Author Archive
After dozens of conversations I started to understand that Kimberly believed feelings are neither good nor bad, they just are. “Excuse me, but haven’t you read in the Scriptures all the evil that comes from anger?” I respond.
“Well,” she says, “if God himself gets angry, it can’t be all bad.”
“Ah, yes, but everyone knows there is ‘righteous’ anger and ‘unrighteous’ anger. If you start feeling the bad kind, you are sinning, and must stop feeling that way. You can get angry for the wrong reasons or for the right reasons, and you should not get angry for the wrong reasons, so if you do, you have to repent.” She clearly did not believe the childhood morality I was taught.
“So,” she responded, “if emotions can be immoral, it means you choose them or refuse them. Is that how your emotions work? Because my feelings come without thinking, often without warning.”
“No,” I reply, “you can’t control your initial emotional reactions, but you can choose to hold onto them or to let them go.”
“And how do you let them go?”
“You tell yourself they are wrong and think of all the reasons why you shouldn’t feel that way, and you can talk yourself out of those feelings.”
“So, Jani, basically you should all over your feelings… you beat down your emotions with the law?”
Long pause as I think about this. I decided long ago that motivating myself with shame is a bad idea. Is that what I was doing? Wasn’t I just listening to my conscience, examining myself, and repenting? Should I not feel guilty for wrong feelings and stop myself from having them? I knew I didn’t have total control over my emotions, but I had enough control to force out the bad ones. I had done it many times.
“I guess I agree with you that my motivation should not be legalistic. So maybe I should work from the motivation of wanting good relationships, and everyone knows anger pushes people apart.”
She responded, “In my family, politeness was a much greater threat to true connection than anger. I have often seen anger bring people closer together because it forces honest communication and each person ends up telling the other person how they really feel. What do you think makes anger bad?”
“Well, you don’t like me getting angry at you!”
“It is not your anger that is a problem for me, but your blaming me.” Okay this REALLY does not make sense. If she was not to blame, why would I get angry? Getting angry over an innocent behavior is just wrong. How can you possibly separate anger from blame? If there is anger, someone is to blame! How could she say that all feelings are legitimate?
“So you think there is nothing wrong with being angry as hell at an innocent person?” I ask.
“Well, what do you mean by ‘wrong’?” she responds. “If you mean ‘are some emotions immoral,’ then I would say no. If you mean ‘are my emotions accurate or correct,’ I would say it depends on what you are measuring. Feelings are unreliable interpreters of someone else’s behavior (your rage does not prove that I’ve done something wrong). But feelings are great interpreters of your heart if you listen to them carefully. Emotions always tell you something about yourself rather than about the other person.”
Wow, that’s really a revelation to me. She is delinking my negative feelings from her culpability, a bond I thought inseparable. I could only imagine my anger being justified if she were truly at fault, but she is insisting that my feelings of anger are legitimate in themselves, even if she has done nothing wrong, nothing “deserving” of anger. They are legitimate for the very reason that they do not measure her misconduct… they simply alert me to what is going on in my heart, and do so quite accurately. If I merely shove my anger away or talk it down without considering what it is telling me, I can gain nothing from it.
After mulling this over for awhile I ask, “Okay, so maybe emotions are not evil in themselves and are just a gauge of my heart, but aren’t some of them a gauge of my bad heart? Doesn’t my anger or sadness or fear point to something that should not be in my heart, something for which I am guilty? And isn’t it possible to hold on to or nurse these negative feelings and so keep myself under their power? And doesn’t it matter how I express my feelings?” I was determined to prove my “negative” feelings were bad in some way!
When Kimberly said, “You are responsible for your own feelings,” I could only think, “If I am responsible, then I have control over my own feelings, and I should not be irritated. I lack self-control, I am not ‘walking in the Spirit,’ I am bad.” You can imagine that the continuing conversation did not go well as I tried to defend myself from the accusation that if I were aggravated, it was my own fault.
Mind you, that was not what she was saying. In fact, she might have used the words, “You need to take ownership of your own feelings,” but that sounded the same to me. She rightly perceived that I was angry and blaming her and expecting her to quit. No one likes to be blamed or manipulated with angry tones of voice, so she reacted in self defense, but a very gentle self defense. She was not returning blame for blame, but that is what I heard.
“Look, I was not irritated in the least until you started slamming the cabinet doors. You started slamming, I got irritated. If you had made less noise, there would have been no irritation. Cause and effect. If you don’t want me irritated at you, don’t bang the doors.” It simply made no sense to me to see it any other way. I had reasonable expectations, and if they were reasonable, she should meet them.
