Luke Brasel Counseling

Blog

  • The Path of Well

    The Path of Well

    One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, “Do you want to get well?” – John 5:5-6 (MSG)

    Do you want to get well?

    Yes!

    And no.

    When we pay attention, the path of well invites us to confront and answer this haunting question on a daily basis. Yes, of course I want to get well. And no, I do not want to own the road of shame, grace, and trust that the path of well requires of me.

    The better we come to understand Jesus’ question and his offer, the more we know it is the road of suffering he invites us to partake in. Not suffering for the sake of suffering. No, it is the journey to experience and tell what is true while also entrusting our heart to God in the process of not knowing, not being in control, and seeing our limitations, darkness, and the shame which keeps us cozy and warm.

    Henri Nouwen poses Jesus offer this way,

    “Do you really want to be converted? Are you willing to be transformed? Or do you keep clutching your old ways of life with one hand while with the other you beg people to help you change?”

    Our clutching the old and begging others for new really gets us nowhere until we step into the process for ourselves. Clutching the old and asking too much of others to save us are really only forms of resolution. To look for resolution keeps us trying to fix both life and ourselves. Both keep us from facing our own path of well. All of us must journey this road for ourselves. No one can live your life for you. Nor are they meant to. Your path is your path. Mind you, this does not mean we have to travel alone. It does mean, though, we must choose the vulnerability and faithfulness to our own journey.

    If we are to ever change, we must free our grip from the old- our selfish, comfortable, and independent strategies of survival and relinquish our request of or demand on others to do our work for us.

    The old has gone, but the new has come. This truth must find its realization in our own heart, which is really to say: The old has gone, and the new must be found, unwrapped, and received. To align with Christ and participate in a death, resurrection, and ascension of the heart requires a lifetime of introspection. The old will always beg us to return, and the new waits patiently for our pursuit. So first we tackle awareness of our own heart. As our heart awareness deepens and our desire fuels our anger for change, little by little we find eyes to discover a new way for our heart to live and be.

  • Things Fall Apart

    Things Fall Apart

    My mechanic moved to Israel. For the past eight years, I have had the luxury of staying away from auto repair garages. Instead I would call my mechanic, and he would drive his mobile repair shop to my house. Anticipating an afternoon of entertainment, my kids eagerly announced his arrival whenever his trailer turned into our driveway.

    Panic overtook me yesterday when reality crashed in: My mechanic is gone. My cars no longer have permission to break down. From now on, I have to pretend odd clicking noises and eery engine sounds belong to the brand new Mercedes next to me at the red light.

    I read a book called Things Fall Apart in high school. I don’t remember much of what it was about, but the title stays with me because things keep breaking in life. Cars. AC units. Date night plans. Parenting plans. Marriages. Lawn mowers. iPhone screens. Door knobs. The coffee grinder.

    No doubt we keep repair shops in business. For every desk in a school and new building built downtown, somewhere there is a hospital bed and a landfill.

    Things fall apart. If you change the artwork on Chinua Achebe’s front cover, you could place that book on the shelf of any section in Barnes & Noble. World History, Cooking, Sports, Science-Fiction, Romance, and Travel. “Things Fall Apart” fits our universal reality.

    The only section I hesitate to add is “Self-Help”. The self-help section is littered with titles which promise results. Hope sells. And for good reason. Few who desire more for themselves would choose “Things Fall Apart” over “Your Best Life Now”. The thing is, hope sells because things have fallen apart. More problems develop, too, when we attempt to find or buy hope without entering the broken parts of ourselves.

    Life has fallen apart, and many times we have something to do with it. These are two tough pills to swallow. First, life does not work. Second, in many cases, we are agents in its breakdown. The former says hope must come from something or someone greater than ourselves. The latter says hope will not be found until we take an inside look.

    Both are true.

  • Unsubscribe

    Unsubscribe

    As the printed word bleeds to death in the age of eReaders and tablets, it seems the only places I see magazines anymore are waiting rooms and checkout aisles in grocery stores. Story is not dead. Only the traditional method of subscribing to it. I know very few people who still have the city paper delivered to their driveway each morning. Is there a newspaper or magazine you subscribe to anymore?

