Are You Struggling With The ING Trauma?

Two birds are crossing the same sky above you.

One is a dove. She has not stopped beating her wings since the moment she left the branch. Flap, flap, flap. Every inch of sky is paid for with effort.

The other is an eagle. She moved her wings a few times at the beginning and then stopped. She is higher than the dove. She is going further than the dove and she is doing almost nothing.

So let me ask you something honestly. Which bird has your life looked like this year?

A word that never lands

There is something I have watched destroy more good people than failure ever has.

I call it the ING trauma.

Listen to how we talk about our lives. We're getting there. We're working on it. Things are coming. It's starting soon. We're building. We're becoming. We're waiting.

Always moving. Never arriving.

Because ING is the grammar of permanent motion. It describes something that is happening, but never finished. Somewhere along the way we began calling that hope, but what if it isn't hope? What if it is simply a sophisticated way of never having to take the responsibility of arriving somewhere?

We spend years telling ourselves when this happens... when I get there... when the business works... when the money comes... when the relationship changes... when the children are older... when I finally become the person I know I can be... Then I'll rest. Then I'll enjoy my life. Then I'll breathe. Then I'll finally be enough.

Yet, the finish line keeps moving and we keep flapping.

Time. Health. Sleep. Presence. Marriage. Friendships. The years our children are small. We hand pieces of our lives over to an imagined future believing that one day the payment will finally be enough.

But it never is.

The moment we reach the thing we were chasing the standard moves. What was once a dream becomes the minimum. What once felt like enough becomes normal. What was once a great salary is no longer enough. We find something else to chase. Another mountain. Another goal. Another problem to solve. Another version of ourselves to become and suddenly we are no longer living.

We are finishing.

Always finishing. Always almost there. Always becoming.

A man who only ever wants future arrivals will always be empty on the days in between because he has never understood what it looks like to want a day.

Read that again very slowly.

The fear underneath the effort

Now here is the uncomfortable part. Maybe you're not actually afraid of failure. Maybe you're afraid of what happens if you succeed.

Somewhere deep inside you may believe that if you finally stop trying you will stop being somebody. Always trying gives us the illusion that we are in control. As long as we are reaching, striving, building, fixing, improving, and becoming we still feel like the Author and Conductor. We still have something to do, to prove, and to accomplish.

Yet, what happens when there is nothing left to prove? What happens when the striving stops? Who are you then?

That is the question underneath all the activity. For many of us striving has become so intertwined with our false identity that arrival feels like death.

So we keep the destination just far enough away to keep ourselves moving. We call it ambition but if we are honest often it isn't ambition. Often it is fear wearing the clothes of a strong work ethic.

Where we first learned to flap

Of course, this didn't begin in the office. It didn't begin with your business or even your goals. It began much earlier at home around those that were supposed to accept us unconditionally as we were.

Many of us learned that love could be experienced, but not simply received. The grade was good so we felt the warmth. The room was tidy so we felt the warmth. We won the game and we felt the warmth. We behaved and once again we felt the warmth.

Yet, somewhere inside the heart of a child a conclusion was formed which often goes something like "If I perform well enough, I will be loved."

Eventually this child grows up but the strategy doesn't. The little boy becomes a businessman. The little girl becomes a mother. The child becomes an adult. Yet underneath the adult is still someone quietly asking,

Have I done enough yet?

Think about the dove. She cannot stop for long. The moment she stops beating her wings she begins to fall. So eventually she learns to associate movement with safety. Flying becomes trying and trying becomes survival and in time rest feels dangerous because,

Rest is seen as descent.

Now consider the eagle, who has discovered something the dove has never trusted which is the wind. The wind was already there before the eagle arrived. She didn't create it. She didn't earn it. She doesn't have to work harder to make it stronger. She simply rises into it and as she does something extraordinary happens.

The eagle stops doing what the dove spends her entire life doing. She stops holding herself up and the difference is that she is carried. The eagle isn't lazy or less committed. She isn't somehow more deserving. She has simply discovered something the dove has never trusted which is,

There is a current in the air, like in life, that can carry you further than your effort ever could.

Perhaps this is the part we have misunderstood. Maybe we don't need more effort. Maybe we are lacking the altitude our effort will never reach.

The word that ended the ING

This is why I keep coming back to one moment. Yeshua hanging on the cross. The most costly act of love this world has ever seen. In His final moments He doesn't say it's almost done.

He doesn't say keep going.

He doesn't say you're getting there.

He doesn't say keep finishing what I started.

He says "It is finished."

Not finishing. Not nearly finished. Not finished if you work hard enough. Not finished if you become good enough. Not finished if you can hold on for one more season or manage one more flap.

Finished.

There is something deeply confronting about that word because we know how to work for things and earn them. We know how to improve ourselves and how to strive.

But receive?

That is another story.

You see to receive means to surrender control yet surrender is terrifying to a person who has spent their whole life flapping. We keep trying to add something to a sentence God has already closed. We keep carrying an ING that heaven has already ended.

Still proving. Still becoming. Still achieving. Still trying to become worthy of what was never offered on the basis of worthiness.

It is finished.

Read that again even slower than you did before. Let it simmer in your heart. Sit in it and let it fill your being from top to bottom.

What this looks like on a Tuesday

Now, you don't dismantle the ING trauma with one grand decision. You dismantle it in small moments. 

The next time you hear yourself say, I'm getting there, stop. 

Ask yourself, Where is "there"? 

Ask, what am I refusing to receive right now because receiving it would mean I no longer have to chase it?

That's where the work begins. 

Not with more effort but with awareness and by occasionally doing the thing that terrifies the dove which is for you to stop moving your wings.

Just for a moment be still and see whether the air holds you.

It was holding you all along

The wind was there before your effort. Love was there before your performance. Grace was there before your achievement. It was underneath you on the days you succeeded and underneath you on the days you failed.

Your effort never made it stronger. Your exhaustion never made it stay. You were never being asked to hold yourself up. You were being invited to discover that you were already being held.

We need to see that all of our striving is so often fuelled by an unspoken belief that perfection is attainable and that control is possible. Both, of course, are an illusion. Yet when we give ourselves to chasing them we are conveniently distracted from the perfection we already carry within us.  

The perfection of our true self that we share with God. This perfection has nothing to do with flawless performance and everything to do with wholeness and completeness. 

It means we are lacking in no way at all. Seen in that light so much of our trying becomes futile and unnecessary, because through our perfectionism we are working tirelessly to produce on the outside what is already sitting quietly within us, patiently waiting to be uncovered. 

When we live caught in the ING trauma, our lives become about fulfilling the law rather than uncovering the truth, the very truth that will cure us and bring all of our INGING to an end.

What is already within us was never meant to be earned. It was only ever created to be found. Because when we do then we will finally experience what it is like to be, 

Safe. Held. Loved. Rest. Fulfilled and enough.

The dove spends her whole life chasing the feeling of being held. The eagle stops... and discovers she already is. The dove keeps flying because she doesn't trust that she can land. The eagle flies because she knows she can let go. One spends her life sustaining herself. The other allows herself to be carried.

Perhaps that is where we have it backwards. We think surrender will make us smaller yet consider that surrender may be the thing that finally lets us rise. You were never created to spend your whole life flapping. You were never created to earn love one achievement at a time and you were most certainly never created to live permanently inside the unfinished sentence.

It is finished.

So let finished be finished.

Let the wings rest.

Let the wind carry what your effort never could.

And then... fly.

Not because you have to but because you finally can.

With you on the journey,

PS. See you next Sunday.