“I’m not telling you that you can’t get irritated, you have every right to get irritated. I’m just not responsible for your irritation.” A long silence on my part as my brain cells tried to break the code: “I only have the right to get irritated if she is doing something obviously irritating, and if she is, she should quit. How on earth can you separate the two… if I am right in getting irate, then it is her responsibility to change. If I am wrong in getting irate, then it is my responsibility to change by repenting of my frustration.”
In my perspective, if there were tension in a relationship not caused by miscommunication, then someone was right and someone was wrong (or both were partly wrong). The way to resolve the tension was to determine who was at fault for what, have them apologize, and the other would forgive them. Over and done. That was always the way it worked in my family. Frustration is either legitimate or illegitimate, if legitimate, the offender repents, if illegitimate the frustrated one repents (“I’m sorry I snapped, I was tired… it was a hard day… I have a headache”).
My wife’s approach made no sense at all—first she irritated me, and then she blamed me for being irritated (as I thought). You can imagine how many rounds of conversation we went through as I tried to figure out what she meant, desperately avoiding her conclusions because they would only squeeze into my paradigm through the slot of shame—whenever I have unhappy emotional reactions, I am at fault and must stop feeling as I do. But she kept insisting I had the right to feel my feelings. Does she mean I can feel these things, but should not express my feelings? She wanted me to express my feelings to her… just not blame her. But if she had done nothing wrong, then wasn’t it my fault for feeling frustrated? I was lost, driving in a loop with no exit ramps.
My wife speaks Chinese to me… at least that’s how it seems when I know the vocabulary she uses but cannot make sense of the message. I love her and so I repeatedly, intently try to follow what she is saying. When someone’s presuppositions are entirely different from mine, they make statements and assert conclusions that are meaningless to me, like: “A subjective cucumber chairs England with pneumonia.” Where do you even begin to ask the questions? And if it is completely coherent to Kimberly, she doesn’t know what needs explaining.
Me: “Do you mean a green cucumber that you eat?”
Kimberly: “Of course, what other kind is there? Now do you understand?”
It has often taken me months and even years through scores or even hundreds of conversations to slowly grasp her meaning about relational things far more complex than cucumbers. Over my head is not a light bulb popping on, but a fluorescent “tube light,” shadowed on both ends from overuse: blink… dark… blink blink-blink… dark… dark. Presuppositions are stubborn things and lie hidden behind blind spots.
The issue I raised at the end of Response #4 actually has several entangled, powerful, and unnoticed assumptions. I mentioned the first—that I felt responsible for others’ feelings. If someone does not like what I am doing, then I should stop doing it unless I have an overriding reason to continue. I am responsible for their feelings. Your irritation is because of my behavior—direct cause and effect—and I am responsible to change my behavior so you can stop being irritated. Your irritation is very reasonable; anyone would be irritated over this; only a saint would not be affected. Your irritation is controlled by my behavior.
This is a society-wide assumption, so that if anyone says, “Stop doing that! You are irritating me!” the only proper response is to say, “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was bothering you,” and to stop. We have no sense of distinction between the statements “I am irritated,” and “you are irritating me” or “you are making me irritated.” When we say the first, we really mean the last two; we are not taking responsibility for our own feelings of irritation, but are putting the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the “misbehaving” person. Of course, we distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable irritation, usually based on our own perception of social norms, but that must wait for another discussion.
I, for one, completely operated by this principle—my behavior caused your irritation. It was so obvious and clear and universal a concept, and I never heard it refuted. When Kimberly said, “I am not causing your irritation,” it made no sense to me at all. “What do you mean you are not causing my irritation?! When you bang the kitchen cupboards, it irritates me. My irritation comes from the banging cupboards… where else would it come from?” Can you understand my confusion?
I may have been more confusing than clarifying in my Response #4. So I want a re-do (wish I could do that in life!).
I had very little understanding of legitimate relational boundaries for most of my life. If two of us had conflicting needs, I thought I was responsible to deny my own and “consider others as more important than myself.” Anything less was selfishness. I also believed I was given more resources by God than others (after all, I came from McQuilkin stock, a line of highly honored preachers, missionaries, and college presidents), so the greater burden should rest on me. This was the scaffolding for serious self-neglect.