    You may be surprised to learn you have more subscriptions than you think. We all subscribe to different narratives in our own life. In addition to “receiving something regularly”, subscribe also means “to agree with”; as in I subscribe to the 1945 curse of the billy goat which says the Cubs will never win the World Series. Such a belief has led to the casualty of hope in countless Chicago Cubs fans. Until last year when the narrative changed, of course.

    Our personal narratives begin with vows, too. When we make a vow, we subscribe to a story. The vows in our life create a plot by which we spend our days.

    I cannot trust anyone. I am overweight. God will not show up for me. I have nothing to say. I will never have enough money. I will never be chosen. I do not belong.

    You have your own.

    Consider a forty-five year old single man who spends his evenings and weekends chatting on college dating sites and hitting the bars with 20-somethings. Unbeknownst to him, his narrative goes something like this, I will never be enough for relationship with women my own age, so I must try for someone younger.

    A woman graduated from an Ivy League school in three years. Immediately she got to work on her masters, and followed suit with her doctorate. As she walked across the doctoral commencement stage toward her diploma, she could not shake the sense that she still felt like the ten year old girl whose 4th grade report card was not good enough for Dad.

    These are the stories we live by. Vows made out of wounds which act as composers and directors for the plays of our lives. We subscribe to storylines before we are even aware, and soon our script is the only strategy we know for life.

    If you struggle to know the narrative you have been living, ask yourself: What would happily ever after be for me? If things fell into place and my heart’s desires came true, how would my story resolve? Or, perhaps, your inability to even hope for happily ever after exposes your script. The answer to these questions and the process by which you think about them points to the story to which you have subscribed.

    What stories show up each morning in your head and heart?
    How much would it cost to unsubscribe?

  • Statues of Liberty

    Statues of Liberty

    The Statue of Liberty stands proudly in New York City’s shadow. Years ago her presence greeted thousands of immigrants ready to depart a ship and make a home. What it must have been like to be welcomed by such a symbol of freedom and opportunity. Hope and fear bundled together as men and women, many leaving poverty in hopes of prosperity, gathered their inspection papers and prayed they would pass the health examination on Ellis Island. After days and days on a ship, sea sick and struggling with cabin fever, the sight of the Statue of Liberty must have liberated even faintest of travelers.

    While I was not around for Ellis Island’s busier days in the early 1900s, I have seen faces on people who walk into communities, jobs, and churches with similar despair and desire for a new life. Good leaders reflect a message not unlike the Statue of Liberty. “Come, feast and drink. Live under my care. You are safe here. You are free to be you. Opportunity abounds under my watch.” People flock to live, work, and worship under such promised care.

    The experience of freedom and empowerment that comes from working under the leadership of someone who knows who they are and what they have to offer cannot be undervalued.

    However, far too many leaders, as my friend pointed out, have another thing in common with the Statue of Liberty: They are hollow.

    In many cases, this is less a character issue and more a failure of self-care. How well do you take care of yourself? A leader must grapple with this question both in the micro and the macro- that is, on a daily basis as well as quarterly and annually. Presidents, principals, teachers, coaches, parents, CEOs, and the rest of us: Every one of us have people or things under our care, and the less hollow we are, the better stewards and leaders we will be.

    People need things from us. While not always preferable, this is good. We are made to give and offer, and if we are not participating in our design, we will drift into depression. So we must pursue the pouring out of ourself. But many care-givers neglect themselves and deplete their reservoir in the process. What words do you use at the end of the day? Tired. Drained. Pressure. Failure. Long hours. Need to sleep. Now multiply these words over weeks and years.

    An empty cup offers potential, but it cannot satisfy a thirsty friend. Those under your care need you splashing and overflowing.

    Do you love yourself and those around you enough to fight for your own heart? It takes self-compassion to put ourselves in a place of being able to care for people. The constant need of others upon a giver empties the heart.

    A Swedish car salesman recently told me, “Americans work too hard.”

    Yes, we do. And I don’t see that changing. So if we continue to work this hard, we had better find healthy ways to rest and replenish our heart and mind, or else. Or else we and those under our care will suffer and pay for our foolishness and lack of wisdom to know the needs of our heart.

    We need more statues of liberty in our world, people who stand for hope and freedom and life. Most importantly, though, we need leaders who can follow through on their promises to care and provide. Leaders like these know how to admit it when they are hollow, and they know how to care for themselves when empty.

