You need a bigger container

I just finished reading pages upon pages of content on counseling individuals with disabilities for school and I now feel overwhelmed. I also spent Saturday reading about families, paradox, suffering and resources for resilience in Christian, Buddhist, and Jewish faith communities.

This was my favorite part of all my readings this weekend. It's a parable about suffering where for the sake of the parable salt is suffering. If you put a tablespoon of salt in a water glass and stir it you will find it tastes quite bitter when you drink it. However if you go to a clean mountain spring and put a table spoon of salt in it, then take a glass of that water and drink it you will find you cannot even taste it.

The idea is that sometimes when you experience suffering (salt) that instead of focusing on the salt focus on making your life container bigger. I love this because it helps me focus not on suffering or stuff that I do not like in life but on that which contains it. I also love this because in counseling I tend to gravitate towards therapies that focus more on resilience (enlarging the container), strengths, tasks and gifts, then on diagnosis. Yes everyone has "stuff" they need to work out or they struggle with but it does seem that the bigger your container for it the better your health and resilience.

Of course now I think, what is my container? My faith, God, friends, family, self-care practices a seeking after things that are good gifts, wise, lovely! Hmmm.