Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
As we have been struggling financially for a while, I decided to save money this winter by installing a wood burning stove in our basement. I found a 55 gallon barrel, scavenged cinder blocks and ductwork from ditches and dumpsites, and with a $50 kit converted the barrel into a stove. I mortared the blocks together with clay from my yard and ran the ducts into our heating system. It is utilitarian, stuck in our basement with our washer/dryer, fusebox, unfinished ceiling and walls, and storage units, so I let it be an uncouth affair. It has served us well with free wood which is always available in these forested hills.
Nature's Ballet
As I build each fire and stoke it through the day, I have gradually spent more and more time just watching the flames. In my boyhood, the hearth was a spot of peace and calm. It was simply for our pleasure, so we lit it only when we had leisure time and a desire to sit in quietness. Childhood emotional memories are deep rooted, and I find that sitting by the fire now is healing, soothing. At first I sat leaning against a paving stone on the cement floor, but I eventually dragged a recliner into this storage room, and here I sit, listening to the steaming, popping, and crackling and watching the orange dancing glow, art in motion.
I’d like to ask my readers, what was peaceful and calming for you as a child? Would you share it with us?
About 10 years ago my oldest sister Mardi gave me a peace plant from her home. For the first couple of years it had several blooms, but with my haphazard watering and giving it sunlight, it soon stopped blossoming. When it drooped, I would water it… if I were around and noticed. I think it has more roots than dirt since I have never repotted it, not wanting it to get bigger. A less hardy plant would have just given up (as many of mine have!), but this one persevered. It put out nice green leaves, usually with brown shriveled tips from over-watering or under-watering (I still can’t tell the difference).
After 8 long years of barrenness!
This winter, Kimberly brought home an even more pathetic small peace plant. She had left it in the care of a colleague while she was out of town, and he had forgotten to water it. The leaves were mostly curled brown and crumbling to the touch. We cut off all the dead leaves which made it look less scorched, but more pathetic, and started to water it. And here in the middle of winter and struggle, we have been delighted with both plants deciding to bloom! The flower on my plant lasted a whole month before I burnt it with incorrect watering of some sort. Kimberly’s flower is just starting.
On good days, I think of it as a parable of our lives, a promise of what is to come, a hoped for sweetness and beauty from a long gestation of suffering and pain. I wish for you, friends, a glimpse of this beauty which is developing in you as well.
first glimmer of life and beauty
I have not visited my own site since I last posted. When I sink too far down, I just work each day on breathing. Sickness of soul has many comparisons with physical illness, and in both cases healing requires rest, the kind of rest and as much of it as a soul and body need. Most of my life I put my body and soul on strict rations, telling them what they needed and giving only that. I now realize my body and soul are a good bit smarter than my brain in knowing what they lack. I now see my brain is called to support those needs and not contradict and fight them. What I need, I need. There is no shame in needing.
THE TOUCH OF GENTLE HANDS
It is true that being “needy” is considered socially ugly in America. Some of this springs from a reaction to manipulators, folks who take advantage of others’ sympathy–and as a healthy boundary this caution may be good–but I suspect much of it springs from a sense of prideful independence… at least I know how powerfully this has worked in my life. And the natural partner to pride is shame (recognized or not), so I have also been ashamed for my need of others, as well as fearful of their resentment in helping me. I have discovered that the more I try to deny my needs, the more I close off grace from my life. Openly acknowledged need is the entry point for grace, though such vulnerability must be exercised with wisdom since letting down the defenses not only allows for more personal healing and deepened relationship, but may also open the way for much harsher wounding, depending on the response of the one we trust. I thank God often for my trustworthy wife.
Kimberly and I (and Mazie, our sweet dog) were able to spend a week at the beach between Christmas and New Year’s thanks to a very cheap hotel and a generous Christmas present from Berly’s dad. The weather was perfect and it was a wonderful time to relax. There was a delightful (and free) art museum in town, and when we visited I saw this inspiring drawing by Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy.
I feel so very tired, weary of life, confused about how to respond in a healthy, soul-affirming way. I’ve tried ineffectively to look for the root of my current depression so that I could apply grace to the wound, but it eludes me. It seems that all I can do is learn to accept my condition with patience.