  • Real Life Awaits. But First Desire.

    Real Life Awaits. But First Desire.

    How many of us really want life, life more abundant, life which does not promise any fringe benefits or early retirement plans? Life which does not promise the absence of pain, or love which is not vulnerable and open to hurt? Madeleine L’Engle

    Three years ago, I toured Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Baseball fans know the sacredness of Wrigley with its green ivy outfield walls and its hand-turned scoreboard and the rooftop seating that looks down from across the street. We arrived for the tour more than three hours before the game, and our guide granted us entrance to empty grandstands rich with over one hundred years of stories. If you love baseball, Wrigley is likely on your bucket-list.

    But the history of the hallowed park fascinated me less than what happened during our tour. Just inside the admission gate, our guide stopped our group to let the Los Angeles Dodgers pass on their way from the bus to the clubhouse. Ballplayers dressed in suits walked by without the slightest glance. I turned into a kid again, but perhaps not in the way you might think: I did not reach into my bag for a pen and Clayton Kershaw’s baseball card. Now into adulthood, megastars have long since lost their luster. Professional athletes are regular people with athletic gifts. When the MVP walked by, I didn’t want his autograph. Instead, I saw a man I always planned to be.

    When I grow up, I want to play baseball.

    Seeing Clayton Kershaw ignited my forgotten boyhood dreams and awoke a grief I had attempted to put to sleep. My career is over, and yet the pilot light still flickers. Since storing my glove and cleats away, I had moved on to much more practical ambitions. Then Kershaw walked by, and my flicker burst into flames: I still want to play baseball when I grow up.

    I like life a lot better when I am not in the pangs of desire. It is easier not to live in want. And yet, a life lived void of desire is a spiritually and emotionally dead life. Life and faith with heart require we keep our pilot light lit, and it burns.

    When we attempt to kill our dreams for fear of disappointment, we harm ourselves all the while thinking it’s for our own good. David Whyte says, “We cannot neglect our inner fire without damaging ourselves in the process.”

    I still want to play Major League Baseball. I never will. Yet something true of me will die if I give up the desire. Three different truths live in this relationship: Desire. Reality. Identity.

    When we cling to desire despite reality, we never mature. When we abandon desire for reality, we lose heart and the opportunity to live passionately. When we embrace both desire and reality, we give ourselves the chance to live present and fully as our broken and limited yet glorious selves.

    Still, desire can be the cruelest of necessities, and thus we see it as an enemy of the heart. Simone Weil reminds us, “The danger is that the soul should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying.”

    For those who are not thirsty or hungry for more, life will continue the same tomorrow as today. But for the hungry and thirsty, for those willing to be in pain for more, real life awaits.

    The journey always starts with desire: I am limited. I want. I am not who or what or where I want to be. I cannot guarantee the life I want. And I will hope.

  • You are a Story

    You are a Story

    You are a story.

    The truth of it is not just one story, but an uncountable number of accounts forged into one. We call these experiences, but in separating out our experiences, we must not lose the greater narrative. You are a story because anything with characters, setting, and plot is, in fact, a story.

    To miss the storiedness of our life is to lose the opportunity to live from and offer the heart where the story itself resides.

    Your life has characters. There’s you. And then the host of others who inhabit your tale, welcomed or not.

    There is a setting. You were born somewhere. Downtown San Diego on one of those 75 degree days. A little town in Iowa, perhaps. Or a suburb west of Boston on a cool September day when the Red Sox lost. Maybe you love or hate the setting of your tale. Wherever you are and however much you like it, you walk and breathe and love and hope somewhere.

    And there is plot. If your story is as good as the popcorn and butter at the movies, it has two main ingredients: Your desire and that which opposes it. Like it or not, conflict becomes a necessity for a good story. We do not talk about the days Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. We talk about the day he fell off. Without tension, a story loses our interest.

    So we must embrace tension, for this is where good stories begin. Tension can be whittled down to a few serious questions: Where have you been? Where are you going? And why? Here resides the heart of your story.

    Where have you been? That scar on your forehead just below your hairline. What happened? The picture on your desk of your family at the beach. Everyone is smiling except the child in the middle. Why the frown? Then there is the way you flinch when someone looks absent and reserved, similar to the gaze your father owned before he walked out. Thank God for the Art teacher who noticed your talent and even more so your passion and heart underneath.

