Responding to Anxiety

For most of my life I have relied on my temperament to prevent anxiety. Calm is my default setting, and in stressful situations everything slows down for me. My breathing slows, my brain downshifts, and I go into problem solving mode. You know, kind of like The Matrix. I casually watch bullets whiz by my head. Oh hey, there's a bullet. But seriously, for as long as I can remember my boat has kept an even keel in crisis, which served me very well as a hospice chaplain and as a friend. I have been unflappable. I can't be flapped.

My temperament may no longer be enough. This long season of transition I have been in has brought anxiety crashing down on me and my boat has not steered as steady. Yet I have gone through big life transitions before and it has not affected me in the same way. I suspect the difference this time is this: I have gotten older. 36 year old Adam does not respond to stress in the same way that the 25 year old version did. In other words, even though 36 year old Adam is still pretty cool in crisis, occasionally he freaks out.

When I worked in hospice, the doctors prescribed two medications to just about every single patient on our service: Morphine, for the pain, and Atavin, for the anxiety. There didn't seem to be any 80 year old hospice patients with a natural physiological calm. I never heard anyone on their death bed say "It's cool." Thus I have a suspicion that those of us born with an innate equanimity will not die with an innate equanimity.

I may have reached the anxiety tipping point, when I can no longer rely on the flow of chemicals in my brain to harbor me from anxious reactions. This is when the real work begins. It's gonna get harder now, and the anxiety will knock at the door more often from this point on. Life gets more complicated as we get older, and anxiety comes with it, so it's not a matter of avoiding anxiety but of responding appropriately to anxiety. I do not believe that we are all doomed to melt into a medicated puddle of anxiety as we get older. Nor do I believe that we have to become homebodies who subconsciously try to prevent anxiety with hardened routines and the safest and slowest possible routes to get anywhere. But I do think that, regardless of our natural bent toward or away from anxiety, we must tackle the issue if we want to age unanxiously.

The most helpful school of thought I have encountered on responding to anxiety is called "mindfulness," which I have found in several places but most lucidly explained in a book called Full Catastrophe Living. I would simplify, perhaps oversimplify, the message of mindfulness in relationship to anxiety thus: YOU ARE NOT YOUR ANXIETY. Just because a situation may create anxiety in you does not mean that you have to make it part of you. When anxious thoughts run through your head, you don't have to stop the tape. You can notice them, acknowledge them, and allow them to run right out.

Anxiety has a way of taking us out of the present moment. It usually transports us into an imagined future scenario, often a hypothetical disaster scenario. Mindfulness says that THIS moment is the one you are living, and the only one you can actually live. Anxiety wants you to miss what is right in front of you. Jesus said the exact same thing:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. (Matthew 6.27-29).

Jesus' remedy for anxiety? Noticing the beauty and the life and the fullness right in front of you, right in this moment. Anxiety imagines a future of scarcity, but the moment is filled with abundance. Pay attention.

Another piece of wisdom I have heard on preventing the signs of anxiety is this: each week do something new and something that feels a little risky. In other words, you don't learn to deal with anxiety by staying safe and avoiding it, but by plunging headlong into it and responding to it there. I'm not necessarily suggesting that next week you try base jumping, bear wrestling, or screaming "Meat is Murder!" at a nearby steakhouse, unless that's what you're into. I'm talking about each week doing something that feels a little uncomfortable. Try a new kind of cuisine, talk to a homeless person on the street, pick up a new hobby. As you get older you will be tempted to constrict your life along with your tightening muscles; keep stretching.

What about you? Do you think it is inevitable that we will become more anxious as we get older? What are helpful ways you have learned to respond to anxiety?

Bud Break

It's spring time in the vineyards, which brings with it the most awaited moment of the vineyard's life cycle. In early April the days get hotter and the vine begins to wake up. The heat triggers the reproductive rhythm, the sap flows upward from the root to the vines, and then that annual miracle happens: bud break. Even those vineyard workers who have seen it 60 times wait with anticipation and some anxiety for this moment, and praise the heavens when it happens. Bud break brings hope, it brings life, and it brings the promise of abundance, livelihood, and harvest.

I wondered for a long wintry season if the buds would ever break in my life. Everything felt cold, dormant, and desolate. I was burnt out, stretched thin, in a job that was choking the life out of my soul, stuck in uncertainty about my future. I could hardly remember the last harvest, when my life had felt full and rich. I had lost my passion for writing, and I struggled with bouts of depression. Even the holiday season had been lifeless and empty. I wondered if the earth had stopped spinning under my feet, and whether I would be stuck in eternal winter.

