We Are All Messed Up!

September 16, 2015 Becky Hill 3 Comments

Do you ever wonder:
If other people are like you?
What their ‘real’ lives are like?
Who are they really behind that mask or behind those closed doors?

Do others really struggle like you do?

Over the years I have learnt that people are more similar than we might think. Although our lives and challenges are, in many ways, unique.

We ALL have struggles.

Life brings all of us both joy and pain.

Even those people who might want you to think that they have it all together. The ones who seem like life always goes well for them – the beautiful couple down the road and the perfect family next door.

Yes; they struggle too.

Their challenges will be unique to them and you will often never know they exist.

But I assure you – they are there.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato

Over the years I have had the privilege to connect and build relationships with people from all different backgrounds and cultures, both here (in the UK) and abroad.

I love people. I love discovering who they really are and then helping them to reach out towards fulfilling their potential.

One of the things I have learnt is that although the world is full of diversity, which is wonderful, we are ALL actually more similar than we might think. Things are different outwardly for us all and yet inside we often face the same challenges, temptations and battles.

I recently watched an episode of a series called ‘The Tribe’ on Channel 4 about a native family living in rural Ethiopia.

It was fascinating.

Obviously their lives were completely different from ours. They lived in mud huts, kept animals, were self sufficient, had arranged marriages and yet as you watched it and listened to the translation you realised that families face a lot of the same issues.

Fear,
Worry,
Anger,
Insecurity,
Struggles,
Pain,
Rebellion (yes teenagers in rural Ethiopia like to push the boundaries of tradition and etiquette just like Western kids do).

In the episode I saw, one of the teenage girls used to love going to the market in the town to look at & buy new items of clothing. On this one occasion she ran off with some of her family’s money to go and buy colourful bras (even though the traditional dress was that women usually went topless). The argument that took place upon her return was so similar to arguments in many teen homes in the West!

We are ALL more similar than you might think.

There is a song by Lecrae, featuring Kari Jobe that really spoke to me following its release a while ago. It is all about the fact that we are ALL broken, messed up and in need of grace.

“Broken pieces actin’ like we ain’t cracked,
But we all messed up and can’t no one escape that…
… Ain’t a soul on the planet
That’s better than another
And we all need grace in the face of each other” – Lecrae

I love this concept.

We are ALL messed up in some way and in need of grace (undeserved kindness, understanding and forgiveness).

Grasping this stops us believing there is a hierarchy of ‘goodness’. That some of us are just ‘good people’ and some of us simply ‘bad’.

The revelation that people are more similar to you than you think, is actually empowering because it makes us all more equal. It demands that we treat one another with grace rather than judging one another with faulty or hypocritical principles.

When we can accept that we ALL have weakness, vulnerability and struggles; our selfishness is challenged and we can actually become more compassionate.

It changes our pride into humility.

We stop rating ourselves as better or worse than others but instead recognise that we are all ‘messed up’, in some way, and in need of grace.

It levels the playing field.

As I wrote in Surviving the Storm Six months on, I have been faced with my own frailty and weaknesses this year, possibly far more than any other year.

This year has challenged my identity and chipped away at my confidence. Physical weakness can also challenge us mentally and emotionally.

You have less energy for life.

However,

I am learning that I need to embrace this process rather than fight it.

We must allow our own struggles to build in us authenticity and a deeper compassion and grace for others.

It’s a painful process.
It’s a humbling process.
But it’s also a beautiful process if we let it run its course.

In A Year Ago Today: A Journey Through Grief (about my Mum’s death) I wrote:

“Suffering can, if we let it, unite and draw us together in a way that nothing else can. It strips us of our titles and crafted exteriors and touches the heart.”

Suffering causes different things to happen to different people: Some people can become hard and bitter, consumed by their own pain and need. Others learn to direct their pain into compassion and empathy for others.

It is these people that find new purpose within their suffering. They have other people to think about and focus on which helps to heal their own wounds.

It changes our perspective.

Self pity; destroys us. It makes us miserable and angry.
Compassion; fills us with positive passion. It moves us to see others needs and make a difference in their lives.

Feeling compassion, for others, in the midst of our own struggles, brokenness and pain, builds bridges that helps us to identify with all sorts of other people.

We are ALL messed up in some way.
We ALL have flaws.
We ALL get stuff wrong.
We ALL make mistakes.

Most of the time we will never know what has happened in someone’s life to make them like they are.

We ALL have a story;
Things that shape us.
Things that break us.
Things that heal us.
Things that strengthen us.

We are ALL more similar than we think and; “We all need grace in the face of each other.”

“It’s incredibly powerful- life changing- to be in a relationship where we can be totally vulnerable without fear, when the person knows the worst about us and still accepts us.” -Samuel Chand

Who could you show grace and compassion to today?

Spinal CSF Leak

Surviving the Storm Eight Months On: My Battle with Concussion & A CSF Leak

September 3, 2015 Becky Hill 4 Comments

A day.
A moment.
An accident.
8 months ago.
When things went wrong for a season.

A fall.
A brain injury.
An undiagnosed spinal injury.
Months of craziness.

This is my update.

It’s for those who know me and it’s for those who don’t. I know some of you are finding these blog posts by searching online.

I want to tell you my story. In the hope that it helps you. Perhaps your own story involves injury and illness, brain or spinal injury. Or maybe it involves another type of storm.

We all face stormy seasons in our lives.

Life is a journey of discovery. We are constantly learning about ourselves and what is around us.

Self awareness is an important part of our growth. My husband and I are on a constant journey to understand life better: Why do we do what we do and feel what we feel? What is our purpose in life and how do we live it out?

We then hope what we learn might help others too.

The journey of self awareness is a humbling journey and yet it is a healthy journey. It helps us to process and break free from thoughts and behaviour that seek to control us.

The past 8 months have been one of the most intense personal journeys of growth I have experienced. As I wrote in Surviving the Storm Six Months On, I have come face to face with many of my weaknesses. Which has been hard and painful, but also a journey of discovering new strength.

So 8 months on.
Where am I now?

I would love to say that everything is fine. That I have made a full recovery and we can leave it all behind us.

But that is not the truth.

At this moment, I am writing this post lying flat, which still forms a significant part of my day. I was up at 6am, as it was the kids first day back at school. I rushed about getting them ready, dropping them off, shopping, sorting, cleaning etc. Then by about 10am I recognised that I needed a bit of ‘down time’ to ward off symptoms and to pace myself through the day.

If you have read my previous posts, know about CSF leaks or have spoken to me about it, you will know that the postural side of the injury is a key part of it.

Basically when you have a CSF leak, your spinal fluid leaks either from your skull or from the part of your spine that holds the spinal fluid.

We never located my leak on the various scans I had, but we assumed mine was probably a spinal leak. This means the spinal fluid leaks into your body from a tiny hole or tear in the membrane that surrounds your spinal cord.

This results in ‘brain sag’. The brain lacks the support of the spinal fluid and so drops in your skull when you are upright (either sitting or standing).

This causes various problems. The most reported symptoms are severe headaches and neck pain as everything gets squashed and stretched inside. But there are a multitude of other symptoms.

One of the key ones for me at first was severe dizziness and major balance issues (I could hardly walk without support for almost 3 months). This is so much better but still manifests as a spaced out/ cloudy feeling quite a bit.

I was diagnosed with a CSF leak about 8/9 weeks after my initial fall off a ladder (following an initial post concussion diagnosis). After finally being admitted to hospital with various symptoms, about 18 days lying flat in a neurology ward, having 3 MRI scans, which were inconclusive, and a lumbar puncture, which showed low pressure spinal fluid – I had a blind epidural blood patch. (They take blood from your arm and inject it into the epidural space in your spine, in the hope that the clotting helps to heal the leak and increase the spinal fluid pressure. Mine was a high volume blind blood patch, because they couldn’t find the leak on MRI scans, which is not unusual. If they know where the leak is then patches are often more successful).