    Where are you going? This is your fuel tank. When you step out of bed in the morning, some force pushes your feet to the cold floor. Desire and longing become our compass. In ten years, I want to be…where? Or, more importantly, who? What dreams have been born out of shattered ones? What do you envision different about the world because you lived? What stories do you want told at your funeral? Who is it you would like to be there?

    And Why? The question of “why” bridges the gap between the completed chapters and those left unwritten. The power of your story is found in your why. Why transforms a spouse on the brink of divorce to one who contends for the marriage. Why moves an addict away from the bottle even when it promises an end to loneliness. Why keeps the creative heart engaged when rejection seems inevitable. Why moves us to seek hope in the midst of despair and to believe there’s still purpose worth fighting for. To know our why hinges on a very story-like question: What kind of character do I want to be?

    You are a story, one worth knowing. Whether you believe you are worth knowing becomes the key that unlocks, opens, and invites you to the depths of your narrative.

  • It’s in the Eyes

    It’s in the Eyes

    I met a man last week, not in person, but on the silver screen. The film was part allegory, part documentary, and this brave man shared dark parts of his journey of infidelity. The most haunting moment came when the audience had the chance to view a photograph of his family, a shot taken before anyone knew the shameful secrets he carried.

    I did not have the luxury of hitting pause in the theater, but as the photograph flashed between scenes, it told enough of the story, even without details. As Mumford and Sons sings, “It’s in the eyes”.

    Our eyes are a window into our soul. While we can pose with behavior and mask our core self as we present a false self to the world, it is nearly impossible to manipulate our eyes.

    I looked into the eyes of this man and his family. His wife smiles and her eyes flicker with life. The kids, too, possess eyes that instill hope and promise about the day and future. Moving clockwise to complete the family unit, I lost myself in the man’s eyes. And no wonder: To look into his eyes is to stare into the blackness of the solar system, without stars or the sun or any chance to return safely to Earth. I got lost in his eyes because he himself has no grounding. His face is blank of expression, and his eyes convey the power of hopelessness and the loss of anything worth fighting for. Dead. Just dead. Deadness owns him as the labor of concealing the truth has emptied his heart of any energy and strength.

    His eyes tell his whole story. The man’s eyes speak of where he has been, and they tell of where he is going, presumably back into his own despair, lies, and cycle of shame. Years later, as a gift to those who care to listen, the man opens up his narrative to help us understand the why behind those eyes.

    Our story always resides behind our eyes.

    Process:
    If you want to explore your heart and story, one way to start is to look through old pictures. Find a few photos from different stages of your life. Plan uninterrupted time to examine your eyes and those of whom smile alongside you.

    What stories are told in the eyes?
    What untold stories are also told through the eyes?
    What feelings, longings, and hopes arise in you as you observe?

    For further interest in the film, check out The Heart of Man trailer (https://heartofmanmovie.com/pages/trailer)

  • Speaking a New Language

    Speaking a New Language

    There are nights when I work late, sometimes not placing my hand upon the door knob of my home until 8:45 PM. Meanwhile one of my daughters fights off sleep to wait up for me. She listens for my whisper as I walk in the house, “Are the girls asleep yet?” The next thing my wife and I hear is a call from upstairs, “Daddy?”

    Late one evening recently, I walked into this story. My wife, with twisty-ties and clips strewn about her hair from 4 year-old hands, looked up from the recliner, TV controller in hand and said, “I literally just sat down. The girls would not stay in their beds. One just fell asleep. The other has been waiting for you.”

    I went to give the princess her long-awaited goodnight kiss. Upon my return downstairs, I determined to love my wife well. I could see the strain of the day in her eyes. I could hear the whining voices she listened to all day as I stepped over coloring books and abandoned markers in their search for the shelter of their marker tops. I threw a bowl of chicken and broccoli casserole into the microwave for my late night dinner.

    Shannon sat reclined in her chair with a plush red blanket. I gently ran my fingers through her hair and then walked across the room to sit down and hear about her day. This is good, I thought. This communication will refill her love tank which has obviously been sucked dry by our twin terrors. We talked for an hour. I heard about her day, and she listened to mine.

