“To live in community with others, which is what God created us to do, means I not only don’t always get things done the way I would prefer them to be done, but that I am called to something much higher; to show grace and kindness toward others and to even get happy about things being done in a manner that I do not prefer. Sometimes, there’s a greater right than being right.” (Randy Booth)
Randy makes an important point, one that I would take even farther by throwing a question over the very certainty of my “right”-ness. I have discovered over the years that “right” is far from clear in most situations. Here are a few of the things that make me more tentative about my correct assessments:
1) My overall idea might be right, but I might be wrong in important details which throws the whole thing off. The words they spoke were untrue, but this came from an honest misperception, not intentional deceit.
2) I might know a truth with certainty but apply the wrong truth for this particular context (because I don’t know all the circumstances, the minds and hearts of those involved, the right valuation of priorities, the plan of God, who often takes a much less direct route than I). Who knows whether mercy or justice should be applied, for instance.
3) The truth might be the right one to apply, but I may apply it with the wrong motive, the wrong method, the wrong timing, the wrong perspective. Ungracious truth is untruth.
4) I might be certain I am right (about the principle, the circumstance, the person, the act) and discover later that I was wrong. This has happened often enough to me that it makes me a bit more humble in my assumptions and assertions.
Truth in the abstract (principles) is such a very different thing than truth in the application.
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.
I finally have enough emotional space in my life to continue my conversation about the conflicting needs in my marriage. I will first restate my perspective on emotions so you can understand my explanations (whether or not you agree).
(ONE WAY TO MAKE TRUTH A LIE)
No one likes unpleasant feelings, and so we all try to escape them. I think that is actually their purpose–like bodily pain that alerts us to physical harm, emotional pain alerts us to psychological harm, though it is the source of the pain rather than the pain itself that needs to be addressed. In other words, our unpleasant emotions are valuable and beneficial in protecting us. But since they hurt, we want to avoid the feelings themselves, and when Christians teach that such feelings are wrong, we believe we ought to avoid them: fear is a lack of faith, sadness is a lack of joy, despair is a lack of hope, anger is a lack of love, and so on. Not only do you feel bad, but you are wrong for feeling bad. As a result many of us have tried to directly control our emotions as a moral obligation, “get over” our weak and “sinful” feelings, talk ourselves into feeling better by controlling our conscious thoughts with “truth.” My own perspective is that when truth is wrongly applied it is simply another form of untruth.
Talking down our feelings may work with superficial and circumstantial emotions (ones which do not connect to deeper underlying issues). But if they are revealing more profound issues, I believe this approach waylays our attempts at growing more mature and healthy, like using aspirin to fight migraines that come from a brain tumor. I think we undermine our growth whenever we disrespect our own feelings (through denial, dismissal, shaming, etc.). As long as our coping mechanisms successfully distance us from our true, unhappy feelings, we are unlikely to recognize and work through our big issues.Coping mechanisms can be more addictive and blinding than pain killers when they are habitually used as the answer to our pain.
Neither Kimberly nor I would have faced our painful feelings if we could have successfully avoided them. I have numerous coping mechanisms: redoubled effort, procrastination, comparing myself to others, busyness, self-castigation & repentance, fixing, passing blame, detailed planning, control… and I could go on. Unfortunately, all these combined could not protect me from those unwanted feelings. I needed help. I needed to find a spouse that would shore up my inadequate defensive arsenal, someone who would be so sweet and supportive and gracious that I could find peace and security at last. I was sure I had found this in Kimberly.Kimberly had spent her life hiding her true feelings from others because she quickly learned the world did not like her unhappy feelings. She badly needed someone to accept her fully as she was, and she found that in me, or so she thought. I had very little discomfort with her depression and felt honored that she would share with me these vulnerable parts of herself. She discovered that she could trust me to accept all of who she is.
But as we grew closer and more fully knew each other, as we grew in trust and shared more vulnerably, our conflicting coping strategies poked out. 
To protect myself against this assault, my coping mechanisms kicked in, and when she smacked against my defenses, she put up a wall. I would feel blamed and shame her in defense. She would withdraw into self-protective silence or try to explain her words in ways that simply hurt me further. The tension escalated, and all we knew to do was to keep talking it out… for hours… for days… for months and years.
