Recently, some things happened in my daughter’s life that felt like a series of untenable situations, and I felt completely stripped of any former wisdom I may have had, for how to deal with it.

My daughter was in a car accident the other day, and her car was totaled. Thankfully no one was injured. 

But boy was this event triggering for me. My entire nervous system ramped up to DEFCON 3, sending me into a protector, fix it, overreaction mode. 

I noticed myself making up panic-driven stories about how she’s not ready to be independent, and inventing stress-laden scenarios:

”Am I going to have to take care of her my whole life? Clearly she can’t take care of herself!” 

All this to try to control and make sense of what happened. 

Have you ever found yourself in an unbearable situation that feels so hard and uncomfortable that it becomes impossible to endure? As if you’ve got to figure it all out and understand every blow by blow, in an effort to mitigate the unmanageability?

And I’m not just talking about situations that affect parents. It could be a long-held resentment with a colleague or family member that is hiding as a secretly felt open wound that’s still lurking under the proverbial rug and causes an emotional trigger.

Every one of us has been impacted by a situation, or life condition that we didn’t want and can’t get rid of. 

In my situation I was trying to get rid of the feeling of helplessness where my daughter’s safety and well being is concerned. There is the fierce lioness part of me that was not able to accept that I can’t protect my child from life’s circumstances. (And that’s no longer my role anyway!)

Often I’ve so badly wanted difficult times to make sense and for every confronting experience to have a clean and clear resolution. 

There’s a phrase in marketing called an “open loop”. It’s why a “cliffhanger” of a film or tv show episode draws us in and almost addicts us to having to return to watch the sequel or next episode. 

Our brains want open loops closed. We want things solved, resolved, corrected, cleared up, made complete, straightened out. 

Out of necessity, I quickly grasped the truth: life isn’t always tidy and neat. There’s a lot that doesn’t make any sense. Ends don’t always meet unfrayed. 

Life is messy and I’m not in control. 

Well of course, at an intellectual level I’ve known this, and yet clearly, my nervous system hadn’t learned the lesson!

So, how did I begin to relate to this untenable, unwanted event?

• I realized that being okay with the messiness feels a lot simpler, (a.k.a. I surrendered).
• I realized I like the freedom of being at peace within myself in moments of apparent chaos and confusion. 
• I also like the freedom in knowing that while things around me may remain dangling undone, I can simply decide it’s complete for me. 

We have the authority to “call it complete” for any mess we face. We don’t have to actually fix everything we deem broken. 

In the midst of the mess, I still get to enjoy the variety and richness of my daily life. I still get to love myself and grant forgiveness to anyone who may have offended me, whether they receive it or not.

One perspective that can help us declare our own completion in situations we don’t want and can’t change is this:

• First, know that you get to choose how you want to relate to what’s happened (through a lens of anger, control, avoidance, positivity, surrender, etc.)
• Second, there’s an attitude you can take after you’ve given yourself the time and space to fully feel your emotions around what’s happened.  

The attitude is this:

“In EVERY adversity, there is a seed of equal or greater benefit.”  

– Napoleon Hill 

… which is found, if I’m willing to stay open to that good revealing itself to me. (The words of Rev. Michael Beckwith,)

Note that it’s really hard to find the “good” when you haven’t allowed yourself to fully feel the human emotions that arise. 

This is not a recipe for bypassing your humanity, but for embracing it.

In full transparency, I’m still navigating the emotions, too, and staying open to the good revealing itself. We’re all in this together. 🙂