All this treatment had a significant positive impact and, as I wrote in my first Surviving the Storm post, it brought a sense of normality back to my life. I could spend much more time upright. I was able to do most things and thankfully could drive again (although I stick to short journeys at present because my head can still cloud over at times).

Since then there has been a general gradual improvement.

However,

I am still not back to where I was pre-injury and that is a challenge. I have days that are better and days that are more difficult. But the persistent symptoms are still a daily battle.

I have had to develop new routines that involve regular ‘lying down flat’ breaks. Often these are around lunch time and in the evening, although it varies a lot as I try and preempt what I need to do and lie down before and/or after going out.

I tend to find evenings harder generally. So on busier days I often spend a lot of the evening lying flat (either in bed or on the sofa – as long as my head is pretty flat). Less busy or less symptomatic days it is not as necessary.

I feel extremely blessed that in general the pain scale is nothing like it was around the time I was admitted to hospital. Back then it regularly reached 8 or even 10 out of 10 (comparable to having a baby ladies).

These days thankfully the pain is not as severe and takes longer to build up.

It is nothing like any headaches I had ever experienced pre-injury.

It’s more of an intensity, a pressure that builds up in the lower back of my head and in the top of my neck, leaving my neck feeling really stiff and painful and my head full and cloudy.

When I do lie down often that same feeling often drops to the bottom of my spine around where I had the blood patch.

Similar sensation; different place.

One way I explain it to others is it’s like having a really bad head cold and your head is so full of pressure that it’s hard to think and do things. If it’s a particularly bad one I also can feel it behind my sinuses which makes the sensation more head cold like.

This feeling varies in intensity throughout the day. Often, first thing, I feel fine. It then builds up to varying levels depending on what I am doing and how much lying down I have done.

As it builds up, things get harder. I might take some paracetamol or ibuprofen which helps a bit. Caffeine is also proven to help, so I usually get dosed up on that in the mornings.

As it gets worse I tend to go quieter as everything gets harder, both mentally and physically. The pressure, pain and stiffness builds, which is often coupled by a spaced out feeling and still sometimes a bit of photophobia.

Most of the time I will look fine outwardly. But if you see me when it gets really bad you might pick up on a spaced out, distracted, stressed or pained look on my face.

I often try and keep going for a while when I get like this, until I reach a point where it gets so bad I can’t think straight, the pressure and pain builds and I know I need to rest and lie down. I also try and preempt it and lie down before it gets too bad.

When I lie down there is an element of instant relief. I often say to my husband before I lie down I sometimes just feel like I want to go to sleep; you just feel wiped out. But soon after lying down I can think straight again, my head gets clearer and the pressure eases.

(This was often the way it was at the start, following my injury. I found I could have decent conversations with people if I was lying down. But I didn’t last very long and often couldn’t think straight for very long sitting or especially standing or walking).

The current physical symptoms vary in their intensity on different days, depending on how busy or strenuous the day is and even what time of the month it is (yes ladies it gets worse then!)

During the recent summer holidays things generally seemed better. I felt I had more energy and perhaps needed to lie down a bit less. It helped that I could take it easy in the mornings, lie in bed for longer and add in breaks where necessary.

This summer we have done a lot of clearing out and sorting thorough stuff, which I wrote about in my last post. That kind of work is quite physically demanding so I would rest more at the start of the day and then by the end of a day I usually had to lie down more.

It’s all about managing your time and energy reserves. I also spend time praying and getting encouraged with great words from the bible and other quotes. This helps keep my thoughts together and focus on good things through the tougher and more frustrating days.

Storms come.
Life goes on.
We cannot wallow in the challenges or they will swallow us up.

I have been getting better and I want to hold onto that and keep believing for complete healing and freedom from this storm soon.

The storm has calmed but it has not yet fully passed. You learn to live with it to an extent and yet I also choose to believe it will fully heal in time.

My faith encourages me to not live life defeated or deflated. Hope always drives us forward. Even though it can be a humbling process balancing belief and reality.

I am deeply grateful for all the health and healing already attained and the sense of normality it brings.

Most of all I am thankful for the good that my experience will bring. There are always positives to be found, even in hard times. Even the darkest times can be used for good.

Whatever your unique storm:
Never let go of hope.
Never stop believing.
Never stop seeing the good, even when it’s painful.

Perspective is vital.

There is always something to be thankful for.
There are always others worse off than you.
We all suffer and feel pain in one way or another.

As a popular saying goes:

“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

I have decided that I will always find the ways and means to dance through life, even in the midst of the rain.

It’s not always easy, but it is the only way to live and thrive through both the ups and the downs of life. It is the only way to find the strength to survive the storm when it hits.

This is my story of a unique season in my life. A storm that has come, that is passing but is taking its time to fully leave.

I don’t know what storms you face? An injury, illness, relationship breakdown or bereavement? Perhaps your prognosis is much worse than mine? Maybe your storm is hidden from view?

But there is a way forward:

We can learn how to dance in the rain.
It is the only way to thrive in the midst of the storm.

I would love to hear about your stories and experiences. Please do leave a comment below or on my social media links.

You can read the first post about my injury here and my six month update here. I usually write my blog posts on my iPhone during my ‘lying flat’ times. Initially following my injury I could not even look at a phone or computer screen for more than a few minutes without feeling exceptionally ill. I am very grateful to be able to do this now.

To read more about my ongoing story of living with a chronic spinal CSF Leak click here.

Here is a brilliant 2 min animation about Spinal CSF leaks.

For more information about spinal CSF leaks please see the UK charity website at www.csfleak.info or the US charity website at www.spinalcsfleak.org.

This is a wonderful new May 2018 medical paper about the 10 most common myths and misperceptions about spinal CSF leaks. It is by some of the top world experts in treating this condition. I was told so many of these myths by various neurologists, anaesthetists, radiologists and many other doctors during my lengthy and traumatic nearly 5 year battle with a spinal CSF leak. This kind of misinformation caused many delays, misunderstanding and great distress on my already immensely long winded and difficult medical journey.

This other in depth 2018 medical paper is about both low and high intracranial pressure syndromes and their similar and different symptoms. It also mentions cross overs with other headache types. When a patient suffers with a spinal CSF leak long term it can cause massive fluctuations in their whole pressure system both whilst suffering from a spinal CSF leak and following treatment. This is why lumbar puncture pressure readings and ICP pressure monitoring can prove an inaccurate disgnostic tool for SIH as this paper refers to as does the 10 myths paper. My initial LP reading was a 7 which was considered ‘evidence’ of low pressure by some doctors and normal by others.

Family

The Art of Simplicity: The Big Clear Out

August 28, 2015 Becky Hill 1 Comment

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci

Every year during the summer holidays I embark on a big clear out at home. In fact, I think many people choose the summer school holidays to sort through their ‘stuff’ and get rid of things.

I find it such a satisfying process! Although it is often both exhausting and frustrating when you are in the midst of it.

I got into the habit of regularly simplifying and clearing out, a number of years ago, when my children were small. For a few reasons we ended up moving house about 4 times in 6 years.

Moving house is a chaotic time but it can also demand much discipline. We had to decide what things we should actually move. Most of the moves we did ourselves and when you have to move stuff yourselves you choose to think more carefully about what you really want to keep.

Each time we moved we would have things stored in attics or cupboards that we had not touched in a couple of years of living in a new house. When you find you have not opened a box in that long, you soon realise that you probably don’t need it after all.

Going through this same process four times taught me the discipline of simplifying and decluttering. Which is something I have continued to put into practice, even though we have finally stayed in one house for 6 years.

This summer we have been particularly ruthless.

