Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Personality is a major organizing force in the development of our worldview, our personal way of making sense of the world and shaping our approach to it. Our natural outlook is not inherently right or wrong as though there is a perfect personality to attain. Rather, God has made us each with our own abilities, roles, emphases, and perspectives so as to offer unique contributions to each other. Every personality comes with its strengths and weaknesses—we offer our strengths as gifts and receive the strengths of others to help with our weaknesses. Like the interlocking hollows and loops in jigsaw puzzle pieces, we come together as a whole. In this way our differences can be a great bond for relationship and a source of insight and growth when handled with mutual respect and validation.
But alternative views are often at odds with our own perspective and so appear meaningless, confusing, or threatening–not understanding how to inter-connect, we knock against each other. I discovered this to be a huge part of the conflicts Kimberly and I had early in marriage. It is not simply that Berly and I disagreed about our boxes of morals, relational expectations, and the like… but that she had no boxes. I was trying to discuss box dimensions and what fit where, and she said, “What boxes?” Without boxes, even “outside the box” thinking doesn’t exist. I am analytical and she is intuitive, I need categories and she needs space, I want clarity and she wants connection. It was the tower of Babel in miniature and without a translator. I didn’t disagree with her individual points, but with her whole system.
The more cohesive my worldview, the stronger and more stable it is, like the many separate strands a spider weaves into a web, and in a well-integrated system, when one strand is touched, everything is set jangling, so trying to incorporate a perspective at odds with one element threatens the whole. For instance, Kimberly said she was hurt by my words, but was not blaming me. That made no sense in my world where pain was proof of fault–either she was too sensitive or misunderstood me or I was too insensitive. We had to establish responsibility so we could figure out how to fix it. She wanted to share, I wanted to fix.
I can see the benefit of her view: sharing puts us both on the same side of the issue, blaming sets us up against each other. But that one idea threatened my whole system. Is no one responsible for anything? That would be chaos. Or do we let everyone determine their own standards? That would be war. Trying to integrate her one idea raised a hundred questions about good and evil, spirituality, relationships, God… the whole enchilada. I was tempted to find a slot to squeeze her idea into, validate her perspective by twisting it to fit my worldview. In this case, between my boxes of “hurt blamed on speaker” and “hurt blamed on listener” I could add a box of special cases, “no-fault pain.” The threat is quelled and my system holds together, but at what price? I fail to truly understand my wife or to stretch and grow in any substantial way. My system is fundamentally challenged, but I shunt the new idea onto a side-railing where I can occasionally access it for special use with my wife. But getting savvy about word choice to avoid conflict is hardly the same as real understanding, acceptance, and validation.
To truly understand Berly, I had to understand her from within her own worldview, not as addenda to mine. To validate her, I had to find a way to also appreciate her worldview. To benefit from her view, I had to find a way to make her ideas meaningful and important, to make room in my system for who she is and how she sees the world… in other words to change my worldview by valuing and incorporating her perspective. It took years and was not smooth sailing, but love finds a way, and it changed me for the better in a hundred ways.
As I unpack the baggage from my travels through life, I see that some of it came pre-packed, some I added by choice or accident, and some was dropped into my suitcases by other hands. I’m regularly surprised by what I find–why is this here and where did it come from? I look for the answers by reflecting back on the interplay of family values, personalities, coping strategies, roles, relational dynamics, and assorted other influences in my growing-up years. This is a large part of my blog posts since I started, but I’m narrowing down the focus just now to the greatest influence, my dad.
Dad and I are similar in some aspects and dissimilar in others, and that discrepancy and how we have each responded to it is a huge part of our story. Perhaps most fundamental to our differences is our personalities–I am a typical melancholic and he is a typical choleric. Generally speaking, life is straightforward for him and complex for me; he is an actor and I am a ruminator; he is confident, clear, decisive and I am uncertain, questioning, hesitant. In his conscious thinking and acting in the world, his emotions are peripheral, and life seems to work best for him when he keeps them in their place. He is largely unaware of his subconscience and the role it plays in his life and has little ability or interest in investigating that realm. In contrast, my emotions speak to me loudly and constantly, alerting me to many aspects of my subconscious world and how it affects me, my perspective, my work, and my relationships. He enjoys life most when he is doing something worthwhile and succeeding at it; I enjoy life most when I am gaining personal insight and growing. In an open conversation, he likes to discuss plans, projects, accomplishments, what is happening in the world, and I like to talk about our internal worlds, what is happening in my heart and yours.
