#UnmuteYourself Day 6 - Coping Strategy
You forgave the iniquity of your people;
you pardoned all their sin. Selah
Today we return to Psalm 85 and are once again asking for the restoration of God’s favor.
I was interested in this word, "Selah," which ends this particular verse. There’s a backstory to this curiosity that I won’t get into here, but this seemed like a nice little nudge to dig into it. There doesn’t seem to be a direct translation of this word available; rather, it is a transliteration like “hallelujah.” The general sense is that “perhaps the most instructive way to view the use of this word, particularly in the context of the Psalms, would be as the writer's instruction to the reader to pause and exalt the Lord.” (with apologies to every teacher I have ever had for quoting Wikipedia). This rings true to me, especially in the context of Psalm 85:2. It is right and good that we pause and exalt God when being reminded that God forgave us of our sins.
I didn’t consciously intend for this to be the case, but I have “right and good” up there and that’s almost the exact inverse of one of my therapist’s favorite phrases, “bad and wrong.” As in, my brain will bend over backwards to find ways to make me bad and wrong about whichever innocuous (or, to be fair to myself, un-innocuous) thing it has latched onto that day. One of the greatest blessings from starting therapy is that I can recognize that as a pattern and pause when it’s coming up again, take a moment and get to the root of it.
Like last night/this morning, I was in an anxiety spiral over the results of the home spirometry (again). My brain jumped me through several hoops but the very deep-down, root cause of it was sadness. Sadness that maybe my shiny new Trikafta isn’t actually working, that I am not getting better. That, even though I know logically that CF isn’t something you get better from, but rather manage, I still tend to blame myself when it does what it does (progressive diseases gonna progress) and feel like I am disappointing my husband, my doctors, my parents, everyone who cares about me when I am not at my peak of health. The mind has a hard time dealing with uncertainty and accepting that sometimes things truly aren’t in our control.
Anyway. The most effective coping strategy I have found, by far, for any of the anxiety has been mindfulness. To pause and listen to my own deepest thoughts and fears. Or to pause and take in all of the available information, like the app I use for the tests blatantly screwing up in an indisputable way so I have proof it sucks. Honestly feeling those feelings isn’t pleasant sometimes, but it’s what brings the anxiety down.
I wonder if “selah” is like that. A reminder to be more present in the moment, to really hear what is being said and not just listen. To have a deeper, more honest reaction, and then relationship, to the Word, and through the Word, with God. God came to earth as a human baby in order to deepen God’s relationship with us, after all. That’s the mechanism through which God ultimately, once and for all “pardoned all [our] sin.”
Advent, then, is a time to be present in the moment, to savor the hope and expectation of the coming of the Savior of the world. An every-year “selah.”
you pardoned all their sin. Selah
Today we return to Psalm 85 and are once again asking for the restoration of God’s favor.
I was interested in this word, "Selah," which ends this particular verse. There’s a backstory to this curiosity that I won’t get into here, but this seemed like a nice little nudge to dig into it. There doesn’t seem to be a direct translation of this word available; rather, it is a transliteration like “hallelujah.” The general sense is that “perhaps the most instructive way to view the use of this word, particularly in the context of the Psalms, would be as the writer's instruction to the reader to pause and exalt the Lord.” (with apologies to every teacher I have ever had for quoting Wikipedia). This rings true to me, especially in the context of Psalm 85:2. It is right and good that we pause and exalt God when being reminded that God forgave us of our sins.
I didn’t consciously intend for this to be the case, but I have “right and good” up there and that’s almost the exact inverse of one of my therapist’s favorite phrases, “bad and wrong.” As in, my brain will bend over backwards to find ways to make me bad and wrong about whichever innocuous (or, to be fair to myself, un-innocuous) thing it has latched onto that day. One of the greatest blessings from starting therapy is that I can recognize that as a pattern and pause when it’s coming up again, take a moment and get to the root of it.
Like last night/this morning, I was in an anxiety spiral over the results of the home spirometry (again). My brain jumped me through several hoops but the very deep-down, root cause of it was sadness. Sadness that maybe my shiny new Trikafta isn’t actually working, that I am not getting better. That, even though I know logically that CF isn’t something you get better from, but rather manage, I still tend to blame myself when it does what it does (progressive diseases gonna progress) and feel like I am disappointing my husband, my doctors, my parents, everyone who cares about me when I am not at my peak of health. The mind has a hard time dealing with uncertainty and accepting that sometimes things truly aren’t in our control.
Anyway. The most effective coping strategy I have found, by far, for any of the anxiety has been mindfulness. To pause and listen to my own deepest thoughts and fears. Or to pause and take in all of the available information, like the app I use for the tests blatantly screwing up in an indisputable way so I have proof it sucks. Honestly feeling those feelings isn’t pleasant sometimes, but it’s what brings the anxiety down.
I wonder if “selah” is like that. A reminder to be more present in the moment, to really hear what is being said and not just listen. To have a deeper, more honest reaction, and then relationship, to the Word, and through the Word, with God. God came to earth as a human baby in order to deepen God’s relationship with us, after all. That’s the mechanism through which God ultimately, once and for all “pardoned all [our] sin.”
Advent, then, is a time to be present in the moment, to savor the hope and expectation of the coming of the Savior of the world. An every-year “selah.”