    Satisfied and sufficiently replenished from our connection, I announced I was going to bed.

    “I don’t feel loved.”

    Like a thief caught in the act, I froze. The dots between confident, mystified, and thwarted began to connect in my head. Hadn’t I just deposited a good hour of emotional currency?

    “My love language is touch. Yours is words. You get energy from our discussions. I need touch.”

    She was right. I had really thought I was loving her well. The only problem was I loved her the way I need to be loved, not the way she needed it.

    I mustered up some pathetic defense, “But remember when I ran my hands through your hair before I sat down?”

    In preparation for writing on this topic, I took the five minute love languages assessment at 5lovelanguages.com. Of the five choices (Touch, Words, Service, Quality Time, and Gifts), my top needs are acts of service and words of affirmation. You know where physical touch fell? Dead last. I don’t even know if you can score a 0 on the scoring system. I scored a 1. My wife is doomed.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if our first inclination was to love our spouse in the way he or she needed to be loved?

    I see husbands and wives make the mistake of loving their spouses by way of their own love language. It is an easy mistake. Naturally the thought process goes something like this: “I see my spouse. I want to love him well. I know what makes me feel loved. I will do that really well for him.”

    But then despite well-meaning effort, connection breaks down.

    All of this reminds me of a time when Shannon and I were at a train station in Prague. We needed to board a Russia-bound train that would take us into Poland. The Russian conductor may have spoken other languages, but English was not one of them. I showed him my ticket, and he simply shook his head. To no avail, I mouthed the words over and over again, “This is our train.” Ironically, we both wanted the same thing. I wanted to get to Poland, and he wanted to take travelers with tickets there. Our struggle came in that we spoke two different languages.

    Rarely do I meet a couple who shares the same needs when it comes how they best give and receive love. Maybe the whole opposites attract thing goes much deeper than the extroverted jock marrying the introverted nerd. If only your spouse wanted to be loved in the ways you wanted to offer it. God seems to have a funny sense of humor in that regard. Or maybe He is less humorous and actually more intentional. The goal of marriage after all is not happiness, but sanctification that leads to joy.

    Love is about giving. When your heart is to love and you still do not seem to be connecting, ask yourself first, “Am I speaking the language that she needs to hear right now?”

    • If her love language is physical touch, offer a back massage.
    • If he receives love through words of affirmation, try writing him a note.
    • If she loves acts of service, empty the overflowing hamper to clean and fold some laundry.
    • If he loves quality time, initiate an afternoon walk with him.
    • If her love language is gifts, invest in wrapping paper and bows.

    In the end, the most magical idea may just be laying down your agenda with this question, “What do you need tonight?”

  • Understanding Your Scripts in Marriage

    Understanding Your Scripts in Marriage

    My dad bought his current car for a $1.

    No lie. And yes, the van has tires, an engine, and even a steering wheel. The purchase was fair and square. No one was shot in the process. There is no arrest warrant out for his thievery, though in an unrelated incident, a policeman did question him at a Dunkin’ Donuts because his face resembled that of an at large armed burglar.

    A couple disclaimers regarding his car. It is nothing fancy. The air conditioner does not work. If you want to listen to music, bring your favorite cassette tapes. We are not talking Porsche or Mercedes-Benz here. But it is not a lemon either. The van runs like the Energizer bunny. Even with sweat pouring down his face in the suffocating heat of a Tennessee summer, my dad says his van is a dream come true. After all, he bought it for a $1.

    Family Messages
    My dad’s joy summarizes the message I learned about the purchasing of cars as I grew up. The family message I heard was: We do not buy new cars. I would not be surprised if my parents dreamt up the philosophy that “once you drive a new car off the lot, it immediately loses value”. Surely this is news to you. You cannot find that kind of wisdom in Proverbs. My parents invented it. You’re welcome.

    Recently my wife and I decided it was time to buy a mini-van. My dad offered to sell me his van for $2. We declined. I learned rather quickly that I do not like the process of purchasing a car. Once you finally land on the brand and make of the desired car, more questions surface. Do we buy new? Do we buy a couple years old? Or do we save major money and buy an old car from someone we trust has taken care of it? Or do we scan Craiglist, buy an old car, and plan to pour the necessary money into it?

    So many choices.

