Archive for the ‘acceptance’ Tag
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.
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 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
ME: YOU GOT A PROBLEM? I GOT A SOLUTION!
I could share many troubles that jumped Kimberly and me because of conflicting needs. One of the most painful and intractable is based on her focus on acceptance and my focus on improvement. Because of our families, personalities, and experiences, we have each fine tuned our coping strategies to survive threats to our emotional well-being: she is a people pleaser and I am a people fixer.
BERLY: I AM HERE FOR YOU
In relationships, she provides emotional support and I provide practical solutions. I am pretty good at empathizing, but that is not my goal. My goal is to help folks find a way forward. Kimberly is encouraged to see folks move forward, but that is incidental since her goal is to “be there” for others. I seek change, she seeks stability; I want action, she wants presence; I need hope, she needs patience.
Naturally, when our coping mechanisms do not “work,” do not protect us, we each feel deeply threatened at our core. You can see where this is going. I feel loved when someone understands my struggle and adjusts to my needs; I feel rejected if my friend does not change. Kimberly feels loved when she is accepted as she is; she feels rejected when her friend asks her to change (i.e. is not okay with her as she is). 
The message she regularly heard from me was “You are not enough” and the message I regularly heard from her was “I don’t care about your needs.” Each of us, by trying to defend our needs in relationship to each other, simply hurt the other one more.
If I were to write my real thoughts about these particular differences while dating, I would say, “I want to change for the better, she does not; I seek improvement, she seeks stagnation; I am an optimist, she is a pessimist.” In my younger years I would have pointed out the many Bible verses that support my perspective and shamed the other person into compliance. I am quick to blame, Kimberly is quick to accept, so she probably did not have these thoughts, but she would be justified in thinking, “I accept others, he rejects others; I am patient, he is impatient; I see people as individuals, he sees people as projects.” Thankfully, Kimberly and I respect one another and highly value honesty, understanding and acceptance. I see real benefits in her perspective and see how I fall short in those areas. She sees real good in my strengths and is grateful for it.
However, this does not change decades of reinforced feelings. When these dynamics popped up, it was very painful for both of us. For a long time, her perspective made no sense to me and my perspective made no sense to her. When our needs were not in conflict, we freely expressed our love and acceptance, and so over time we became more trusting of each other. That gave us the emotional space to slowly learn each others’ languages. Most of this happened before marriage, and though our feelings still smarted a great deal, we understood our issues and were committed to working through them. In fact we realized that in an amazing way, even our conflicting emotions were a great benefit to us and our relationship… but more on that later.
Pain Opens the Door to Love
HOLY PEOPLE WANT LESS!
By suggesting an alternative to wants-versus-needs thinking, which seems to pit rationality against emotions, I am not suggesting that no difference exists between needs. Surely some needs are more important than others. I want to challenge the notion that there is some simple objective way of determining my needs, and that, being objective, it’s evaluation requires no input from emotions. (As a side note, we seem to have this odd notion that our emotions were badly damaged in the Fall, but that our intellect came through nearly unscathed, so that we can trust the latter more than the former). There are things I clearly need, some for my body (food, water, shelter) and some for my soul (love, interaction, forgiveness). Those things I need for my soul should never be forfeited for the sake of another, because I am foremost responsible for my own soul, and I never do well by another when I forfeit myself. God is responsible for their needs.
I don’t mean that we never forgo some food for the soul as a benefit to another… just like skipping a meal, such choices are good for us if they are in the context of a steady, nutritional diet. The key I think is my own health, for which I am responsible. One can be spiritually glutinous or spiritually anorexic… in the first, the intake regularly exceeds the output and in the second the output regularly exceeds the intake. Both are bad for the soul. The first is characteristic of those we would call “selfish,” but is also characteristic of those who are starving (or feel as though they are starving). The selfish individual has the emotional resources to do more for others, but chooses not to, while the starving has no such resources. None of us knows another’s heart well enough to make this determination about them.
I Know What I Need!