My children are finally learning from ‘clearing out’ with me over the years, that simplicity often makes life easier. They hate tidying their rooms, but are learning the less things you have and the more organised they are, the easier it is to look after them.

We got rid of bags and bags of clutter, rubbish, junk and passed on decent items no longer wanted or outgrown.

Life is easier when you declutter and simplify. It takes time and discipline but it is worth it.

How many times have you lost something amidst the clutter of your home only to rediscover it when you finally get round to clearing out?

Simplicity can provide space for the new. When your life is too full of the old, there is no room left for the new.

We should certainly celebrate the old, hold onto memories and enjoy traditions. But we must find a balance of old and new that creates space in our life.

In the West we love to accumulate ‘things’
… And more things…
….And more things!

In the hope that it will make life better and happier.

And yet ‘things’ can also complicate our lives.

We instead need to discover a balance that works in our life. Reassessing what we actually need and what is just taking up precious space and time.

When your life is too full of the old, there is no room left for the new.

I have learnt that taking the time to consistently organise, sort through and make space, enables us to embrace change more easily and move forward into the future without having to drag too much of the past around with us.

“Resistance to change is universal. It invades all classes and cultures.”- John Maxwell

The practical discipline of ‘clearing out’ and decluttering is metaphorical of a similar process in our wider lives.

I often choose the start of the new year or the end of a school year to clear out and prepare for the new season ahead.

This summer held more significance for my elder daughter because she is moving on from primary school to High School.

Clearing things out and sorting through them can prepare you mentally as you look through old memorabilia, selectively choose which to hold onto and then make space for the new things you will inevitably acquire (especially when you have children around).

We have to choose what things hold real significance and sentimental value and what we perhaps need to ‘let go’ of because it is simply cluttering up our lives.

Taking the time to consistently organise, sort through and make space, enables us to embrace change more easily.

The wider life discipline of simplifying asks the same question:

What is cluttering up my life?
What do I need to cut back on to make room for the new?
How can I prepare myself for the season ahead?

Our physical reality is often symbolic of other things going on in our life. Physical actions can help us prepare for, face and work through mental and emotional change.

Decluttering and re-organising helps us to:
Celebrate yesterday.
Focus on today.
and
Make space for tomorrow.

I found the process of starting to help my Dad clear his house following my Mums death quite a therapeutic exercise. Of course you want to hold onto many memories and items of significance, but there is also something healthy in saying goodbye, letting go and recognising a new season ahead.

It is not always an easy process, and can take time to face, but is one that can be useful in so many different ways and can help us mentally accept and adapt to change whether it is happily welcomed or tragically enforced.

Time invested today to embrace the process of simplifying is not wasted time. It is preparation for the future. So that we can move forward and welcome change without too much baggage tied around our ankles.

There is a freedom that comes through LETTING GO.

“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.” – Steve Jobs

How could you make more space, room and time in your life?
Is it time for a big clear out?

Words & Writing

Thoughtless words can wound as deeply as any sword

August 8, 2015 Becky Hill 4 Comments

WORDS are sometimes easy to say.
Sometimes they are hard.
They can be too many.
Or too few.
They have the power to WOUND.
And the power to HEAL.

How do you use your words?

Each of us have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to words.

We can be GOOD with them.
Communicate well.
Inspire, encourage and build others up.

Or we can be BAD with them.
Communicate badly.
Say the wrong thing at the wrong time and hurt people.

Communication isn’t always easy or simple. We ALL get it wrong at times, both intentionally and unintentionally. We can say too much or we can say too little.

It is not always easy to get right and even when we think we have, we can find that someone heard it all wrong anyway.

We know that good communication builds strong relationships and bad communication can tear them apart. But it isn’t always simple to navigate and it certainly takes a lot of wisdom.

Words can sometimes fly too freely from our mouths. It is not until later on that we might realise we didn’t think long or hard enough beforehand about how we communicated them. We gave too little thought to their consequences.

An old proverb says:

Thoughtless words can WOUND as deeply as any sword, but wisely spoken words can heal. (‭Proverbs‬ ‭12‬:‭18.‬ The Bible)

Can you relate to that Proverb?

I know I can.

I can remember one time during my first or second year at secondary school (age 11/12). I had a friend that I would sit next to in my tutor group. We used to spend quite a bit of time together in and out of school. Then one day another friend told me that on that morning, as I came down the path towards the classroom, someone said “Becky is coming” and this girl had apparently responded, “Oh no, she is so annoying, I can’t believe I have to sit next to her.”

Someone I thought was my friend didn’t like to be with me.

Those words hurt.

They attack your confidence and your trust.

Our words matter.
They are not easily forgotten and cannot be taken back.
Badly spoken words can wreck relationships and hurt others.

We cannot change what we have said in the past. We also cannot change what others have said to or about us. But we can choose to use own our words differently, both today and in the future.

We can turn the tide and use more thoughtful and wise words to HEAL others.

Thoughtless words can wound as deeply as any sword, but wisely spoken words can HEAL. (‭Proverbs‬ ‭12‬:‭18‬. The Bible)

I have been thinking about how wise and thoughtful words can heal and how can we use them more. Here are some of my conclusions.

KIND WORDS BUILD PEOPLE UP
Using kind words can have more impact than you can imagine. In the same way that we remember words that hurt us. We can also remember significant kind words, especially when they are given during a difficult times.

I can remember times when a short message on a card or a text has meant a lot and held much significance.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. – Mother Teresa

ENCOURAGEMENT COUNTERACTS CRITICISM
We all face negativity and criticism. It seems all too easy for us and others to complain, moan and point out all the faults in what others do. In a world that can often hear a lot more negatives than positives we desperately need people who choose to encourage. Who are thankful and appreciative of others. Who choose to see what is right rather than just what is wrong.

“Encouragement is the oxygen of the soul.” -John Maxwell

BELIEF RESTORES HOPE
Expressing your belief in someone can restore their hope and vision for the future. People find it all too easy to pull one another apart but the words ‘I believe in you and what you are doing’ can be life changing and counteract discouragement and disappointment.

“Worry weighs a person down; an encouraging word cheers a person up.” -The Bible: (Proverbs‬ ‭12‬:‭25‬)

KIND WORDS ARE GENEROUS
We often think about generosity in terms of money or gifts. But we can also be generous with our words. Offering someone a kind word, compliment or encouragement can be a form of generosity because it puts that person first and shows that you are thinking about them. It takes time, effort and humility to reach out to someone with kindness.

One of the best gifts you can anyone is encouragement. If everyone received enough the world would blossom beyond our wildest dreams. – Nicky Gumbel

WRITTEN WORDS CAN BE HELD ON TO
When someone writes thoughtful words down for you, you can re-read them, hold onto them and treasure them. I am sure many of us hold onto particular cards and letters with messages that really spoke to us at that time.

These can be invaluable during difficult times in our lives. They remind us that someone, somewhere does care.

USING KIND WORDS BLESSES US TOO
When we give a gift of kind words to others we find that we get blessed too. Good communication builds strong relationships with others. It encourages others to use similar words back. It helps us to feel good in sharing them. We get the focus off ourselves and think about how we can help another and that always helps us to feel better too.

The Proverb is so true. Thoughtless words DO wound deeply, but thoughtful, wisely spoken words DO heal.

Good words not only build others up but they can also heal the wounds inflicted by other thoughtless words. That is why our words are so powerful. They really can change lives.

Would you rather be a person who wounds or one that heals?

I know who I would rather be!

Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange. – Maria Popova

How do you think words can heal? Do you have any examples from your life?

Family, Leadership, Perspective

Life is not meant to be easy!

July 31, 2015 Becky Hill 2 Comments

Life is a gift.
A wonderful privilege.
Full of adventure, love & happiness.
Life brings both wonder and excitement.

