Meditation – Page 20 – Andrea Arthur Owan

Jesus in the Garden: Body, Mind and Spirit

The moonlight filtering through the garden’s ancient, gnarled olive trees casts dancing shadows on the ground. A young man, muscled and toned from years of outdoor living, frequent walking and laboring as a carpenter kneels alone on the cool soil, a few yards from three friends who have fallen asleep.

Just minutes before, the young man’s festive mood had changed from one of peace and strength to sorrow and deep distress. He expresses as much to his friends and asks them to sit and watch with him while he goes to pray. But they can’t. They’re tired after the long day, and their full stomachs following the special celebration meal have made them sleepy.

The young man’s distress is verbalized in his prayer. “Please, Lord, take this cup from me.” Clearly he would rather not do what he’s being asked to do. He prays, and then, agitated, rises to check on his friends, or be encouraged by their presence.

But they are sleeping, and the young man chastises one of them for not being able to stay awake with him, to support him and keep watch. Danger is lurking. The young man knows it’s only a matter of time before it arrives, and he doesn’t want his dearest friends to be blindsided by it. They don’t have a clue what’s about to happen. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” he tells them.

He again admonishes them to watch and pray, and then returns to his spot to continue his beseeching conversation with God. Then he checks on his friends again, who have once again fallen asleep. Again he admonishes them and warns them to stay awake before he returns one more time to his prayer.

This time his distress becomes severe, and he sweats so profusely that his pores ooze drops of blood. It looks as though the life is draining out of him, weakening him physically. But he makes his decision, accepts his fate, and rises to meet his friends for the final time before being grabbed and arrested in front of them and dragged away for trial.

A closer look—

Most of you are probably familiar with this story—Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples after their Passover meal. Jesus selecting three of his closest disciples to follow him farther into the garden to sit, watch, and pray while He beseeches His Father to remove the punishment and suffering of the cross that he’ll soon have to endure.

In this story, Jesus displays both his physical and spiritual sides. Acutely. But can you tell what he is more of—physical or spiritual?

Body, Mind, Spirit? Or all three—

He craves the physical closeness and emotional support of his friends. He seems to crave assurance that they have his back. When he discovers—two times—that they don’t, he is angry and calls them out for their weakness. Their physical weakness, not their spiritual deficiency. He recognizes them for what they are—weak men who have difficulty overcoming their body’s physical needs and desires. And he warns them about the dangers of letting the physical overrule and control the spiritual.

By the third time, he confronts them again, but essentially tells them it doesn’t matter anymore. The peace of the night (for them) is over. Indeed, life as they have been living it will abruptly cease within hours.

Being God incarnate, Jesus was spirit, The Word itself. But He was also physical, that spirit encased in flesh. On this night, he demonstrates both the body and the spirit to the extremes.

What about us?

Is it realistic to expect us to do any less? Especially since we are not God in the flesh—we are not God at all—and we are more likely to battle with our body’s frailties, shortcomings and demands than Jesus.

On that night He demonstrated both body and spirit. Yes, the Spirit won the battle over the body for Him, but that does not detract from the fact that His body suffered immeasurably, and would suffer even more when it is beaten, pierced and hung soon after His arrest.

Our Lord suffered physically, emotionally and spiritually, a triad of pain.

Body, mind and spirit.

If our Lord suffered so, how can we expect to be spared from sometimes being more body than spirit, not an equal balance of both, or times when we manage to be more spirit than body?

And you?

What has your experience been?

Until next week,

Rejoice in the complexity of being both body and spirit!

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photo by Antoine Perier

Suffering from FOMO? Time to Experience JOMO!

Are you a social media hound? Do you live vicariously through others? Do you suffer from FOMO—the fear of missing out? Without realizing it, have you succumbed to Silicon Valley’s must-be-in-the-know hype and algorithms designed to keep you attached to their social media platforms?

Then it might be time for you to unplug, turn off, scale down, disengage and tune out! It’s time to experience JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out!

The research—

Study after study seems to conclude that our digital device habits are making us physically, emotionally (and often spiritually) sick. Eye muscles, brain re-wiring, neck pain, headaches, shortened attention span, depression and the emergence of the new “tech neck” neck wrinkles are just a few associated ailments.

You’d tend to think it’s teens and college kids who are the sufferers. And they are. But evidently adults—on average—spend four hours a day on their social feeds. Catching up, tuning in, watching, watching, watching and updating.