My effort to bring false and true needs into the discussion fits here. I believe the problem with those who are “selfish,” is not usually that they imbibe too much or more than their share, but that they fill up on Twinkies and Pringles, and since this does not meet their true need and they remain hungry, they continue to stuff more in to fill that gnawing hunger. No one turns to alcohol to satisfy a need for alcohol. They do it to reduce the pain from true needs that are languishing. It is easy to make folks feel better by satisfying their false needs (it makes the giver feel better as well, so we are inclined to do it without thinking), and sometimes it is the best approach for many reasons, but I think it is good for us to realize we are not providing a remedy for their genuine needs. Their unsatiated need will remain, stimulating their desire for another bag of popcorn.
Another Piece?
I could give a hundred examples in my own life of misunderstanding my needs and trying to satisfy my hunger with plastic pizzas and wooden fruit–the hungrier you are the harder you chew. It has a profoundly disrupting spiritual effect in one’s life. I have had a desparate need for acceptance all my life. I felt unworthy as I was and thought I could not be loved unless I “got my act together.” I could not trust any acceptance that came from someone who tried to overlook my faults, because such acceptance was undeserved. My felt need was for holiness… greater and purer and more constant than I had so that I could be worthy, but no matter how much higher I climbed, my thirst for acceptance remained, driving me deeper into the desert. My growth in “holiness” (as I undertsood it), instead of fulfilling me, was actually dragging me away from realizing and satisfying my real need, which was to discover and embrace God’s grace. I’m glad my search was a cul-de-sac or I would still be climbing that mountain.
From one of my all time favorite books, written by a non-christian with deep insight: Expecting Adam by Martha Beck, a married Harvard student who discovered her fetus (Adam) had Down’s Syndrome.
With Adam, I had more fears than usual to plague me during those long, long nights. The problem was that it was impossible not to fall in love with him. It is a frightening thing to love someone you know the world rejects. It makes you so terribly vulnerable. You know you will be hurt by every slight, every prejudice, every pain that will befall your beloved throughout his life. In the wee small hours, as I rocked and nursed and sang to my wee small boy, I couldn’t help but worry. Will Rogers once said that he knew worrying was effective, because almost nothing he worried about ever happened. That’s a cute statement, and I’m glad Will’s life worked this way. But mine hasn’t–at least not where Adam is concerned. Almost everything I worried about during the nights after his birth, almost every difficult thing I feared would come my way as a result of being his mother, has actually happened.
Thank God.
…….
What my fears all boiled down to, as I sat with my tiny son in the days after his birth, was an underlying terror that he would destroy my own facade, the flawlessness and invulnerability I projected onto the big screen, the Great and Terrible Martha of Oz. You see, I knew all along that there wasn’t one label people might apply to Adam–stupid, ugly, strange, clumsy, slow, inept–that could not, at one time or another, be justifiably applied to me. I had spent my life running from this catastrophe and like so many other things, it caught up with me while I was expecting Adam.
In this regard, as in so many others, my worst fears have come to pass. But as they do I am learning that there is an even bigger secret, a secret I had been keeping from myself. It has been hard for me to grasp, but gradually, painfully, with the slow, small steps of a retarded child, I am coming to understand it. This has been the second phase of my education, the one that followed all those years of school. In it, I have had to unlearn virtually everything Harvard taught me about what is precious and what is garbage. I have discovered that many of the things I thought were priceless are as cheap as costume jewelry, and much of what I labeled worthless was, all the time, filled with the kind of beauty that directly nourishes my soul.
Now I think that the vast majority of us “normal” people spend our lives trashing our treasures and treasuring our trash. We bustle around trying to create the impression that we are hip, imperturbable, onmiscient, in perfect control, when in fact we are awkward and scared and bewildered. The irony is that we do this to be loved, all the time remaining terrified of anyone who seems to be as perfect as we wish to be. We go around like Queen Elizabeth, bless her heart, clutching our dowdy little accessories, avoiding the slightest hint of impropriety, never showing our real feelings or touching anyone else except through glove leather. But we were dazed and confused when the openly depressed, bulimic, adulterous, rejected Princess Di was the one people really adored.
Living with Adam, loving Adam, has taught me a lot about the truth. He has taught me to look at things in themselves, not the value a brutal and often senseless world assign to them. As Adam’s mother I have been able to see quite clearly that he is no less beautiful for being called ugly, no less wise for appearing dull, no less precious for being seen as worthless. And neither am I. Neither are you. Neither is any of us.
HAPPY HAPPY, JOY JOY!!