But buds are relentless and inevitable. They may look fragile when they first emerge, but they will not be denied. Even if a spring frost comes and freezes the nascent buds, new buds will shortly take their place. The vines will flower, they will produce leaves to make sugar and protect the flowers from the summer sun, and clusters of grapes will develop out of the flowers. Sugar levels will increase, acidity levels will decrease, and come the fall the grapes will make wine.

I got serious about wine after I started visiting the Santa Ynez Valley, about 45 miles north of Santa Barbara, in 2004. I first visited after seeing the movie Sideways, and I quickly learned two things: first, this is my favorite place on earth, and second, don't mention the movie Sideways to locals. I quickly became a regular, making the drive up here 10-12 times per year, and I began to nurture a dream of living here and spending my remaining days writing, sipping the plentiful nectar of the land, working at a winery, and living a big life in a small town.

The Santa Ynez Valley became my promised land, a place where wine flows like water, where beauty lifts and calms my soul, where it takes an hour to get out of the grocery store because everyone in line chats happily with checkers and baggers, where life moves at the pace of the annual vine cycle, where the farmer's market is three blocks long in a six block town.

But every promised land has giants as well as grapes. There were significant obstacles keeping me from the entering the land. It is expensive to live in wine country, and my pastor's resume wasn't exactly conducive to getting a job in the wine world. My dream was so near and yet so far away, and I lived for many seasons in that far away nearness. As of a couple of months ago, I had given up on it. I was in the wilderness, and I didn't know how to get out.

Early in April I attended a conference in Napa hosted by Image Journal called "Cultivate," and the theme was winemaking, art, and the creative process. I had left ministry a month before, and was suspended in an in-between world, walking a tightrope between two cliffs, trying not to look down. It was an unsettled, anxious time. One morning at the conference, I spoke on my own search for "place," and especially how elusive true place has been for me. I longed for a place where I felt I belonged, a place that I could call home, a place where God visited. And for me that place is Santa Ynez, but I felt like Moses in that I got to see my promised land but didn't get to enter it.

That very weekend I received a call from the tasting room manager at Fess Parker Winery. I had been a member in their wine club for several years and whenever I was in the area I stopped there. Back in December I mentioned to my friend Barrett, whom I had met just by tasting wine at Fess fore 5 years, that I was hoping to move to Santa Ynez and start a new career in the wine world. That was the last time I had spoken with him.

In late March Barrett was promoted to hiring manager, and he needed a new employee. He thought of me and called me in for an interview. As it happened, I would be driving through the area two days later on my way home. After a 5 minute interview, I had a new job. I moved to the Santa Ynez Valley last Saturday, and I start my new job on Thursday. And the buds are breaking all over the place here. They will not be denied, not even by the coldest winter.

This Wilderness Life

Apparently I had one more post in me during this time of quiet. Today I am a guest over at Sarah Bessey's place, with a post entitled This Wilderness Life. Of course I would like for you to read my post, but honestly I am more excited about introducing you to Sarah if you are not acquainted with her writing. She has one of the most prophetic, courageous, honest, and beautiful writing voices in all of the Christian blogosphere, and soon, the bookstore! Go for my post; stay for her writing.
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There are those moments in the Bible when the people are gathered in the radiant city praising God and having the goodwill of all.

Have you ever noticed that those moments are few and far between?

Is it just me or is the wilderness actually the mailing address for God’s people, and occasionally they buy a pilgrim fare to the city on the hill? Even when a fortunate generation lives in the vicinity of the temple, the wilderness outside the city walls seems to lie in wait, ready to swallow them when the Babylonians come to town. Whether it’s Adam and Eve chased out of the garden by an angry flaming sword, Cain wearing an L for Loser on his forehead, Abraham finally moving out of his parents’ house at age 75, the Hebrews on their way out of Egypt to receive the covenant they will struggle to keep, Israel circling the desert like buzzards waiting for death, David pursued by a schizophrenic king who is calmed by classical music like Hannibal Lecter, the northern kingdom fleeing from Assyria, the southern kingdom scattering from Babylon, John the Baptist getting his weird on out by the Jordan, Jesus saying WHAT UP to the Adversary for 40 days, or John the Revelator going all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy on Patmos, the proper context for God’s people seems to be….the wilderness.

I am in a wilderness season right now. Why am I surprised?

To read the rest of the post on Sarah's blog, go here. 

Embracing the Quiet

I woke up late Thursday morning, after my last hospice shift, and I was exhausted. It was not the exhaustion one feels after a restless night of sleep, though it was one of those nights. It is the exhaustion one feels after 2 years of restless nights. After being stretched thin, poured out, laid bare. I am exhausted, and admittedly, a little depressed. I am leaving a lot behind, and I am feeling the fatigue of carrying those weights around for so long. Sometimes I feel like I have absorbed the pain of all the grieving people I have been with.