I think it’s time for all of us to do some self-examination on why we’ve managed to get ourselves hooked on these sites and be ruthless about taking some digital detox time.

Make some changes—

While it may be easier to initiate a new practice on the weekend, I want you to at least be paying more attention to your social media habits, recording your usage time, being mindful of why you’re updating, watching and reading and then trying some of the following tech-free activities, especially when you get the urge to check your social feed on your phone:

Go for a Sunday drive WITHOUT your phone. Or shut it off and throw it in the car trunk. Stop for lunch some place and enjoy a nice, relaxing, lengthy meal without snagging your phone from the car. (Daydreaming really is a lost art. Or chatting with the waitress.)
Set a timer to alert you to when you’ve spent an hour on your social media and then turn it off immediately when the timer dings.
When you feel the urge to open Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or any of the other sites, take a meditation moment instead. Then make sure you don’t go to the site after the meditation.
Plan for a tech-free vacation and leave your computer, tablet, etc. at home.
Select a tech-free room in your house, where computers, phones, tablets, etc. are off limits. The bedroom would probably be the best place because it would help you get out of the harmful habit of reading emails or the news online just before you switch off the lights to go to bed. You’re sleep will improve. Trust me!
Embark on a connection-free vacation to a WiFi and cell-phone connection-free location. A co-worker of my husband’s says he travels to a special place in Indonesia because there’s no WiFi there, and the company can’t connect with him! Be thinking about where you could go and really leave it all behind.
Stop giving out your email address and phone number to everyone, or every store or organization that asks you for it, so you can receive notice of new offers and special sales. You’ll save money.

Experience the joy of spending some uninterrupted time with yourself, with nature, with others, with your Creator.

Experience the joy of daydreaming again.

Experience the joy of tech-free freedom.

Improve your emotional, physical and spiritual health.

Stop obsessing over what everyone else is saying about the world situation and their lives.

Thousands of generations before us did just fine living tech-free. Really. In many ways they did much better. Maybe it’s time for us to go backward in some areas and defy the tech revolution!

And while you’re reducing your tech and social media time, shut off the television.

There’s certainly not much joying going around on that device.

Share your journey—

If you’ve been able to slay the FOMO, tell us what you did to accomplish it!

And tell me how much you’ve been able to reduce your social media time in a week.

NEXT WEEK: Was Jesus a philosopher?

Until then,

Experience what joys life has to offer you (the ones you’ve been overlooking) when you’re missing out!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

“No social media” photo by The Arizona Beehive

Are You Mostly Body or Mostly Spirit? Part 2

Have you ever been in physical pain? I mean the kind of pain you experience with a serious car accident, broken bone, or surgery?

The pain can be so severe that it strikes at your deepest gut level. Your nerves scream. You’re in agony, and you can’t get any relief. Heavy pain meds might take the edge off, but only for a while. Ice acts like a numbing anesthetic it, but eventually that wears off too. Your body screams “Nooooooo! Make it go away!” Or the pain can be so severe you actually entertain the thought of death being an inviting option.

Before I went on hiatus for my oral surgery, we were discussing whether or not we—as humans—were more body or more spirit. I’d like to return to that discussion for the next several weeks.

What do you think?

When you’re in physical pain, would you say you’re thinking of yourself as more body, or more spirit? I know I’ve often wished that I were more spirit than body at that point, but there’s just no escaping the body my spirit’s housed in. Often even my spirit cries out too, since it doesn’t seem to like it when the body’s suffering either. The physical disability seems to wrap its tentacles around every part of you. Body and spirit intertwine. And you engage in mental combat to make the spirit rise and conquer.

At those times, we usually allow the body to move into center stage, and give it all the attention it demands, deserves, if you want to heal properly and press on in life. Often the spirit takes a backseat, or is temporarily forgotten. Even though you’re really trying to focus on the spirit—sometimes for distraction—the body can be pretty demanding.

Example—

Take a good look at the picture at the top of the post. The collarbone that’s broken, splintered into multiple pieces and displaced. It’s a doozy. And having suffered a simple greenstick fracture (crack) in my collarbone at the age of 4, I can tell you this person is suffering. My arm felt as though it was falling off. I can only barely imagine what this person’s arm felt like.

