The floors are sticky. The grooves of the table grouted with crumbs. And our kids can eat for themselves with utensils by 1 year old.
No, this isn’t a parenting blog to shame and call out all the ways you are doing things poorly. It’s not even ultimately about parenting or toddlers. (Though, I [Lane] am a parent to young children and naturally find life lessons in the crucible of child-rearing.)
It’s about discomfort. The leftover-maple-syrup-on-hands kind of discomfort. The-approach-to-the-top-of-a-roller-coaster-before-the-drop kind of stomach-clenching discomfort. The I-need-to-end-this-relationship heart fluttering, second-guessing kind of discomfort.
Are you uncomfortable yet?
Discomfort feels icky.
Good news? There’s free, same-day shipping, on-demand streaming to instantly gratify a lot of emotional and physical dysregulation.
Bad news? We can’t grow without discomfort.
Discomfort is a critical way to grow resilience, change relationships, and see us become better. Embracing it is the first of at least 5 ways to alleviate the pressure to "just get through."
What do I mean? Think back to my children. I could alleviate a lot of discomfort. I could spoon feed all the bowls of sugar, cottage cheese, and toddler cravings to their hearts’ content.
I wouldn’t have sticky floors. I wouldn’t be cleaning off layers of leftovers on our kitchen table. My wife wouldn’t clean the umpteenth load of laundry. My children would never throw their utensils in frustration over their food selection. They would never experience sadness and disappointment and anger over their difficulty handling that flimsy piece of waffle.
If my aim is never rocking the boat of any “big emotions” and a spotless house, we are crushing it. If my aim is raising attuned, empowered humans who can navigate life as they experience it, I am failing.
Discomfort is part of growing up, growing out, and changing for the better.
The Apostle Paul says it like this to the community of Jesus followers in Galatia, now modern-day Türkiye:
4-5 Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life. 6 Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience. 7-8 Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life. 9-10 So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith. -Galatians 6:4-10, MSG
Let’s break that down and discover 5 ways to alleviate discomfort by embracing it.
Your creative best embraces the discomfort of comparison.
Paul addresses the discomfort of comparison when he invites the Galatians to explore carefully who they are and the work they are to be given. Not who they are in comparison to the church in Jerusalem or Antioch. Not in who they are in comparison to Peter or Apollos.
Who they are.
For some of us, we are so uncomfortable with who we are that we try to find absolution or confirmation through threads, feeds, and influencers from today’s social media marketplace.
For some of us, we are so uncomfortable with who others believe themselves to be that we micromanage, manipulate, or mute them to conform to the image we want them to be in relation to ourselves.
I can easily do this with my children. I was conformed to suppress “negative” emotions, so I want to nullify frustrations as soon as they arise in them: “Don’t be sad.” “It’s not that big of a deal.” “Why are you upset?”
In doing so, I mute, manipulate, and micromanage my children and rob them of their ability to grow in regulating their emotions and part of what it means to be human.
In community work, missions, transformational development, justice, poverty alleviation, volunteering, social work, {insert your version of being a change agent}: Are you being your creative best? Or are you trying to conform to the best of said hero, model, or method?
Just as important though, are you making room for the creative best of “common life,” the community and relational networks with whom you walk alongside?
Your generosity challenges the comfort of consumerism.
Paul does not see self-sufficient maturity as an end in itself. Paul does not see it a win to have a token child, a model individual, an extracted story of rags to riches.
“Making it” to then make it as comfortable a situation as possible for myself is not the end of maturity. Maturity is to be shared.
An unchallenged life is a fruitless life.
Clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy talks about the danger of assuming happiness is the goal of parenting (and by implications, life itself):
[Is happiness the goal of parenting?] No. Anybody who had a childhood in which happiness was the goal would be predestined for a lifetime of anxiety — life is full of distress! What’s something that’s distressing as a kid? It could be, “My tower fell down.” If happiness were the goal then my behavior would be, “Look, we fixed your tower, it’s fine.” What would I be wiring into my child by doing that? The more we focus on becoming happy, the less tolerance we have for distress and the more we search to feel any other way than how we’re feeling — which is the experience of anxiety. So what’s an alternative response to “My tower fell down”? It wouldn’t be me saying, “Tough, things happen.” It’s the accumulation of feeling alone in our feelings as kids that gives us adult struggles. So how would I not do aloneness? Through presence. My kid’s tower falls down? I would try to say: “I’m not going to rebuild it. I’m going to stay here with you”; and maybe it’s [sings] “Towers fall down and that really stinks.” Through my presence, what I’m doing is teaching my kid that when their distress light goes on, we want it to operate on a dimmer. If you think about all the worst adult coping mechanisms, they are an attempt to turn a feeling off, not an attempt to dim. I used to see adults in my private practice who came to me with eating disorders or bulimia. I would say to those with bulimia that the way that vomiting makes you feel as if, wow, you’ve cleaned out everything bad in your body — not just the food but the accumulation of experience — that’s something I can’t offer to you. I can offer you something different: It’s dimming your distress — not to a zero, but from a 10 to a nine and then a nine to a eight and so on. Then you can learn how to operate in the world.
Whether maturity is how to use a utensil in eating food, or how to work through the distress of life as we work out relational brokenness, my lessons learned are to be shared through presence.
Authenticity embraces the discomfort of imperfection.
Who wants to admit their faults? ✋🏼
I get it. It’s not in the cards of our marketplace. Faults don’t land jobs, get dates, or score points. Unless it’s captured on camera and goes viral, or you are… Well, I won’t go there. Most of the time, our faults don’t help us. So, we cover them up.
