Wouldn’t Versus Couldn’t

 

At the risk of being a Debbie Downer who deflates all positivity, we live in a life with limits.

Why am I bringing up this fun topic?

Because we tend to beat our heads against several walls, trying to force one answer where another already exists and will not change.

Situations like addiction and abuse highlight that reality. How many of us, especially us codependent types, will hang in there, enable, try, and blame ourselves for the self-destructive actions our loved ones make? It is often within this realm, we are confronted with will versus disease, and personal choice versus circumstances beyond our control.

Wouldn’t Over Couldn’t:

One such loved one for me was a female family member, “Jenny” (not her real name, of course).

Jenny grew up in a physically abusive home, regularly watching her father beat her mother with his fists and hammers. Unable to do anything to stop the chaos, Jenny, not surprisingly, focused on simply surviving.

And that meant she turned to food as her coping mechanism. She ate to feel better. She ate to escape. She ate to numb. She ate to deal with her “unacceptable,” unsafe, and repressed rage. She ate for every other reason, except to nourish her body.

This set the stage for her struggle with food, weight, and body image for the rest of her life. Constantly either dieting or binging, Jenny became a depressed individual. And, as an adult, she chose not to seek therapy for her issues. She became convinced her answer was only found in a diet and the achievement of a weight loss goal.

There were multiple factors impacting Jenny, not the least of which, was her depressed state. One can bring up the point of how much her depression was there from the start, eliciting her self-medication, or how much of it was brought on by her daily, abused trauma.

Chicken or egg: which one came FIRST?

Still, her “wouldn’t” exerted a strong will over her “couldn’t,” in the respect that, she was aware of professional help, therapy, and counselors. As a child, she was powerless to seek those things out, as her adult parents had the final say in her life. But as an adult, she could make a different choice. And she did not choose therapy.

She chose, instead, to insist she didn’t need counseling (that was for OTHER people), she was healthy, compared to her alcoholic siblings, all while dieting and binging, chasing an unrealistic and faulty solution in being thin as the remedy to her pain. She did this all while simultaneously becoming morbidly obese.

It’s not to shame or judge. It merely illuminates, despite the complexities of life and trauma, in this case, those of Jenny’s life, ultimately, her decision was to choose to say no to help. You and I can make that exact same choice, despite our different lives and painful issues.

Scripture has a couple of great ditties that underscore this concept.

First…

“‘If You will, Thou canst make me clean.’ And He stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, ‘I am willing; be clean.’”

Luke 5:12-13

There is help. Do you and I ask for it? There are therapists, doctors, programs, books, support people… and even prayer, itself.

Do we reach out, admit we need help, and grab those tools and lifelines? Because the overwhelming response from these helpful resources, usually, is this…

“I am willing. Be clean.”

Fairly straightforward, wouldn’t you say?

Ah, but here’s where another scripture ditty comes into play concerning the help/get clean issue…

“…‘Do you want to get well?’"

John 5:6

Boom! Mic drop.

Is our “want to” busted?

Would we rather stay sick?

Would we rather say no to help?

Each one of us has had moments in which we appeared to choose disease over health, chaos over peace, misery over fulfillment.

We all know the common sense answers: eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep, be around people who treat us with love, dignity, kindness and healthy behaviors, delay gratification. Even if that hasn’t been our direct experience, we know, because, again, there are resources. There’s social media, the internet, television, and people offering to give us these very things.

Do we accept or do we refuse?

Most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, can probably admit to, at least one instance of saying, “Nah, I’m good. I wanna get loaded, get high, binge on junk food, stay with this toxic person, etcetera.” We know the answer we “should” choose.

And then we choose its opposite.

Couldn’t Over Wouldn’t:

“…The spirit is indeed willing. But the flesh is weak.”

Matthew 26:41

As Jenny grew older, her weight ballooned. Her decades of dieting and binging caught up to her one day in the summer of 2009. She woke up on a Sunday morning, had a stroke, and collapsed. She wasn’t found until two days later, when a welfare check was done. Hospitalized for days, it was soon determined she had lost the ability to walk because of the stroke. And her excess weight made everything more difficult to achieve, including the restorative therapy to repair some of the stroke’s damage. She was moved to a care facility, where she spent the remainder of her life.

And now, her obese body is confined to a wheelchair. Despite exercise being a regular part of her daily routine, as part of her care, she cannot do what it physically takes to lose enough weight that would place her in a “healthy” range. She is monitored, on a multi-drug regimen to deal with her slew of health issues.