I suppose an illustration at this point might help clarify our marital dance. I have many to choose from! Like most American women, Kimberly has a higher standard of cleanliness (or lower comfort level with dirt) than her husband. So how do we determine what is “fair”? Do we decide that her standard is “right,” and that I should do 50% of this? Do we decide that my standard is right, and that if she wants it to be cleaner, the rest is up to her? Or do we settle on something in between so that both of us are doing more than we feel is fair? There are many other considerations–who has more time or energy, which tasks do each of us prefer or hate, how much emotional cost is involved, is resentment building up because either of us feels the other does not care enough about our feelings to do more?
We try to talk… or rather I try to negotiate and Kimberly tries to share (I’m a fixer, she’s a relater). It seems to me completely useless to clean underneath or behind the sofa. No one sees it, not even us! But she feels it! It bothers her. Now here comes the rub. When she tells me about her emotional needs, she is simply sharing. She just wants me to understand, listen, empathize. She’s not indirectly asking me to change, but that is what I hear: her expectations, what she thinks I should do. That’s what “sharing needs” always meant in my family of origin if the person we were telling could actually do what we wanted. So I argue against her unreasonable demands (as I see it), but she is not coming from a place of expectations, so my resistance to her sounds like I am rejecting her feelings, telling her that she should not be bothered by the dog hair under the loveseat.
She completely separates sharing about her needs from my obligations regarding her needs, but I instinctively unite them, so the only way I have of protecting myself from demands that seem unreasonable is to talk down her feelings (which are loaded with expectations as I suppose). If I could separate empathy from obligation as she does, I could listen compassionately without feeling threatened that my needs are being shoved aside. But my feelings are so deeply ingrained around this relational dynamic, that even after I intellectually grasp where she is coming from, even after believing she really is not imposing expectations (both of which took years for me), I still struggle with my deeply ingrained emotional reactions.
However, the more we talk, the more our mutual understanding and acceptance grows. Since I am released from a sense of obligation, I have much more emotional space to empathize, and my love for her responds easily and gladly in this context of freedom, vulnerability, and trust. Now I can choose to clean under the sofa and actually feel good about it, because I am motivated by love rather than obligation. Still, we give each other the right to take care of our own needs, so if I feel burdened by the thought of vacuuming, I let it go, and Kimberly, because she genuinely has no expectations, is glad for me to do so. This does not mean I love her less, I simply have a need just now that it would hurt me to neglect. We have learned that if we do not honor our own needs, we not only suffer personally, but ultimately hurt our relationship as well.
Cleaning under the sofa might be a trite issue for many, and if the feelings it raises are slight, then resolution is easy. It doesn’t really matter who cleans, and the issue of “fairness” is rather meaningless since nobody is asking the question. The real conflict for us was not over a five minute cleaning job. That was simply a porthole into the deep waters, the very fundamental question of every human heart, “Do you care? Am I loved? Do my needs matter to you?” Emotions are surprisingly consistent and accurate in telling us what really does matter to us, though the “why” is often hard to interpret and is often best teased out in a supportive, accepting relationship. I am so incredibly blessed to have such a relationship.
SORRY! IT'S ALL MY FAULT!
We all know we have some influence over our emotions, and there are various reasons we may find it beneficial in particular situations to manipulate our emotions: if emotions are impairing our functioning on some crucial matter, if we cannot control our expression of emotion and that expression is damaging others, if we don’t have enough space (time, safety, etc.) to process our feelings just now. In such cases we are not ignoring our feelings or pushing them away, but we are asking them to wait for a bit until we can address them.
If as a rule we listen and support our feelings and what they are telling us, then the exceptions I suggested above won’t undermine our spirits. If as a rule we try to control our emotions instead of listening to them empathically, it is as healthy as trying to control your spouse—the more “successful” you are at this effort, the more damage is done. It took me a very long time to begin to deal with my emotions based on the principles of grace instead of the principles of law.
I can manipulate my emotions by suppressing them or by aggravating them and neither approach is healthy. It is one thing to listen graciously and patiently to my anger until it has told me all it needs to say; it is quite another to pump up my anger. When I use various means to exacerbate my feelings, I am being just as untrue to my genuine emotions as when I refuse to hear them.