If I starved myself to feed the hungry, I would die quickly, but when I starved myself emotionally, there was no such forced resolution… I kept living, breathing, and relating. No matter how much I gave, I felt I was not giving enough. So I pushed myself further and further until I nearly killed myself in India. Self preservation was not in my DNA. After all, I subscribed to the motto, “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”
If I had the resources, and another had a need, I was obligated to meet that need. I thought the only morally legitimate way to deny helping Bob was to help Bill instead. To use my resources on myself was simply selfish. It was not a true need of mine. Christ was all I needed, and instead of receiving what he wished to give me, I became simply the channel for his giving to others, a teflon heart towards God’s grace. I didn’t realize what harm I did myself and others by working out of a serious personal deficit. I did not understand how healthy relationships worked.
Of course, the more I expected of myself, the more I expected of others… not as much as I would give, but still a fairly high standard. When they did not give what they were “able” to give (in my estimate), I judged them as unspiritual, uncommitted, and selfish, and I resented having to make up for their slack. Denying myself everything for others only worked if they denied things for me.
I was blind to the distinction between healthy and unhealthy giving. That difference might best be illustrated with actual gifts, the kind with wrapping paper and bows. 
There is quite a long list of unwritten, unspoken guidelines that must be followed in our society if we wish to be an acceptable member. The one with more money may spend more; the amount of money or time spent is a reflection of how much the recipient is valued; gratitude must be expressed (whether or not the gift was a true expression of love), often in writing; and the list goes on. We speak of a ‘gift exchange,’ a social arrangement which prescribes rules and follows social norms to avoid anyone giving too much or too little. But the original meaning of “gift” (Charis in Greek) suggests something freely given out of love without thought of return. Otherwise we are really talking about trading, a legitimate financial arrangement, but one that follows law, not love.
As long as everyone follows group expectations in an exchange, this arrangement works swimmingly, but once we try to move towards a gracious approach, one that does not include payback, the old rules do not apply. If I must give everything to everyone without consideration for reciprocation, then I am in serious trouble if others do not do the same. All my resources (whether time, money, emotional reserves, energy, etc.) will sooner or later be exhausted, and then I have nothing for myself or for others. Without receiving adequate “reimbursement,” the system fails. The path of grace seems unworkable unless everyone else is equally “gracious.” Instead of being responsible for my own upkeep, they become responsible for me, and I for them. I am at the mercy of the goodness of others… if they are not good enough, I cannot survive. This sounds to me suspiciously like co-dependence rather than interdependence. Am I not ultimately responsible for myself?
I do the cooking in our house because I enjoy cooking and my wife does not. I usually make huge messes when I cook: countertops flecked with flour and fruit juice and butter, stove top smoking with burned on spills, a sink overflowing onto the large cutting board with stacks of dirty pots and pans.
Last night as I finished cooking supper I commented, “I should have a neat cook come watch me and give tips on how to minimize the mess.” Kimberly replied, “that’s who I am! If you want to improve, you just have to put a much higher value and concentration on cleanliness as you cook. But do you really want to go that route? It might stifle your pleasure in cooking.” She was exactly right. So now I have been set free to blissfully make messes (as long as I clean up afterwards). I have a wise and understanding wife.
Elisabeth speaks for many of us when she worries that making room for someone’s quirks could encourage the attitude, “God made me this way so just accept it even though it is inconveniencing or hurting you.” That is one of the guiding principles that shaped the way I related to others most of my life, and it still pulls strongly on my emotions. This will take two posts to discuss even briefly because I want to start with my own experience and perspective and then offer the comparative view of my wife.
I grew up believing very strongly that I was responsible for others’ responses to me. If someone felt hurt or inconvenienced by my actions, I should change my behavior. Either I had done something wrong and should apologize and change myself to prevent this in the future, or they were mistaken and I should explain to them how they had misunderstood my intentions (or a combination of the two). Their negative feelings indicted me, and I was responsible to relieve them and to then live in such a way that I caused them no more inconvenience or hurt.
I think this entanglement of responsibilities is common among children who respond to parental displeasure by being compliant and who determine their own lovability based on the feedback they receive for their behavior. If my mom or dad is angry, it is my fault, and I must fix it. I think our parents’ generation generally believed this, and those of us raised in religious homes believed this was also a true reflection of God’s attitude towards us. One of the downsides of this perspective is that I hold others responsible for my feelings as well. You take care of my feelings and I take care of yours. You take care of my needs and I take care of yours.