We were committed to the relationship and to honestly working through our issues, we respected and loved one another adamantly, so our only way forward was to try to understand the painful dynamics. I explained myself over and over to Kimberly and she asked questions and tried to understand. She told me about herself, repeating the same confusing messages week after week while I struggled to make sense of it. Our way was slow, painful, scary, confusing, but we found ourselves on a journey of deep self discovery and healing wounds. We were constantly dumbstruck by this unexpected dynamic–that understanding and sharing our pain with someone who loved and accepted us was so amazingly transformational and life-giving.
I have been struggling more with depression in the last few weeks and it deflates my energy for social media. I kept trying to process the feelings because it always helps me work through to a better place if I can identify the source of my emotions, but I could get nowhere with it, so I used busyness as an alternative escape. I think I have finally identified the source… Kimberly’s discouragement at work. Not only do I suffer because she suffers, but both of us continue to be inspired by the L’Arche vision (even though I resigned a year and a half ago) and we have kept hope alive that this L’Arche community would find its way through the turmoil to a place of genuine L’Arche living. With Kimberly now having doubts after hanging in there so long, it is the slow death of our dreams for a community that embraces weakness as a core value. This is why we moved to Lynchburg in the first place, and it leaves a sense of emptiness, uncertainty, pain, loss.
In a Christian community everything depends upon whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain. Only when even the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain unbreakable. A community which allows unemployed members to exist within it will perish because of them. It will be well, therefore, if every member receives a definite task to perform for the community, that he may know in hours of doubt that he, too, is not useless and unusable. Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of fellowship. (from Life Together p. 94)
In the current economic/political context I need to point out that “employment” is about one’s role in the body, not about earning a wage.
Kimberly and I are enjoying a sci-fi series called “Haven.” Last night they ended the show with a short dialogue I thought was profound. Chris is hugely popular, and he uses his popularity to manipulate others, though he knows he is not being his genuine self in doing so. He can only be himself when he is with Audrey, his “love” interest.
Chris: I want to be with you Audrey. I need to be with you.
Audrey: You once told me, ‘I want you because you’re you.’ Wanting me and needing me are two different things. I can’t be the person that keeps you you. You have to do that on your own. You’d eventually start resenting me for it.
THAT WAY!
God often uses us as his channels of grace, and we can support others in their efforts to heal and grow. But if we take responsibility for their change, it will prevent them from truly growing. They lack the courage or desire or understanding to move forward, and eventually they will resent us for obstructing their default path. We must all choose for ourselves the path of life and growth and the pace we take on the journey, and then others may support our will rather than substituting for it.
I’ve discovered that all the support in the world is of no use to me if I cannot receive it. No amount of compliments or empathy or affection can heal my heart unless I am somehow able to open to it. But opening to love makes me vulnerable… I can be hurt much more deeply by those I trust (and all humans fail). Kimberly and I have each discovered that unless we can find a means to value ourselves, external validation will make little impact. Grace knocks at our door but is also on the inside encouraging us to open. Grace is on the giving side, but also on the receiving side, supporting us with the courage and faith to accept. But we must acquiesce, for grace forces itself on no one.
This was my written prayer over not missing, but just delaying my morning visit with God. Welcome to a world where grace is in short supply. (Notice the date, this was well before I awakened to full grace.)
07/07/97
Lord, forgive me for failing to spend time with you this morning. I was caught up once again in doing other things, working on the day’s tasks instead of spending time with you. Lord my heart is so prone to wander and so quick to forget and turn aside. Oh, God make me sensitive to hear your voice. To crush the voice of my flesh crying out so loudly all day and all night. Let me learn to die to that voice. To live only to you. To take my pleasure only in giving you pleasure. To cast out all darkness, however pretty, from my heart like it is the entrance of Satan into my heart, for it is. Who can tell where the end of evil is once it enters the heart–for even after repentance and forgiveness it continues its evil work in me and in others, sending out wave after wave of evil from that one initial act. What fools we are to think we can measure our own sins. If we added all the evil up which comes from one sin alone, we would find it the mother of countless and terrible demons roaming the earth to devour all good.
