Welcome to Weekending Well with me, Andrea Urquhart.
This first week in September for me here in the UK in this season of my life is still about “back to work” after the holidays, my youngest back to school (final GCSE exam year!) and it’s also close to the anniversary of my dad’s passing. For me, September has a familiar feeling of marking a new school and working year - along with taking stock of where life’s at. Mine started with a few emotional bangs.
In truth, it’s been a week of some huge and reassuring positives alongside moments of coping with some incredibly sad pieces of news and having to make a couple of key decisions. Early in the week, as sometimes happens in me when there’s inner emotional pressure, a migraine hit.
I’m familiar with them and how they work in me. For the first time I ended the week being grateful that it had visited, because I noticed something valuable: I spiralled up in a week when I could have spiralled down.
Migraines floor me initially. My speech goes awry and for 24hours I have to rest, fully compassionate and letting go of any emotional pressure. Then, in the next couple of days, I have to push through as my speech returns, but without overdoing it physically. I’ll show up again in work and relational spaces but am also banking physical rest to be able to so. Finally, three or four days out, the effects subside, but I feel an underlying echo of it throughout my body. I’ve learnt how to manage these migraines and to ride the wave of it.
In the vulnerable intensity of those initial 24hours, it can be easy to feel guilty or frustrated: “Here we go again” and “Why does this happen?” or “I should be able to just push through this”. Self-reproach for the way that emotional and physical pressure releases itself in my body. The return of the cycle, along with a choice of whether to spiral down or spiral up.
Spiralling up isn’t pulling yourself together, it’s facing that returning challenge or cyclical echo with self-compassion and determination. It’s not self-pity or dejection, it’s remembering how far you’ve come and that this is just another stage upwards rather than a slipping backwards and down.
When I first trained as a teacher, I remember being thoroughly confused and frustrated at being taught how to teach maths! It wasn’t the maths; it was that it’s taught using a “spiral curriculum”. I’d never heard of such a thing and thought it was a bit crazy. It flew in the face of what seemed more logical to me at the time and how I thought learning should be: that staircase upwards, one piece of learning at a time neatly stacked as we grow. Nice and neat and logical.
But learning isn’t linear. No matter how much someone, anyone, may like to tell you or sell you that idea in books and programmes that they offer. It’s spiral. It’s cyclical. Learning and growth involve returning to a point we’ve learnt before and strengthening it as we learn yet more and build on the knowledge and skills we have so far. This is spiral growth.
It’s not just learning that is spiral. You could consider our relationship with God a spiral upwards too along with our own deeper, personal relationships.
This doesn’t mean that they come and go. Not at all. It means that relationships grow season by season, not necessarily step by step. We move forward through and to the next thing and the next, and then that first thing swings round again in our life or relationship and the cumulative effect of all of our learning helps us to tackle that first thing at a deeper level this time. Deeper to go higher. That’s spiralling up.
Our mindset at those points, our emotional determination, our self-compassion, along with the grace of God, determine whether we make decisions that help us go higher, feel stuck in a part of the spiral or spiral down.
When we see our personal growth as spiralling up, coping with these cyclical seasons like the start of a new year or a grief anniversary, or simply the remnant of something popping up again in our life, becomes an opportunity to see these as a positive. We may still have to work through them, but we’re riding the wave or the waves differently, remembering that we’re spiralling up.
Celebration is key in this. This week, I’ve purposely nestled celebration alongside the challenges I’ve faced. Celebration that remembers how far I’ve come in so many ways, that honours my strengths and the encouraging and kind words others have shared with me - keeping those present as the spiral comes round once again in different ways, reminding me that being at this point once again is not going round in circles or spiralling down. It is another opportunity to spiral up. To pick up my life and the different parts of it that pop up or echo in this particular part of the spiral and to hold them, to celebrate and to make constructive choices.
I know these migraines are how my body processes emotional or physical overload. We call this a somatic response. This time, I didn’t see this as a weakness. I was fully aware of what was happening and why. So, my somatic response informed me of things I needed to take notice of and actions I could take. I spiralled up with it. I made and actioned some key decisions. I celebrated and I took actions to move forward in some things. I gave myself the physical care I needed, and I also took time to reflect and lean into my walk with God.
This meant being active in that spiral - creating the emotional, physical and mental momentum to keep spiralling up - even when part of that was to be actively resting too!
Back to that maths curriculum. Once I understood that teaching children maths begins with the basics and building on those until we return to them and add another layer of complexity, I understood the power of the spiral curriculum not just in learning but in life.
There may be moments when things come back round again for you, but that curve is part of your forwards journey. Each time they do come back round, it’s in a different position. We have grown more, learnt more, experienced more and know more.
No more beating myself up emotionally or mentally if something challenging swings back round again. With self-compassion and determination, I lean into a powerful phrase: “It’s okay, we’re just spiralling up again.”
You can borrow it if it helps you too ❤️
At Strengthen, we focus on our wellbeing alongside our relationship with God. I see too in my own life, and those of the people I talk with and mentor, that this revisiting and deepening of aspects of our walk with him and our own inner, spiritual growth and healing can also be cyclical. We experience breakthroughs and we also experience times when remnants pop up - how we deal with those can help us to spiral up, feel stuck or cause us to spiral down in our emotions and thoughts.
But really, we are still repositioned and just needing to remember that - and to deal with that remnant or those echoes as we continue our journey onwards, and upwards. It’s all part of God transforming us as we lift our head and hearts to him, continuing on our journey.
Whether you think of this as a spiral or zigzagging to mountain heights, let me encourage you that there is a world of difference between looking down with celebration to admire the view and recognise how far we have come, from resenting that rock or remnant we may be facing again. Remember that you’re higher this time, further on and, even in those moments when you feel weak or vulnerable, you are stronger.
So, take courage my friend, when the seasons of life come and go, and when old challenges resurface or new grief compounds existing grief. Though we may feel the tension of the season, with self-compassion, determination and the grace of God, we are spiralling up. Not invalidating what we are experiencing, but knowing ourselves more and walking in who we are now. Going from strength to strength.
Thank you so much for joining me today. As usual, there are songs linked below 🎶 I do try to vary them as I know we all have different styles of worship and music that we prefer.
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I look forward to welcoming you again next time.
Spiralling Up!