Inabilities

Our primary tendency is to just focus on what can’t be done. And if that’s all we look at, then we get really discouraged and frustrated. But if we begin to turn and say, okay, there are other things that are important to me that I can do, or I can do to some level, and if I focus my energy there, then anything that we feel like we’re able to engage and build on and move into in and of itself brings some momentum and some positive excitement along with it. 

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. It’s great to have you along. Brian Sutter is here in the studio with me. I’m always glad to have a conversation, Brian. Yeah, me too. Brian, I’ve got an age-old phrase. I want to run it by you and ask for your opinion on it. And that is, you can do anything you set your mind to. Have you heard that before?  

Yes, indeed. And I would say, you know, it’s a little bit loaded. It is when you first say that I think that part of me roots for the underdog. And I remember hearing that as a young man, like, yeah, anything. 

Yeah. I think we can go for it and you don’t want to be that voice of limitation in another person’s life, to say, give up, for example. Or don’t try. Exactly. Don’t work. You’re never going to be able to do that. Yeah. What are we to make of this? Is it a true statement? And if it’s not a true statement, what do we need to construct around it?  

Yeah. And I would say, stepping back from it and letting the emotion pass and just looking at it as a statement, I don’t think there’s any way that we can conclude anything other than no, that’s a false statement. That isn’t true for any of us on the planet. And the reason why I want to address this topic, I suspected that was the answer. Sure, Brian, but these could be some pretty big wounds in people’s lives. Yeah. It’s those things that are out of reach. And maybe we’ll part and parcel those things that are within reach, but need some work, right? 

Sure, because that’s worth it too, right? Right, for sure. Yeah. But also, to have some sort of conversation around those things that are out of reach. Right, because that is sometimes an area of wounding. What are some examples here? Yeah. Let’s try to flush this out so people follow us. Well, just this weekend I was chopping wood with my 8-year-old son. And so, I’m able to swing that axe and wood begins to split and he’s like, hey, dad, give me a try. Sure enough. So, I give it and he can barely lift it up. And so just at that kind of physical strength standpoint, he is limited in a way that there’s just no way he’s going to be able to split that wood. 

Right. So as much as he sets his mind to it, he will not be able to. Over time, that would be something that there could be growth, but it’s an example of there’s a limitation that there’s just no way around. It is what it is, and so physical. Another one would be cognitive. That our IQ, our ability to think and reason, you only get so much room, and we all get different levels of IQ. 

And we don’t like that most of us, but it’s a reality that if you have an IQ that is in a superior range, that’s going to give you different opportunities than somebody who has a lower IQ. I mean, I can speak to that exactly. Having been in the educational world, I’ve had higher education, and in particular mathematics was my study of expertise. 

And I am, Brian, so in awe of the brilliant pure mathematician, okay? To me, those guys and gals are like heroes. And I know, because I’ve had enough classes, that it’s out of reach. I can’t do that. And so, I very much bump up against the ceiling there of what I can and cannot do. 

And that goes for a lot of areas of our life. Oh, absolutely. And it’s interesting, even as you’re talking about that, sometimes we don’t realize how high the ceiling is until we broaden our horizon, and we get around others and their ceiling is either so much higher or so much lower than ours. Then it starts to expose those things that if we get caught in our own world, we may not even be aware of how limited or how gifted we are. 

I think limitation actually is probably a good word here, right? There is a limit that we cannot cross, right? I mean, I think disabilities at some level really are these, right? Right. Yeah. For example, somebody who’s lost an arm, a physical disability like that, some certain limitations come with that. 

Or like we’re talking about cognitive disabilities or even in the emotional realm, there would be diagnoses and different things like those that could be given that might limit somebody’s emotional capability, whether that’s being able to feel emotion or interpret emotion. Those would all be examples of things that would come along. 

You know, another, like dyslexia, all of these different things that don’t define a person, don’t put them in second class, but they do bring some limitations. I’d really like to speak about that area. I’d love to pick your brain on that, Brian. As you work with people, no doubt, who come face to face with these limitations, face to face with inabilities. 

I can’t do that, and I want to so badly. That has to bring about a mental health crisis at some level. Oh, yeah. Am I right? Right. There’s just so much pain around having something in your mind that you’re hopeful for and then coming to the realization that just maybe is not a possibility for you. 

It’s not a matter of working harder or trying harder or time. It’s just not within your grasp is a really painful dream. It’s not going to be possible, right? Like it’s just a shattered dream. And with that shattered dream is going to come a lot of sadness and grief and questioning. 

