Say No to Negativity and Bad Moods

Adam Dachis wrote that a single bad episode can negatively taint the memory of an otherwise pleasant event (“Your Brain Can Fool You Into Hating Something You Actually Like,” http://lifehacker.com/5948851, see also “How to Beat a Bad Day Before it Starts,” http://lifehacker.com/5754196/how-to-beat-a-bad-day-before-it-starts).  It is so easy to fall into a negativity trap, and it actually takes some self-awareness and creativity to short-circuit the negative process your mind would normally take.

I’m actually very fortunate to have had my goofy Dad as a silly, but wonderful example.  All his life, Daddy had the ability to see the humor in the kind of things that wreck other people’s whole day—and usually it was his own clumsiness, lack of planning, or just plain stupidity.  Take for example the time we were camping in Palo Duro Canyon when I was four years old.  It had rained overnight, and my three-year-old brother and I had left our sneakers outside the tent.  In the morning they were soaking wet when we woke up.  Daddy set fire to the trash in one of the 55 gallon drums that the park used as trash cans, put a grill from the barbecue on top and set our shoes on the grill to dry while we had breakfast.  Halfway through breakfast, Mom wrinkled her nose and said, “What is that smell?”  The rubber soles of our sneakers had melted.

Another man might have gotten upset, after all, this would mean cutting the weekend short.  Another man might have gotten angry at us for leaving our sneakers outside all night.  But Daddy was able to see the humor and his own fallible humanity in melting our sneakers, so he just began to laugh.  And when he began to laugh, we all began to laugh.  What could have been an ugly incident was turned into one of our funniest family stories—one that I immortalized in my book, “Hannard Productions,” a memoir of Daddy.

The other day I used that same skill to navigate the difficulties of trying to get to the airport in Wroclaw, Poland.  The desk clerk at my hotel in Kalisz helped me figure out how to get back to Wroclaw, recommending the bus, rather than the train because of some unexplained difficulties that would have me getting off the train at some point and taking a bus the rest of the way.  She called a taxi for me, and told him where to take me (it was too far to walk with a suitcase).  When I asked about how to get to the airport from the bus station, she recommended a taxi.

On the bus, about an hour after starting the trip, we were suddenly sitting at a dead halt in the woods somewhere.  In fact, the driver had turned off the engine.  A few cars passed us coming the other way, and those were the only times the driver turned on the engine and inched forward.  Finally a fire truck pulled up and exchanged words in Polish with the bus driver.  I asked the woman next to me what was going on.  She said that there was an accident blocking the road, and the fireman was advising us to turn around and go another way.  With admirable skill the driver turned the enormous bus around on the tiny two-lane road, and backtracked to the last town we had gone through.

He chose another route, and before long we had stopped again.  The road was completely shut down due to roadwork.  So he turned the bus around and headed back to town, choosing another route.  By the time we got to Wroclaw, the bus was about an hour late, and I still needed to get to the airport.

I followed the other passengers into the bus station, and found the information booth.  But the woman there didn’t speak English.  I pulled out my phrasebook, looking for the Polish phrase: “I need to go to the airport.”  The phrasebook has the following useful phrases:

Where’s the . . . ?

bus station

city center

road to . . .

train station

How do I get there?

Where can I buy a ticket?

I want to go to . . .

Which bus goes to . . . ?

Please take me to . . .

In fact, it has every useful word and phrase for getting around in Poland except the word “airport”!  And I couldn’t remember the name of the airport, so I couldn’t even ask it that way.  I went to look at the departures board, but that was as unintelligible as Sanskrit.  I felt panic rising in me as my check-in time approached, knowing that the taxi ride had taken almost an hour from the airport to the city center.

I wanted to chuck the phrasebook in the trash.  How can it have phrases like “What a great film!”, “Do you like horseback riding?”, and “Where can you go to hear folk music?” and not have the word airport?

I went back to the information window and tried again.  Upon hearing the word airport, she wrote 408 and a Polish word in indecipherable scratch.  What does that mean?  Do I need to look for bus number 408 to wherever this says?  I was as uninformed as ever.

I went to the ticket window for the bus and asked the woman there if she speaks English.  She shook her head no.  I asked her how to get to the airport, and instead of selling me a bus ticket, she wrote on a slip of paper 408 and a Polish word as illegible as the other.  What to do?

I saw a sign for bus tickets at the pharmacy, and seeing that the woman behind the counter was young, I decided that it couldn’t hurt to try and ask her.  Usually it is the younger people who speak English.  The woman ahead of me talked and talked, and I fought hard to contain the panic and wait patiently.  Finally after several false exits in which she turned and said something else as she stepped away from the counter, she finally left.  The young woman did speak some English, and she advised me that my best bet was to take a taxi to the airport.  I asked where I might find a taxi because I hadn’t seen a single taxi in this part of town.  She told me where to find the taxi stand.