Relational Balancing Act
It sounds very considerate, and I suppose it may be, but in my case, instead of a free and loving choice, it was grounded in fear and relational obligation. I could not survive in forgoing my own needs for the sake of others’ needs if they did not reciprocate, so if there was no parity, I had to pressure others to meet my needs. If I were inconveniencing or hurting someone, I was under moral obligation to change, and if I did not like what they were doing, they had to change.
Of course, the entire system broke down if others did not meet my needs. When I eat out with a friend, the payment shuffle at the end is a bit embarrassing. Supposing my friend will reciprocate the next time, I decide to pick up the tab. But he doesn’t return the favor. I decide to do it again as a good example that shows him clearly how he is falling behind in the balance of hospitality. By the third unreciprocated meal, I start feeling resentment and make mild side comments or light jokes to bring his attention to the situation. If he simply does not work by this system of fair trade, then our relationship is in trouble. I will feel that he is selfish and uncaring.
When I decide what to wear, what to say, where to go, how to behave, I automatically assume others’ needs are preeminent. This does not primarily come from a place of health or freedom or generosity, but from a fear that they will justifiably think badly of me or resent me if I do not care about them. I find it very hard to think well of myself if others think badly of me (in this case because I am being “uncaring”). On the other hand, if others seem to ignore my needs, I feel that my needs don’t really count, I am not worthy of receiving their care. So I am trapped in this world of reciprocation based on fear of losing my worth as a person.
My fear of others “taking advantage of me,” requiring me to do more lifting in the relationship than they do, is not simply that I will run out of energy and resources. It is a much more basic fear—that my very worth as a person is seriously at risk. Of course, I never think it out so clearly and objectively as this, but simply react from deep-seated emotions, often jumping right past the fear (which makes me feel vulnerable) into the reactive and manipulative anger of self-defense, “Don’t you care about me?!”
Some say that compromise is at the root of any good marriage, but what if either or both partners feel an arrangement is unfair, unbalanced. Picture the impact on the relationship if this imbalance is not simply an inconvenience, but a threat to the spouse’s very worth as a person. That is a picture of Kimberly and me as we stepped into a committed relationship.
I agree with Elisabeth that “where I am weak is when I get to see God at work,” though I think it might be good to consider what this may or may not mean. How does God work with or in spite of our weaknesses? He can certainly override or bypass or compensate for our inbuilt weaknesses when he chooses, but I expect, like any other miracle, it is the exception rather than the rule for him to work contrary to the traits with which he uniquely designed each of us (and the circumstances by which he shaped us). Not only the abilities, but the limitations he gives us are integral to our design, a key part of who we are. A car is great for driving, but it is pretty bad at sailing. If we make a car to also sail, those adaptations will hinder its ability to drive well, which is its true design. 
Allow me to get personal. I was raised by a mother who was not time conscious and a father who was very time conscious. This was the source of much contention, especially Sunday morning, and both my mom and dad agreed that the “right” way to be was prompt, which of course meant my mom was inadequate and my dad was adequate. Dad was organized and Mom was disorganized; Dad planned out everything well in advance and Mom flew by the seat of the pants; Dad was very analytical and Mom was not. We were taught by both parents that we should emulate our father in all these things, because this was godliness, and thus avoid the weaknesses of our mom.
Most of my life I fully believed this to be true. My dad even taught a college ethics course that included a section on the moral necessity of being good stewards of our time. The good ol’ American values of productivity and efficiency were apparently a fundamental part of God himself, handed down to us in his word. The verses in the Bible about being punctual are fairly meager, so he used arguments such as the injury we did others by being late (“keeping them waiting”), which was both selfish and unthoughtful. It is more the emphasis than the idea which became a real problem for me. One could argue that good stewardship of the body requires daily bathing with soap for good health and so make showers a moral issue, but I don’t think I would go there with it.
It was decades later that I started to question this thinking. I found that examples of godliness in Scripture seemed to have a very different perspective of time, one that did not include minute hands on sundials. Jesus himself seemed to be much more God conscious and people conscious than time conscious, and he regularly chose to live by the former values at the expense of the last.
I don’t mean to suggest that punctuality is of no worth, but I wonder if it does not fall farther down the scale of true values than most white, middle class Americans would like to think. I wonder if it is a constant source of judgment towards other cultures and people who value it much less. Might our insistence on timeliness do more injury to individuals and relationships than our being more flexible with our schedules? In fact, is too much of a need for promptness a weakness of another kind and is flexibility perhaps a strength? Do we unnecessarily devalue the traits of some folks instead of appreciating their uniqueness and important contribution to perspectives, relationships and plans?