You know, purpose and value and all those sorts of things. What help is there to be provided? Sure. I think the starting point would be to be able to see that as a loss. That’s a very real loss that occurs when there’s a hope that’s not able to be fulfilled and with that loss would come a lot of grief and sadness and wrestling with questions. 

And in that that if we could be a safe place where those could be expressed and received and validated and even processed through, that would be extremely helpful, I think. So, it sounds to me it’s a bit of a grief type of process that we’ve spoken of a number of different times before. Sure. That expression of pain and disappointment. 

And I would just say with that, there would be one tweak to that, and that would be, in this space especially, I think it would be important to recognize the lie that maybe comes alongside of that, and then how to walk through that lie in a helpful way. Okay, so that is a distinction. When we talk about grief and loss in other contexts, sometimes that loss is crystallized or clear. 

Right, in terms of naming it and identifying it. And so, even while this one, inabilities and weaknesses, can be identified, there is something else that we need to do because there’s a lie. There could very well be a lie. Let’s fill that out with an example. Well, I think, for example, it’s very easy when you’ve got an inability for that to breed the idea that there’s something wrong with you that devalues you. And so, that would be maybe something a lie would attach to. For example, I’m a waste, or I can’t do anything. It catastrophizes it into everything I do is wrong, I’m incapable of anything, and it starts to paint a really negative picture. So, if I can’t do this one thing, I can’t do everything, or anything. 

Exactly, yeah, it starts to get pervasive and move across all things, and then just moves us away from even thinking about, what can I do? Or maybe I’m not important. Exactly. Yeah, that would mean I think that would be one that we deal with, right? Because we see, wow, everybody who can do this thing, Matt, that’s really useful. 

I cannot. So, I’m not useful, right? Because of these inabilities, a lot of times we can look out and publicly feel very different. And in some ways, we are very different depending on what that inability is. And then that can really move us away from feeling like we’re a part of the group. And even in that, I think on the front end, like we’ve talked about at the beginning here is sometimes trying to distinguish between, is this a limitation that is like not something that can be grown in versus something that is maybe a weakness that you could work on and even get better at, even if you can’t get as well as you’d like. Having some help navigating that I think can be a huge role as a helper, like not in a mean kind of cruel kind of a way, but in a loving kind of way that no, I just don’t think you becoming a really gifted musician is in the cards for you. 

And just helping them come to that conclusion, you know, would be a big help. Okay. So, we’re going to come back to this, I think, as you mentioned, weakness, places that can be grown in. Okay. Because I think there’s something to be said there, but back to the limitations, the dream that’s out of reach. This reality that I saw, as you mentioned, is not in the cards. 

I think we all get that, right? Certain things aren’t going to be in the cards, right? For me to be this or that or the other thing. And so, this expression of that, allowing to grieve that and understand that as a loss is important. I think you mentioned this, come to terms with or something like that. 

Yeah, what does that look like? How does a person know if they’re doing that? Yeah, that’s a good question and I think in many ways one of the words that we use a lot in this realm would just be acceptance of reality, coming to terms with what is real. And I think you see that even with Paul and his thorn in the flesh.  He comes to the Lord and he makes the petitions three times will this be removed and hoping something will shift and it doesn’t and then in that point I would say he moves into acceptance and says I don’t know why. I don’t like it. It seems like a hindrance to me and yet this is where the Lord has me and I’m going to move forward now in this. That would be an acceptance of this may not change, but now I’m going to engage whatever’s in front of me. 

I think just with that example, you’ve now provided the reason why acceptance is important. Because my question to you is going to be, what happens if we don’t accept? Paint that scenario out a little bit. Yeah. And then paint the scenario of acceptance out. Well, without the acceptance piece, I think we just keep chewing on it. 

We keep wrestling with it. And that tends to lead to bitterness, frustration, angst. It’s a little bit like the two horseshoes that are connected with a chain and they’ve got that little ring. It’s an unsolvable mystery and you have those puzzles and if you know where there’s a solution to it, you can wrestle with it and it’s kind of a fun game. Then eventually you hand it over to somebody else and they’re like, ah, voila, here it is, and that’s fun. But if you’re trying to solve something that literally does not have s solution, it’s just frustration upon frustration and fighting and wrestling and instead of figuring out how do I live in life with this reality, you spend all your time fighting the reality. 

So, it sounds to me by what you’re saying there that acceptance is a prerequisite to moving forward in a healthy direction with the inability. I think so. Yeah, I think it’s a very difficult step. It’s not like you sit down and you do that in a day or even a week. That might be a very long process. But without that, it is going to be impossible to engage life in the fullest way with the cards or the reality that you live with.  