We can only see the world from where we stand, it only makes sense to us from our own perspective, which is heavily colored by our experiences, values, and, yes, personalities. We can expand our viewpoint by trying to hear deeply and appreciatively another’s perspective, but it still remains our own particular perspective. I experience certain things as comforting, stimulating, painful, supportive, frightening, encouraging, and I assume others experience them as I do. It is hard to see all of this as particular to me because they feel like universal norms. When the reactions of others differ from mine, I ascribe their fears to cowardice, their pleasures to immaturity, their anger to an irascible nature. In short, if they see the world differently, they are wrong. This myopia is especially hard to escape when it dovetails with our culture and significant others whose views are constantly reinforcing our own.
In a father-son relationship, the father is in the driver’s seat, so it is his personality which becomes key to the relationship, and to the extent his boy’s personality differs, the dad struggles to comprehend the world from that perspective. The more the father sees his own view as the correct universal one, the less he can understand, appreciate, and validate his children in the ways they differ from him. It is always difficult to appreciate a point of view that clashes with our own, but it’s especially hard for parents, who carry the heavy responsibility of guiding their kids, especially for those of my father’s generation, especially for those with less reflective personalities.
All in all my dad did the best he could, which is all we can ask of any father, all that even God himself asks. But don’t suppose that all goes well when everyone does their best. This broken world is filled with jagged edges, including our own shards. If we are to relate at all, we must relate as fractured people, cutting and bruising each other unintentionally and even against our best efforts to be careful and kind. Good, healthy relationships are profoundly healing, but even between best friends muck gets kicked loose. In the end it will all work out for the best if we can stumble through the slough to a better place, a place of greater maturity and deeper, truer connection. It is often in digging through the muck that we strike the truth that was buried beneath.
“There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen
My father has thousands of admirers and followers and a well established public persona through his writing and speaking and professional relationships, an image that has slowly coalesced over time through the collaboration of thousands of voices of readers and listeners, students and colleagues. It is a fair enough rendition–dad had no secret fatal-flaw, no mistress or addiction or off-shore account, nothing for scum-mongers to dig up–but it lacks the depth and complexity, the humanness, that dissenting voices might bring. We elevate heroes to inspire and guide us, but someone larger than life cannot be a realistic model for us frail humans.
A son (or daughter) is more poised than other voices to offer an honest rendition of someone’s life from a place of intimate and extended knowledge. But the public and private records are not primarily competing for accuracy because they actually are records of very different things. A child’s telling is an altogether different story of a public figure, as different as a tale of my truck Bernie versus the dealership’s glossy of the Ford F250.
Mine is not only a different story, but a unique perspective. We are always the central figure in our life’s stories, so the account I give of my relationship with my dad says more about me than about him, but our stories are so closely intertwined that the more I understand him, the more I understand myself, both in ways that I am like him and ways that I am different. Every year I discover important aspects of who I am and why, uncover tensions between conflicting values, recognize cracks in my foundation that have undermined my growth, and many of these insights come from reflecting on my childhood. If this journey of reflection and discovery interests you, then hop on board.
Note of Clarification: My goal here is not eulogy but discovery, not praise but insight, so these posts may not be what you are looking for. This is more the reflection of a son on his relationship with his father, and to that end, his public persona is a distraction from his role as an “everyman” father. His admirers may be frustrated and disappointed by what they find here.
A couple of days ago I received the same one-line email from my dad about 20 minutes apart, the second with an apology in case he already sent it and forgot. He turns 88 in September and this summer his short-term memory has started to lapse appreciably. As his memory fades, he slowly loses parts of himself that will never return, gone forever, except as those thoughts and perspectives, emotional reactions, explanations and stories carry on in the lives of his children, adopted or adapted consciously or unconsciously. Like physical DNA, family culture is passed down generation to generation–reproductions of the mind–and the most persistent are those aspects least noticed or recognized. When a man dies, or loses his mind, he is not lost to this earth. His voice and thoughts and outlook persevere in those he has touched, most profoundly in his children, like data downloaded from an old to a new computer (though the updated software may configure it differently).
