Archive for the ‘self discovery’ Tag
CAN I PLEASE JUST HAVE THE BONE?
It seems to me that if we do not find in God the ultimate answer to our needs, we become dangerously dependent on others. If I think my wife is the sole channel of God’s grace for any substantial need and she fails me, then my only recourse is to force her compliance. I might cajole, argue, bargain, threaten… there are a hundred ways to get her to “fall in line,” but this manipulation undermines her sincere love.
Genuine love must grow in an atmosphere of freedom, not control. That is frightening because freedom allows my friend to choose to be unloving and uncaring, refusing to help with my needs. If I make no demands, but offer unconditional love, he may take advantage of me, take all I have to offer and give little in return. And if my needs go unmet, I cannot survive. So when I sense a disparity between how much I give and how much I get, I react to protect myself. If I protect myself by giving less, I feel bad for my selfishness, for my lack of generosity, and I feel a distance growing in my heart towards him. So instead I subtly (or plainly) push him to give more.
This approach did not go over well with Kimberly. She felt the pressure of my expectations and recognized the conditionality of my love. When she chose not to do as I wished, I felt unloved and became resentful, critical, and demanding. This in turn made her feel unloved. I tried to pressure her to comply, to prove her care by meeting my expectations. She insisted on a more honest path to resolving our conflict, one that made room for both of our needs and for genuine rather than forced expressions of love.
I thought love was proved by what it gave—if folks didn’t give, they didn’t care—and this was intolerable to me because it inflated my fears of unworthiness. I gave to others with the expectation that they would reciprocate and so prove my lovability. My mind tightly bound together loving motivation and helping behavior, and I desperately needed Kimberly to prove my worth by setting aside her feelings to meet my needs. Through long conversations and consistent responses, Berly expressed her care for my needs without yielding to my pressure to change her behavior (and so abandon her own needs in favor of mine). It took years for me to believe she loved me in spite of not coming to my rescue. I slowly realized that someone can love without helping and help without loving, that sometimes the truest and hardest love is one that does not give when giving would beguile the loved one into a false security.
I wanted to stop feeling my insecurity and Kimberly wanted me to embrace it, understand it, work through it. If she helped me to avoid those feelings, it would undermine our relationship. For her part, she was afraid of my resentment, and wanted to act in a way that would hold it at bay, but she knew living out of that fear would keep her from sharing herself honestly and vulnerably with me. Things might go smoothly between us, but we would be sacrificing substance for façade. Slowly we both stepped into our fears and broke through to a deeper understanding of ourselves and one another, a deeper trust, and a deeper freedom to accept who we are. We encourage and help each other to find a way to meet our needs, but do not take the responsibility for this on ourselves. Of course, sometimes our needs conflict, but that is another story altogether.
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.
Kimberly and I talked last night, trying to sort through my feelings. As I discussed my sense of failure in India, I realized that wasn’t really the major issue. I have focused for ten years to overcome the lie that my worth depends on what I do or don’t do, and I’ve found a large degree of freedom. But if it was not about failure, what was troubling me so deeply?
New thoughts began swirling around in my brain. Like a child trying to work out a puzzle, I kept shuffling the pieces to make sense of these vague notions. At last I told Kimberly that I would have to let it marinate for now.
This morning I started stacking and restacking my blocks of feelings and speculations in conversation with Kimberly, trying to find the pattern that fit. A center of concern began to take shape, an issue I have not focused on, but one that has deep roots from early childhood—the idea that my needs don’t matter. Only one thing matters—doing more for God at whatever cost to myself. And if my needs don’t matter, then I don’t matter.
This priority on service meant that everyone else’s needs were more important than my own, and therefore my needs must always be sacrificed. In essence, self-care was selfishness unless it was clearly required to keep the machine functioning to do its job. Caring for myself physically and spiritually was only legitimate as an intermediate goal, a means to the end of serving others (and emotional needs were merely desires, not true needs).
This became an inescapable trap. When I met my own need, I felt ashamed for my selfishness. When I rejected my own need to help others, I strengthened my belief that my need (and therefore I myself) was of little worth. Either way, shame won. I could not find a way to break free. After India, I kept trying different ministries to see if I could find one in which I found fulfillment and peace, where there was less competition between my own needs and the needs of others. But I crated the real issue around with me from place to place. I now realize I have a lot of work ahead to unravel the emotional knots.
This Catch-22 has played out, not only in my occupation, but in all my relationships. When Kimberly and I moved into our new home, the “master bedroom” was a loft open to the living room below. I promised Kimberly I would build a bedroom there, a foolish start to a marriage! Unfortunately, I have very poor skills in estimating the time a job will take to complete.
As the work dragged on, keeping the house a mess, I began to lose enthusiasm and Kimberly began to lose heart. I didn’t want her to suffer, so I prevailed on myself to keep working hour after hour. Since I was now working out of obligation (the obligation of love, as I saw it) and not a creative pleasure, the job became more and more loathsome, and I had to whip myself harder. I felt shame when I didn’t work on it, but my own needs were rejected when I did work on it, and that sharpened my sense of worthlessness at a deeper level. I have always struggled with this belief that the task, especially the God-given task, is more important than I am.
We tried to talk it through many times. Kimberly suggested that we pay someone to finish it, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay out that kind of money, especially for something I could do myself (another issue of mine). We finally decided how much of the bedroom she needed complete before we could move in, and this gave us a foreseeable end. But the work had long since broken down my sense of worth. I couldn’t bring myself to do any wood work, which I love, for the next two years. And the closet still does not have doors.
This same scenario has played out often in many situations, and I could find no way to resolve the problem—should I push through or not push through? Neither worked. Calcutta was the point when my determined willpower finally crushed my spirit. I kept driving myself throughout four years of deep depression until it started to hurt others, and then I benched myself. I did not resolve the dilemma, I just took myself out of the game. And now it seems I am pulling my uniform back on and the feelings are all too familiar.
More personal reflections to follow.
Janathan Grace Reflections 