A Case For Connection [pt. 1]
The last 18 months have completely turned my world upside down. I have only experienced a few such seasons in my 35 years here. It was one of those seasons you didn’t ask for, you certainly didn’t see coming, yet deep down, you knew that everything would be different when you got to the other side. I’m still not sure I’m through it yet.
If you are reading this in real-time, you might remember that 18 months ago, the real estate market began to shift. At the time, it was subtle. Interest rates went up slightly. No big deal- it happens all the time. They will come back down… or so we thought. I was leading one of central Oklahoma's top real estate teams at the time. I had been selling real estate full-time for five years and was pushing hard to build a mega team to dominate my market and free me financially. If only I had possessed a crystal ball…
Generally, it’s not good business sense to dramatically increase expenses while decreasing revenue just as dramatically. One might call that a recipe for disaster. The problem is that I couldn’t see that disaster coming until it was too late. I got caught in one of those… but next month will be different… thought cycles that nearly ruined my family financially.
I didn’t know then that while my world, finances, and sanity were unraveling, God was positioning me for a life-changing reorientation on every level. To be clear, I don’t think He was the author of my suffering. I’ve come to accept the source of my suffering was simply what Paul called “circumstances” in the fourth chapter of his letter to the Phillippians.
Through this process, I had to confront the question of what I would do with the circumstances I found myself in. What meaning would I give this season of my life that seemed nothing more than a colossal, ulcer-inducing failure?
Authentically confronting these questions led to a realization I was not prepared for: I was disconnected from myself—completely and utterly. Somewhere along the way, in the midst of being a husband, a father, and chasing success, I left myself—my true self.
As I sat with this realization, met with mentors, and read, I discovered that humans leave themselves (aka disassociate) for a number of reasons. For some, it’s busyness. For others, it’s trauma. Still others, it could be because of absent parents. The list is endless. The bottom line is that leaving ourselves—disassociating—is a type of defense mechanism. It is our brain's attempt to protect us from the pain it perceives as a threat. While this may serve a purpose for a time, long-term disassociation hinders your ability to connect with your true self and, by default, God and others.
I couldn’t answer the question, “What meaning would I give this season of my life?” because I no longer knew the person attempting to answer it. I began to realize that the only way out of this season was to accept God's invitation—the invitation of authentic connection to myself.