But,

Life is not easy.
It is challenging.
It often feels hard.

Hard work.
Hard relationships.
Hard choices.

Of course many of us recognise that some people have had a ‘harder life’ than others. (Which helps us keep a balanced perspective).

However,

We are also very aware of the challenges we ALL face.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle – Plato

Do you often feel that life is hard?
Harder than you thought it would or should be?

Perhaps?
Definitely?
Always?
Sometimes?

Why is it that?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and it has caused me to think through a number of questions:

Is life actually meant to be hard or are we getting a raw deal?
Do other people find life as hard as you do?
Do you hope that life will get easier someday?

Sometimes I think we have believed a lie that life is supposed to be EASY.

That it is easy for some.

Easy for them.

In the West, we are sold that lie every day. Adverts, films, books, magazines and social media, all feed the ideal of a better, happier and more comfortable life.

But do things and comfort actually make you happy?

I often say to my husband that the media often sell us the lie about the ‘perfect family life’.

The good looking Mum and Dad have an awesome, romantic, yet down to earth marriage. They work hard, but also have lots of time to invest in their beautiful children. They have plenty of money, a stunning home, car, clothes and go on amazing holidays.

Life looks easy!

Does that not sound attractive?

But in reality family life is often anything but ideal.

FAMILY – is often hard work!

In many ways I have what might seem an ‘ideal’ family life. Matt and I have a great marriage. We have to work at it, like everyone else, but we managed to set a firm foundation from the start which has provided great stability in our home.

We have two healthy, beautiful, kind, loving and intelligent girls who flourish at school, are creative and full of life.

And yet we, like many others, find that in reality family life is often exhausting.
Parenting is tough.
Directing selfish kids is a challenge.

We can dream of consistent ‘family bliss’ but I am not sure that it really exists.

FAMILY – is often hard work!

Our kids regularly fight, argue, push against boundaries, complain and challenge us until we are tempted to run away and hide under a rock for a while – until things get easier.

Often ‘quality family time’ is far from wonderful. In fact sometimes it feels like something we all have to endure rather than thrive on. (Especially when you have small children)

I actually started writing this post on holiday. The ‘prime’ of quality family time. Supposedly a time of fun, laughter, love and relaxation.

….And although there is truth in that (we have had some wonderful times together)…

In reality even holidays don’t stop the responsibilities of being parents and the kids squabbling & complaining.

So what do we do?
Do we just give up on family life?

No!

We know we have to push through the hard times so that we can then appreciate the wonder and beauty of family.

To keep on keeping on!

No one really lives the fairy tale ideal anyway!

I have just finished reading a fantastic book called ‘Leadership Pain’ by Samuel Chand. It was both refreshing and insightful to read him, and so many others, acknowledging the ‘pain’ that is unique to leaders. Whilst encouraging us to keep on growing, which means constantly raising the threshold of our pain.

Often people can look at leaders around them and assume they must have life all figured out. That they enjoy their ‘power’ and ‘bask’ in the limelight.

This is rarely the truth.

Of course people can pursue and abuse power and hide their true selves.

But true leadership is often more challenging than many of us imagined. In the same way that the responsibility of leading/ parenting our children is.

Leadership, like parenting, is often hard. It is often painful. You have to make many sacrifices. You will get hurt.

You are leading real people. Helping them to grow and develop. You have to have courage to lead the way, even when you haven’t been there before yourself. Even when people don’t get you or your decisions and push against your authority.

Samuel Chand writes,

“There is no growth without change, no change without loss and no loss without pain. If you are not hurting, you are not leading. Your vision for the future has to be big enough to propel you to face the heartaches and struggles you find along the way.”

Leadership and parenting are inherently HARD. So you have to have a vision for the future that keeps you going through the tough times.

You must believe that your current investment, as a parent and leader, is worth while. You need hope for your child’s future, hope that many of the people you lead, will grow, develop and move forward. That is where you ultimately find joy and satisfaction.

It all comes down to perspective. Without the right perspective we can get drowned by the hard times and lost in the pain.

Life, in its essence is often NOT easy and the sooner we get our heads round that, the sooner we can prepare our minds to face the challenges life brings.

Responsibility
Hard work
Pain
Suffering
Rejection
Perseverance

Are all a fact of life.

Life, in its essence is often NOT easy and the sooner we get our heads round that, the sooner we can prepare our minds to face the challenges life brings.

We all have dreams for the future but they will usually not fall into our laps. Instead, we must face the fact that often WE have to make the right choices and keep on making the right choices for things to work out.

We have to CHOOSE the longer and harder road to experience longer term satisfaction.

We have to invest in our lives early on, making the necessary sacrifices along the way.

People want love without sacrifice.
But that does not exist.
Love and sacrifice are coexistent.
That is why we find family life and relationships hard.

Leadership is the same. Great leaders are not driven by selfish ambition. They are driven by a desire to serve others. To do this, great leaders love their followers.

And if:
LOVE = SACRIFICE.

Great leaders, like great parents, sacrifice for those they lead.

Sacrifice in its essence is hard.
Which means true love is hard.

Life was never meant to be easy. Life is an adventure. Adventures are in their essence challenging. But they are also so exciting.

We cannot experience the joys of life without embracing it’s challenges. It is the hard times which help us appreciate the good times.

It’s all about perspective.

You will never understand pleasure without pain. – T D Jakes

Do you find life hard?
How do you find strength to face it?

Spinal CSF Leak

Surviving the Storm Six Months On: My battle with Concussion & a CSF leak

July 7, 2015 Becky Hill 9 Comments

This post is a follow up post to Surviving The Storm: My Battle With Concussion And A CSF Leak that I wrote 3 months ago.

Life is a journey through different seasons. Seasons of celebration, happiness and success and seasons of loss, pain and frustration.

Sometimes unexpected things happen and life changes in an instant. Sometimes that change is temporary. Sometimes permanent. But it always brings a season of adjustment with it.

At the start of 2015 my life was going along normally. It was the start of a new year; a new season; a new time.

Then I had an accident.

In many ways, it was just a small accident. In an error of judgement I put a small step ladder on an uneven surface whilst painting. I painted with it there for hours, then in one moment the ladder toppled over and I fell.

One mistake on my part. And one I have paid for over the past six months.

We all make mistakes every day. Often the consequences are minimal. Then a day comes when we make a mistake that has bigger consequences.

We can’t change what happened.
We can only learn from our mistakes.

That journey is never easy.

When I fell, I hit my head, back, neck and arm. It was a blunt but forceful impact to my lower head and although I felt the impact and felt slightly dazed, in general I actually felt OK.

So I did what I always do: I got up and carried on.

I even joked to others about falling off that ladder – oblivious to what had actually taken place.

Then as I wrote in Surviving the Storm, over the next week my injury caught up with me and everything began to unravel.

Brain injuries like concussion, post concussion and CSF leaks are tough. They are difficult to fully diagnose and yet so debilitating. Your brain is like mission control to your whole body and when your brain gets rattled or strained so many things get out of sync.

I am one of the blessed people whose injury, although serious, was comparatively mild. Severe brain injuries are life threatening and permanently life transforming. I am so very thankful that it was no worse.

However,

It was and still is a storm in my life. It was debilitating. It changed my life for a time. It is still improving but it has not yet fully passed.

Four or five months ago, at its worst, the only way to ease the symptoms was to lie flat and do nothing. For hours, days and weeks on end.

Have you ever tried that?

Doing nothing but lying flat in a dark room.

It can be torture. Especially when you are dizzy and in pain.

I was then finally admitted to hospital 8 weeks after the initial injury. Although tough in itself, I was thankful for this, because we got some answers and I was finally diagnosed with a CSF leak (cerebral spinal fluid leak).

Many people will not know that after a few days in hospital I faced one of the darkest days in my life.