We confess a sin quickly, spoken and forgotten. We said an unkind word to a brother. Out of discouragement from that word, he fails to be grateful to his wife’s special meal. She responds by withdrawing into silence and her daughter feels rejected. Because she is in her mood, she forgets to make lunch for her son. At the first growth of sin it has multiplied into two lives. The daughter goes to school, and her attitude affects 5 girls. The son doesn’t have a lunch, and gets angry as a result, and because of a quarrel, loses a friend who turns against Christianity as a result. All through his life he affects hundreds of people with his hatred of Christianity. That sin we confessed and forget that night grows into a terrible monster. Evil, like energy, never dies, but rather grows and breeds.
A story from NPR:
Last year, my young son played T-ball…. Needless to say, I was delighted when Dylan wanted to play…. Now on the other team there was a girl I will call Tracy. Tracy came each week, I know, since my son’s team always played her team. She was not very good. She had coke-bottle glasses and hearing aids on each ear. She ran in a loping, carefree way, with one leg pulling after the other, one arm windmilling wildly in the air.
Everyone in the beachers cheered for her, regardless of what team their progeny played for. In all the games I saw, she never hit the ball, not even close. It sat there on the tee waiting to be hit and it never was.
STRIKE... 13?
Sometimes, after ten or eleven swings, Tracy hit the tee (in T-ball, the ball sits on a plastic tee, waiting for the batter to hit the ball, which happens once every three batters). The ball would fall off the tee and sit on the ground six inches in front of home plate. “Run! Run!” yelled Tracy’s coach, and Tracy would lope off to first, clutching the bat in both arms, smiling. Someone usually woke up and ran her down with the ball before she reached first.
Everyone applauded.
WOW! Look at This BUG!
The last game of the season, Tracy came up, and through some fluke, or simply in a nod toward the law of averages, she creamed the ball. She smoked it right up the middle, through the legs of 17 players. Kids dodged as it went by or looked absentmindedly at it as it rolled unstopped, seemingly gaining in speed, hopping over second base, heading into center field. And once it reached there, there was no one to stop it. Have I told you that there are no outfielders in T-ball? There are for three minutes in the beginning of every inning, but then they move into the infield to be closer to the action, or, at least, to their friends.
Tracy hit the ball and stood at home, delighted. “Run!” yelled her coach. “Run!” All the parents, all of us, we stood and screamed, “Run, Tracy, run, run!” Tracy turned and smiled at us, and then, happy to please, galumphed off to first. The first base coach waved his arms ’round and ’round when Tracy stopped at first. “Keep going, Tracy, keep going! Go!” Happy to please, she headed to second. By the time she was halfway to second, seven members of the opposition had reached the ball and were passing it among themselves. It’s a rule in T-ball–everyone on the defending team has to touch every ball.
The ball began to make its long and circuitous route toward home plate, passing from one side of the field to the other. Tracy headed to third. Adults fell out of the bleachers. “Go, Tracy, Go!” Tracy reached third and stopped, but the parents were very close to her now and she got the message. Her coach stood at home plate calling her as the ball passed over the first basemen’s head and landed in the fileding team’s empty dugout. “Come on, Tracy! Come on, baby! Get a home run!”
Tracy started for home, and then it happened. During the pandemonium, no one had noticed the twelve-year-old geriatric mutt that had lazily stettled itself down in front of the bleachers five feet from the third-base line. As Tracy rounded third, the dog, awakened by the screaming, sat up and wagged its tail at Tracy as she headed down the line. The tongue hung out, mouth pulled back in an unmistakable canine smile, and Tracy stopped, tight there. Halfway home, thirty feet from a legitimate home run.
She looked at the dog. Her coach called, “Come on, Tracy! Come on home!” He went to his knees behind the plate, pleading. The crowd cheered, “Go, Tracy, go! Go, Tracy, go!” She looked at all the adults, at her own parents shrieking and catching it all on video. She looked at the dog. The dog wagged its tail. She looked at her coach. She looked at home. She looked at the dog. Everything went to slow motion. She went for the dog! It was a moment of complete, stunned silence. And then, perhaps, not as loud, but deeper, longer, more hearfelt, we all applauded as Tracy fell to her knees to hug the dog. Two roads diverged on the third-base line. Tracy went for the dog.