Realignment would require surgery and internal fixation. It may even be a compound fracture, where it’s broken through the skin. Bleeding. With muscle, fat, and nerve tissue exposed.

There is no question in my mind that the sufferer of this injury is overwhelmed with the limitations and demands of his or her body. And it’s getting their attention.

Can you blame them?

NEXT WEEK: I’ll give you what I think are good examples of spirit and body taking on equal importance. And it’s demonstrated with and in our Lord Jesus.

Have a great weekend nurturing both body and spirit!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photo by Harlie Raethel

Post-surgery Recovery Meditation—Part 2

When you’re lying around, getting waited on, with nothing hanging over your head besides recuperating, you have a lot of time to think. About yourself, your life, and your priorities. What’s holding you back from achieving them. And what “priorities” and life habits you should erase from the list or alter. So you live a more balanced life and enjoy life more.

Right now I’m working out how I can keep that relative stress-free thing going after I’ve made a full recovery, which should be the middle of August. I’m hoping I’m on schedule!

Of course, I can’t always have it my way with the stress-free living. I’m a daughter, wife, mother, friend and self-employed writer, fitness pro, chaplain and speaker. Stress and unexpected responsibilities and schedule changes can overtake you like a tsunami in any area of life, and often it happens in more than one area at the same time. (During this time of recovery, I also had my son’s echocardiogram for a heart concern burdening my heart, too, so I did have plenty to worry about, IF I’d chosen to “worry.” Thankfully, the results came back normal.)

My responsibility—

While there’s much I can’t control, there is a lot I can control, a lot I can choose to set aside or say “no” to, and a lot I can take a pass on. Like completely ignore. I don’t always have to be everything to everybody. And I don’t have to feel a responsibility to respond to every inquiry or notice I receive.

Making a deeper examination of that was part of my recovery meditation process.

During my initial recovery stages, I read voraciously, watched movies, and colored. I even studied my on-line business-to-business email-writing course, and sat in on several webinars when I felt strong (and interested enough) to pay attention. One I exited fairly early after I decided it wasn’t worth my time or effort. Time I would never get back in my life. At my age, I need to start getting picky. Actually, at any age you should be.

The deadly, depressing emails—

One thing I started thinking seriously about (and realized I’d become somewhat of a slave to) is all of those emails I have lined up in my inbox. You probably have some of them yourself. The ones with the little red flags or yellow stars highlighting them as emails you wanted to go back and read because when they first arrived in your inbox they grabbed your attention, you just knew they were worth reading, when you have time. You were sure you’d have time to get to them later.

Know what I’m talking about? I was sure those emails would give me some little information nugget to improve my life, improve my business, make me a better or more well-rounded person. Make me happier, or more in-the-know.

Then I noticed how many flagged emails I had in just one email account alone. It’s embarrassing to admit. But here it goes. (Drum roll!)

Twelve hundred seventy-eight flagged emails. Yup. 1278. One thousand, two hundred seventy-eight emails I planned to open to read. That I planned to spend my precious time reading.Time I would never again get back.

And you know what? It’s not gonna happen. Ever. Why? Because I really don’t want to read those emails. If I did, I would have found the time to do it when they first came through.

And I don’t want to take precious time to read them, either. Not all of them, anyway. Not most of them, actually. So I made a decision and developed a plan for those emails and future inbox arrivals. Some of these ideas might work for you too.

The plan—

Go through your list and decide which emails are must-saves, like the airlines tickets, hotel reservations, etc. Move what you can to an email folder, set up for each topic. Learn how to file your emails.
If the email is older than a month, then it gets tossed. Chances are the same email subject will arrive in my inbox again, at which time I can decide if it’s really timely and important for me, or not. (In which case it needs to be immediately deleted.)
For those emails that come from a regular blog I subscribe to that I really find helpful and interesting, I can always just automatically delete the email and go to the sender’s web or blog page to scroll through the recent topics or blog posts I should read.
I can set aside a portion or time block of my day (be intentional on just how much time you’ll set aside) to devote to email and blog post reading. For me, sometimes it’s helpful to read a couple of blog posts or articles on writing early in the morning before I sit down to write. That tends to get me encouraged and motivated. And I always try to start my day with some kind of Bible study or inspirational, faith-based reading.
For those sites that offer a “Week in Review” email, wait until that comes through and then be selective on what you read.
It sounds harsh, but don’t assume that everyone who sends you an email needs a response. It’s time to kill the guilties on this one!
Choose a time of the day (maybe after all of your must-do work is done) to respond to emails from friends. (The same holds true for text messages.) Of course, if they’re emailing you about an urgent need that you can and want to help with, or a prayer request, then it’s usually okay to respond immediately. As long as you don’t allow the conversation to go on and on and on. (Unless you have time, of course.) Family and friends need attention and nurturing, but some are needier than others, and you sometimes do need to be selective on when and how you respond. Always be intentional, thoughtful and purposeful about it.
I’m setting a time to turn the phone off (or set it aside) and shut the computer down every night at least an hour before I go to bed. (This goes along with knowing when to read emails and not let them consume your day.) That way I’m not chained to those emails and reading them. I’ll be able to prepare myself better mentally for bed, relax, unwind and set myself up for a better night’s sleep.