Some events took place that probably during an average day I would have coped with and managed mentally and emotionally a lot better than I did.

But on that day a pattern of events unfolded that involved a senior hospital staff member with an exceptionally bad attitude.

And it totally floored me.

I have never felt so utterly weak and helpless. I was in so much pain, was mentally impaired by the cloudiness and dizziness, and faced a very unpleasant situation that I was powerless to deal with.

Those two days (because things got worse before they got better) were probably two of the the hardest days of my life, in many ways.

I have never felt so desperate, so weak, so intimidated and so vulnerable.

I cried a lot that day, desperately and deeply (in a hospital ward full of other people).

Have you ever come to the end of yourself?
When you have no strength left physically or mentally.
When you feel desperately vulnerable.
When you can’t fight any more.
When you don’t know what to do.

At its worst my injury left me in severe pain and my body would start shaking violently in response. As this happened my mind would cloud over and take me into a drunk-like state.

You can’t think straight, struggle to talk, can hardly stand and walk, and it can be quite distressing.

You feel immensely vulnerable and it was in my vulnerability that I faced this intimidating situation that I couldn’t deal with alone.

In that moment I thank God so much for people who loved and cared for me. There was a wonderful nurse at the hospital who reached out to me in my desperation with compassion and understanding. My church family had already dedicated a week to praying for me and they fought for me spiritually in my dark hour.

My husband was at a pre-planned family gathering with my girls that day (over 2 hours away). It was to celebrate my Mum’s birthday, in her remembrance (just over a year after her death). He dropped everything to leave, earlier than planned, and got to me as soon as he could (about 3 hours later).

In my darkest hour I was physically and mentally wrecked and alone, and yet I did the one thing I could: I reached out to God in the midst of my desperation.

I knew that He would carry me.

When there was nothing left of me I knew He would hold me.

When I felt the most vulnerable I had ever felt, I knew I had advocate who was fighting for me.

And that is what got me through. Believing, hoping and trusting that things would get better.

I have never felt so desperate, so weak and so vulnerable.

CSF leaks can be very hard to fix. There is still a lot of uncertainly about the best ways to treat them. After two and a half weeks in hospital I ended up having a blood patch (where blood is injected into the epidural space in your spine) which helped a lot, but it certainly didn’t solve everything.

I again had to decide to hold onto my hope and have faith that it would get better. And things have got better. A sense of normality returned, but even 6 months on life post-injury is still a challenge in many ways.

I still can’t do everything I once did.

And that is hard.

As I shared in ‘Is Busyness a Choice?‘ I was a busy person. One of those people that always had a lot on and did a lot of rushing about.

But at the moment I still can’t rush about like I used to.

And it is SO frustrating.

I still have to sit and lie down at regular intervals. Especially when I have a lot on.

I often feel lightheaded, my head gets cloudy and a spaced out.

Life takes much more effort. Which is a mental, as well as a physical challenge for me.

I am a doer, a get up and get on type of person, but my body won’t always let me do that at the moment.

When your energy levels are low, everything becomes so much more difficult. The things you have to do become that much harder. And even your mental processing becomes impaired. These are all things that I still have to battle through daily.

I have to have wisdom to work out my days. If I know I have a lot to do I need to make sure I have clear rest points in the day, both before and after the activities I need to do.

It is manageable.
But it is frustrating.

And yet despite all these challenges I have learnt and grown so much.

I have so much more empathy and awareness of people with health issues. I hardly ever used to get ill, so my experience of battling this has given me more compassion for people who are struggling with injury and illness.

I have had to develop a longer term perspective so as not to get overwhelmed with the daily challenges. I have to see the bigger picture.

I have had to learn to say no to doing too much, allow other people to help me, and tell people when I am struggling. Which doesn’t come easy to me because I fight against self pity at all costs and do not enjoy being a victim.

Life has been more frustrating.
I have faced increased feelings of discouragement.
But I have certainly become more self aware and developed more humility.

The last six months have been tough in many ways.
However,
I believe we can never give up or lose hope.

Without hope we have nothing to live for. It is always faith, hope and love that give us confidence for the future.

I have faced my own vulnerabilities and weaknesses like never before. And more than ever I know I cannot rely on my own strength to keep going and do all I am meant to do.

But that is not a bad thing.

Coming face to face with your own weaknesses and vulnerability can be a good thing.

In the Bible God said this to the Apostle Paul when he was struggling with his own weaknesses:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Paul then wrote in response:

“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9-11.

When I feel weak, I realise that I can’t ‘do life’ on my own. I realise that I don’t have the capacity and strength alone to face the challenges that life brings. But I do know God will work His power in and through me…. regardless.

That is grace.

The Almighty God uses us fragile humans in our weakness and vulnerability and makes us strong in His power.

When I come to the end of myself I have no where else to turn but God. It is then that God’s power works in and through me in the most beautiful way.

Because when you come face to face with your fragility you understand that we are all the same.

We are all human.
We all have struggles.

It is then, as God shows us His love and grace in the midst of our own struggles, that we can show love and grace to others in the midst of their struggles.

That is the power that works within us.
The power of love and the power of grace.

It is the mystery of God.
The divine paradox.

That weakness brings strength.
And that strength is spelt LOVE.

And love and grace are all you need!

So that’s my journey of surviving my unique storm. It is still not over, but writing this post has been helpful for me in looking back over the past six months, remembering, learning and growing towards the future.

This post has, in all honesty, been written through tears as I attempt to share some of the darker realities and vulnerabilities of my journey.

However, what I do know is that these dark days are not without purpose. They have been used to strengthen me and they will be used to help others.

There is always new strength to be found in weakness. Sometimes the journey to finding it will be painful.

But it is always there to be found.

How do you find strength in weakness?

Comments are always welcome below or on my social media links.

To read more about my ongoing story of living with a chronic spinal CSF Leak click here.

Here is a brilliant 2 min animation about Spinal CSF leaks.

For more information about spinal CSF leaks please see the UK charity website at www.csfleak.info or the US charity website at www.spinalcsfleak.org.

This post was inspired by my last post called ‘Breaking Free! From Pretense’.

Breaking Free

Breaking Free! From Pretence

July 4, 2015 Becky Hill 1 Comment

Do you ever feel like you can’t truly be yourself? Like the real you is hidden away, pushed down deep, where it is guarded and protected. Perhaps only let out for the select few, those you can really trust.

Why do we sometimes pretend?
Do we even know when we are pretending?

I can remember being in a science lesson one day when I was about 11 or 12. I am not sure where the teacher was, because at that moment I wasn’t doing science.

I was hiding in a cupboard.

Why – you may ask?

Good question.

Well it was so that one of my friends could ask another one of my friends, whether they actually liked me or not, or if they were just pretending. The plan was I could then listen from my hide out and suss out where I was at in that friendship.

I can’t really remember what happened, in fact, I think it turned out that you couldn’t hear so well in a cupboard. Which was probably not a bad thing. Sometimes it’s best not to know these things.

But it is a question that can frequent my thoughts even now.

Do you ever wonder:
Who actually likes me?
Who obviously doesn’t?
Who is just pretending?

What about you?
Do you pretend?

I decided a long time ago that pretending wasn’t for me. It’s too much like hard work. Not that I’ve ever consciously decided to hide or pretend. It’s just something we all do.

But however much I decide it’s not for me. I believe we all still fall into the trap of pretending, at times, for both similar and unique reasons. We try to show the best of who we are, whilst attempting to cover over the worst.

We all have masks in some form. We all have crafted exteriors that we put on in other peoples presence. We want to present ourselves in a certain way.

We may ask ourselves questions like:
Who can we trust with the truth of our lives?
Who do we let in to our vulnerabilities?
Will they accept us for who we really are?

We all have masks in some form. We all have crafted exteriors that we put on in other peoples presence.