But, by and large, the window for Jenny’s ability to make significant changes to greatly improve her life and her health has closed. Try as she might, especially in the early days, post-stroke, Jenny was adamant about walking, insisting she’d be back to her normal self in no time flat.

 Her legs said otherwise.

Stubborn at that reality, she often overdid things, pushing herself past what was doable or safe. She fell many times, all while maintaining she could walk.

This was a woman who once avoided physical activity, loathed it as punishment, and only a means to get “thin.” Now, she desperately wanted to be active… and could no longer be.

Perhaps, now she was willing. But, like Matthew 26:41 stated, her physical body was, indeed, weak.

It has been a painful cautionary tale for my family members and I to behold.

When the “Wouldn’t Window” Becomes the Closed “Couldn’t Window…”

We can delude ourselves into thinking we have all the time in the world. We have endless opportunities laid before us. We have chance after chance to do something. We will get to it “later.”

But what if “later” is “too late?”

I mention this, along with Jenny’s situation, to illustrate how, as despair-filled and hopeless this outcome may be, it also does have a silver lining attached to it.

When we flawed, vulnerable, human beings encounter life moments that show us that maybe, a moment or opportunity has passed us by, that maybe it does feel “to late,” a grace can flow from that broken place. And that broken place asserts that in human weakness, be it physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, compassion is something we qualify for when we simply just “can’t.” It doesn’t need to be life and death matters, or something as severe and attention-getting as not being able to walk, like Jenny. It can be anything that we “give way” on.

When stress, pressure, and, well, life, come at us, we will find ourselves giving way to it. And there is no shame in that; there is only humanity.

And I hate to break it to ya, we’re not being excused with any kind of hall pass from that humanity.

Pesky little sucker.

So, when you and I simply can’t, for whatever reason, remember, humanity. We’re all subject to it.

Back to Wouldn’t Again:

Jenny was faced with opportunities and experiences to embrace and refuse help. She encountered the consequences of exerting her will, and of being fragile and limited concerning her desires and wishes.

For the past few years, she has settled into a resignation about her life.

Seeing it as largely over, living in a wheelchair, in a care facility, and unable to be the person she once was, she, not surprisingly, is not interested in exploring anything new. I’m not just talking about a new hobby.

Again, I am referring to the concept of getting therapy for herself.

And her refusal to do so is not simply because of her age and health limitations. Her decision, again, largely falls on her steadfast belief she doesn’t need the help, and, therefore, would not benefit from it. Maybe she believes she is “too old,” or it is “too late.”

 But, mostly, she doesn’t want to enter into that therapeutic space, because of fear, pride, ego, and discomfort. To a certain degree, she’s content with her discontent. She’d rather exist in her status quo than live in better health and well-being.

I say this because, within her care facility, there are options and offers for her to discuss with a counselor, her issues, and circumstances, including her disordered image and abuse issues. She has refused them, insisting, again, therapy is for “other people,” and she is fine as she is.

Because of this choice Jenny has made for her life, I have had to sever contact with her. For, her refusal to help herself impacts on my ability to lead a healthier life. And since my cancer diagnosis hit my life years ago, “healthy” has become a non-negotiable for me. To waffle on this now could cost me my life, not to mention my sanity and my spirit.

Her disease cannot be my disease.

So, I made the painful decision. Jenny is no longer in my life.

“Do you want to get well…

…or not?”

The question cuts through reasons, excuse, lies, and circumstances.

There will never be a “good time” to deal with our pain and our issues. There will never be the perfect cocoon, the ideal environment. So, with that in mind, what is keeping us from transcending our “wouldn’t?”

The answer: us, you and I making the willful choice, even after life changing circumstances and insights have altered our worlds and our perspectives.

Maybe the wakeup call didn’t wake us up.

Maybe the death or the health issue didn’t get our attention enough to change.

Maybe the loss of a relationship was not a powerful enough motivator to get us to seek help and deal with ourselves already.

Wouldn’t or Couldn’t Within Us:

We can make the choice, to improve, to get healthier, to deal, to heal. We make thousands of choices every single day. We can choose even while powerless in our lives. The choice in those paralyzed moments, is to choose to embrace and accept, not abandon ourselves.

We deserve to not abandon ourselves… ever.

Easier said than applied. It may feel like an impossible, harsh, judgmental standard, asking way too much of us.

Still, we choose, regardless of if we think we’re making a choice.

We choose.

Copyright © 2021 by Sheryle Cruse