And so now let’s paint that acceptance piece. And I think you’re using Paul, which I think is a good example there. How would you coach a person in saying, Okay, but this is a path we can go down. Yeah. Right. What does that look like? Well, I think to be able to explore what it is that you are interested in. What is it that you’re hopeful for? What is it that you might be able to do that you’re interested in? Let’s set this thing aside or recognize that this limitation will be part of the picture moving forward and that even though that may be painful there can be a great deal of fulfillment and joy and life in life as we move forward. 

Let’s think through together what that maybe looks like and how you could engage life with whatever that limitation is rather than how do we get rid of the limitation. It’s okay, this is here, now let’s move forward. and figure out what it looks like to live in the midst of it. So that limitation is a part of their reality. 

Right. It sounds to me by what you’re saying there, you’re allowing it to be a very present part of reality. It’s not necessarily that they forget about it. It is part of who they are. And is that an important part of acceptance? Kind of going back to the acceptance part? Yeah. To say that this is a part of me, and who I’m not. 

Yeah, I think so, that this is part of who I am, which maybe disqualifies me from some things, but it also gives me an opportunity at other things. In some ways, it’s like, if you’re playing a card game with your kids, and one of them knows from the onset that their cards are really bad cards. 

Well, they could just choose to throw their cards in and walk away. But then they’re going to be frustrated. They’re going to be disappointed and everybody else is too, but they can still participate in the game. Even if they have poor cards, that means that they may not end up on top at the end, they can still engage in relationships and have fun with everybody and be a part of the experience. 

Even if they’re not going to come out on top because of the cards they’ve been given, that makes a lot of sense. And so, what I get a sense there is there’s a pivot and perhaps that’s what we’re asking of all of us with limitations, right? When we come up against a ceiling, or a limitation, we acknowledge that ceiling or limitation. We grieve it. We must come to an acceptance or else we’ll just keep beating up against it. Right. And then there is a pivot. Say more about that pivot in the way that you might inspire a person in your office or help them think about that pivot and what that looks like. 

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it would be interesting to help them again identify what are the things that are core that you would say you want to be a part of your life. That if somebody were say, tell me who Matt Kaufman is or what’s important to Matt and you identify a handful of things, like, oh, let’s say he’s a hard worker or that he loves people or cares about people. 

Okay. So those are things, those are characteristics that you can carry no matter what your limitations are. And how do we then bring those limitations into this task in front of you that we can inspire. There are a lot of things that you can do. How do we focus on what can be done? Whereas our primary tendency is to just focus on what can’t be done. 

And if that’s all we look at, then we get really discouraged and frustrated. But if we begin to turn and say, okay, there are other things that are important to me that I can do, or I can do to some level and if I focus my energy there, then that anything that we feel like we’re able to engage and build on and move into does in and of itself, bring some momentum and some positive excitement along with it. 

Brian, I think you’ve just given us an insight into the mindset of people and it really resonates with me like, oh yeah, that’s what I do. And that is what we focus on and where we place our mind energy, right? Is it that thing that is out of reach? Does that thing that’s out of reach define me? Right? 

Yeah. And it all very often can. Yeah. As opposed to, all right, what is within reach, or what can be obtained with effort and good toil, right? And so that’s really what we’re looking forward to. It’s going to require that. Yes, yes. And again, admittedly, that can be a very difficult thing to do, but also brings a great opportunity. 

If we can engage that as a worthy thing to pursue, and once we find it, it can be exciting and fun, then we can step into it. It seems like we have a pretty good vision for the grandeur of those things that are out of reach. And we have a very limited, if nonexistent vision for those other things that are within reach. 

And so really, you’re calling on a vision here. I think even as a larger community of believers, that inspires me to think about how we see value and purpose and lots of different roles, whether it’s within the church or within the community, that we elevate those rather than our tendency can be, these are the important things are celebrated ones. 

These are the celebrated ones. These are the ones that have prestige and all of those sorts of things, but rather to be able to create a mindset and a culture that says, no, let’s see the value and the purpose and the dignity in all of these various things. It reminds me, is it Corinthians 12 when he’s talking about the body? 

Yes. And the least part of the body is the most needed and Paul says it so well. Yes. And I think it’s one of those things we all wink at, we kind of get, but we don’t. Right. And sometimes Brian, I wonder, we go into heaven and all of a sudden everything’s flipped right side up. Oh man. 