Depression often shows up in times of life transition, indicating that you have lost something significant. In William Bridges' amazing book Transitions, he explains that a transition does not begin with a beginning but with an ending. The reason why many people do not transition well is because they leap to the next thing too quickly without taking seriously what has been lost and left behind.

On the horizon I see a future of writing and wine, and in early April I will be speaking at a seminar hosted by Image Journal called Ferment: Winemaking and the Creative Process. In my mind, this will be the beginning of a new season of life for me, when wine, embodied spirituality, and the intersections of wine and church history will become my central pursuits. I will focus on training as a wine sommelier and educator, and hopefully one day you'll eat at a great restaurant and I will serve you your wine while wearing a three-piece suit and a pocket square. If it's my first day on the job, I apologize in advance for the black eye the Champagne cork may inflict on you.

But I know that if I want to transition well I must spend time in this in-between stage, often called the liminal zone, walking the tightrope between the cliff I have left and the one ahead of me. I have been in that place for a while now, but I know that I must finish my inner work of transition before I can embrace the outer change that is coming.

Transition is a sort of grieving process, in which we mourn and mark the end of what we have lost. I find myself these days frequently practicing the discipline of the long stare, not necessarily thinking about anything specific, but letting my mind disengage and my eyes lose their focus. I believe that each time I do that I let something go. I make room in my soul for something else to take its place.

Transition is a quiet place. I am trying to embrace the quiet. You would think that as an introvert I embrace quiet easily. That is not always the case. After 15 years of ministry I have learned that there are different qualities of quiet. Quiet may sound the same but it does not feel the same. There is an anxious quiet and there is a peaceful quiet. I had experiences of both in the last week, and your feelings in the quiet immediately reveal what sort it is: anxious quiet feels like hell and peaceful quiet feels like heaven. We rush to fill anxious quiet with words - even excessive, controlling words - but we slow to luxuriate in peaceful quiet, and once we have experienced it, we crave it.  

I am setting aside the month of March for embracing the quiet, and I am hoping for more peaceful quiet than anxious quiet. I have 3 chapters to write in my listening book, which is a perfect way of reflecting on the ministry and relationships I have experienced, acknowledging the end of a life I have known. I will be in Seattle, typing to the sound of the rain on the roof.

This will be my last post for a few weeks, and I would greatly appreciate your prayers as I finish my book and work through this inner transition. I will be back in mid-April, and I sincerely hope you will come back after the quiet too.

Thank You and Goodnight - My Farewell to Hospice

Tonight I worked my very last shift as a hospice chaplain. It is midnight, my shift ended 11 minutes ago, and I am writing a blog post while my thoughts are fresh. I'm planning on going deep into the night, just as I have so many times when I've been on-call. And then on Friday I'm going to resume my previous life as a morning person.

I'm wearing my badge around my neck, for the very last time, as I write this. As another nod to sentiment, I just returned from a late night Del Taco run, which I have done probably 50 times between the hours of midnight and 6am in the last 2 years. Many times I circled the drive-thru just because it comforted me to know that other people were working at that time of night. While most of you have been oh-so-selfishly sleeping in your warm beds during these shadowless hours, some of us had to keep the world running. Big Fat Chicken tacos don't make themselves, you know.

I also just left my last voice mail for the team I worked for tonight. I ended it with "Peace out suckers!!" No one will laugh when they hear it. Hospice workers just aren't funny.

It's all but impossible to capture the experiences, the feelings, and the interactions that have formed these last 25 months. There is no way that I can fully describe what it feels like to go to bed with a beeper (yes, a beeper) next to your ear, and have it scream you out of sleep at 3am, like a rooster who's been doping. And that's only the preface to the terrors of what comes next: "Adam, there is a family who lost someone tonight and they're not coping well. The nurse needs your help for spiritual and psychological support. Oh, and their house is 50 minutes away from you, in east L.A. Tell us when you're finished, because we may have another visit after that for you."

When I told people I was a hospice chaplain, they would give me one of two responses. Either they would be absolutely mortified and look at me as though I were an alien from outer space, or else they would be incredibly moved and give me a hug. One time an old couple bought me a bottle of Syrah and a 20oz Rib eye after they found out what I did. One time a woman scowled and walked away after she found out what I did. One time a child yelled "I hate you!!", stomped on my foot, and ran away. I might have made that last one up.

But the extreme responses I received from others only echoed the contradictions that I experienced within myself. Hospice has been the best thing that ever happened to me. Hospice has been the worst thing that ever happened to me. Sometimes I feel like I have seen too much. Sometimes I feel like I have seen exactly what I needed to see. I feel like my heart grew 3 sizes. I feel like I left pieces of my heart all over Pasadena, and Monterey Park, and Pomona. I had days where I felt like taking off my shoes because I stood on holy ground. I had days where I felt like putting on layer after layer because I felt naked.