For the last two months or so I have awakened each morning with a great heaviness of spirit that nothing seems to lift, a feeling of exhaustion and unhappiness. The only thing that seems to help is going back to sleep, which I have regularly done (since I work nights, I can do that). Just lying down, even without sleep, seems to help a good deal. It is my way of giving my soul a rest, removing all demands and expectations for the moment. The weight gradually lifts during the day on most days to the point that I can do something “productive” without cost to my soul. I have no energy for the creativity, vulnerability, and/or interpersonal connection that social media involves. My sister Mardi finds that she is pushed to express her feelings in art when she is depressed, but the opposite happens to me. So I stop blogging.
Some folks have suggested that I suffer from seasonal affective disorder, which comes out in the winter. But my struggles come out indiscriminately throughout the seasons, probably more affected by my life circumstances. Environment does impact my feelings significantly, cloudy days often cloud my spirit… in fact, when I can enjoy an overcast day it is a good indication that my soul is at rest.
Kimberly and I just had a week’s vacation at the beach, and it was very refreshing. Each day was quiet, slow, soothing. We slept in, read from a favorite author, and then talked about our thoughts and feelings; we had lunch, went for a long walk on the beach or in the woods with our dog Mazie and settled into a relaxed evening. We take great comfort in one another’s company and our sweet Mazie is a constant delight to us (Mazie is short for Amazing, so with our surname, Amazing Grace). I was hoping that calm would carry over into our days at home, but the personal gravity pulled me down as I rose from bed today, our first morning back. Reminds me of John Mayer
To all those who face this: my understanding and empathy are with you. May you find little landings of peace on the long climb, short embraces of sunlight piercing through, unexpected touches of gentleness for your battered soul… and when you need it, take a nap!
I phoned an old friend today. He wasn’t in and I had to leave a message. In anticipating his return call, I imagined Bob asking me, “How are you?” What would I say? What does the question mean? How am I this moment or overall? How am I in reference to what scale? How am I feeling or how is my soul or how are circumstances or…? Yes, I do complicate the simplest things, but it seems to lead me to a deeper understanding.
I think most people want a superficial (and pleasant) response, but my friends have learned to expect an honest, reflective answer from me… which begs the question, what is genuine? Consider margarine–is it imitation butter or genuine margarine? The truth is that I have been struggling for a few weeks about my self worth because I have been applying for a lot of second jobs, even minimum wage jobs, to cover the loss of income from Kimberly leaving her employment, and I have had no responses, as though I have nothing of value to offer the world. My overall emotions continue to improve in the long view, but I still experience much more psychological turmoil than I wish, a mark of how much farther I have still to grow. So the truth is that I am struggling.
However, I am like a cancer patient going through successful chemotherapy. In spite of all the pain and sickness, signs of improving health are very evident. I am on the road to recovery. One can feel miserable while being in a very good place personally. So the truth is that I am doing well, very well, increasingly well. That does not mean that I am feeling happy or content. Sometimes life is just hard (often hard for some of us), but it is well with my soul.
So, I haven’t posted for a while. Kimberly is away in New York leading a retreat for L’Arche members. I’m looking for a second job. I have an interview this Thursday which looks quite promising, a weekend supervisory role. While Kimberly is gone, I’m trying to get a few things done with which to surprise her. Primarily painting the living room a color we agreed on. Finding a close color match has not been as smooth as I expected, so I hope she is okay with the shade. I know she will appreciate not experiencing the fumes and mess that the painting will create.
I conducted the wedding for my sister-in-law and husband weekend before last. It was the first time I met many of my extended family in-laws. I have a new appreciation for destination weddings (this one in Fort Myers, FL). Spending several days with in-laws can create the basis for much quicker assimilation. As I told everyone, this was the first time I felt I was part of the family instead of part of Kimberly’s family. It felt good (though a little stressful to conduct a wedding for an in-law… if it goes badly… which thankfully it didn’t). I did manage to screw up the new name of the couple when I presented them after the kiss, but everyone seemed to be okay with that… after all, a beach wedding tends to be more casual (it was the first time I ever wore a suit in bare feet!) Lots of cameras and lots of photos and video. But I’m having trouble downloading them. I’ll try again later.
I have hinted at the positive direction that Kimberly and I are headed, but some might wonder if it is really worth all the pain and struggle. Believe me, we asked ourselves the same question many times, and for the first year or two of marriage I regularly wondered in the middle of a conflict if we had made a mistake in getting married. But we couldn’t help ourselves. Neither of us felt there was much benefit in a shallow relationship, and the only alternative we knew was to keep going deeper in honest understanding, acceptance, and respect for ourselves and one another.
As we worked through the foundational issues in our conflicting worldviews, some pretty amazing things happened within each of us and in our relationship.
