Janathan Grace Reflections   This is my journey of self discovery shared with you

Welcome to my world!  I hope you find here an open invitation to an honest journey, a story of struggle and hope, of pain and grace.  I hope you find this place safe enough to share genuinely about your own joys and fears, growth and heartache.

Because I want this to be an interactive community, I have decided to move here from Xanga where you must jump through hoops to leave a comment.  I am blessed in being able to share.  It helps me think more clearly and connects me at a deeper level with others.  I am also greatly blessed when others share with me.  So come sit down and visit for a while!

After some 6-8 weeks on a generic form of Prozac, I found myself with far more energy than I have had in many years.  My fears that I would lose touch with my feelings was proven false, at least for me.  I actually have more emotional space now to be more connected to my feelings, so it has inspired a new round of self reflection and growth.  It has been a lungful of fresh air… not perfect….  I still struggle with depression regularly, but that seems to me to be a good thing because the source of my depression is an ungracious paradigm or framework out of which I have operated all my life. I need to connect with the resulting emotions so that I can identify my self-criticism (which is constantly at work in my subconscious), and apply grace to a wider scope of my life and perspective.  Since a very young child, I have been severely limited in my ability to bring grace to bear at the deeper levels of my heart. 

At first the limitation came from being clueless about my true feelings.  My sense of failure in Calcutta and the resulting clinical depression fifteen years ago broke through that blindness to my deepest needs and their remedy in the grace of God.  For many of us, unfelt needs are far more significant and life-shaping than felt needs.  As I do everything whole-heartedly, for the last decade I have been on this rigorous journey of self-discovery and grace discovery.  I realized the problem and solution correctly, but I knew myself so little that I was greatly hindered in this journey.  Instead of moving from a law to grace perspective, I tended to simply refocus all my energies and obligations on knowing myself and grace better.  In other words, I was still mostly operating out of a foundational legalism.  I continued to “should” all over myself and drive myself to discover grace!  Like trying to vigorously fan a weak flame into life, it tended more often to blow it out. 

I continued to operate (unknowingly) out of a motivation of obligation and with great effort (both of which are inimical to grace).  I knew my house was broken and why it was broken, but I kept using the same broken tools in trying to rebuild it.  I think this is often inevitable, because when we realize our need for grace, our history is not erased (the tools are not exchanged for others, but must themselves be slowly rectified).  Regeneration gives us the power to be transformed, but growth in grace is a lifelong process.  I find that I can only apply grace effectively to the self-condemnation which I recognize, and I was out of touch with most of those subconscious views.  When the problem is not what you are seeing, but what you are seeing with, it is very hard to identify clearly, like using my eyes to evaluate what is behind my eyes or seeing a vast landscape without noticing the perch I stand on. 

At times that submerged perspective broke through (and still does) to the level of my consciousness.  Often I only notice a particular moment of dis-grace.  If I am able to give that moment my attention and reflection, I will gradually be more open and aware of those hints to my underlying outlook until I identify a pattern of self-condemnation that needs the salve of grace.  This often comes as an “aha!” moment.

My wife Kimberly laughs at how much I talk out loud to myself… carry on snatches of conversation actually.  I was so accustomed to thinking out loud in this way that I didn’t hear myself doing it.  But one day I realized that every time I make a mistake I say to myself (occasionally out loud), “Dummy!”or some other pejorative.  [At this very moment I suddenly remembered that my dad has always done that to himself, and anger is tied to this for both of us… but I will leave that for another time.]  I started becoming more aware, especially when I said it out loud, and began correcting that damaging view.  But quite recently I awoke to the truth that this was not just an occasional word of self-hatred, but only an occasional siting of an ever present self-condemnation over mistakes.  I had not only recognized a pattern, but the underlying sinkhole of dis-grace, and it makes me alert to more and more occasions of self-condemnation.

