This past week, we welcomed our 3rd child into the world. It was beautiful. It was a peaceful labor for the most part… from my perspective.   The second day, I don’t know if it was a result of being in the hospital for 24 hours, being surrounded by people in wheelchairs and stretchers every time I went to the cafeteria… whatever. But I was feeling restless. I was feeling anxious, as we were trying to manage my daughter’s Type 1 diabetes from afar… It was the kind of feeling where your mind is sort of racing, your body feels restless, like you could just stand up and run at a full sprint for no reason at all… and my stomach was bothering me. Felt like I needed to chew a handful of TUMS and PeptoBismol… I asked Elyse if she had any, she said yes, in the car, so I went out, venturing out into fresh air for the first time in 24 hours, but I had gotten turned around and ended up walking out the back of the hospital. I was in a t-shirt and jeans and it was probably 35 degrees, but I loved it. It felt so good to be in fresh air and to feel my body feeling alive. I asked someone how to get to the parking garage and he suggested I just walk around the block, out on the main street and around. And as I walked, briskly, not a sprint, but not slow either, this phrase came back and hit me square in the heart… It was a phrase I had heard a few years ago, and a more recently had seen it pop up in various different places.    This is the phrase: Of course.    Of course. A brief, obvious, clear, concise statement. Of course.    But within it, a world of grace. A world of giving yourself permission to feel your feelings. Permission to breathe. To extend grace to yourself. To be cognizant of where you currently are in life… and not adding to the anxiety or fear or worry or stress but adding SHAME on top of it, but releasing the pressure valve a bit…   Of course.    Of course you feel that way. You just had your third child. This is the perfect time to have an anxiety attack. Of course, this is exactly when people have mental breakdowns worrying about how they’ll provide for their kids and manage their life-threatening diseases and run a quickly growing business out of a shed in their backyard. Of course.   This is exactly how you should feel, John. This is how anyone would feel.    Oh, you just got laid off and you feel blindsided and doubting your competencies and worried about the future? Of course. Who wouldn’t be? A crazy person wouldn’t be.    Oh, you were raised in a fundamentalist Christian home and now have a hard time trusting rich, white men in suits that tell you what God thinks about any pop-culture topic or lifestyle? Of course. You should be skeptical. Any person with a fully functioning brain would be. Of course.    I was just talking to my wife about maybe a surprise work trip to LA in the next few weeks and she started to feel anxious, and I stepped back and said… “Of course. Of course you’d be anxious about this. Who wouldn’t be? Who wouldn’t be a little stressed out that their husband is leaving on a work trip a few weeks after having your 3rd child?” I’m not going now, by the way… Cancelled. We’ll do that one via video-chat.    You’re in your 30s and single and worried about ever finding a spouse? Yeah. Of course. That’s perfectly normal to feel that way. People have been feeling that way for hundreds of thousands of years. Finding a mate is a thing. A big thing. And it can be a stressful thing. That’s ok. Allow yourself to feel that.    I think there’s something deeply toxic about being raised to believe certain innate, primal human emotions are somehow wrong. I see it in my single friends, almost all of them women, almost all of them in the Christian context, and there’s this quiet, assumed shame about being single. And everyone responds differently to it… like they somehow SHOULDN’T desire to have find a husband, or that they should hide it, or that they’re somehow less spiritual if they take things into their own hands and pursue a man they’re interested in. Dating apps or taking initiative with someone.. These are normal things.    There’s a long list of completely natural things we experience that our culture shames, either quietly or explicitly. Desire being one of them. Women have historically been shamed for expressing desire. Like “wanting” something for themselves is somehow embarrassing or shameful. No. Of course you want that thing.    Pride is another. Pride is a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction that comes from your achievements, or the achievements of someone close to you. That sounds incredible. Pride is an emotional state deriving positive affect from the perceived value of a person or thing with which the subject has an intimate connection. Wouldn’t we all benefit from a bit of pride? Wouldn’t there be less striving? Less shameless self-promotion if we experienced some genuine pride? Satisfaction? That your perceived value was satisfied? And yet in Christian culture that’s all shamed.    We only associate those words with the sin… We only have context for them when they’re taken to the extreme, exploited, over-done and folding back in on themselves. Yes, pride can be overdone and turn into narcissism. Yes, desire can get out of control and turn into lust and obesity and greed.    I guess the word of alignment today is to give your life an honest look, and see where that permission slip of “Of course” can release something inside of you.    Of course you feel that way. Who wouldn’t?    You’re worried about the future of politics in America? Yeah… who isn’t? Of course you are.    Most of your relationships are on social media and you feel a bit lonely? You feel a bit isolated? Feel like people don’t really know you? yeah… of course. Because we’re designed for real relationship. Social media is not that. And never will be. We were designed for flesh and blood, face to face, hand in hand friendships. Of course you feel that way. Everyone does.    We need to give ourselves permission to feel our feelings. To understand our current reality. To see things clearly.    I don’t know if this is helpful for you, but for me and my wiring, I need mantras like this. Of course. It talks me down off the ledge for thinking I'm crazy… or that I can’t keep up. Or that I can’t understand something. Or that I’m tired. Of course I’m tired, we have a 4 day old baby.    Be kind to yourself. Back to episode 5 of this podcast: Be kind to yourself. Be a good friend to yourself. Talk some sense into yourself. If your inner dialogue is all over the place… “Of course.” Of course you need to talk to someone. Call a therapist. Get that stuff out in the open. Vent. You feel angry because of what was done to you? Of course you do, you should be angry! Of course.   You’re not alone. You’re not alone in how you feel about that. In fact, most everyone in your situation would feel exactly like you do. of course they would.    I love you, thank you for being a part of this Vertebrae community. Make it a good day.