None of us are “self-made” people, but each is made up of bits and pieces of everyone who has impacted our lives, directly or indirectly. In a real sense our memories are not our own, springing up from our independent interaction with our environment. We do not experience the world in isolation, but see it through the eyes of significant others who dramatically shape our valuations, expectations, and understandings. Even as individuals we are radically communal in nature–I am not simply “I”, but the self that I perceive is largely composed of others, a mosaic, a smorgasbord partly chosen by me and partly plopped onto my plate without my knowledge or choice. We are all creative, coming up with our own unique elements of self, but even a genius borrows most of the building blocks of his invention from others who passed on to him the wheel, lever, and axle.
This gives each of us great advantages in life, but it also creates life-long cumbrances: we are given both wings and chains, and we can only find our way to a better place personally and corporately by identifying and taking apart each aspect of the heritage we have been given to determine if it benefits or binds. Some would suggest that we honor our elders by remembering and praising their attributes and passing over their failings, but that certainly isn’t the Bible’s approach to the heroes it lauds. It is only true honor of another to acknowledge the whole of who they are, anything else is only honoring a false representation. Remembering the dark side of each person gives them the 3 dimensional character of a real person, though we should see that side with eyes of love and patience, understanding and humility… especially humility since we always fall short of accurately estimating others (our memories are all tainted).
I offer those few paragraphs as an introduction to an exploration I want to take into my father’s legacy in my own life, to use the impact I felt from him to pull apart and consider how that has shaped me into the person I am and want to be, an ongoing blog series.
Irritation has been bubbling over for the last few days, quick sparks of anger at things and people that don’t work right. This morning I wanted to heave the piece of 2×4 in my hand through the TV screen. I pictured Kimberly seeing the broken set and asking what happened and my anger then turning on her. I have too much sense to actually break anything valuable or start unnecessary quarrels, but my imagination runs wild with clubs and bricks, torches and car crashes. And my anger, bridled and checked though it is, still leaks out in an unresponsive, tight face.
Ongoing irritation is always a tell that I’ve got a burr in my soul. Sometimes I can find it and pluck it out, but other times it is hidden down in some forgotten niche. A sharp emotional memory was poked, some reminder of past failures or insults, and it threw me into defensive mode to parry the assault on my sense of worth… but the picture faded before I recognized it and only the feeling remains.
Lord knows I have enough failings in my past to keep me trapped in shame for the rest of my days: memories that sting every time they rise up to my consciousness–people I have hurt or ignored, good advice I scorned, blindness to obvious faults, arrogance and criticism and foolishness of a hundred kinds. I have discovered that I can only apply grace and forgiveness specifically, a balm for a particular wound. For best results, I need to identify the thing that is niggling my heart and bring that to be bathed in God’s love.
A parent or spouse may say, “I don’t care what you have done, I love you anyway,” but we fear that if she knew THIS evil of ours, it would create a barrier to her heart. Something whispers inside us, “She only loves me because she doesn’t know how bad I have been.” We need to hear the words of God’s grace applied to each individual failing, for as many times as it rears its accusing head in condemning us. It is so reassuring to show Him that fault with our doubts, and hear his resounding, “Yes, I love you still!” Blanket forgiveness is a weak alternative to working through the details of our wrongs both internally and inter-personally.
But sometimes like today I don’t know the cause. Perhaps it was a slowly accumulating list of smaller incidents or a subconscious sting, a dart that zipped through my heart leaving behind only the pain. It is hard even to love myself if I don’t know what is blocking that self-compassion, to look that specific failing in the face and say to my heart, “Yes, you are still loveable in spite of your brokenness.” Unlike shame, grace calls us to grow better from a place of full acceptance rather than out of a striving for acceptance.
I think part of my problem is failing to deal fully with each remorse as it occurs, but instead feeling bad about it and then letting it fade into the random fog of my emotional context. I should rather recognize the full weight of it on my soul and take the effort to deconstruct and sort out the turmoil stirring beneath. I will take some time to do that now with the last few days cache of self-blaming, a very bad habit of mine.