When I notice those destructive thoughts, my personal conversation goes like this:  Me: “I am not a dummy.  Making mistakes is human and everyone inevitably makes many all through life.  There are humans and angels (a perfect non-human), but at least this side of heaven you have no other option than being a flawed human.  God created us as limited, fallible creatures, and he looked at us and said, “very good!” Alter-ego: “He said that before the fall of mankind.  You are severely flawed.  He is disappointed in you.”  Me: “Yes I have many flaws, but God loves me all the more in my failures.”  Alter-ego, “Well sure he loves you, but don’t you believe he has expectations in which you are miserably failing?”  Me: “Your idea of love is a lie!  It suggests that God’s love is conditional, that it vacillates based on our behavior.  God loves me completely, unalterably, unhesitatingly, unceasingly!”  This conversation will go on as long as I need it to, until grace wins my heart.  Sometimes I need to get the help of others to stand up for me, for God’s grace–to declare me loved fully despite any situation–since in my most vulnerable places I cannot stand up adequately for myself, that is, I cannot embrace grace because my self-condemnation is too strong. I had a year of counseling to do just that, and would have kept it up if I had not moved across state and halved my salary.  But what I got in return (my wife) was a far greater blessing.

I have not posted in two months because I have been struggling with depression more than usual, and when I am in that place, I only have energy for the essentials.  It took me two months to figure out why I was struggling.  I should have figured it out the first week, but after a lifetime of emotional neglect, I find it very difficult to identify problems that crop up. 

I currently work at a private college library (Lynchburg College) supervising student workers.  The job is not only part time (28-30 hours), but is only for the school year, so I was furloughed over Christmas (and will be over summer).  To make up for the winter drop in income, I took a part time job cleaning up some organizational messes at my previous employment.  I knew I didn’t like the job, but it took me 6 weeks to figure out that it was also pulling down my whole life experience.  Thankfully, it was a temporary setup anyway.

The last 15 years of my life I have been depressed, and though I did all I could to get free, nothing restored my soul.  For 10 years now I have considered taking medication.  At first I was reluctant because of the stigma (both from a religious perspective as well as a professional one).  After working my way through that barrier, I was reluctant because I thought it might distance me from my own emotions and so make it more difficult to grow more healthy.  I was also reluctant to become dependent on meds, and to drive up insurance costs (on applications they always ask).  But 4 weeks ago I finally decided to give medication a try.  I understand it takes quite a bit of trying to find the right one, so we will see how it goes.  I am hopeful, though so far I’ve experienced no significant changes.  I would ask for the prayers of those who believe in prayer (and the well-wishes of those who don’t).

My wife passed on to me this letter written by one of L’Arche’s extended family members.  I’m sure sorrow is and will be a big part of their journey, but the part described here was uplifting for me to hear.

Hello to all,

It’s funny how people in general insist that they are in control of the direction of their life.  We are just as guilty of this mentality as anyone else.  Our life might be compared to a car ride – with Patrick driving and Lisa in the passenger seat reading the road map.  Should we go North or South?  East or West?  So we consult our map and make a decision, Patrick hits the gas, turns the wheel, and off we go in the direction we planned for ourselves.  How mistaken this view is!  The reality is that we are the children in the backseat, playing with our pretend steering wheels, not even able to see over the seat in front of us!  So who is driving this car we call life?  Our Faith tells us that God is in charge of which road we take.  Sure, we might tell him what our plans are, which way we’d prefer to go, but He ultimately decides the fate of our journey.  Our challenge is to accept the path He chooses for us, and find peace and joy along the way.  So why are we sharing this with you? Well, it seems that God has decided to take us around the bend in the road that we would not have chosen for ourselves.     

We’d like to introduce you to our daughter, Annalisa.  We’ve attached a picture of our last ultrasound.  It was taken on Monday, October 25th and we hope you all will be able to view it.  At the time of the ultrasound, Lisa was 20 weeks pregnant.  In our eyes and God’s eyes, Annalisa is beautiful and perfect and God has something special in mind for her.  With that said, our daughter has a tough road ahead of her.  The ultrasound was with genetic specialist Dr. Jane Corteville from Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, and was very extensive.  Here is what she found:

Annalisa is very small for her gestational age.  She is measuring in the 5th percentile for size, with her head coming in at the 1st percentile.  She has a growth on the back of her head, as well as a cyst inside her brain.  She has a cleft lip and palate and a hole in her heart.  In addition, the arteries going to her heart are reversed, she is missing her right kidney and stomach, and she has club feet.  Dr. Corteville suspects an underdeveloped brain and that a chromosomal abnormality is causing all these defects.  We’ve done an amniocentesis and are waiting for the results.  However, the doctor has cautioned us that whatever the diagnosis, the chances of Annalisa overcoming all these birth defects are slim. 