Social media can cause us to put up masks, either intentionally or unintentionally. Photos with filters that show:
The Best bits
Great relationships
Gorgeous kids
Exciting lives
It’s easy to portray an image that looks great but may not be the whole reality. As I wrote about in The Insecurity of Comparisson.

Does that mean that we should all put more awful photos of ourselves and share the ins and outs of our disastrous family moments?
No I don’t think so!
But we do need to be mindful that we are often seeing the best snapshots of people’s lives.

No ones life is perfect.

Let’s celebrate the good parts of people’s lives whilst being mindful that they are just that:

The good parts.

We all have good and bad days.
We all have dull mundane days.
We all get stuff wrong
We all have insecurities.
We all desire to look our best.
We all desire to be liked and loved for who we really are.

We hope that other people are genuine too. That they are not two faced, pretending to like and love us, when in reality, they don’t.

We desire authenticity.

WHAT IS AUTHENTICITY?

Authenticity has become a bit of a buzz word recently, but it’s a great word.

The Free Dictionary defines authenticity as:

The quality or condition of being authentic, trustworthy, or genuine.

WHAT DOES THE WORD AUTHENTICITY BRING TO MIND?

The real deal!

An authentic product is real, not fake. An authentic person is real, not fake.

Pretending is exhausting. It’s stressful trying to maintain a crafted exterior. It’s much easier to learn how to be yourself.

Authenticity is attractive. It’s easier to be around authentic people.
They are not trying to impress or compete with you.
They are simply who they are.
No frills.
Not gift wrapped.
They have both humility and integrity.
They are not consumed by maintaining an act.

The problem is it actually takes a lot of courage and strength to be yourself. To be real about your best and worst parts. Your strengths and your weaknesses.

Pretending is exhausting. It’s stressful trying to maintain a crafted exterior

It certainly doesn’t mean telling everyone everything, or not being professional. We still all need to have self control. We don’t all need to wear our hearts on our sleeves. (That can be just as exhausting as hiding it, for you and everyone else). No one likes a perpetual moaner.

Sometimes we need to put how we really feel aside and get on with the job in hand. Parents, professionals, leaders and those in any positions of responsibility have times, days and seasons where they have to put their own feelings aside to do the right thing.

Which is a good thing.

However, having wisdom and self control in what we say and do are different from outright pretending. Pretending can actually be deceptive. Sometimes we need to face up to the reality of our lives and do something about it.

“Pretend less. Doesn’t it feel energizing to go home and stop pretending?” Dan Rockwell (Leadership Freak Blog – Refuelling Strategies)

People can be both professional and authentic. It takes a lot of wisdom, but it is possible. We don’t have to separate our life out into segments where we are different people in different environments.

We can all be genuine in what we do.

Who you are is so much more important than what you do, what you say, or who you know. Authenticity is attractive. —Brian Houston

It is good to reflect, to work out what makes us tick. To think through who we want to be and whether we are living life in line with our values and dreams.

It is helpful once in a while to ask yourself these questions:
Who am I?
Who do I want to be?
Do I pretend?
How can I be more authentic, whilst maintaining wisdom, self control & integrity?

It is a journey that requires humility. A journey that will demand integrity. A path of courage and wisdom. A choice to be real and transparent …. Regardless:
Of what others think
What others say.
How you are treated.
How you a judged.

There is freedom in discovering who you really are.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. – E.E. Cummings

This post is part of my .Breaking Free. series of posts. Click here to see posts on Breaking Free from Fear, Worry and Discouragement.

Breaking Free, Leadership

Breaking Free! From Discouragement

June 19, 2015 Becky Hill 2 Comments

Do you ever feel discouraged?

I do
a lot.

Or at least a lot more than I should.

In fact, I started writing this post today because I began to feel discouraged. There was no particular reason, just more general feelings and thoughts which attempted to flood my mind and pull me into a discouraged place.

That might come as a surprise to a lot of people who know me personally, because I tend to be very positive and upbeat about life.

But I have a confession to make.

I battle with discouragement a lot.

I often find it creeping up on me, tapping away at my thoughts, attempting to get its claws into me.

A cloud that comes down and brings a foggyness to my outlook. Reminding me about all the obstacles, frustrations & challenges before me. It surrounds me and it’s difficult to break through.

It attacks my confidence, enthusiasm and identity. I can feel:
demoralised,
disappointed,
downhearted,
despondent.

It sucks away at the energy and life within me attempting to
kill my passion,
steal my joy &
plunder my peace.
Until I feel like I have no energy left to fight it anymore.

But I have learnt I have to fight it early on …. Regardless!

I can’t let it win. I have to break free from discouragement and it’s hold over me before it pulls me into a darker place that I will struggle to get free from.

I have to daily ‘take on’ the thoughts of discouragement and choose to see with more hope and faith. Some days that battle is harder than others, however, it is necessary to see life more positively.

WHAT DISCOURAGES US?

There are lots of different things and each one of us is affected by it in different ways.
Perhaps someone let you down, broke your trust, walked away.
Maybe your job or school work is harder than you expected and you are not making the progress you wanted.
Perhaps marriage and having children hasn’t been the experience you dreamt of.
Maybe life just seems to be hard and you are struggling to muster up the strength to continue each day.
Perhaps your plans and dreams haven’t worked out, things have gone wrong and you can’t see a way forward.

Discouragement knocks at your door and it’s hard to resist the flood of negative thoughts it brings with it telling you:

You are a failure
A nobody
You are not going to make it
You are not good enough
What you do is not enough
Why not give up
No one cares
You will just get hurt
Why do you bother
Things are never going to get any better.

All this is just too hard!
Life is just too hard!

But

We can’t let discouragement win!

I believe that discouragement is one of the biggest struggles that leaders, in particular, have to overcome. Until you become a leader, in any setting, you have no idea how hard it is.

You have to find the energy and passion to keep going yourself, plus a load extra to carry everyone else with you. It’s hard. There are a lot of responsibilities & commitments, that you have to shoulder. When everyone else drops out you have to stay standing strong and do it alone if necessary.

It’s in this area that I probably face the most discouragement.

To be a leader you have to have vision. This means that you are constantly seeing what ‘could be.’ Discouragement often takes hold when the ‘could be’ seems miles away from the current reality and the progress you are making seems so slow.

Every leader has days when they feel discouraged, wish they could throw in the towel and ignore their responsibilities. Discouragement comes knocking and it takes all your might to keep the flood gates closed.

This is why we should think about how we can encourage leaders.
Trust me, they need it!

Discouragement often takes hold when the ‘could be’ seems miles away from the current reality and the progress you are making seems so slow.

HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH DISCOURAGING THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS?

We have to fight discouragment. We have to push through it.

Discouraged people discourage people.

Negativity spreads like wild fire.

When people are discouraged it spreads. It takes a lot of courage and strength to break through an atmosphere of discouragement and refuse to be part of letting it spread. But it is the only way to stop it in its tracks.

Discouraged people discourage people.

Rick Warren wrote about discouragement:

“Fight back! Discouragement is a choice. If you feel discouraged, it’s because you’ve chosen to feel that way… Hang on! Do what’s right in spite of your feelings. No feeling lasts forever.”

Some people don’t like hearing that our feelings can be a choice. It means we have to accept more responsibility for what we feel, think and how we behave.

But I believe we have a lot more control over our emotions than we might think. I am not talking about hiding them or pretending they are not there, that isn’t healthy. I am talking about learning to not be ruled or defined by them.

Emotions and feelings usually begin with thoughts. We cannot necessarily control the initial thoughts that come into our head but we can choose whether we dwell on them or not, whether to let them draw us into a negative mindset. Which is something I spoke about in Breaking Free! From Worry.

