Permission To Be Upset

I got a big distinction today that really freed me up. I'd always related to an "upset" as something that SHOULDN'T BE - after all, I have all the distinctions and have practiced them pretty well; I'm transformed AND a leader of the work of personal transformation; people actually come to me for coaching to get them off their upsets - therefore I shouldn't be upset. Sure, I've gotten upset a few times over the last year and gotten off it with velocity, but it was a state of being I resisted like the plague.

Until last Saturday, right at the beginning of a big event, when I got upset and didn't even realize it. It wasn't a big upset, but it got uglier the more I suppressed it. First, my legs cramped up and the pain got so excruciating that I had to sit down and hand off part of the presentation to my co-lead. Then my voice went - in the middle of speaking in front of more than 50 people! Thankfully, I made it through, produced effective results, and didn't think much about what happened...until I had "what happened" and "what I made it mean" distinguished later that evening.

I unknowingly created an internal conversation that I wasn't being supported (my interpretation of a single experience that very quickly got "validated" as the afternoon went along), and as I couldn't express it while in front of the guests, it somehow manifested physiologically - both through the pain in my legs and my voice. Since I'd been perfectly fine an hour before the event, it all made sense.

I thought I was off it completely until today, in conversation with a good friend and coach, I saw that I was still really upset. My voice hadn't returned, so there still was something I wasn't communicating. And she said something that powerfully freed me up: give yourself permission to be upset.

What?! I'd thought an upset was something that I shouldn't allow to happen - I actually hadn't been giving myself permission to be upset or to even acknowledge that I was being upset. But how could I even begin to "get off" being upset if I never acknowledged it?

It made perfect sense. I'd been stifling my upsets all this time, until the BIG one last Saturday reared its ugly head without my permitting myself to be present to it. So I cleaned that up today, with someone I'd actually been upset with during the event, and, weirdly enough, for the second time in the last two days (I'd earlier expressed my withheld communication to a couple of other people) my voice actually started to come back in the course of the conversation! How freeing it was to actually say that I got pissed off by my interpretation of how he was occuring to me and to actually own and be responsible for my upset! And to finally, completely get off it, in the course of five minutes.

Now that I've given myself that grace, that permission, I can acknowledge that I AM being upset about something else: a certain expectation I've been denying (to myself) I harbored. I can now own and be fully responsible for that, now that I've seen that I'd been relating to circumstances as "this shouldn't be!" By choosing, not resisting, it, I can really "get off it." And create anew :-)

Thank God for access to that freedom, for the liberation from the crippling restraints of fallen humanity that keep us from being who He created us to be. For how can we be loosed from the chains that bind us, if we don't even acknowledge that they're there? It was no coincidence that the reading for that fateful Saturday is one of my favorite verses, from 2 Corinthians 4 (6-18):

"For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of (Jesus) Christ.

But we hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.

For we who live are constantly being given up to death for the sake of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Since, then, we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, 'I believed, therefore I spoke,' we too believe and therefore speak, knowing that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and place us with you in his presence.

Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God.

Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal."