It’s a pretty extreme saying, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. But something ‘killing you’ doesn’t have to be a literal murder. Your dreams, your relationships, your season, may come to an end, but the end of one thing can lead to the start of something new. When you refuse to give up or curl in a ball, even if it takes a while to get to that point, you can come out wiser and more equipped. Allow the death of whatever that thing was to sprout and grow something even better.
Adaptability allows us to flex and move in and out of different situations.
When we bend or pull with our arms, our biceps and triceps take turns contracting and extending as the need arises. We generally walk around with our arms loose at our sides until the bicep or tricep kicks into action and moves them. When our arms are loose, our muscles are relaxed. Then we need to lift a bag or a pile of books and voila, our biceps contract. As we put the bag down, our biceps extend and return to their relaxed state. When it’s time to open the door we pull the handle and our triceps kick into gear. Then we allow our arms to rest again.
What about that complex moment when we’re carrying a bag and we open a door with the same hand – both muscles are working in tension with each other to move our arm with the right amount of lift and the right amount of pull. Then eventually we stop carrying the bag and rest our arm again.
This is what adaptability looks like. Our arms are designed to do jobs and then rest.
In an ideal world, our arms have full range of motion and we keep them in good condition to meet our daily needs.
Life looks like that. We are designed to respond to the things before us and then rest. Sometimes we lift someone with encouragement or practical support, sometimes we pull to get momentum going, then we rest. Tension builds in one direction or another, then we rest. Tension is not a bad thing, neither is stress. Without tension or stress, nothing would ever get done.
We are designed to knuckle down from time to time and push through to get something done or to move in someway. But what happens when we lose the ability to rest?
When we don’t straighten our arm, tension builds up in the muscle. When we don’t rest, we fatigue. Where we fatigue, we start compensating with other parts of our body. What used to involve our bicep or tricep now requires our shoulder and neck too. As our shoulder and neck fatigue, we add new strategies to avoid using the muscles that were designed to do the job. When we continue on, we develop funky movement patterns that look stiff and clunky to onlookers, but we are oblivious to our lack of function and mobility. We know the reason for our restrictions and they become normal to us.
If our arm gets stuck in one position from injury, our muscles shrink from lack of use.
Taking offence is like getting ourselves stuck in one position. One aspect of our world contracts and stays contracted, stopping other muscles from working. When we allow offence to remain, other parts of us will shrivel from lack of use.
When we carry offence, others see it. Our interactions become stiff and clunky because we avoid interacting in a natural way. Our compensation strategies become more obvious the longer we cling to them.
We might carry tension for a time, but we are designed to let that tension go and return to rest. When you’re building muscle, the muscle needs time to repair. Tension is valuable in building strength, but so is rest.
When you are trying to build muscle, focus on extension. You lift a weight, bending your arm by contracting your bicep, but then a coach or personal trainer will tell you to let it out slowly. Build muscle by learning to intentionally release the weight. Don’t just drop it, you might damage something. Gradually, intentionally, ease your arm back down to a position of rest.
Where you have been stuck, deliberately release that thing. Slowly. You might have to repeat the movement over and over again to get good at it, but start those small steps toward letting it go.
When someone is lifting weights that are heavier than they can manage alone, that weightlifter will have a spotter; someone who carries some of the weight as they release. By having a spotter, they prevent dropping the weight and causing injury.
If we carry an injury that doesn’t heal on its own, we need to see a practitioner. The practitioner often works in two ways – working out the tension by applied pressure and stretching the tight muscle to restore its ability to achieve rest.
Applying pressure to that tender spot allows the tension to release. It’s not pleasant but it’s a good pain that leads to recovery. Confronting a painful experience may not be pleasant, but ultimately, dealing with it leads to healing.
Practitioners give exercises to strengthen and stretch the restricted area. It might be a stretch to respond differently, it might be a stretch to forgive, it might be a stretch to try again, but by doing so under the guidance of someone who recognises your specific needs, you are working toward healthy relationship once again.
Tension in relationships is normal. Lifting and pulling are both part of connection. When we adapt well and allow ourselves to flex when needed, or to be strong when needed, we navigate life with periods of intensity and periods of rest. This is healthy.
When we confront something time and time again, our muscles strengthen. We get stronger. If you’re in the flow of life and you’ve done a bit of lifting and pulling lately, I encourage you to rest. Rest from time to time as you go through the process, rest when it’s done. Take some time to just be.
If you recognise that you have a restriction – where a muscle or relationship remains strained, I encourage you to let it go. Slowly. If you discover that there is an injury, please seek help to work through it. While you’re injured that muscle protects itself, you might even feel like a part of you died. But as you acknowledge your self protection strategies and work through the rehabilitation process, you may discover a new kind of strength that you can carry from this season into the next.
