It happens far too often. Something taps my wound, and like a cavity-stricken tooth meeting a cube of ice I am victim to a seething pain that aches and thuds and pulses within me. This “something” plays off the pain, and then spoon feeds me a lie. I am coaxed into accepting the lie, biting down on it only to intensify the throbbing. I get upset. Increasingly upset. Sometimes just on the inside. Other times visibly disturbed.

From here, I spiral, and it is as if all my teeth have cavities. Like they all might spill from my mouth like water from a glass. By the end, I am completely unwound and undone. And when I look back at what ignited this chain of events, it always seems so petty and insignificant. It’s hard to understand the cause and effect of it all. To trace the chain from beginning to end. For a moment, I feel defeated. AGAIN. And a mixture of anger and sadness courses through my veins, pounds in my head, pricks my heart.  I’m so disappointed in myself and my inability to break this cycle. To keep ending up here. In this very same place.

You can see how unhealthy this pattern is. And it’s only when I somehow find the perspective to zoom out and actually realize what’s going on, to recognize the pattern, that I find any peace. The funny and glorious thing is that when I’m able to do this, there is not only peace, but complete peace. I’ve disrupted the pattern, at least for the moment, and it no longer controls me.

I’ve come to understand that my wounds are pretty much always going to be there with me. And that no matter how accepting I become of them, they will have the innate ability to trigger negative emotions if given the most remote of opportunities. I also can’t stop the lies from coming. They always do. They are powerful and strong and convincing and so believable. But at this point in the pattern, I actually do have a choice. I can choose to believe the lies and send things rolling down hill or I can choose NOT to believe the lies and cut the pattern short. When I am in a healthy, balanced state, I do a good job of this. The problem is that I quickly forget it.

Since I’m actually feeling a great deal of peace this week, and balance, I thought I’d capture this train of thought so that when I stumble into a darker place, I can have this to remind me of how to return to the  light.

When I’m healthy, I even go so far as to anticipate the lies. To expect them. To wait for them. To look for them. To run toward them and take them head on. They are persistent and consistent. But these lies are never original. They just run along like a broken record. It’s the same old thing over and over again. For me, the lies are usually along the lines of me not measuring up, being good enough, being successful, being liked, being accepted and validated. Being relevant. Visible. Worthy. They just keep coming, the same line of them, over and over and over and over.

I know I use a lot of sports analogies, and I apologize for that. But really, there’s nothing in the world that you can’t compare to sports or Seinfeld to make a point. When I’m healthy, and balanced, I approach my lies like a batter in baseball. Hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. Believe it or not, one great tactic for improving your ability to hit the ball is to guess which pitch is coming. There are certain scenarios when a batter can more accurately predict whether the pitcher will throw a strike or a ball, and whether the pitcher will throw a fast ball, or a curve ball or a slider.

When a batter is anticipating a fast ball thrown in the strike zone and guesses correctly, he usually makes good contact with the ball. Many times, he will crush it. And yes, if he guesses wrong, he will typically look really foolish. When I’m healthy, I’m poised at the plate, waiting for a certain set of lies to come my way. And then I crush the truth out of them. And I disrupt the pattern. As I just stated, it’s easy to anticipate the lies. And when you are able to do that, something that can seem so very difficult to master can become much, much more manageable.

I wish I could say that by now I always crush the lies. But there are times, many times, when I don’t. When I’m not in a good place, and I just can’t see clearly what’s coming next. They catch me off-balance. They surprise me. They overwhelm me. And it seems like resisting them is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

While I’m in my healthy, balanced, peaceful zone, let me encourage you to examine the patterns that lead you off your positive path and into the weeds. To seek out the lies you tell yourself. And then to extract all the power those lies hold by waiting anxiously for them to show their face and then laying the wood to them like you were trying to clear the left field wall.

And if you swing and miss, do what all successful baseball players do. Dig in and try again.