I woke up today with a sweet dog snuggled up to me and a loving God looking down on me with a good-morning smile. I lay there talking with Him for some time, and then sat up and all the good feelings drained away like cascading water. This is a regular occurrence, and I’m not sure what to make of it.
I’m like an emotional preschooler, unable to understand my own emotions–what I feel and why I feel that way. I have the emotional theory down pretty well, but like passing a written driver’s test, knowing the answers on an exam doesn’t help much behind the wheel. Trying to interpret the principles into practice is still largely a conundrum for me. I’m not sure approaching it like a science is the best route anyway. If I thoroughly studied gravity, balance, muscular response and tried to apply that knowledge to learning to ride a bicycle, I think I would find it more a hindrance than a help.
But that analogy fails to capture the complexity and variability of emotions, and the experiential feedback I get is not like falling off a bike—it is not immediate, clear, and simple. Occasionally I know straight off that I got it right–that my gentle response to a harsh retort came from a healthy place and felt emotionally rewarding. But that immediate and clear reading of my heartbeat is rare and comes after a great deal of struggle, trial, and slowly growing insight into some facet of my heart. Often my response is partially unhealthy (which part, and how?) and my emotions are conflicted–a dash of fear, a sprinkle of false guilt, a slather of confusion, a pinch of hope.
We all ride bikes the same, but our emotions play out uniquely for each of us. So we learn basic principles about emotions, but using them to understand ourselves (and others) is a complex skill that must be learned the long, hard way by practice, regularly skinning our knees and running into things in the process. It takes fearlessness, tenacity, and commitment.
Had I been taught as a child to notice, validate, understand and respond affirmatively to my feelings, I think I would have learned the process and developed the skills by now. In our inescapably fallen world, I was rather shaped by society directly as well as through its influence in my family and playmates to ignore, judge, and control my feelings. Anger was forbotten, sadness was curtailed, fear was mocked. Meanwhile love, hope, and joy were pushed as the acceptable feelings to manufacture and share. And in turn I too became a spinner of these lies. In short, a great deal has to be unlearned and long-ingrained reflexes untaught, in the process of discovering what is true and good for our hearts. So we misplace our true selves early in life and get further lost with our borrowed and faulty compass and map.
What might come naturally, like learning to walk, now requires much deeper insight to untangle our confused legs, clear up our bleary eyesight, and reorient our backwards direction. Unlearning is far more difficult and involved than learning fresh from scratch. The whole outlook must be re-oriented before individual bad habits can be addressed and a healthy direction taken, and all of this must be done in the face of constant opposition from the world around us.
Society says, “Don’t worry, be happy!” and ostracizes us when we frown. The church agrees with “Worry is a sin against faith!” and judges us if we share our fears, especially tenacious fears. How then can we find a way to validate our own experience and feelings, to be understanding and empathetic with ourselves? It often feels as though we are on our own, swimming against a very strong current.
So I write this to those of you on this long journey with me because it is so easy to get discouraged and lose hope. The road to recovery seems to be so hard and take so long. Weariness and doubt and confusion drag down our resolve and steal our hope. Let those of us who wish to take this way encourage one another. I believe in you!
If your life is happy or satisfying so that simply living feels good and worthwhile or if your life is integral to something that you believe is an important endeavor, then life has meaning for you. I have lacked the first for twenty years and the second for ten years. It makes me feel lost, directionless, without purpose. I cannot make sense of my life. Why am I here? The only goal-oriented living I do is my personal growth. But for various reasons that doesn’t seem a focus I can organize my whole life around… for one thing, it is self-absorbed. I feel like a screw that is always sharpening its threads and point but never being used to screw things together.
Many would suggest that our purpose is to be connected to God, but unless I became a monk (and I’m sure Kimberly would object with good reason), I’m not sure how to organize my life around that either–that objective describes the person with whom I do life more than the activities that fill up my life.
The old Calvinist theology of “calling” suggests not only that one may have a purpose, but that it is a purpose for which God planned, designed, and equipped us, not one randomly chosen. After all a screw might decide to act as a light bulb, but that would have obvious drawbacks.