UM... UH... SO ABOUT MY ISSUES.
Nothing has ever affected me so powerfully as being accepted for who I really am right now in all my brokenness (not for what I do, who I project I am, or who I one day will be). It did not come easy for either of us, but I cannot remember a single major conflict in the last two years and Kimberly has difficulty even remembering the hard times. Of course we were on the fast track, often talking 3, 4, even 5 hours a day trying to understand our fear, pain and depression, and each of us had already spent many years working through our own issues.
I could say that it was the best thing to happen to me since I heard the good news of Christ, but that would make it sound like a different thing than the gospel, and Berly is just my clearest experience of the gospel. I discovered God’s grace through her in ways I had never known it before. I want to encourage you with snapshots of my personal healing and growth as a result of our relationship (the changes in Berly are her own story to tell).
You Did WHAT?!
Let me start with my anger. I had been taught in youth that anger was either good (“righteous indignation”) or bad (“the wrath of man”). The difference lay in whether or not the one who exasperated me was truly wrong or guilty. If he was, then my anger was justified, if he was not, then my anger was aberrant. When I got mad, it was someone’s fault–me for illegitimate vexation or him for illegitimate behavior. The most important thing was to discover who was at fault and have them repent. The matter was thus fixed and the relational conflict resolved. If I thought he was at fault, and he refused to admit it, then I would forgive him. To avoid condemnation, I worked hard at justifying my temper and blaming the other person. I was good and he was bad. Being “right” became very important… it was the only way I could save myself from the shame of sinful anger.
Kimberly was afraid of my anger, and given my perspective, when she shared her discomfort, I only heard this as judgment of my anger and reacted defensively. But she did not have my take on anger: She was not blaming me, wanting me to agree with her, or asking me to change. She just wanted to share her feelings with me (which I could only hear as a demand for change). Because she respected me, wanted to understand and accept me, she kept affirming my feelings, even though they scared her, and I gradually came to trust that she really did accept me when I was cross, that she thought my anger was always “legitimate” because it was revealing to me my heart, not the guilt of the other person. As she accepted my defensive feelings in this way, she wanted to understand me better, so when she asked about my aggravation, it was not to correct me, “fix” my rage, or gain ammunition for shaming me out of it. She had compassion for me and my experience of anger.
In this harbor of safety where I slowly grew less defensive about my temper, with less need to use it to protect myself, learning to have compassion for myself, I started to discover what lay beneath my frown. From what was my temper guarding me? To hear these deeper throbs of my heart, I had to embrace my feelings with compassion . If I had to protect myself, it meant that I was afraid. With Kimberly’s help, I learned to have compassion for the fear behind my anger instead of shaming myself for it. Only with this gentleness could I feel safe enough to explore my anxieties. Berly always justified my fears, affirming that they always had a very good reason, I just had to uncover it. Discovering the roots of my fear (which often was a long process) led me to find the substructure, the actual beliefs on which I lived my life, and often they conflicted in some way with my stated theology.
Again, Kimberly’s grace and acceptance gave me the support I needed not to shame myself for these faulty beliefs, but to see myself as the victim of these legalistic lies and to be led by grace into believing grace for myself, to discover that God’s grace was the healing for my fears. My fears were not the enemy. They were doors into grace: “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved,” in the words of John Newton. I had always thought this was a one time event brought about by the amazing grace of the gospel… as though I didn’t need the gospel of grace all through every day. I think working through my fears is a life long process of growth in grace, applying the gospel to each wound as I need it, believing each day more fully that God loves me completely, always, and without any strings attached.
GOOD TO SEE YOU... FINALLY
If Kimberly’s reactions had not provoked mine, I could have avoided my negative feelings and the issues behind them, but I and my relationships would have suffered. I needed her insecurities to push mine out of the shadows. From a hundred examples of this, let me share in this post one of our early conflicts.
When Kimberly and I started dating, she was living in Lynchburg and I in Arlington (of cemetery fame). Once a week I drove the 6 hour round trip to be with her. Occasionally she would drive to Arlington. I went to Lynchburg to spend the day with Kimberly, and I expected she would do the same when she visited me. However, she had other friends in Arlington with whom she wanted to connect. I was disappointed when she went off in the afternoon to visit her friend, and when she came back late for the dinner I was cooking, she could feel the cold winds blowing. I was quiet, polite, distant. She could have just ignored it and I would eventually have warmed up again, but instead she asked what was troubling me. I tried to pass it off, but eventually replied.
