Dancing with the gifts of stability + risk
Learning to be nourished by both
“As long as I stay in my box, I feel safe. But I don’t get the payoff unless I take the risk.”
I recently overheard someone say this and the simple truth of it sent a few gentle tremors through me.
I felt their tension as they sat in the middle of the pull. The pull back to the safe box. The pull to the risky new thing. It’s so true.
Some of us are naturally risk averse. We prefer the known, safer, predictable path. Stability wraps us up like a cozy soft blanket. As long as we’re safe and comfortable inside the blanket of stability, all is well. We can breathe, exist, and simply be. We feel stable.
This makes other people itchy. Something in their wiring aches for the unbeaten, risky, unpredictable path. The thrill of novelty or a new challenge makes their heart shimmer with aliveness.
Is it simply a matter of biological wiring?
Or life circumstances and trauma? Both?
Is one path better than the other?
Or — are they two paths that we learn to dance throughout our lives?
Because there are seasons that invite stability. Bringing a baby home from the hospital. Saving for retirement. Paying rent or a mortgage. Receiving a paycheck so there is money to feed and clothe yourself and the people you care about. Standing with another human and committing to partner with them in this life.
And there are seasons that invite risk. Stepping in to a brand new relationship. Starting at a new school. Making a tough but important decision. Choosing to look closer at our inner world. Trying an experimental treatment after an illness has exhausted all other options. Making a big financial purchase.
I notice many people assume they are one or the other. A family or work system will even assign them a path. You are either a risk taker, or the fearful safe one. We develop entire personality defense mechanisms around this belief. We carry a label we placed on ourselves or someone placed on us.
We are either the person who makes safe predictable choices or we are the person who throws caution to the wind and impulsively changes route. We’ll even assign negative characteristics to both. We’re either boring or irrational.
But what if that isn’t true?
So much of our work as humans lately is breaking the binary. The assumption that there are only two options. But faith and growth and spirituality always remind us there are multiple ways to journey and be human.
What if you get to access both and more?
How might that interrupt the assumptions and narratives that run through your body?
Unnourished by both
As a first born daughter, I’ve fallen in the safe and responsible camp most of my life. I was often jealous of the people around me, who felt free to take risks. When I felt the thrill of something new, my sense of hyper responsibility brought me crashing back to earth every time.
I came to really dislike this about me. I fought with the Responsible label. My inner world was full of distain for safety and comfort, while also pulsating with envy as I watched others make big risky choices.
I stood paralyzed in the middle. Stuck in the life I had. Not appreciating its daily beauty while also craving the greener grass that must be somewhere else.
Unable to see the gift in stability and risk, I remained unnourished by both.
In seminary, we learned that pastors are to be a non-anxious presence in the communities we serve. In all circumstances, we are to remain calm, grounded, and open-hearted as we walk with people through life.
This is beautiful (as long as said pastor is getting to experience the full-range of human emotion in other spaces besides their job), but there comes a fascinating point of tension.
Leaders are also taught to introduce urgency into systems that have fallen into status quo. “This is how it’s always been. We can’t change.” Any leader who longs to see communities and people flourish is also responsible for stirring up a stuck system. Leaders ask good questions and invite the community to wrestle with realities they may want to avoid. Leaders purposefully introduce urgency and even some anxiety into the system as a way to wake it up.
While also remaining a non-anxious presence.
Right.
By the way, many of you know my journey with anxiety so I always found it curious that I was encouraged to present a non-anxious presence while bringing anxiety to the system while not knowing how to deal with severe anxiety inside my own body yet. It was a lot.
Our binary brains
My binary brain wants me to land on one side or the other. I want to hear someone at the finish line tell me stability or risk win. Make it clear so I can lean into one or the other. But if we’re here to break binaries so we can see the fuller story of being human and flourishing together, we’re invited to hold both stability and risk loosely.
Three questions for you today:
1. If there are seasons we risk and seasons we need stability, how are those showing up in life right now? How might I express gratitude for both?
2. Am I surrounded by people who tend toward stability or risk? How does this affect me?
3. What assumptions do I have about stability and risk? Is there a place I want to interrupt these assumptions?
Just because we’ve told ourselves one story doesn’t mean we can’t make space for a new reality. “I’ve usually felt most comfortable inside my cozy blanket of stability, but I see the benefits of taking a new risk. As scary as it feels sometimes, I want to try something new.”
It seems the life invitation is to truly be nourished by the gifts of stability and risk. To not simply run from one or the other because of how it went last time.
Sending courage, curiosity, and deep love your way, my dear reader.
When faced with unexpected loss, pain and grief set up camp in our bodies and we don’t always know how to talk about what we’re experiencing, especially in the first year of loss. Still Here is a collection of poems for those trying to make sense of the fragility and terror of losing a loved one. We name the shock, wade into the everyday nuances of grief, and eventually take tentative steps into the land of the living again, only to discover love never dies. Somehow their love is still here, dancing with our every breath. Still Here is an honest reckoning with the pain and frustration of grief while journeying toward surprising healing.
Written by a poet and pastor who unexpectedly lost her youngest brother, she captures the ache of loss and the complexity of healing as her family travels the first year together. As she braves the unbearable with curiosity and trust, we’re invited to unravel the grief that awaits each of us, in the hope that love never dies.
They’re still here. So are we.