In that regard, I do feel particularly equipped and effective at preaching/teaching, but I have no avenues for exercising that gift… and have almost no emotional energy for seeking them out. So, it seems I must become emotionally energized (and I’m at a loss to know how) or some opportunity must be dropped in my lap. Neither of those has happened in ten years. So I sit waiting, filing my little threads. Perhaps the right moment will come, or perhaps I will die of old age waiting. But the question remains, “What is the point of it all?” as I daily suffer the sharp pain of feeling useless to a vast, needy world.
A video on bullying I watched today sparked memories of my own childhood spent running from troublemakers at recess. Only once was I seriously punched and had to go to the emergency room for stitches (my right eyebrow still has a slight split on the outside corner). But harassment was constant during gym class and recess–I was pushed, punched, threatened, chased, tripped, mocked. There were other danger zones as well: the lunch room, the hallway, the breezeway waiting for our school bus, and the bus ride itself was tormenting, bad enough that I started riding my bike the 10-mile round trip to middle school. Among boys, the only mark of prowess was aggression… and girls were liked for their looks.
Kids reflect the values of a culture with a clarity unobscured by the social camouflage that adults master. That’s why I like children’s books–bold, plain, and real. Because of family values, I admired intellect as a boy, but that was the stuff of nerds, not heroes. The lead actors from all my favorite TV shows punched and shot and muscled their way into glory… and they always got the pretty girl (first prize). Of course, their violence was validated by the justness of their cause, though that cause was usually self-defense, an arguably selfish motive were it not juxtaposed against the villainy of the other. The “other” was evil, right down to the color of his clothes.
Aside from the cowboys and cops and colonels, we had a few “nice guy” actors, but no one aspired to be Andy Griffith–you liked him but didn’t want to emulate him. Pacifists were cowards, courage was in the fists. The hero never picked a fight, but always finished it by beating his opponent into submission. Be it kung fu or fighter jets, we all admired the warrior, not the lover, who was just a wimp if he showed up without his six-shooters. The ultimate virtue was conquest, not love… even love was gained by conquest.
And so I set about life as a loser determined to fight my way into the trophy circle. My goals slowly shifted from physical prowess to spiritual prowess, but success was still my path to prove my worth. I focused all my energy to become a champion for God, which is to say, having a wide impact on others. Success is just as strong an addiction as gambling, even if you’re not a winner… especially if you’re not a winner. But unlike other addictions, it reaps praise, not shame, and moral validation, not warning, both from the world at large and from the church itself.
Cultural values that co-opt religious faith are the most pernicious and blinding of our defects. When church and society link arms, escape is nearly impossible, and far from looking for an exit, us losers are desperate to launch ahead. Unfortunately, as success grows, it clogs up the opening for grace. Success would have obviated my need for grace, a pitfall of all self-made men, even those who ostensibly credit God. But grace blocked my chase after success. It shackled me to loser-hood until I was forced to admit that my accomplishments don’t validate me. Apparently God doesn’t need my efforts any more than a father needs the help of his 3-year-old to change a tire. The toddler is not valued because of what he does, but who he is–a son.
Success still holds a little place in the corner of my heart–just in case–sort of like the spot reserved for a Porsche convertible that someone’s rich uncle might give me. Both daydreams would likely be a burden rather than a blessing. I trust God’s path for me, and I’m content just to hold his hand… most days anyway.
My constant refrain this year past, muttered or sighed or groaned: “I am SO tired!” Many times every day and out loud to myself–in the kitchen, on walks, at work, and even in my mind as I spot tasks that stare grumpily at me, like the window air-conditioner sitting on our coffee table that I brought up from the basement two days back. I’ve barely managed to keep up with life: washing clothes and then leaving them in the laundry basket to fish out for work, while I dump dirty clothes on the floor next to it; watering plants just before they die, or not; cooking raw meat just before it rots. I’ve dropped other things after dragging them around mentally like a ball and chain, such as the $8 rebate from Ace Hardware that expired… well I actually didn’t give up on that, it just ran out before I mailed it in. Unfortunately, I never give up on things. I just accumulate them like sandburrs on bare feet.
