The Long Climb Out – (At the Bottom – Part 3)

It only takes a second to fall from your pedestal, your position, your place, or your life, into the pit. The unexpected meeting, phone call, text, tragedy, collision, diagnosis, overdose, etc., changes your life in an instant. But one of the cruel realities of life is that the plunge into the pit is sudden, but the climb out is long and arduous.

Hitting the bottom makes you numb. The shock is jarring, and initially, you can’t think, and you can’t feel. Unfortunately, when this wears off, the pain arrives – overwhelming, debilitating pain. When some of the pain subsides, you are ready to begin your climb out.

This process is grueling. For many people, it’s the most difficult challenge they will ever face. It is painfully slow, full of repeated setbacks. You will be frequently frustrated at your lack of progress. But you will move at the right pace for you.

It’s not important how fast you move, just that you keep moving forward. You may have to crawl, but just like an infant, you must learn to crawl before you walk. And to walk before you run.

And you will fail and fail repeatedly. And you will lose and lose repeatedly. You will lose so often that people will consider you a loser. At times you will feel like a loser. But let me assure you this: If you are still in the game. If you are still at the table. If when you breathe in, your lungs receive oxygen. You are not a loser. You are a warrior who has not yet achieved the victory. Resilience is the most valuable trait you can possess. (more of this in the next post). Crawl on, walk on, run on – Move forward.

For most of this journey, you will walk alone. Unfortunately, you can’t rely on most people to help you out. The people who hung with you at the top will quickly abandon you at the bottom. It’s just human nature. However, there will be a few people, special people, who will help pull you out of the pit. Cherish them – they are your true friends.

The most valuable skill you will acquire during this time is the ability to recover from a failure or loss. Before your fall, a setback in your life may have caused you distress for a month or more. But now, you will fail repeatedly. You will fail so much that at some point, it barely phases you at all. You will learn to take a punch and not be afraid to get hit again. You will learn how to get knocked down and instinctively bounce back up. You will become a human weeble. You will wobble, but you won’t fall down.

At some point, you face the acid test. After you have suffered failures. After people view you as a failure. When people would rather pity you than help you. Your success at climbing out of the pit comes down to this: 

EITHER YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF – OR YOU DON’T

This is where you reach down deep and decide who you are, what you have to offer, and where you want to go. And then make the choice:

EITHER YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF – OR YOU DON’T

It doesn’t matter who else believes in you, who else cares for you, or who makes the effort to help you ….

EITHER YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF – OR YOU DON’T

There will be those dark days when you feel alone. You will feel completely  abandoned. You will doubt yourself. You will feel as if no one cares.

It is at those times, for the people of FAITH to trust in the promise of THE CREATOR, that he will never leave you nor forsake you. And why are those words there? Why are they even in THE BOOK, when that truth seems so obvious? Precisely for these dark days. Yes, you know it’s true, but you need to hear it repeatedly in your journey upward. This truth is so essential that it appears near the beginning of THE BOOK and is repeated again near the end.

Learning how to lose. Acquiring the skill of regaining your balance after getting knocked down. Believing in yourself. How well you do these things, make the difference of whether you stay down, bounce back, or bounce forward.

It’s What You Still Have (At the Bottom - Part 2)

I ambled across the room to greet her. As I approached, I noticed the hollowness of her eyes. It was as if the life had been totally sucked out of her, and in a way, it had. She appeared frail and transparent. I could see right through her. There was no hiding her pain, so she didn’t try. It was immense, overwhelming agony. She radiated anguish, and she was figuratively bleeding all over the floor.

She had lost her husband of over 20 years. It was sudden and unexpected. Her plunge to the bottom was deep and rapid, and the crash severe. This was of no fault of her own, and yet she probably found something with which to blame herself. Because that’s the type of irrational thinking you experience at the bottom.

It was the first time I had seen Cindy since the funeral seven months ago. I figured she would have been doing better by now. But how could I know what to expect, never having experienced a loss this devastating?  

Her condition caught me off guard. In a few seconds, I would speak to her, and what possibly could I say? I couldn’t ask, “How’s it going?” because she is going through hell, and I don’t want her to have to describe the trip. In fact, all small talk is out. Because it’s small, and what we have here is trauma, enormous trauma.

My brain starts spinning, trying to come up with the right words to say. I’m a positive person, and I don’t function well in negative situations, so my rule is to let my words be few. So, after the customary hellos, I blurt out:

It’s going to get better.

Cindy’s expression reflects complete rejection of my statement.

It’s going to get better; I restate it.

This time she scrunches her face and turns her head. She is hurting so badly, and the idea is so inconceivable, she can’t even verbally express her dismay.

Trust me. It’s going to get better (repeated for yet a third time in a slightly softer tone) 

Two lies you tell yourself at the bottom are: “It’s never going to get better” and “You’re always going to feel this way”. You really believe it’s always going to be this terrible. You can’t see the future because you are overwhelmed by the present.

How did I know it was going to get better? What I saw was a beautiful, smart, charming woman. With terrific children and an incredible family supporting her and half of her life still to be lived.