I easily found the taxi stand, and when I said the word airport, he popped my bag into the trunk and whisked me away.  I made it on time, and with no further difficulties.  And I said all that to say that my scary moments at the bus station might have soured me on Wroclaw or even ruined my day.  But I started thinking of how the folks at Lonely Planet had overlooked something very simple, but essential to the traveler.  And I started laughing right there in the taxi as I thought, Well, at least I know how to ask people if they like horseback riding!

Lessons in Floating

Last Year – When I was here at the beautiful Adriatic Sea last year, the Holy Spirit told me to go for a swim.  I loved the beach when I was a kid—what kid doesn’t?  But as an adult, I had come to associate the sea with many discomforts: the itchy feeling of salt water dried on the skin, oily sunscreen crusted with sand, fair skin that burns despite the use of sunscreen SPF 45, the sand that gets into places it shouldn’t, and a body that’s white and lumpy and looks better clothed than in a swimsuit—intense body shame.  So it was with all that beach-hating baggage that the Holy Spirit told me to take a swim.

Despite my bags and baggage, I did take a swim.  Leaving my glasses on top of my towel, I walked toward the water.  I saw something washed up on the beach that looked like a dead jellyfish.  I’ve been stung by jellyfish.  It’s like being stung by an electric wasp—definitely an experience I don’t want to ever have again.  But instead of turning back, I just laughed.  If God wants me to swim, then He has a purpose.  “Besides,” I told myself, “it was probably just a plastic bag from somebody’s beach lunch.”

I had decided that my act of obedience meant that I should get completely wet.  So I got about waist-deep, then dove into the waves.  After paddling around for a few minutes, I thought that I was finished.  But the Holy Spirit told me: “Lay back.”  I did, and discovered something wonderful: I float like a cork!  I am so buoyant that I can even float with my head above the water, toes above the water, and bottom down.  But laying back with my ears under the water was incredibly peaceful, and little by little I felt my limbs release their muscular tension.

I took that first swim fully clothed because I didn’t have my swimsuit with me.  I understood that swimming would be something I should do every day while I was here, so I knew I needed to buy a swimsuit.  The only thing I’ve hated more than the beach is buying a swimsuit.  The last one I bought online, and it covered so much of me that it was almost a throwback to the old swimsuits they used in the early 1900’s.  I knew that if I thought too much about it, I would talk myself out of buying one, so I just plunged into a swim shop and bought one.  It’s not bad looking.

A few days after that first swim the wind kicked up, bringing bigger waves.  Thanks to a breakwater, the big waves are tamed into choppy little wavelets before they reach the swimming area by the beach.  During my floating session that day, God (who had never repeated Himself to me before) told me: “Relax!  Relax!  Relax!”  And the little wavelets shook each limb with a different rhythm and out of synch with one another.  It reminded me of a Lamaze exercise in which your coach takes an arm and your teacher takes the opposite leg and they shake them in differing rhythms.  You are supposed to practice releasing the tension in those muscles and all the others in between.  And that memory tickled me so much that I laughed out loud—and a more profound relaxation followed.  God has the greatest sense of humor!

The lesson in physically relaxing taught me to relax when I’m worried about things going wrong.  Without going into detail (which you can read about in my book “Look, Listen, Love,” available from http://www.lulu.com/), I learned that I can relax and let God work out the things that I have no control over.  And when I do really relax and release those worries, God not only works things out, but blesses me in unexpected ways.  And one of those things, you can read about in my blog post: https://europeanfaithmissions.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/god-meets-radical-faith-with-radical-provision/.

This Year – I have returned to the beach, bringing two very dear friends with me.  The three of us have gone to the beach each day, floating and swimming, talking and laughing, praying and praising our Heavenly Father.

A lesson that God has been teaching me recently is to let go of the past—particularly past offenses and betrayals, but also past mistakes or bad choices that I need to forgive myself.  I have been working on it, releasing those people and things to God, forgiving and letting them go.  But every once in a while, the memory of these things comes to mind, robbing me of my focus and trying to rob my peace.  Whenever this happens, I try to release the memory as quickly as possible.

While floating yesterday, the Holy Spirit told me that, just as I had learned to relax my worries into God’s hands, I also need to relax my memories into His hands.  And lying there on the bosom of the sea, I did exactly that.

This morning during my prayer time, once again I found my attention wandering to a painful event.  Immediately, I said, “Let it go!  Let it go!  Let it go!” and I released the memory and returned my focus to God, my Peace.

When it comes to relaxing my grip on those memories, would it be wrong to say that I’m working on it?  I’m grateful that God is a patient Teacher.  God is good!