What are your Feelings, Fears, and Wants? (11/22/24)

 This question is one that Joyce and I have tried to ask each other on a regular basis since attending a marriage retreat in the earlier part of this year. The idea is that successful marriages require good communication, and that one very important type of communication is the “Heart Talk.” The format for these types of conversations is outlined with the pneumonic “ICU,” and the goal is to (1) IDENTIFY your feelings and the feelings of your spouse, (2) CARE about those feelings, and (3) UNDERSTAND those feelings with the assistance of your mate. I’m very thankful that we were introduced to this concept at just the right time, and I wish we had been given a little more opportunity to practice before these became survival skills. It’s almost like we went out for a surfing lesson, popped up on the board once or twice, and then as a cruel prank someone entered us in the Mavericks Big Wave Invitational.

This week we had the opportunity to speak with a psychologist. She asked us to identify three things that help us in coping with the current situation. As we thought about it, we both came to the realization that our nightly “Heart Talk” was one of the rare glimpses of light in a world full of darkness. What a gift it has been to be able to hold hands as we stare directly into our own mortality and give voice to all of the feelings, fears, and wants that accompany that experience. We have found that Psalm 42 has been a great blueprint for the exercise of “pouring out our souls.” But as important as it is to “get in touch with our feelings,” this is not enough. After taking time to carefully and actively listen to all of the panicky things our hearts are telling us, there comes a point where we have to tell our hearts to sit down and shut up for a moment so we can speak back to all those anxieties. As Martin Lloyd-Jones described it: “And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who he is and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man [the author of Psalm 42]: ‘I shall praise Him for the help of His countenance.’” This is not just cognitive behavioral therapy. While it is true that our feelings are not the result of what happens to us, but the result of what we tell ourselves about what has happened to us, there is much greater power when we have these conversations with ourselves in the presence of God.

When I think about all the people who are standing firm with us today as we prepare to embark on chemotherapy, I can look back and for the first time and appreciate the unmistakable presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives as a direct and definitive answer to all of the prayers that have been offered up. There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t be falling apart right now and giving up the last little bit of hope that we might have found since receiving such a grim diagnosis. Let me assure you that neither one of us are that resilient. Rather, it is the result of that same voice that we read about in Psalm 42:7-11 speaking to us:

“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God my Rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?’ My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”