When thoughts of discouragement enter my mind if I do not stop them in their tracks they have the potential to snowball and pull in other thoughts until my perspective becomes overwhelmed and I feel rubbish about everything.

HOW CAN I FIGHT DISCOURAGEMENT?

Be honest with myself.
Trying to ignore discouragement often makes it worse. It can pull us into the dangerous place of pretending and you can only pretend for so long before the reality comes crashing down upon you.

I realise I can’t do it alone.
I am personally grateful for the inner strength that comes from my relationship with God. I talk to him. I listen to his still small voice encouraging me, renewing my strength and vision.

I speak to someone I trust and I know will encourage me.
My husband Matt is great at that. Or a close friend can help. Someone I know who will help me to see with a more positive perspective.

I read words that will help me.
From the bible, good books, articles, or the hundreds of inspiring quotes I store in my phone.

I try to remember everything that I can be thankful for.
Even when other things are going wrong around me.

I look for opportunities to encourage someone else.
Sometimes getting the focus off me and my problems, being aware of other people’s challenges and choosing to encourage them, helps me to break through my own discouragment.

It can take a lot of courage to choose to be hopeful in the face of discouragement. To keep trusting and believing even when things are a struggle.

But it’s the only way. Despair is not an option.

In this verse from the Bible God encourages Joshua to be strong and courageous not discouraged and afraid, so that he can lead the people. — In this verse from the Bible God encourages Joshua at the start of his leadership journey.

It starts with a choice.

Choose to be encouraged. Learn how to encourage yourself and let others encourage you.

You can then become an encourager rather than a discourager to other people and help to turn the tide away from a culture of criticism and negativity.

There is always something good going on around you that you can celebrate.

We just have to choose to see it.

I would love to hear what you think:

Do you struggle with discouragement?
What do you do to deal with it?

There are lots of things we can do to fight against discouragement. Carey Nieuwhof gives some good advice in this blog post.

This post is part of my .Breaking Free. series of posts. Click here to see posts on Breaking Free from Fear and Worry.

Identity

Is Busyness A Choice?

June 13, 2015 Becky Hill 8 Comments

Just stop and ponder this question for a moment.

Is busyness a choice?

What if we make it personal:

Is how busy I AM a choice?
Or is it an unchangeable fact of my life?

I have been thinking about writing about busyness for a while. At first I thought about adding it to my ‘Breaking Free!’ series and yet the more I thought about it, the more I kept coming back to these questions:

Is busyness actually choice?
How much control do we have over it?
Can I really ‘break free’ from it?
Do I want or need to ‘break free’ from it?

These are the type of questions I have been pondering and have asked myself on numerous occasions, especially since having kids.

Will this overwhelming, exhausting busyness ever stop?
The relentless do, do, do, go, go, go of life.

For years I have both thrived and have been exhausted by busyness.

My husband Matt and I are very driven and passionate about life. We live life with purpose, get involved with a lot of things, connect meaningfully with a lot of people and do not shy away from responsibility.

It’s in our nature to have a full life.
We love living life to the full!

But in at the start of 2015 things changed. I fell off a ladder and sustained a minor brain injury. And busyness began to happen around me rather than to me.

And
I struggled.

Enforced rest is hard. And it wasn’t fun rest either:
I couldn’t watch that movie.
I couldn’t read my favourite book.
I couldn’t listen to my favourite album.
I couldn’t go out for a meal with friends & family.

For about 3 months.
I mainly just had to lie there in a dark and quiet room feeling unwell.

Comparatively (to normality) I couldn’t DO anything.

Now if you know me personally, you will know I am a DOER. It’s in my nature to DO a lot of different things at the same time.

But suddenly I couldn’t

And it was hard.
Really hard!

And at these moments the question flies around your head:

Who am I when I can’t really DO anything?

An interesting question in itself and something I will come back to later.

Even now, 5 months on from the accident, I am so much better and improving each week, but I still cannot rush about as I did before without feeling the impact. My head begins to get cloudy and dizzy and everything takes much more energy.

I cannot DO busyness, like I used to and it’s a challenge to me.

A couple of months ago, I read an article called ‘Busy Is a Sickness’ by a guy called Scott Dannemiller. It said a lot of what I had been thinking about for a while.

In it Scott discusses two types of busyness.

1. Busyness we can’t control: Which he writes primarily affects the poor because their economic reality simply does not allow for downtime. They have to work 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet.

2. Busyness we can control: Self-created stress. He writes, “Most of the time, I manufacture urgency in the hope that it will create urgency in others. Instead, it only creates anxiety, resentment and spite. Which is absolutely counter-productive. And even in the cases where the urgency is real, it’s often due to a packed schedule I created.”

Why do so many of us get caught up in a cycle of busyness that we can control and yet can often feel out of control?

Scott Dannemiller writes:

“… we are defined by what we do. Our careers. What we produce. It’s the first question asked (of us)…. The implication is that if I am not busy doing something, I am somehow less than. Not worthy. Or at least worth less than those who are producing something.”

He goes on to make the case that many of us can use busyness because ‘we are afraid of ourselves’. True quiet time can be a challenge and also very revealing – as we come face to face with ourselves and our own thoughts.

So busyness is very linked to our identity.
1. It helps us to feel like, and let others know, we are DOING something useful or important.
2. It can keep us distracted from facing ourselves and our thoughts.

Perhaps Busyness is a sickness of epidemic proportions!

“We are defined by what we do.” – Scott Dannemiller

So many of us often feel crazy busy. The irony is, we complain about it and yet we can simultaneously wear it as a badge of honour. We mention it to empathise with others, but it can then quickly become something we compete over.

It can be a reality.
But also an excuse.

Busy, busy, busy…. Rush, Rush, Rush!!

No wonder people want to:
Escape it.
Get away.
Drink it away.
Eat it away.
Medicate it away.
Self medicate it away.
Run away.

The pressure of life.
The realisation that life and responsibility is not easy.
That it involves a lot of hard work.
That it never seems to end.

The stress.
The worry.
The exhaustion.

Of all I need to DO!

The modern world we live in demands more and more of our time and attention as technology invades every part of our lives. Until our lives can feel out of our control.

It can feel overwhelming!

Yet do we have more control over it than we might think?

This is something I have increasingly thought about and my answer is, of course: Yes & No!

After 10 years of having children I know full well that having kids makes life hectic. You have these little people dependent on you 24/7 however tired, exhausted & in need of a break you are. When you have kids busyness is often an inevitability. Even holidays can be exhausting.

But there is still a lot of choices I make each day in how I use and view my time. Often:
I chose it,
I agreed to it.
I took on that job.
Said yes to that appointment.
Agreed to that meet up.
Answered my phone.
Took on that new responsibility.

So I must either accept the consequences of my choices, do it with a humble heart and increase my capacity – which is a good thing to do and something some of us need to learn to do more.

Or I have to decide to somehow change it, whilst maintaining my integrity and honouring my commitments wherever possible.

There is no point in complaining or getting bitter about the choices I have made.

If my busyness is out of control maybe I need to think carefully about my life and make different choices. Change may not be possible over night but there are always ways forward.

What about the times when busyness is not a choice?

Life will always bring seasons that feel uncontrollable. Things happen that we did not expect in our personal lives and jobs and the balance in our life quickly shifts to ‘unbearable’. Sometimes we just have to manage and find a way through a particularly exhausting season.

Matt and I faced this, at the start of the year. We had to quickly make a lot of changes when I was ill. Matt couldn’t DO it all on his own as I wrote about here.

It showed us that we could scale back when we needed to. We can say no and reevaluate what needs to change. Lessons I hope we will apply more in the future.

I have realised that I need to ‘break free’ from a busy mindset and its hold on my identity and discover a rhythm of life that works for me and my family.