We white-wash. We spiritually bypass.
Jesus had a lot to say about this in the Gospels. He repeatedly denounced and grieved over the actions of religious leaders, teachers of the Holy Books, who covered up self-indulgence and broken relationships, and dismissed injustices around them through denials like, “If I was alive [when …], I never would have [...].”
It’s not the curated, outward facing, religious talker who denounces all the wrongs in “them” and “other” who Jesus applauds; it’s the man who comes to terms with the ways he has stolen from his fellow neighbor and colluded with those in power, acknowledging his wrongs and asking simply, “Have mercy.” (Check out Luke 18.)
Paul says something similar: Don’t fool God. Know what you are sowing, name what needs to change, and believe in the growth that can still take place in you.
When we believe we have to cover up our faults, we believe that we have no more room to change.
“Showing up” embraces the discomfort of slow-change.
Who likes waiting? ✋🏼
Again, in the day of high-speed Internet, shop-and-click consumerism, and access to hundreds of other coping behaviors, we often don’t have to.
Which makes actual moments of waiting a whole lot harder. (Full disclaimer: Any helpful points here will not lead to helpful change in your life by the end of reading this article.)
Paul says to not stop doing good to those in Galatia. To not lose heart in Corinth. To run the race in Lystra.
We want instant change. We want Instagrammable stories. Successes. Succinct stats.
It’s one of the reasons why there are so few refugee-led organizations (1.2 percent in fact), despite thousands of humanitarian organizations trying to serve such a population. Why?
Jean Marie Ishimwe, East African regional lead, Refugees Seeking Equal Access to the Table (R-SEAT), says that factors such as impact reports affect where donors will give their money, despite the fact that on-the-ground stories would reveal ROI on one’s dollar.
Also, despite the fact that glossy annual reports are not necessarily up-to-date.
Instant is very American. It’s very Western. It’s neither found in nature, among the cosmos, nor in most cultures, whether historical or modern-day.
Our obsession for instant has profound ramifications in our lives, whether that’s in sleep training our kids, coping with pain, or engaging in charity / social good / development.
Here’s an example to illustrate how our discomfort circumvents transformation and maturity in ourselves and our relationships: Michael Jordan and Calvin Klein.
I am from Chicago (true story). I really like Michael Jordan and his heyday as a Chicago Bulls player (professional basketball team in the US). I also like Calvin Klein clothing (not true, but useful for this illustration).
One day, I stumbled across an advertisement of Michael Jordan promoting Hanes (another true story and competitor to Calvin Klein).
I find myself at a crossroads of discomfort. What psychologists and communication experts call cognitive dissonance. How can I like Michael Jordan who likes Hanes and also like Calvin Klein for myself?
Well, I either need to embrace the discomfort and hold all those things to be true, or I will need to vilify Michael Jordan or Calvin Klein to rectify the discomfort. The outcome is either being a MIchael Jordan fan who jumped on the bandwagon of Hanes or decided Lebron James is a better player and keeps his Calvin Klein collection.
I learned this theory when studying public relations and the art of persuasion. What is amazing is I never considered the underlying premise that assumes humans will choose comfort over tension.
This comfort over tension plays out though not only in considering advertisements, but also in social good. Think of the story of Doug the Do-Gooder and Henri the Hungry.
Doug sees Henri hungry. Doug is uncomfortable by Henri’s hunger. Doug is even more uncomfortable with the underlying factors contributing to Henri’s story: malnourishment, lack of access to affordable food, food deserts, urban planning, consumerism, etc.
Doug feeds Henri. Henri is no longer hungry. Doug is happy.
Doug returns to his core relationships and shares this story of hunger to happiness and inspires others to these successful, instant-change moments.
The problem? Henri is still hungry tomorrow.
If I lovingly invite Doug to consider this, he becomes uncomfortable. His discomfort with Henri was appeased through feeding Henri, but now I am suggesting that Henri is still hungry and Doug’s good has not alleviated the problem.
Doug has dissonance. He either has to ignore the underlying factors contributing to Henri’s hunger and stick with the narrative of doing good, or he has to embrace that short-term change falls short of bringing about long-term good.
The crux? Doug has to embrace discomfort.
Growth embraces discomfort.
Paul concludes this portion of his letter with the encouragement to press on toward the betterment of all. All includes oneself.
What would happen if Doug embraces discomfort in its entirety? What would happen if he did the slow work of growing his character to name areas he is lacking, identify competencies that would help him be more empowering and present to pain in himself and others, study the history that serve as bricks and mortar to the current realities of a community, collaborate with others because he knows that one solution is not enough to change Henri’s life, and forego having pictures and posts to write home to?
Growth would happen. Not just in Doug’s life. Not just in Henri’s life. But in Henri’s community and in Doug’s community.
I have seen this growth happen in my life and in others’ lives. It’s the growth made possible from steady love, patiently working toward what is true and beautiful all the while not holding wrongs against the dissonant as she lives with the tension of who they are with who they are inspiring to become.
Dissonance isn’t easy. Discomfort isn’t easy. It’s why working out in community is a whole lot more sustainable than at-home workouts. We are human beings-in-community. We are relational. And there’s nothing quite like rallying cries to keep going.
Even better, rallying cries from voices of diverse experiences.
It is why I am part of Resilient Communities Center and am committed to creating learning environments where Doug, where you, where me, can have a safe space to grow and change and be encouraged to keep going when I discover something I do not like.
I invite you to join me on an upcoming Learning Cohort or visit me in Atlanta at a community building night.
You don’t have to do this alone. Let’s embrace discomfort together.
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