I could sit here on the living room sofa and write a discouraging list of tasks that I can literally see from here: A dvd player to take to Goodwill–it’s been sitting accusingly at the end of the loveseat for two weeks; an old external hard drive to process, walnuts in a coffee container that need shelling, now practically buried behind accumulating paperwork, books, and other stuff that needs to be sorted and resolved; a briefcase full of files and lists neglected for many months; a dime-sized food stain on the sofa arm under my wrist that needs cleaning–it has been there for two months; and the latest addition–insulation that arrived yesterday, now propped against the wall, that needs to be hung in the attic. I’m not even mentioning the things that are in the room but just out of sight–I am fully aware of them–out of sight out of mind is a laughable proverb for those with a mind like my own. I haven’t even touched on the cars, yard, basement, shed, office–a thousand obligations wrap like Lilliputian threads around me. I could cut off the least important hundred tasks and make no difference to the overall affect.
Mind you, I go to work every day, pay my bills and mortgage on time, walk the dogs, take out the trash, shop and cook enough to keep us fed adequately, mow the lawn, exercise, wash my clothes. In other words, I am a normally functioning human, which seems enough for most folks. I’m amazed at the ability others have to simply ignore their overflowing in-boxes. Something needs to change in my outlook on life, somehow to live under the flow of grace in a way that releases me from this constant weight of obligation. For all the work I have put into grasping this principle over many years, one would think I would have found freedom by now. Even learning grace seems to be such an arduous, long-term effort–my thoughts, my habits, my feelings slide so easily back into my old ways. That sounds so wrong-headed even in saying it… shouldn’t grace be easy by definition? Law is so deeply engrained in my soul. It stains every thought to the roots. Well, let me celebrate each baby step and not add insult to injury by condemning my lack of growth in grace. It will come, it will take time, and this post is one more reminder to myself to re-orient my soul in line with God’s unconditional acceptance.
Monday I was hiking with my doggies in the Blue Ridge Mountains and noticed my neck cramping on one side. To stretch out the kinks I started rolling and rotating my head, wondering what I’d done to my neck. And then it dawned on me. instead of pulling ahead as usual, Mazie and Mitts had fallen in behind me, and as the path was narrow, I held both leashes in one hand. My right arm swung freely, but my left arm was pulled back by the leads, and over a couple of miles that tension worked its way up to my neck.
I spent decades paying little attention to my body, and so harming it. I have only learned in the last few years to listen to this complex, integrated structure–I would never have guessed that a sore neck could come from an arm slightly skewed. When an injury’s throb is felt in a separate body part, it is called “referred pain.” Those are the trickiest to self-diagnose and so misleading that the real problem often escapes us.
During those years I listened no better to my psyche than my body. I shouted down my feelings and became emotionally deaf, unable to decipher its most rudimentary language. Emotions were to be embraced, vanquished or transmuted according to an accepted moral code. I thought every feeling was a straightforward response to external stimuli. My anger was incited by “stupid” drivers. My anxiety was the result of critical bosses. My shame was the direct product of my tardiness. Emotional “referred pain” was not even a speck of consideration… until the conventional interpretations became so convoluted in the telling that even I recognized something was fishy. They rang false, though I couldn’t detect the crack in the bell. It was my indecipherable, unrelenting depression that forced me to finally admit my emotional cluelessness and rethink my psychological map.
I discovered that my pride was tangled up with fear, my affection enmeshed with insecurity, and a seeming calm and patience was simply an emotional disconnect to protect myself. I realized that my anger ignited from inside, not outside, that it was a cover-up for shame, and my shame was grounded in a legalistic denial of grace. It was all so much more complex than I realized, but this self-reflection, softened by grace, opened me to a remarkable level of integrity and clarity and personal growth. My whole sense of spirituality and relationships was reorganized. I finally had the tools I needed for fundamental transformation instead of the spiritual strictures of a flawed system.
I have been working for years to learn my emotional ABCs. Slowly I untangled the knots so that patterns stood out in relief and dynamics materialized. What is the real reason for these feelings? What leads me to freedom and understanding rather than fear and blindness? What does my soul need in the way of support? What pulls it down or picks it up? I wonder–do any cultures teach their children to be heart-interpreters rather than heart-controllers?
Janathan Grace Reflections 