So what can we expect?  At this point, it’s difficult to see around this bend that God has guided us toward.  Most likely we can expect Annalisa to survive to delivery.  Beyond that, the outlook is not favorable.  It’s not hard to surmise the life expectancy of a baby with a list of problems like that. 

So where do we go from here?  There is a freedom in acceptance.  We now must put our trust in God.  We simply need to sit back, relax, and let Him steer our car around this bend in the road.  Our challenge is to find peace with this path that’s been chosen for us.  Our way to peace is to celebrate the joy that Annalisa brings to our life now.  She is our daughter and she is indeed a miracle of life.  When we think of her, we do smile.  When she kicks in the womb, we rejoice.  We talk about her to others with pride.  And when she is born, we will hold her in our arms and love her.

We appreciate your prayers and support.

With love,
Patrick, Lisa, Landon, and Annalisa

I sometimes come across inspirational stories or provocative ideas that I want to share.  Check out his website if you are interested.

Ransome lived down the street from me when I was a small boy. He was a friend of sorts. We competed over everything and it must have appeared to onlookers that we were more foes than friends. Ransome was athletic. He could chin himself on a bar fifty or sixty times. I struggled (with sweaty palms) to lift myself over the bar even once. He could run fast, faster than any kid his age. I was slow, a turtle of sorts; the kind of kid who always got caught in a game of tag. Ransome had fabulous eye-hand coordination. He could catch baseballs thrown by older kids and was often invited to join their pick-up teams. I closed my eyes whenever a baseball was thrown too hard. I was rarely asked to join the older boy’s teams (and was usually glad for it). Ransome caught the only baseball I ever hit toward the center field fence. He said I had the weakest swing of any kid in the neighborhood and from that day on, I never wanted to play baseball again.

Ransome was smart too. He knew facts about everything and always managed to correct me when I least wanted to be corrected. I remember telling a little girl (who I secretly loved) that several of the U.S. presidents were born in Europe. He corrected me and called me an “idiot.” In truth, none of the U.S. presidents were born outside of the United States. Ransome was right (again). I was wrong (again). On those occasions when I did know something of importance, Ransome always said, “I could have told you that.”

I was jealous of Ransome. I tried to defeat him on the playing field but he was always one move better, one leg faster. I tried to defeat him in school, but he was always a little smarter. Ransome seemed one better at everything.

And then one day I visited Ransome’s house in the middle of the afternoon. Ransome’s mother was sitting in her night clothes on the living room sofa. She spoke of lewd things, awful things, dark things. It was clear she was drunk. She told Ransome that she was ashamed of him because he had forgotten to clean his room and that his father was a loser. I saw on Ransome’s face an indescribable shame and horror. I saw his head drop and for the first time in my life, I saw in his eyes defeat. From that moment on, I no longer wanted to defeat Ransome. I could see clearly that his competitiveness on the playing field and in the classroom was a way of avoiding his trouble at home. At a very early age, Ransome was trying to answer a question we all must answer: if I am not good at what I do, if I am not successful, will I be loved?

From “The Man with a Black Belt in Intellect” by David Pitonyak

Click to access BlackBelt2.pdf

I often feel as though I am in some information backwater hole.  I heard for the first time today about The Book of Awesome that has been on the NY Times bestseller list for most of 2010 and about the author’s related internet site voted international blog of the year.  When I heard his TED talk, I found Neil to be quite articulate and funny.  It made me think.  (I know, I know, dog hair and crumpled paper make me think).  