    And beneath all the choices are the messages my wife and I brought in from our family upbringing. Our family messages subconsciously write scripts we feel we should follow. My script about the purchase of a car went something like this: Brasels pay in cash, and we buy used. Because my wife had a different family story, she has a different script. Her resistance toward buying new was nothing like mine.

    Then something happened. My dad bought my mom a new car. It was an earthquake which brought my well-built paradigm crashing down. The forbidden became permissible. Not just permissible, but also practical. New information infused and edited my script: When the goal is to drive the car into ground, to use the vehicle until it is no longer usable and resale will never be an option, it is therefore acceptable to purchase new.

    With my script altered, I found new lenses to look through as my wife and I discussed what van best suited our needs.

    Thankfully, the decision of what and how to buy a car did not expose scripts that were all that different between my wife and me. Often though, we do encounter decisions and conversations where our scripts completely differ. A colleague of mine has an exercise he uses with couples in his counseling office. He will hand them a pre-written script and ask them to read aloud. Each will assume they are reading from the same screenplay. They are not. A few lines into the reading, confused eyes look over top their respective books. You were supposed to say “__”. No, I was supposed to say “__” and you were supposed to say “__”. Their eyes drift back to the counselor. This is not going as planned.

    We carry different scripts into most, if not all, of marriage. Count the moments pure joy when you and your spouse agree wholeheartedly on an issue or plan. When decisions and conversations do not flow easily, consider your own script.

    Here are some practical script questions:
    • What expectations do I bring to this topic?
    • If the decision were completely up to me, how would the process or decision go?
    • Does my script leave any room for my spouse’s view?

    If you want to go deeper than simply uncovering your script, you can trace your story beneath your script:
    • Where did I learn to expect the house to be clean when I returned home from work?
    • Who taught me there was a right and wrong way to mow the lawn?
    • Where does my preference for home school over public school originate?

    In most of the issues and decisions a couple makes, there is hardly a right or wrong answer. Sometimes there is. The husband who considers whether or not to have an affair might consider the script his upbringing helped write, but his father’s adulterous lifestyle in no way gives his son license for the same behavior. But most of the time couples must work through issues without a clear right and wrong. Let us brainstorm a few:
    • What time do we put the kids to bed?
    • Should the toilet paper pull upward or downward?
    • Do we want a television in our bedroom?
    • Will we buy the generic or name brand dishwasher soap?
    • The car needs an oil change: Synthetic or conventional oil?

    Sometimes, too, we simply have personal preferences. He likes Italian food, and she likes Mexican. Desires do not always revolve around a script we brought from our upbringing. In times of disagreement, though, it is good to humbly consider whether a script may be in play.

    Upon entering marriage, you have a script about how this journey should go. Your script is based on your story. Your script will not be your spouse’s because he/she carries a different story. Know your story. Know your script. Or it could work conversely. You may discover your script invites you to explore your story. That is great, too. Either way, you will love your spouse well when you understand what expectations and philosophies you carry into the marriage.

  • Dealing with the Past

    Dealing with the Past

    Below is an excerpt from Inviting Intimacy: Overcoming the Lies and Shame.

    Whatever your story, (in the process of dealing with past baggage) you must recognize the shame and guilt that led you to isolate. Abandonment kills our sense of safety and security, not only the abandonment of others but also the ways we abandon ourselves. In such moments, shame in the form of self-contempt enters and hardens. The brain wires itself in trauma. And you feel alone.

    It may be easier to shut down feelings and block memories, but doing so stops the story. A concluding period enters the narrative when a comma is required.

    So how do you edit? How do you begin to write new paragraphs and new portions of your story? Believe it or not, you must confront and engage the past within new and safe relationships. Within the context of safe relationships, our hearts open and our minds can be rewired. Old identities can be uprooted, making room for something new. As we uproot the past in context of the present, we are given a chance to examine what we have come to believe about ourselves. What messages have we accepted? What lies have we taken on about ourselves? What truths can replace them?

    In the shame and trauma of the past, it is possible that you only listened to two voices: your own and the voice of the Enemy. But in the presence of new and safe relationships, you can expose the lies you have long embraced as true: relationship bestows identity.

    Learn more about one woman’s struggle through promiscuity, faith, and recovery and download chapter 1 here: Inviting Intimacy.