Two roads diverged in this little girl’s life. One is the road of rules and expectations, the other is the road of love. The roads of our lives are much the same. Will we go for the safe, predictable road of rules and expectations? Or will we go for the One we love…?
Yaconelli: Wild Abandon (quoting a story by Bill Harley on NPRs “All Things Considered”)
This is where my story gets hard and healing, frightening and amazing. First the mess. My needs displayed themselves in a hundred ways that were threatening to Kimberly and her needs. For instance, 
I have often used anger and blame to protect myself from looming danger, but Kimberly was raised by a mother who screamed and shouted, so when I honestly expressed my feelings, her alarm tripped.
Early in our dating we sat for lunch in a restaurant booth in Arlington, Virginia where I was living. The man in the booth behind us, apparently a construction foreman, was carrying on a loud conversation on his two-way radio. I muttered to Kimberly how rude this was, which she feared he could overhear, and then I swiveled around and gave him a “dirty look” hoping to shame him quiet. When I turned back around, she was visibly shaken and said she did not know whether she could stay in relationship with someone with anger issues. So began the saga of conflicting needs in the area of self-defense, specifically anger.
The machinations of the mind are complicated, so unless this is your experience, you may not understand the root of my anger. Anger is the result of feeling disrespected, having my boundaries crossed. As I grew up, my sense of worth grew dependent on the value others placed on me. If they seemed to devalue me, I was threatened at my core. There are many ways folks can protect themselves from this, and one of mine was anger and blame. When the crew chief raised his voice, I felt disrespected, and in my insecurity, I reacted to protect myself against this threat.
Is This Going to Work?
From childhood, Kimberly has taken the opposite approach of protecting herself by accommodating every one so that she is liked. When threatened, I bared my teeth and Kimberly wagged her tail. She was quite successful in acting in such a way that no one would ever get angry with her. Underneath was her terror of rage and denial of her own anger. Both of us were living out of fears that we did not recognize, incompatible anxieties, each person’s defense mechanism triggering the other’s fear. I thought I needed a mate who would be okay with my anger and Kimberly thought she needed a mate that never got angry. This did not look like a match made in heaven!
But what we wanted was not what we needed. Let me put it plainly–we each wanted to marry someone who would help us escape our deepest fears. Our coping mechanisms were not “working” (protecting us from pain), so we wanted a spouse that would reinforce our defenses, not so we could face our underlying issues, but so we could avoid them successfully. We were both blessed to have a very supportive and accepting relationship… except when it wasn’t. She was not trying to expose my denial (the anger that hid my fear), but in simply being herself with me, and I with her, the truth was forced to come out, and it was very painful. After all, there were quite good reasons why we developed these protective patterns early in life. Let me relate a very common interchange
Me: “That jerk just cut me off and then slowed down to turn into Sheetz. That’s really considerate!” My insecurity is shouting at me that I have been disrespected. I don’t realize that I feel threatened and fearful because my anger jumps in so quickly to protect me and blame the other driver. I think my aggravation is his fault.
Kimberly: “Maybe he was running low on gas and saw the gas station at the last minute.” Kimberly feels her fear rising at my heat, and she jumps in to protect the person I am attacking. I feel unsupported and shamed.
Me: “He could have easily slowed down and pulled in behind me.” My coping mechanism is being threatened. If you take away my anger, I have no protection from being devalued. I still don’t realize that my true, underlying feeling that needs addressing is fear.
Kimberly: “Maybe he didn’t have time to think of that.” I feel the legitimacy of her argument. I really should not be mad. I begin to feel shame for my temper instead of sympathy, which would give me the safety to look deeper into the roots of my fear. I shame my anger away, closing the one door to my true heart’s need, and I no longer feel safe sharing my feelings with Kimberly.
Me: “Whatever!” an irritated dismissal. Kimberly senses my disapproval of her responses. She is deeply hurt by my unspoken criticism that she is not supportive and caring, that she is not enough. I am challenging her one shelter against shame, her remarkable ability to be supportive and empathic. Her solution for the world’s problems is “Life is so hard, let’s all just get along.” To feel safe, she needs me to be nice to everyone, especially her.