But Cindy couldn’t see that. You plummet to the bottom because you lost something – a person, a spouse, a relationship, a job, a status, an income, an asset, your dignity, your health, etc.

And at the bottom, all you can see is what you lost, not what you still have. We agonize over the loss. We want the lost thing back so desperately. We yearn to go back in time. But that can’t happen.

What you still have left, after the fall, is vitally important. It’s what you will build upon as you move forward. It is the platform on which your recovery begins. It is your base; it is your core. And that doesn’t disappear, no matter how far you fall.

So, to repeat with emphasis. After the fall:

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU LOST THAT’S IMPORTANT – IT’S WHAT YOU STILL HAVE

A year later, I could tell Cindy was coping better, and the grieving process was continuing. My message to her was the same.

“It’s going to get better,” I said again.

“I hope so,” she replied.

Ah, there was hope! So, I raised the bar.

“I think it’s going to get much better,” I emphasized with a smile.

When I saw the hope in her eyes, I knew she was on her way back.

But she had lost something precious, a great husband and a great man. Her life had been great, greater than she had ever realized, until he was gone. This recovery was going to take some time.

And then it happened. Her life became good. And then her life became great once again. I don’t know if her life now is better than before the tragedy, but it could be. Regardless, Cindy has a great life. And that’s because:

It’s not what you lost that’s ultimately important – It’s what you still have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When You Hit Bottom

 Life is going along fine, maybe even wonderfully, when suddenly an unexpected tragedy rams into you, knocking you off your perch. You fall, and keep falling. Your head spins, as the life you knew slips through your fingers. You try to grab it, but there’s only air. You experience a flood of bad emotions. You can’t think. You can’t cry. It’s just one long, loud, internal scream.

And then comes the abrupt crash at the end. Of course, you don’t hear a thud, but the force of the blow shakes your inner core. It hammers your soul. It’s quietly painful and painfully quiet at the same time. You have hit bottom.

If you have never experienced this, I want you to continue reading to better understand when a friend or family member goes through this. If this has happened to you, then it will be a reminder of just how far you have come since then. And if you are at the bottom, read this slowly and understand that I know how it feels, and the words are true, to the best of my ability to express them.

We tend to judge the people who have hit bottom based on our perceived notions of how they got there. If it was bad decisions, we say “they deserved it”. If it was of “no fault of their own”, we find it tragic. But how we feel about them is of no interest to the person at the bottom. They all hurt just as desperately. The place is the same for all people. Rich, poor, educated, uneducated… The torment doesn’t discriminate. And regardless of the circumstances, all bottom dwellers will find some reason to blame themselves for their predicament. Even when it’s not your fault, you will savagely beat yourself up repeatedly at the bottom.

And this tendency to judge people because they deserved it? In the BOOK, when the MAN encountered someone at the bottom, he was not concerned about how they got there but totally focused on offering them a way out.

Now there are actually three good things about hitting bottom:

1.    You can’t fall any further. That plunge was traumatic and frightening, but you are on solid ground now. You have reached an endpoint.

2.    There is no confusion about which direction to go. There are no choices. There are no options. There is only one way out – straight up.

3.    It’s eerily quiet at the bottom. There are few distractions. If you want to hear the voice of the CREATOR, there is no interference or distractions.  

When you hit bottom, you land face first. This means initially, you lie there staring at the ground. You are focused on the ground and how you ended up there. You focus on the past. You are obsessed with the specific details that brought you there. You rewind the hell over and over. It’s like playing the same horror movie repeatedly, and you are the star of the show.

Therefore, step one in the recovery is to roll over and stare at the sky. That represents the future. And that’s where you are headed. But it’s still a struggle because you continue to think irrationally. You can’t trust your thoughts at the bottom because you keep telling yourself lies, such as:

-       There is no way out of this mess                                 

-       It’s always going to be this bad

-       I’m always going to feel this torment

-       My useful, relevant life has ended

And these are utter, complete lies. They seem ludicrous now to those who have ever been at the bottom of the pit, but they were so believable and destructive then.

In the pit, you can’t see the future. You can only see your failure – or your circumstance. It’s challenging to look forward even a year into the future when you are obsessed with just making it through the day. But there will be a future. It may be much different than the past, but it will be your future, which you can control. Dwelling on your past mistakes or misfortunes while trying to recover is like driving a car forward by looking in the rear-view mirror. You can’t go very fast or very straight. You have to rip the mirror off your car.

At the bottom, it is also easy to think that because the CREATOR threw you in the pit, he will just as suddenly lift you out. It may seem logical, but this is a false hope. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. You must lift yourself up.

To climb out the pit, one must scratch and claw your way back - learning to celebrate small victories against sturdy resistance. The weight on the lifting machine has been set to the max, and now you must become strong enough to move it.

And move it, you will. Through the process, you gain the strength, the guts, the determination, the fortitude, and the skills to flourish in your next challenge in life. Life at the bottom is brutal, but can be empowering if you let it.