And you know what I figured out after starting to apply this plan? I learned that I can read about three educational emails a day before my brain starts swimming, and I start forgetting the important points of what I read. So I know I need to be choosy. And really learn and remember the important points of what I’m reading. I think that if I can remember, and apply, 2 – 3 good points to my life and work, I’m doing well! (And that may be 2 -3 points a week, not daily!)

Why delete the unread, flagged emails—

While I could just leave the flagged emails sitting in my inbox, and not spend time deleting them, I won’t. Why? Because just seeing those little red flags and gold stars makes me feel guilty. It screams “Obligation!! Important!!” “Must do!” to me. And that triggers stress and irritation. And I want to reduce my stress and irritation as much as possible.

Even though I might have signed up to receive those emails, I don’t need to read all of them. And I don’t want to be reminded of what I didn’t do and what I might (gasp!) have missed. I don’t want to become a slave to my inbox. I’m determined to slay the FOMO that lurks in my brain. That’s something I need to keep meditating on until the FOMO has fizzled away.

It all might be a psychological game right now, but the brain plays games with us. And I need to retrain mine.

How about you?

Question:

How many “I’ll-have-to-go-back-and-read-those-emails” do you have in your inbox? And when are you going to—with a happy and content heart—send them on their way?

How much is your time worth to you? (In the business world, every second or dollar is spent is weighed against a ROI—return on investment. It’s worth weighing in every area of life too.)

As King Solomon wrote in the “Book of Ecclesiastes”:

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:”

NEXT WEEK: Turning FOMO into JOMO!

Until then,

Be ruthless! Like junk mail, learn how to— and be— aggressive about dumping emails!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photo copyright pcworld.com

Post-Surgery Recovery Meditation—Part 1

I’m so glad the doctor wanted me to have light anesthesia for the three-hour surgery. I don’t think I could have knowingly reclined in the chair that long, with him cutting and scraping tissue from the roof of my mouth, using it to make new gum tissue in front of my four bottom teeth. Every once-in-a-while he’d talk to me, and I’d respond. And every once-in-a-while the pain and pressure were severe enough to make me shift around and moan a little. But he said I was a model patient and everything went perfectly. Thank you, Lord!

Post-surgery prescription—

Recovery usually comes with a winding path, and this recovery was no different.

I knew I was going to have lay low—very low—during recovery. I wasn’t allowed to do any strenuous exercise or activity (I finally found out that their definition for “strenuous” was doing anything that raised my blood pressure. (!) I couldn’t bend over—too much pressure on the surgical site and blood flow into the area. I wasn’t to brush my teeth (ach!), or eat hot foods, or chew on anything hard. Since I don’t do well with aspirin or ibuprofen, he sent me home with several packets of the narcotic Vicodin and a prescription for more. I also got a handful of ibuprofen packets, just in case, but I decided to stick to my liquid child ibuprofen, in small amounts.

Dealing with physical post-op pain—

Even though I don’t like taking pain meds, I did take them. People who take their pain meds to stay on top of the pain, rather than waiting for it to ramp up and get out of control, recover better. And I wanted to recover. And sleep enhances healing. And pain meds encourage sleep.

So I tried to follow his instructions to the letter and then some. I alternated acetaminophen and ibuprofen to manage the pain. I used the little ice gel pack (I got my ice!), ten minutes on and ten off, unless I was sleeping, which ended up happening a lot. I stuck to cold liquid foods the first day. (Cold beef broth is surprisingly tasty when it’s one of only several foods you can take in.) Then came the cold cottage cheese, buckets of cold mac and cheese. Then a little goat yogurt. Even though I was allowed to “chew” on soft foods, I didn’t the first week. When I finally did get around to chewing on really soft chicken and quinoa, it was a catastrophe. So away went the chicken and quinoa.