I find myself valuing strengths in others that I do not have. But instead of simply being grateful for and blessed by their contribution to my life, I compare myself to them and challenge myself to be like them… and then judge myself for falling short. I tell myself that I must be as organized, as gentle, as confident, as humble as they are. These are all good things to work on, but things that do not come naturally to me as they do to others, and in fact, they usually have their own downside. People who are temperamentally gentle often have a very hard time confronting others; Those who are typically confident tend to be less open to the perspectives of others.*
If I use a lot of energy trying to “fix” these weaknesses I attribute to myself, I not only make no room for others’ contributions to my life, but I end up undermining my own unique gifts. Others become competitors to me instead of partners, and relationships suffer. The differences between us that were meant to teach us, unite us and make us interdependent become the very things that drive wedges between us because I expect others to be like me and shame myself for not being like them.
Let's Work Together!
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*Of course, we usually think of humility and gentleness as virtues (moral attributes which are acquired) and organization and confidence as character traits (nonmoral attributes which are given). So for the purposes of this discussion, let us leave aside the “virtues” and think simply of “traits.”
This blog site is a little over a month old, and I would really value your feedback. Are posts too long or too short? Do I post too often? Should I publicize each post on Facebook or just some (and if so which kind)? Any remarks on the content? Any other suggestions? Thanks a million!
Gregory Boyle, a priest who works in gang territories of L.A., tells this poignant story:
I knew an inmate, Lefty, at Folsom State Prison, whose father would, when Lefty was a child, get drunk and beat his mom. One Saturday night Lefty’s father beat his mother so badly that the next day she had to be led around by his sisters, as if she were blind. Both eyes were swollen shut.
On Sunday, Lefty’s father and brothers are sitting on the couch, watching a football game. Lefty calmly goes into his parents’ bedroom, retrieves a gun from his father’s bedstand, and walks out to the living room. Lefty places himself in front of the television. His father and brothers push themselves as far back into the couch as possible, horrified. Lefty points the gun at his father and says, “You are my father, and I love you. If you ever hit my mother again… I… will… kill you.”
Lefty was nine years old. He didn’t kill his father, then (or ever). And yet, part of the spirit dies a little each time it’s asked to carry more than its weight in terror, violence, and betrayal. (From “Tattoos on the Heart”)
That last sentence is so achingly true. Every child is forced to handle situations that exceed his or her capabilities, and each such experience incites fear or shame or distress. I have discovered in my own life that my greatest emotional reactions to situations as an adult invariably spring from the wounds of my boyhood. Have others found this to be true?
Elisabeth’s comment raises at least four additional issues in my mind. The most apparent one, I think, is the distinction between enabling (as AA uses the term) and supporting. When people take too little responsibility for themselves, offering blanket assistance may not be the most helpful thing to do for them. We need to take this into consideration so that we do not inadvertently hurt or weaken others by our aid (such as parents do when they over-protect their children).
When folks are in need, love calls us to discern how best to serve them. It seems to me, the better we know someone, the better we can identify his or her true needs (so perhaps the best way to serve them is to get to know them). The difficulty lies in determining whether the crutch I offer will aid or hinder healing, and I have many potential problems in sorting out this quandary.
I tend to expect of others what I expect of myself, but this is a dangerous measure. Each of us has unique struggles and strengths, clarity and confusion, emotional surplus and shortage, speed of growth in different areas. If I don’t even know my own heart well, how can I presume to know another’s? I tend to expect too much of folks (and others’ tend to expect too little of them). Without realizing it, I tend to help or deny help to others for the wrong reasons (because it feels good to be needed, because I am proud of my abilities, because I feel obligated, because I resent the inconvenience, because I am suspicious of their motives). I rarely if ever respond out of pure love.
How can I tell when folks are being negligent, failing to do what they can easily do, or whether they are in genuine need of a hand up? Without even deciding that question, I know of a number of vital ways we can support others. We can accept them for who they are, we can feel and express empathy for their sense of need, we can listen and ask questions, we can offer encouragement and insight from our own similar experiences, we can be honest about our hopes and concerns regarding them and the strengths and weaknesses we bring to the table. I have discovered in relationship to my wife that what I need more than anything else is someone to understand and accept me as I am. It is far more important than the help they do or do not give me.
The Comfort of Caring Hands
Janathan Grace Reflections 