I find that the best question to ask myself regarding my feelings and my response to them is “why?” Why do I feel so angry? Why do I feel the need to stimulate them further? I used to ask myself these questions in condemnation, just as my irate mother used to ask us: “What is WRONG with you?!” This was not asked in a comforting way to find and relieve our suffering. The natural follow up to such a question was, “Just stop it!” And that really was my attitude towards my own feelings.
OUT!
When I was in India, I kept throwing my unwanted emotions out the back door, only to realize too late that it was not the back door, but the closet door, and the shelves collapsed under the weight of my ignored emotions, driving me into deep depression. Trust me, when you ignore or shame your emotions, it does not fix them or get rid of them, it just forces them to keep working behind the scenes where they sicken and weaken your spirit.
I agree with Elisabeth that “where I am weak is when I get to see God at work,” though I think it might be good to consider what this may or may not mean. How does God work with or in spite of our weaknesses? He can certainly override or bypass or compensate for our inbuilt weaknesses when he chooses, but I expect, like any other miracle, it is the exception rather than the rule for him to work contrary to the traits with which he uniquely designed each of us (and the circumstances by which he shaped us). Not only the abilities, but the limitations he gives us are integral to our design, a key part of who we are. A car is great for driving, but it is pretty bad at sailing. If we make a car to also sail, those adaptations will hinder its ability to drive well, which is its true design. 
Allow me to get personal. I was raised by a mother who was not time conscious and a father who was very time conscious. This was the source of much contention, especially Sunday morning, and both my mom and dad agreed that the “right” way to be was prompt, which of course meant my mom was inadequate and my dad was adequate. Dad was organized and Mom was disorganized; Dad planned out everything well in advance and Mom flew by the seat of the pants; Dad was very analytical and Mom was not. We were taught by both parents that we should emulate our father in all these things, because this was godliness, and thus avoid the weaknesses of our mom.
Most of my life I fully believed this to be true. My dad even taught a college ethics course that included a section on the moral necessity of being good stewards of our time. The good ol’ American values of productivity and efficiency were apparently a fundamental part of God himself, handed down to us in his word. The verses in the Bible about being punctual are fairly meager, so he used arguments such as the injury we did others by being late (“keeping them waiting”), which was both selfish and unthoughtful. It is more the emphasis than the idea which became a real problem for me. One could argue that good stewardship of the body requires daily bathing with soap for good health and so make showers a moral issue, but I don’t think I would go there with it.
It was decades later that I started to question this thinking. I found that examples of godliness in Scripture seemed to have a very different perspective of time, one that did not include minute hands on sundials. Jesus himself seemed to be much more God conscious and people conscious than time conscious, and he regularly chose to live by the former values at the expense of the last.
I don’t mean to suggest that punctuality is of no worth, but I wonder if it does not fall farther down the scale of true values than most white, middle class Americans would like to think. I wonder if it is a constant source of judgment towards other cultures and people who value it much less. Might our insistence on timeliness do more injury to individuals and relationships than our being more flexible with our schedules? In fact, is too much of a need for promptness a weakness of another kind and is flexibility perhaps a strength? Do we unnecessarily devalue the traits of some folks instead of appreciating their uniqueness and important contribution to perspectives, relationships and plans?
I find myself valuing strengths in others that I do not have. But instead of simply being grateful for and blessed by their contribution to my life, I compare myself to them and challenge myself to be like them… and then judge myself for falling short. I tell myself that I must be as organized, as gentle, as confident, as humble as they are. These are all good things to work on, but things that do not come naturally to me as they do to others, and in fact, they usually have their own downside. People who are temperamentally gentle often have a very hard time confronting others; Those who are typically confident tend to be less open to the perspectives of others.*
If I use a lot of energy trying to “fix” these weaknesses I attribute to myself, I not only make no room for others’ contributions to my life, but I end up undermining my own unique gifts. Others become competitors to me instead of partners, and relationships suffer. The differences between us that were meant to teach us, unite us and make us interdependent become the very things that drive wedges between us because I expect others to be like me and shame myself for not being like them.
Let's Work Together!
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*Of course, we usually think of humility and gentleness as virtues (moral attributes which are acquired) and organization and confidence as character traits (nonmoral attributes which are given). So for the purposes of this discussion, let us leave aside the “virtues” and think simply of “traits.”
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:
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 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.
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.
Janathan Grace Reflections 