I have holy memories, and I have haunted memories, and they mingle in my mind, like a wedding attended by two families who hate each other.

I remember the man who threatened to commit suicide at 2am, and how I kept him on the phone for over an hour until he promised not to do it that night.

I remember the woman whose heart stopped beating the moment I said "Amen."

I remember the brothers who got into a fist fight after their dad died.

I remember Livia, who I sat with for hours and talked about her childhood in Italy.

I remember the family who complained bitterly about my service, even though I gave everything I had to that visit.

I remember Katherine, who told me what it was like to grow up in London during the Blitz.

I remember the woman who told my supervisor, "Either he needs to learn some goddam respect or else get another mother*%$ing job!"

I remember the people who said "You have been with us in the most important time. You are part of our family now."

I remember the time I was called 4 times in an 8 hour shift, and how I spent the next 3 days on the couch, depressed.

I remember the old woman at a nursing home, who answered my "Good morning" with a brazen flip of her middle finger.

I remember the time when I sat in a nursing home with a grieving woman with early onset dementia who had just lost her mom. She asked me the same exact question every 4 minutes for 2 hours.

I remember the late night drives to the City of Industry, where very little industry happens aside from strip clubs and prostitution. I remember the late night drives to the City of Commerce, where very little commerce happens aside from strip clubs and prostitution. Don't go to the City of Industry or Commerce late at night.

I remember the first time I was the first person to inform someone that a relative had died. It was my very first death visit.

I remember Eulogia ("blessing" in biblical Greek), the 99 year old woman who had lived in her house for 80 years. Shortly before her 100th birthday her family moved her into a nursing home. When I visited her the next day, she saw me and immediately burst into tears and said "I didn't think you would know where to find me!"

I remember the time that I prayed for a man who had been unresponsive for three days. When I took his hand to pray, his fingers closed around mine. It was the last time he moved anything voluntarily.

I remember the two sisters - young, smart, attractive, and blonde, with dream lives in their crosshairs - and how they watched their mother succumb to breast cancer.

I remember the girlfriend of the dying man who sat by his bedside all Christmas eve and all Christmas day, when his family wouldn't come. They had been dating for 3 months.  He was perfectly healthy when they started dating. They met at church.

I remember the men of older generations who didn't feel comfortable expressing emotions. They slowly died on the inside while their wives died on the outside.

I remember the time that I threw my beeper across the street and had to hunt for it in the dark for 10 minutes. I remember the time that I managed to turn off my beeper while asleep. I remember the last time I ever turned off my beeper. It was an hour ago.

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The apostle Paul tells us to "give thanks in all circumstances," and as I penetrate through all the memories, all the late night drives, all the pop music I used to keep me awake, all the agony and the joy, all the holy and the profane, all the cursing and the praise, all the solitary walks around Pasadena City Hall, all the graveyard Del Taco runs and daybreak Starbucks runs, I uncover gratitude. I am grateful to be done, yes, but I am grateful for all of it.

Thank you for teaching me about pain. Thank you for teaching me not to run from it, but to sit with it.

Thank you for the sacred moments, when I was able to hold a patient's hand as he took his last breath.

Thank you for teaching me about death, that it is always awful and sometimes beautiful.

Thank you for opening my heart to family, who may war with another but almost always show up in the same room when they need to.

Thank you for showing me that my dreams and desires will not always pulsate within me.

Thank you for teaching me about depression, that it often shows up at times of transition.

Thank you for clarifying my priorities, for showing me what is significant in life. 

Thank you for teaching me that my most profound thoughts fall completely flat in moments of life and death.

Thank you for making me a better person than I was 2 years ago.

Thank you for showing me that neither life nor death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

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When you spend as much time around death as I have over these last 2 years, when every day on the calendar is Ash Wednesday, you learn that ultimately life offers no happy endings. Every life ends in sadness and grief and pain and silence. And all we can do is struggle and work, believe and doubt, hope and fall, run and wrinkle. Every person has both a victor and a victim inside of her. You have more fight and strength in you than you ever imagined, but you also have more weakness and vulnerability than you ever thought. Your bodies will decay and ultimately lose the fight, but you will battle valiantly and courageously. I have seen it time and time again from people you wouldn't think would be so strong.

When you work in hospice, you spend a lot of time with people who are waiting, suspended in that interim period between light and darkness. But whether in life or in death, we are people who wait. We anticipate a Day when the deathbed will be transformed into the cradle of resurrection, when the last gasps of death will be modulated into the cries of new life.

Until that glorious daybreak, we pray with the Church every night:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love's sake. Amen. 

Goodnight. Thank you.