This dynamic played out scores of times. We were committed to honesty in sharing our feelings and in accepting one another “as is,” and this characterized our relationship, so we grew more trusting and secure with each other. The problems came when our needs conflicted, when supporting her meant denying my own needs. But our commitment to love and understanding in the other parts of our lives slowly began to soften these areas of conflict. Kimberly moved from “your anger is bad” to “your anger is hard for me” to “your anger is understandable” to “I see how your anger is a vital protection.” I moved from “you are not enough” to “I feel hurt by you” to “I see why anger is a problem for you” to “wow, you have every reason to fight anger.” This was only possible by understanding ourselves and one another better. We had to face into our fears and trust one another to listen, understand, and accept us. We often failed. It was messy.
OKAY, LET'S TAKE THIS SLOW
PAIN
Before I share how Kimberly and I grew in our wonderful, painful, scary and supportive relationship, I need to give some context regarding our perspective on coping mechanisms.
All of us are wounded because we are born into a broken world with broken people and broken relationships. In order to survive emotionally we develop methods for protecting ourselves. These include the happy face, the sad face, the angry face, the cute face to hold off the dis-grace of others. We use control, manipulation, confrontation, and every other form of avoidance (procrastination, withdrawal, acquiescence, drugs). The list goes on. We use these methods unwittingly, settling into a pattern that works best for each. Many children would be emotionally destroyed if they found no means to cope.
I was at one time convinced that coping strategies were evil because they shielded us from the truth and taught us to live a lie. They do shield us from the truth, but this is not necessarily an evil. As Jack would say, “You can’t handle the truth!” or in Jesus’ words, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.” Our coping mechanisms act as crutches, and if we see them as such, we can slowly mend and get back on our feet. The problem comes when we either deny the injury and pretend we have no crutch or stop going to physical therapy because it is too painful and decide we’ll just sign up for a disability pension. I used to try talking people out of their coping mechanisms, kick their crutches out from under them so to speak, until I realized how powerfully beneficial these protective shields are.
My major coping mechanism for feeling better about myself is trying harder. I thought I was practicing discipline, obedience, godliness, but increased effort was really my means to block a sense of shame and unworthiness. I only discovered this truth because my method of coping didn’t “work” sufficiently–I still felt too much like a failure. The more energy I used to escape my negative feelings, the more I realized it wasn’t working, that I could never make it work.
Once I realized that this was a coping mechanism, I tried to “overcome” it. It was a lie that I had to cast out… only it had stopped deceiving me once I recognized it for what it was. When I realized it was a crutch, I could use it as a crutch. For instance, I feel inordinately bad about failing to meet expectations (the inordinate part is a major clue). When I did not recognize this as a coping strategy, it controlled me subconsciously. Now that I realize it is a crutch, I am tempted to throw it down, but the problem is not so much my behavior (trying harder) but the reason behind it–working to earn my worth.
The Dark Hand of Shame
So my second temptation is to maintain my hard effort while changing the underlying thought patterns, but the effort itself supports the wrong mindset. I am running late for a meeting, and as I drive I tell myself, “It’s okay. Everyone is sometimes late. Calm down,” but all the while I am driving like Jehu. I find that I can’t maintain the same level of diligence without operating out of a sense of urgency, a drivenness that comes from my insecurities. The more I try to give myself a break, the less I meet expectations, and the worse I feel about me. These voices of condemnation have indoctrinated me and shaped my feelings, and barring a miracle, it will take a long process of reorienting my perspective. In the meantime I do not have the emotional resources to simply stop all effort to meet others’ expectations and hold back the resulting flood of shame. I would be overwhelmed by the voices against me feeding my shame. My coping mechanism allows for my frayed emotions to be soothed as I slowly push into my fear and break free.
So I take baby steps, put a little weight on the foot. I put in a little less effort while working to offload the shame that I would normally feel, turning a little more towards grace. I share with others my fears so that their power is reduced. I find gracious people to support my faltering faith. And slowly I find myself growing whole from this deep wound. Healing of long established problems, both physical and emotional, takes a lot of time, gentleness to the injury, support and protection.
Janathan Grace Reflections 