Much of our busyness is a choice. We can get frustrated by it and yet we often choose it. Sometimes we can end up blaming others and get angry about it. And yet we have agreed to it or allowed the people around us, or our own mindsets, to influence it.

I know Matt and I will always live a ‘full life’ even amidst challenging seasons. But I have realised that I need to ‘break free’ from a busy mindset and its hold on my identity and discover a rhythm of life that works for me and my family.

A life rhythm that continues to thrive on a ‘full and purposeful life’ which will inevitably include a lot of hard work, generosity of time, sacrifice, commitment and responsibility. But one that does not pull us into a place that is consistently overwhelming and potentially damaging to our health, faith, marriage and family.

Busyness will take everything if we let it!

To end I wanted to again use Scott Dannemiller’s words because he says it so well.

“So my prayer today is this. That I stop defining myself by my doing, and start defining myself by my being. That I stop measuring time by the clock on the wall, and start measuring it by the experiences I share with those around me. And that I stop seeing my life as “busy,” and instead, see it for what it truly is.
Full.”

Do you think busyness is a choice or do you think of it as an inevitability?
How could you bring a better rhythm to your life and see busyness a different way?

I invite you to discuss or comment below, or on my social media links, I would love to hear what you think.

Breaking Free

Breaking Free! From Worry

May 24, 2015 Becky Hill 5 Comments

I saw the words below on Twitter recently and they really got me thinking about what happens in our heads when we worry about something.

“Worry is a misuse of imagination.” -Dan Zadra

Just think about that for a moment…

WHAT GOES ON IN OUR THOUGHTS WHEN WE START TO WORRY?
HOW IS OUR IMAGINATION INVOLVED IN WORRY?

When we worry our mind runs through lots of scenarios.
We imagine potential outcomes.
We picture things that could happen.
We see things that might go wrong.

Worry draws us towards the worst case scenarios. Our thoughts become irrational. Our imaginations can take us to dark places.

For instance, your spouse, partner, child or parent is travelling home from somewhere, they are late and not answering their phone. After a while you will probably begin to think:

Why are they late?
What has happened?

Which is very rational.

However, soon if we are not careful, worry begins to set in, our imagination is let loose and we start a thought process that can go something like this ….

What if there has been an accident?
What if it was a bad accident?
What if they are hurt?
What if they are badly injured?
What if they died?
How would I cope?
How would the family cope?

Before you know it, you are flooded with strong emotions anticipating and imagining what might be. You feel;

Worried
Anxious
On edge
Scared
Stressed
Overwhelmed
Unable to think straight
Unable to focus

Rationality flies out the window and is replaced by a jumbled mind that cannot seem to help but imagine the worst.

You lose control over your thoughts.
You lose any sense of peace or calm.

I have been there myself many times. It can creep up on you slowly, before you even realise it has taken hold.

Or perhaps you have a strange and unexplainable symptom in your body so you ‘Google it’. Before you know it, you have diagnosed yourself with some of the worst diseases out there.

This happened to a lady in a bed near me when I was recently in hospital. She Googled her symptoms and found a shocking diagnosis. She asked the Doctor about it and unfortunately he didn’t really give a definitive reply. Somehow the lady took that to mean that this worst case scenario was a real possibility, or even probability, and before you knew it she was on the phone to friends and family, totally distressed, telling them how bad this illness could be and might get.

Unfortunately in hospital there is little privacy so you can hear everything that is going on.

This poor lady spent all day reading up on this condition, allowed her imagination to run wild with it and obviously ended up totally distraught for most of the day. At one point I heard her say to her husband, in floods of tears, ‘if it gets as bad as it says here (on the internet) I think I would just kill myself’.

It really did sound awful.

The next day it turned out her tests were normal and they couldn’t find anything wrong. She asked the Consultant if it could still be the diagnosis she had found on Google and they said none of the tests showed that or anything else out of the ordinary.

A lesson in being careful what you feed your imagination with.

Worry takes over our thoughts. Before we know it, our body and mind are filled with so much anxiety and fear that we can’t think straight and can start to feel physically ill.

However.

Most of the time we soon discover that worry was totally unnecessary. We put ourselves through torture and nothing came of it.

It all turned out to be OK in the end.

That person walked through the door telling us that they only got stuck in heavy traffic or we discover that our self diagnosis was way off the mark. Our worry again wasted time, energy and head space.

BUT SOMETIMES THE WORST CASE SCENARIO DOES COME TRUE – WHAT THEN?

Yes, sometimes bad things do happen and in those moments we can think that our worries were justified. That they perhaps prepared us for what was to come. And yet;

Did the worry before hand actually make dealing with the crisis easier?

Often it doesn’t.

Instead it actually wears us out before the real crisis hits. When you let your imagination loose on that potential scenario before hand, you can fall apart just thinking about it. But when things actually do go very wrong you usually somehow find you do have the strength to deal with it.

That’s because when you do face the real crisis you have no choice but to get on with it. You have to find that strength to get through.

Breaking free from Worry quote copy — Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who, with her family, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. In the end she was imprisoned for it.

We only have today’s strength today!

Worry tries to get you to focus on yesterday, today and tomorrow all at the same time. Which is why we end up feeling so overwhelmed!

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (‭Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭34‬ – The Bible)

SO HOW IS WORRY A ‘MISUSE’ OF THE IMAGINATION?

That word ‘misuse’ can almost sounds a little harsh. Is not worrying a natural part of life? Some of us are just ‘born worriers’…

Aren’t we?

Yes I believe many of us do have a natural tendency to worry and negative thinking. I know that from my own life. But that doesn’t mean we can’t change that. If I understand that my imagination plays a key role in how worried and anxious I get, I realise that to find more freedom I have to look at my thought processes and think through how I feed my imagination.

I have to change the way I think.

BUT HOW DO WE REALLY CHANGE HOW WE THINK?
HOW DO WE TAKE CONTROL OF OUR IMAGINATION?

The starting point is becoming more aware of our own thought processes. For instance, if I start to allow my imagination to focus on;
worry,
fear &
negativity,
it will lead me to a dark place and I will then find I do not have room to;
create,
envision &
conceive
new ideas or best case scenarios.

Worry hampers our perspective and creativity.

We all have the ability to create. Being creative isn’t just about being artistic or musical. It’s also about;
vision,
ideas,
making things happen,
thinking outside the box,
solving problems,
offering solutions,
connecting,
exploring.

Creativity is vital to our growth.

But.

If my imagination is full of worry and negative scenarios it takes up lots of my mental capacity and energy that can be used for positive creativity.

Worry robs us of our positive creative energy.

The only way to change this is;
Track our thoughts back to their root.
Look at what feeds our imaginations.
Then retrain our thinking processes.

We can ask ourselves; Do I feed my imagination with good things? With people, words and things that inspire and encourage me to explore, dream, discover, create and build?

Or do I allow my imagination to be fed by dark and negative things? Which causes it to run away from me into worst case scenarios, dark thoughts and hopeless mindsets?

It comes down to choice, and good choices are the pathway to freedom. Freedom in our imaginations doesn’t come instantly, it’s a process, but if we choose it, we can learn mental & spiritual disciplines to encourage it.

I don’t know about you, but I want to use my imagination for good.

To create new things.
Find solutions to problems.
Dream dreams and see with vision.
Think differently and find new ways to do things.
Have faith and see with a healthy and optimistic perspective.
Creatively connect with those around me.
Encourage others and be part of changing lives.

That is what our imagination was built for and that’s what it needs room for. Our imaginations are a gift that need to be set free to see with new eyes, dream, create and spread great ideas.

How do you use your imagination? Could you use it more effectively?

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength. – Corrie Ten Boom

Let me know what you think, I very much welcome any comments below. This post is part of my .Breaking Free. series of blog posts. If you liked this post then maybe take a look at these which so far include:

Becky Hill's Blog