Me, a bit resentfully: “You said you were going to be here by 4 o’clock.”
Berly, defensively: “I know, but my friend needed a listening ear. I called you as soon as I could.”
Me, exposing the bigger issue: “When I come to Lynchburg, I spend the whole day with you.”
Berly: “You don’t have any other friends in Lynchburg to see.”
You can imagine the next two hours of conversation as I explained how reasonable my expectations were in the face of her uncaring behavior, and she explained how she could care about me without meeting my expectations. Even though we were both defensive, we tried to hear and understand one another over the cacophony of our feelings. We slowly came to realize that I place a high priority on time spent together, that this is my gauge of how much someone cares about me.
Now, unfortunately, I must digress to clarify how our approach differs from other approaches. Let me first contrast it to the “apologetic fix,” the resolution of choice in my family of origin. The conversation would have gone:
Me, a bit resentfully: “You said you were going to be here by 4 o’clock.”
Berly, apologetically: “I’m so sorry. I should have been here on time,” followed by an effort to be sweeter and more solicitous than usual to win back my favor.
That would be it. We would both feel better. The resulting “peace” would be a sufficient reward, tricking us into thinking we had a healthy, happy relationship. Berly would realize my expectation and shape herself to conform in the future, not out of love (since she was responding to my shaming pressure), but in an effort to keep the peace. She’d “should” on herself to reduce her insecurity in my conditional love.
The second, more discerning approach would simulate our actual conversation, and Kimberly would realize time spent together was my “love language,” so she should do what she could to satisfy this need of mine. That would be the end of it. Conflicts would arise to the extent she failed to meet my expectations, but she would keep trying to adjust, reminding herself of my need and becoming more sensitive to it. This second approach is more healthy because it does not depend on shame as the motivator. In fact, the motivation can be from genuine love if the one who changes can do so without much personal cost (if it does not feed her insecurities). Notice that in both these alternate approaches the resolution is fairly simple and straightforward and depends on conformity to expectations, my underlying insecurities (if there are any) stay hidden and unresolved. The more the
expectation is legitimized, the more the one conforming will see it as an “ought,” and such an obligatory response easily usurps a genuine love response.
Kimberly was unwilling to deny her own needs and feelings to satisfy mine. She stood up for herself in the face of my resentment. This only increased my insecurities about her lack of love for me (as I perceived it), and when my fears were exacerbated, I could see my issues more clearly. I realized that my anger was not a simple reaction to the current situation, but was protecting me from experiencing the underlying raw fear of not being truly loved, not being truly lovable. 
Kimberly could easily relieve my insecurity in relationship to her by spending more time with me, but my fears would remain and continue infecting other relationships. I would keep protecting myself from others by blaming, pressuring, loving conditionally when I felt devalued.
My true need is not for friends to choose my company more often so that I feel loved. Trying to resolve my insecurities at this level will only block access to my deeper need, fears that I am unworthy of love. What is the source of this insecurity, what subconscious ideas are keeping me trapped in fear, how do I bring healing to this fundamental place of need? If I fend off my fears by enticing others to give me more quality time, I will never look for the answer to these questions.
Fortunately, Kimberly’s issues did not allow her to salve mine: if she agreed with me that she was not enough, she would be denying her own needs and feelings. Unfortunately, given my presuppositions, I could not rationally separate loving someone from taking care of them. The first resulted in the second, otherwise it was fake. I did not disagree with Kimberly, I simply did not understand her. But I kept trying until I slowly realized that her gibberish was crucial to the healing of my soul and relationships. I was trapped in a world where others’ responses decided my worth. What I needed was to discover unconditional acceptance, to unhitch my lovability from how others did or did not love me, and hook it to a love that is unwavering and limitless towards me no matter how “unworthy” I may be, a love that is not drawn out more by my worthiness, but that proves my worthiness by loving me despite all.
And I need that divine love shown to me, however limitedly, through the heart of another in my world… the very thing which is Kimberly’s amazing gift. She is committed to accepting me and loving me for who I am, the good and the bad, the broken and partly mended, the prickly and tender. She shows me God as the Gracious One that he is. When I share my fears of being unworthy of love, not as a means to manipulate her, but simply to share vulnerably, it opens wide the flood gates of her compassion for me, and slowly I begin to see that I am lovable despite my many shortcomings, that my woundedness does not invite shame but sympathy. This peace and joy touches the deepest reaches of my heart and begins its healing work.
Something tells me we'll find a way.
Janathan Grace Reflections 