“It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.”
— Fred Rogers
I see Fred Rogers as a paragon for peacemaking because he always strived to help people to respond to their emotions in ways that would neither hurt themselves or others, and peacemaking is exactly that — not attacking others or escaping from ourselves.
But there is a poignant truth upheld in the quote at top.
There is a reason why anger is such a big problem in our world and in our lives. We resist feeling. We avoid going to the very place peace would come in. We’re fearful it would swamp us, or that we’d be called a sissy or that we’d feel that way. Maybe we don’t have the faith that we could do it. We can do it.
Never ever do we outgrow the need for nurture. Even as a 230lb man, well into his 50s, I need nurture at times every month, and probably weekly. Sometimes there are entire seasons when I’m down on confidence for some reason unknown to me, or where I’m staving off irritability or anger and don’t know why.
Yet, sadness and fear are usually at the core of it. Grief from change, from loss, from things I find hard to accept.
Going into my fear and into my sadness I’ve learned are not hard; they just involve awareness, then action. To be vulnerable brings relief. To reach out is a pressure relieving valve. To pour our prayers and tears to God is healing, if not in the moment, tears of an evening are joy in the morning (Psalm 30:5).
If there’s one life skill we all need, it’s this: to capitulate when our soul screams out for nurture; to know when to fold; to act in the moment of weakness by honouring it, which brings forth the fruit of the truth, that “when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash
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