Yeah, and we’ll all of a sudden realize, oh my goodness. Sure. Absolutely. I think there’s no doubt to some degree that will be our experience. And it makes me think of a young man who’s been involved in our family. He’s got some cognitive limitations, but the joy that he brings and the experiences and there’s such value and joy with him being around and he plays such a vital role, even though there’s very observable limits there. 

Yeah. That’s a great example. Let’s now go to this weakness. Sure. I think I said I’d come back to that. Okay. Even in the example that you gave, you might be missing a limb and you’re not able to do things. I think there are people with all kinds of strikes against them that are doing amazing things. I think it’s Special Olympics, right? Sure. And it’s just incredible. So, let’s now breathe a little life into that and just simply say, there is a responsibility as human beings that we have, and let me say it this way, to understand what is a limitation in my life and what is simply a weakness to be worked on. 

Yeah. Because we can default to the other direction and say, well, I just can’t do that. Right. Exactly. And so, that might be even just a good thing to think about. One of the common areas of temperament that’s measured is the area of how persistent someone is. And some people are just so persistent, and they will not give up for anything. 

And depending on where you are on that spectrum, maybe provide some insight. If you’re somebody who’s going to be quick to give up and you need to try and step into pursuing, growing in a weakness versus somebody who’s so persistent that you might have to say, you know what, acceptance might be the key here. 

Yeah. So, I think that’s helpful. I think that’s important. It is very important. And again, that’s where I think you may want to bring somebody in who can provide some wisdom and input into that space for you to help you know which it is because sometimes, we’re too close to it. Right. And maybe too blind to it to really know the difference between a weakness and a limitation. 

Let me define those again. A limitation being that thing, the ceiling is there. You cannot reach past it, whether it’s physical, whether it’s cognitive, whether it’s just simply not in the cards, right? And weaknesses are those things that with effort, practice, with some study, with some growth, we can do this. Yeah. And so, in those areas to be able to accept, you might still have the acceptance of in the moment, there’s going to be limitations in the sense that you may not be able to do it as well as you’d like. But it’s a weakness in the sense that with time and effort, those two ingredients together, it’s likely that you can get better at this thing or that thing. And many things in life fall into this category where it’s a weakness that we can grow in, and we want to grow in.  

Brian, give us a perspective on just personal growth and mental health and that type of thing. Is it, let me say it this way, because sometimes, once we get out of school and even early in our career, all of a sudden you don’t have the impetus necessarily to keep working or keep improving at certain things. 

People aren’t grooming you in those ways. You know what I mean? So, I’m interested in your thoughts. What I would say is that I think growth should be something that we’re all pursuing. And at least in my opinion, maybe my observation to some degree would be that we can be pretty quick to set growth aside that we can tend to view even like spiritually that once we come into the church as a member that somehow then we are fully matured into the healthiest most beautiful butterfly we can be, and we forget the sanctification piece. And I think sometimes then that carries over into most areas of our life that we’re just like either you have it, or you don’t have it or if there is growth that occurs, it just is over the course of time and experience and age that just naturally comes. 

And those are true. But how much greater if we can say, wait, no, this is an area that over the next year I’d like to grow in and I’d like to get better at. And we do that and I’m going to need to participate in the process. Yeah, like you are going to have to be able to say, this is something that I’m invested in. 

This is how I’m going to go after it. This is who I’m going to bring into this space. And then really participate in that. And that’s really, I think, the best ingredients for growth. Yeah, I like that. Brian, this has been really fascinating. I think it’s good for all of us. Because all of us have limitations and we all have weaknesses and all in different areas and in different places. 

And just to bring awareness with all to say, this is a difficult part of all of our lives, right? Dreams that are out of reach, right? Maybe we’ve tried and failed at certain things and we’re coming to the hard reality of what’s not in the cards. What I’ve heard here today, Brian, is being able to discern that, realizing that I can’t go further here because it’s a limitation, but I can grow in this direction and that it’s important that I do. 

Yeah. Right. None of us like the reality of limitations, but they are here from our Creator. I think they’re for our good, and even John 9, talking to the blind man, and why was that there? Well, not because of someone’s sin, but that God might be manifested and glorified. You know what I love about that passage, too, is just the very first phrase that says, He saw the blind man. 

Jesus sees that. He sees us. He sees us in our limitations. He saw the blind man in his blindness, and he sees us in our weaknesses and our limitations as well which I think has got so much hope in it. Thanks, each one for being here. Thanks for listening. And we hope and trust this could be helpful and bless you.