Neil tells us of two huge sorrows that happened a month apart–his wife told him that she didn’t love him anymore and his best friend committed suicide.  He became quite sad and needed something to improve his outlook, so he started his blog (1000 awesome things) to remind himself of the good things in life, simple things like naps and french fries.  In the face of life’s tragedies, he recommended that we focus more on positive things, even small positive things, to counter-balance the negatives.  Though his message was upbeat, I felt disconcerted by his sudden shift in perspective from thousands dying in an earthquake in Haiti to his joy in putting on fresh, warm underwear.  I do not fault Neil, who was given 18 minutes to speak on a narrow topic.  He had little time to develop or nuance his thoughts.  Besides, he seems like a nice guy.  Still his talk raises many questions for me.  PLEASE give me your thoughts!  (If I’ve given too many questions, just pick one or just give your general impressions.  My point is to open a dialogue.)  My assumption is that thinking about small joys is generally beneficial, but may have limitations (especially if we expect too much of it).  Try to be kind and humble in your responses (or pretend to be!).  Here goes:

To what extent and in what ways do pleasant thoughts (positive thinking) help or hinder our strength, growth, and relationships… and thereby our happiness? 

To what extent and in what ways do unpleasant thoughts (thoughts that come with sadness) help or hinder our strength, growth, and relationships… and thereby our happiness? 

Can simple joys (or profound joys) compensate for tragedies or do they just help us not sink too low?  What is “too low,” how would we describe it, and why is it beneficial to avoid?  

Is it possible to take positive thinking too far?  If so, what negatives might result? 

If positive thinking is not sufficient in itself to resolve our emotional response to tragedy, what do we need in addition?

And finally a more specific question: how can we tell when a focus on the positive is feeding denial?

I live in constant fear.  My closest friends don’t see it… or rather didn’t see it.  Now I have no close friends but my wife.  I cannot have close friends.  I am too vulnerable after connecting with my long suppressed fears.  I need real and deep friendships, but the more genuine they are, the more vulnerable I become, and the gentlest touch to raw flesh is shockingly painful.  It seems an unsolvable dilemma: my wounds need the healing hands of compassion, but every human touch is imperfect in its love, and that imperfection inflames the wound.  Instead of relieving my anxiety, relationships provoke them further.

I am frightened that others will not accept me for who I am, a fear (I might add) that has been repeatedly confirmed.  Who I am, as I am today in all my imperfections, is bound to hurt others.  I can be critical, impatient, unthoughtful, angry, selfish, unsympathetic.  My friends, relatives, and acquaintances don’t like this (who would?–I dislike it myself).  They like the good parts, but don’t like the bad parts, and they have many subtle or straightforward ways of telling me to bring the good stuff into our relationship, but leave the rest at home.  The more sensitive I am, the more easily my overall experience feels like one of rejection.  Even if someone is 95 percent affirming, that 5 percent will scream loud enough to drown out the rest, and my imagination can constantly manufacture clues of rejection when none is intended.  To the degree I connect with my own feelings of inadequacy, to that extent I am open to being crushed by conditional love… and all human love is conditional.

Most of my life I protected myself by denying my own distress, which is another way of saying I denounced and rejected who I really was.  The less I accepted myself for the flawed person I was, the less I accepted the faults of others, and their defensiveness to this increased my fear, goading me to thicken my armor of denial.  I was invulnerable, a sea of fear tightly locked within the dyke… until the dyke broke.  Now every relationship is soaked in fear.  I am afraid of displeasing my bosses and of displeasing my employees.  I am afraid of what all others think or say about me–in the grocery store and bank, over facebook and email, by phone or in person.  I constantly second-guess myself.  Was I critical, proud, selfish, unsupportive?  Are they irritated because I was late or snickered at a favorite TV show?  Do they belittle me because of bad grammar or bad breath?  Are they offended or bored or burdened by me?  How good do I have to be or what do I need to change (or hide) in order to be safe in my relationships, for my heart is so distressed that just a mild poke will close it down.