Dealing with the day-to-day recovery—

And so it went. I wasn’t allowed to pull my lip down to inspect his handiwork, but I had to gently swab diluted hydrogen peroxide on the area twice a day, and I could feel the patchwork quilt he’d sewed into the roof of my mouth. Everything I did revolved around what I needed to do to heal. And, for the most part, that ended up being my meditation.

It made all of the difference in the world having a caretaker to rely on. My precious husband stayed home to work and to see to my needs the first week. “Don’t worry about doing anything. You just had major surgery. You need to focus on recovering,” he kept saying. And that made all of the difference in the world too. Knowing I didn’t have to worry about meeting any deadlines, returning any emails, or making sure things got done. (I did text a lot, which was nice since I couldn’t chat on the phone.)

The positive emotional, physical and spiritual effects—

And after the first week of pain and the pallid skin color that comes with illness, I noticed something. The healthy color started returning to my face. I actually looked healthier than I have in some time. The worry lines started softening along with some of my “older looking” features. My eyes looked brighter, happier, even though I didn’t wear a smear of makeup for three weeks.

While lying in bed one day, I realized how happy I was to be able to focus on one thing, and feel stress-free while doing it. I realized how miserable and worn down physically, emotionally and spiritually I can become on just a day-to-day basis, with an over-scheduled and over-committed life. I realized just how much life, and the way we choose to live it, can drain you of energy, happiness and joy.

Recovery comparisons—

All of this made me think of a friend who battled breast cancer some years ago, a young mom of four.

Her husband—a worship leader—had gotten a job at another church, and we didn’t see much of one another, although I knew she was battling cancer. When my husband and I were out to dinner one night, we ran into her. She was going through chemo, had lost her beautiful mane of dark brown silky hair and was wearing a dark brown wig cut into a cute bob.

But her face looked strained and her body exhausted. Way beyond the look of suffering a cancer patient normally shows when undergoing chemo. When I learned she was still working at the bookstore during her treatments, I asked why. Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes looked sad when she responded. “I have to. To keep my medical insurance.”

I felt horrible for her. My friend couldn’t lean into her treatment or cancer recovery, meditate on it, and focus on victory because she had to work. She had to drag herself out of bed everyday to put in her hours just so she could keep getting the treatment she needed. Not only did she have the stress of severe sickness weighing on her heart and chewing away at her body, she had the emotional and physical stress of maintaining a daily work grind.

My friend finished her treatment, had breast reconstruction and seemed to be doing well. Until the cancer returned, and she passed away. She worked through all of it, and I often wonder: How would she have done if she’d been able to focus completely on her health and recovery? If other burdens had not weighed down her heart, soul and body.

I’ve had other friends who’ve battled cancer in much the same way. Although they didn’t have to work, they lived as though they did. Determined to make sure life went on as usual during an unusual time, they pushed and exercised, and tried to muscle through the treatment. And none of the people I’m talking about survived. They may have seemed to be doing okay, but then the cancer returned or metastasized beyond treatment. The one friend told me she returned to cycling training as quickly as she could in order to get the chemo out of her body.

Now I haven’t done any research on it, but I’m wondering if that kind of approach typically leads to that kind of ending. I know it’s important to do things you love and maintain social contact, and family connection during a time of illness, I wonder if, in our haste to pursue normal or not let anything change our course, we don’t deliberately lean into and meditate on healing as much as we should. Nobody likes pain or problems, and we tend to fight and run from them with all of our being. But maybe leaning into them, meditating on them, and embracing them is the best prescription.

There really is a lot to be learned in the course of an illness and recovery. Maybe wrapping our arms wide around it and working to extract everything we can from the event is the best thing we can do to enhance healing.

To consider—

What are you going through right now that you’d be better off leaning into?

NEXT WEEK I’ll talk about several things I learned and took action to correct—to enhance my physical, emotional and spiritual health now, and in the future!

If you join me this Wednesday for Workout Wednesdays, I’ll give you a brief overview of what went right and what went wrong in the exercise department during my initial recovery.

Until then,

Don’t miss a single meditation opportunity in your life!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).