Just a thought…

I have been thinking about a little life lesson I had recently that might just be good and applicable for others as we launch into the holiday roller coaster. 

I hope and pray I can explain this in a fairly compact way that remains effective without overcomplicating it. 

The lesson was gleaned during a process that happens with me regularly. 

As an over thinker and over processor, I can take the every day encounters of daily life and feel a lot of emotions all at once. Sometimes I get my feelings hurt…okay a lot of times I get my feelings hurt…even though the offender probably has no idea it happened. 

It’s exhausting, unproductive and according to multiple posts on social media, it triggers unhealthy cortisone spikes. Or so they say. 

My friends and relatives who are wired differently than me like to advise me to shake it off, let it go, fuhgettaboutit. And those who are wired exactly like me know we would love nothing more than to be able to do that. 

But we can’t. 

So on yet another walk trying to work through yet another battle with my thoughts, I prayed as I always do to change. I prayed to move from who I seem to be into someone who doesn’t have to be so touchy. I asked yet again to be one of those people who just always seem to be in a good mood. 

As I walked and prayed, I felt the Lord ask me if maybe instead of trying to move to the complete opposite of what I am, could I move just one step away from the negative spiraling. 

I prayed more, asking for a word or picture to help me see how this could work and I got the impression of moving from negative to neutral. 

Not all the way over to positive, chipper, easy peasy lemon squeezy. 

This thought intrigued me as I thought of how we move a car into neutral….not forward, not back. Or the moderator of a debate (or how they should be). Or a country that refuses to take sides. 

So when I got home I looked up neutral and found exactly those words in the definition. 

To be neutral is to not choose sides and so as I continued to ponder and pray and practice it, I came to see that when my feelings get hurt, I am essentially taking my side in a real or imagined altercation. 

By choosing to be neutral, I take my thoughts captive and decide that I will not take “my side” against another person in my feelings and emotions. 

I literally picture myself shifting my emotional car into neutral. There is relief in NOT spiraling in negativity NOR do I feel condemned that I can’t be one of those cheery uncomplicated people. 

It’s like the hurt is there, and I can acknowledge it, but I forego mulling over the circumstances by sitting in a seat of judgment of right and wrong. I am releasing the need to figure out what happened by being neutral…not choosing sides…and letting God handle that. 

In this place of neutral, I can heal and move on the way I was wired. 

Like a bruise on the shin, the point isn’t how it got there, but treating what I can and then letting it heal. 

This will make sense to some of you. For the rest, perhaps just be mindful that the people you will encounter this season will include a few like me. 

Let’s walk tenderly and prayerfully through our encounters with friends, family and acquaintances. 

God made each of us uniquely and wonderfully and we all struggle with different things. 

If something needs to be addressed, I can assure you, spending some time in neutral will take the intensity of emotions out of the encounter that needs to happen <3