I want to heal, I want it desperately, and I constantly make choices to step into my fear, to share as honestly as my timid soul is able, but it is such a slow, scary, searing process.  If I share with someone what I really think, feel, believe, doubt–the things I am afraid to let out–I give them the power to close me down so that I am even more fearful of sharing with others.  There is a very thin margin of error emotionally speaking: avoid the pain of sharing and block growth or step in too far and get singed.   Those tight margins, combined with my own frailty and confusion, often leads to faulty choices.  I either avoid danger in ways that hurt myself and others or I step into danger and get burned, like learning to be an electrician by working with live wires. Progress comes in this herky-jerky way, and each positive step seems so small and so meagerly rewarded that I wonder if it is worth the effort and pain.  But I have no choice.  I need genuine relationship and genuine relationship hurts.  It seems to me that I can die the slow death of denial or take the path of fear and pain.  My courage is small, please be gentle with me.

………

Day before yesterday I wrote this and was going to post it to my blog with a link to facebook, but stopped myself for fear of judgments (spoken or unspoken) as well as misunderstandings.  For the first, I will let folks judge as they will and not try to defend my experience to them.  But for those who simply misunderstand, perhaps I should provide a bit of balance to what I have written. 

When I said I am constantly in fear, I spoke honestly and without exaggeration, but I am sharing my experience from only one perspective, which may be misleading if it is taken as the whole.  I was not suggesting that I am constantly conscious of my distress.  I have very well-developed defenses to protect me from feeling scared, so well-developed that I was completely unaware of my own anxiety most of my adult life.  Even then I realized the tension that criticism, blame, or failure created, but I thought it was a healthy stimulus to better myself, not realizing how deeply and harmfully it affected me and my relationships. 

For the last ten years I have been on a journey of self-discovery, purposely uncovering my many apprehensions, but it is a slow and bumpy road.  I am often unaware of the root problem still.  In daily interactions I quail and revert to ingrained habits, leaping to protect myself with avoidance, blame or overwork, reacting so quickly that I jump right past my fear.  Sometimes I ward off the danger with just a warning glance or tone of voice, an apologetic smile or short laugh.  It is over, I shielded myself, and I move on without a second thought.  But if I admit my true feelings, my stomach turns queasy and my face flushes, my throat tightens, my mind stutters and I wait for the ground to crack wide and swallow me.  Why open my heart to that agony when I can easily deny my fear by blaming my coldness on her touchy personality or explaining my compromise as kindness to a friend?  It took me 40 years to discover that buried fears don’t disappear but thrive in the dark like fungus, while bringing my anxieties out into the light with compassion, understanding and acceptance fuels my insight and growth and transforms my relationships over time.

When I said I can have no close friends, I meant the kind of friend with whom I can share deeply about myself in vulnerable ways and still feel fully accepted.  I can have friends with whom I share many things, but as long as I feel the need to hold back any significant parts of who I am, their acceptance seems conditional, and that often feels worse to me than no friendship at all.

For a close friendship to be genuine requires a mutuality of sharing, and few folks are willing to share with me that vulnerably—perhaps for good cause since all acceptance is deficient (certainly mine is) and each of us has unique needs for safety.  My insecurities are different from yours–the harbor you crave and offer me can blow against me like a hurricane (and my kindnesses can also wound you).  Even when folks are willing to share deeply and honestly, they are stymied by lack of self-knowledge, and I feel as though I am risking much more than they are.  Any effort at genuine relationship (the disclosing of the true you to the true me) is fraught with complications, and it takes a great deal of courage to face into the storm.

Yesterday I told my Facebook friends that I was thinking of fighting winter doldrums by concocting a month long birthday celebration for myself!  I had fun last night brainstorming about all the things I would really like to do.  Imagine my dismay to find myself depressed by those same ideas this morning.  Everything last night I pictured enjoying now seemed burdensome since most things I find really pleasurable—reading, writing, conversing, creating—can be reframed as duties.  I am a master at taking the things that give me joy and reducing them to obligations, draining them of any gratification.  Doing things for sheer delight and living from that motivation seems hedonistic.  Surely duty is a much godlier partner to holiness than pleasure.

As you can see, I have a serious problem with being responsible.  A sense of duty weighed me down all my life, and nothing I did was ever done well enough, never accomplished to the point of satisfaction, but could always be improved.  Each task done inadequately nailed down another proof of my failure and inadequacy as a person—I was not diligent enough, patient enough, thoughtful enough, committed enough.  I was not enough.

Responsibility was the driving force of my life—its energy, direction, cohesion, and measurement—and to its cause everything was sacrificed, even my self.  What I wanted, what would give me joy, was of no consequence, or worse was a temptation against the unending and uncompromising call of duty.  It was God’s will versus my will, and my only choice was to squelch my desires.  It seemed to me clearly taught by Jesus in Scripture with the motto “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”  What I wanted didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter to God and shouldn’t matter to me.  I had a job to do, and that was all that mattered.  This I believed wholeheartedly: my task is more important than me (and so I am only valued as a person to the extent I fulfill my calling).

Of course, I was reassured that God really did want me to be happy, but on His terms and not my own.  The remedy to my unhappiness was not to be free of duty, but to take pleasure in it.  This seemed less like a solution than an additional problem—not only was I bound to live for God’s satisfaction against my own, but I was also obliged to make this my source of pleasure.  It felt as though I were locked in a sweatshop and ordered to picture it as a cruise in the Caribbean.  I’ve been sitting in this same position for 12 hours: “No, I’m on a cruise!”  I just whacked my thumb with a hammer: “No, I’m on a cruise!”    I don’t know if I’ll get paid enough to buy supper: “I’m on a cruise!”  If this was God’s view, the right view, my only hope was to make it mine as well.  From an early age I tried desperately to make this work, fighting hard against opposing feelings which apparently sprang from the blindness of my sin nature.  In the end, my emotions mutinied.

Depression, four years of profound and unremitting depression, finally drove me to question the very foundation of my worldview and to discover that God is the God of all grace.  God wants the fulfillment of my desires, not their repression.  But discovering a broken foundation is one thing; removing and replacing the foundation and rebuilding the structure is quite another (especially when your subconscious keeps sneaking in to replace the old blocks).  40 years I shouted at my desires, “Shut up!” as an act of submission to God’s will.  For 10 years I have been learning to receive the grace of God.  As you can see, I still have a long way to go.

My mind keeps bouncing with thoughts of what it means to support others.  It is difficult to be a strong support without a deep, well established relationship, one in which each person is known genuinely and accepted for who he or she is.  My wife and I do this for each other, but neither of us has experienced it fully in any other relationship.  We have both had very effective counselors who understood us and accepted us fully, a rich and rare gift even among therapists, but the client-therapist relationship is limited by its professionalism and lack of mutuality. 

My relationship with Kimberly is not perfect by any means.  We regularly have to deal with issues that cause tension and distance in our relationship, but we do deal with them fully, which is unusual.  We talk through our problems, each of us discovering and sharing our true fears and hurts, and return to a place of trust and acceptance with deeper self and mutual understanding.  I tend to forget how unusual and valuable a gift Kimberly is to me and I to her. 

We each wanted a spouse that was completely supportive, supportive (it turned out) of our coping mechanisms.   Instead, we found the person who continually challenges our pretenses by simply being themselves.  Since I am insecure, I wanted a wife who is always affirming so as to shore up my sense of worth.  In other words, I don’t feel okay about myself, but if my significant other constantly tells me I am okay, it helps me ignore those gnawing doubts.  Instead, I got someone who, although affirming, refused to play the role of “Worth Giver.”  Rather than being saved from my insecurities by lavish reassurances, I was forced to acknowledge and deal with them.  But when I admitted my issues, my wife accepted me for who I really was (instead of affirming the person I really wasn’t).

We expressed this to each other in our wedding vows.  Mine read in part, “God has used you to set my soul free and alive in truth as I never imagined.  You see me for who I am and who I can be and accept me as I am while believing with me for who I am becoming.  I am safe with you, even my deepest, most vulnerable parts, but you also encourage me and challenge me to grow.”  Just now my cheeks got damp reading that again and remembering the incomparable blessing of having a wife like her.  Such honest and accepting relationships may grow also between friends and relatives, but I think few people in this life ever find it.