Those words, ebb and flow, gifted to me by a friend offer a hint of relief as they innocently imply a constant fluctuation. She is alluding to the in and out movement of ocean tides — a perfect metaphor for the dark moods that come over me. A decline and increase. It is true the dark moods come less and less for me as the years pass by.
I hate this day.
I hate the day or two after a I write something like yesterday. (That was a major dumping — discharge — purge.) Though the writing is therapeutic for me on one level, in the sharing of it publicly I am left sitting here alone in my study anxiously worrying that people will think I am a narcissistic, egregiously self-absorbed person. Which I am. Didn’t I just say I want to be my own God?
But the ebb and flow metaphor only barely works because the moon pulls the tides. The tides do not control themselves. The tides are daily, predictable, constant. Are my moods predictable? No. Are they known for their patterns? To some extent, yes. Ironically, as time passes I forget how dismal this mood genuinely is; it is utterly insufferable. God forbid this thing was foreseen!
I had forgotten how bad it feels to slip into the murky place of in-between. I go through the motions. Though some are too difficult, already. I have random thoughts. Do not kill the dog. Cannot make the lunches. I find myself wearing PJs for half the day only because I can’t bear to choose what to wear. I can lean down and pick up book after book from the library bag that has spilled over on the floor. I must bring order so that “they”, the ones I love, don’t have to be afraid. Won’t start to worry. Don’t worry about me I want to say. I resolve not to be anyone’s extra concern. The weight of the day is enough for most people. I sit and listen to my son tell me about aliens and zombies in the book he’s reading. It’s noise. Even though I want to care, because he cares. I can’t get up and make lunches (the task at hand) even though I know I need to make myself engage. I try to pretend the cement is not in my veins.
How’d it happen, this time?
How could I possibly have let this happen? I know. I think. I am absolutely dejected about the future and my lack of purpose and even perhaps my inability to accept the purpose put before me. I am afraid of what others think of me, unless I find a high-powered job or pursue a degree that will puff up my sense of self and be something esteemed by others. I am afraid to enjoy the garden, photography, writing or family!
Should I write the book about my spiritual and psychological journey of healing? Much of it is written here. And I have more than fifty poems. I also have a book of photography waiting for printing. I am frozen and disgusted by my self-pity. And terrified that once again I find myself anxious about the little things (which intellectually I know I can handle.) And even more so, I am wondering if I have the book in me. If these experiences would be worthy to put on the printed page to help others.
For today, all I have is my excuses. My brain, clouded over by this mood, aches. And all I can do today is resolve to get a little exercise, to not isolate, and I shake my fist at the ebb and flow wondering aloud to the One who controls the moon and her tides. What do you want from me?
I am my secrets. They make me human. And yet, if I don’t trust you enough to share them, I will die of my shame. I need you to know my despair.
I need to tell you that today my heart is aching. I need you to believe that my masks are not all lies. You do know me, because I always tell you the truth. About my despondence — my anguish that comes too easily. I need to tell you about the internal corruption that sits with me night and day mocking me. And that I sit with my secrets wondering where are the friends to reassure me that everything will be okay?
Where is God to say that his Truth is all that I need?
Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me. I am choking on it right now. I thought for a minute I kicked this habit of despair.
I don’t doubt the fact of knowing you God. I am certain that you are there. Knowing you love even me. The tears I cannot cry, you wipe away. No misunderstanding there. But what I have come to understand is that some days — it makes no difference at all. I hurt anyway. Your song, God, offers no comfort today. The music at times so poignant. Nothing about that seems to matter, when I know you don’t care what I do with my life. Universal truths don’t matter, today, as I sit here thinking about what I now know. What I think I want. Sitting here smothered by the heavy weight of my self doubt. Begging you to help me understand what is happening .
Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me. I am choking on it right now. I thought I kicked this habit of despair.
Why do I have to feel my life is so important? Why can’t I surrender to simply living each day. Loving. Others. Quietly. Unknown to the world. Anonymous. Why can’t I just do it. Instead I sit here under the black cloud of the sinkhole and my need stares back at me in the mirror.
I. want. to. be. s.o.m.e.b.o.d.y. I want to be important. I know what I can do. I know my own potential.
But that is what I thought you took from me — God — in my Exodus years. I know you took my heartache and salvaged my soul. Gave me forgiveness and in the sojourn to hell and back you promised to take this hideous ingratitude, ambition and greed. The need for accolades and esteem. That part of me that I loathe, that wants so badly to earn my worth. That thinks I can prove something, anything. Those ghosts of ambition crowd out all that you have taught me through my affliction. Face it.
I want to be immortal. I always want more than you.
It should be enough that you love me. The knowledge that somehow you are rebuilding the frame of this crooked broken heart, that aches and thinks it is something, anything without you. My secrets remain. The fact that some days I don’t want to serve you. I want to be my own deliverance. I want to be God. As if I could.
Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me. I am choking on it right now.
I don’t think about my father very often — any more. After he died, there was a time when my relationship with him clouded everything I did, or thought, or believed. Before he died, I had no real understanding of how much he made me who I am. He and my mother. Every choice I made, sadly was in some way a reaction to his control over my mind and my heart. I don’t think he meant to have that kind of power over me, nor would he have wanted it. But it happened that way because I was so afraid of him. I so wanted his approval. And longed for more from him and my mother.
I talk a lot about the mind and heart in my writing because though two different organs they are connected psychologically to — what makes us — human. I believe they make us who we are and it is through our choices (by making up our mind) that we grow into different people (transforming our heart.)
It’s strange to think back. I had no idea how unwell my parents were — as a child I thought they were just being parents. Thought all parents were like mind. I had no notion that there was a good or bad way to be a parent. Nor could I conceive that I might one day stand in some sort of judgment over them and I am still very uncomfortable being perceived that way.
[I feel when I write about my mom and dad, I have to give this caveat every time: I know my parents did the best they could with what they had. I figured that out through lots of therapy. I do accept it now.]
Listening to a radio interview yesterday of Anne Sexton’s daughter, Linda Gray Sexton, I was struck once again by how very dysfunctional my home life was growing up. If you don’t know, Anne Sexton was a poet, known for her confessional verse who won a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry in 1967, a year after I was born. She suffered through out her life with clinical depression and after many attempts, killed herself when she was 45 and her daughter Linda was 21.
While I listened to Linda talk about her relationship with her mother as a love/hate and like/dislike, oh how much I related as it is unpleasantly close to what I experience today with my mother.
I love my mother dearly, but I can’t figure out a very good way to be with her. I want to be in her life. And I try, sometimes. And at other times not very hard at all. I know that I must be a better daughter. And that she is a widow. And I have all that weight on my shoulders which I want to live up to. But often we hardly see one another and she lives ten minutes away.
Certain things she does hurts me, over and over again. And no matter how much I have learned to not take it personally it is hard not to do so. For example, it is not personal that she does not show up to things that are important to me because she got sick or is not “up to” it or is genuinely in some physical pain. She’s done that my whole life and it feels personal! But it’s not. I think she just shuts down sometimes. I believe it is because of my father’s treatment all those years — her brain blitzes out and she just can’t “do” life. It comes and goes. Sometimes she’s all over me. And then she’s gone.
I simply want to escape the pain of not being able to understand my parents and how they treat me.
For Linda, growing up it was taboo for her to talk about her mother’s suicide attempts. For us it was forbidden to talk about my father’s rage, my mother’s illnesses, and later the drinking. There were so many secrets. I wrote about that in a poem to my sisters titled A Sacred Contract and that’s what it was.
Linda Sexton said how much her mother’s depression and suicide attempts hurt her. I’ll say it. These are the things that broke my heart early on in life and God is beginning to repair. My father’s rages. My mother’s obvious misery. My father’s belittling and constant picking at her and us. My mother’s frequent sinking into illness to “get away” from him. My father’s work and frequent travel with subsequent fatigue. My mother’s constant “support” and appalling attempts to build him up when he was in one of his Funks of insecurity and fear of failure. I think because if he fell apart the whole thing — our lives — would fall apart also. At least that was the threat. That was the fear. That tsunami was constantly just off the coast for years.
Relationships with parents are difficult and complicated. On the one hand we know how we are so like our parents in their dysfunction and we castigate ourselves for it. There is a level of shame involved that must be overcome.
Forgiving your parents for being who they were. And forgiving ourselves for being so like them or for choosing not to be like them any longer which also somehow becomes a betrayal as well.
No Boundaries.
Linda went on to say, as she put in her book Half in Love, another dilemma of living with such parents is that there are no boundaries appropriately set up by the adult. And so the child feels unsafe — life feels precarious all the time. My father’s rage was so unpredictable. Even while it was on some level expected, it came at unexpected times. If you cannot count on or predict the bad, on some level you cannot believe in the affirmation and love. I don’t know why. You just can’t.
And yet I worshiped my father. There I said it. And it is true. Just as others did, I did.
And that was also my betrayal. I worshiped my father and came to unfairly loath my mother. It’s twisted. She suffered from his rages more than anyone. She endured. She protected us by holding that fragile matchstick house together all those years. But I saw her as the betrayer of us after all those years. Thinking somehow she should have left him. And what would have become of us if she had walked out on him after one of his thousands of verbal beatings over the years? All I know is now. Now without him we are a fractured family. We don’t know how to be with each other. We are all alone in our lives together.
Parenting by free fall.
As a mother, after all these years I see how this way of growing up gave me “no map for how to be a mother” as Linda Sexton put it so well yesterday in her interview.
I have struggled so much with the confusion of that reality. At times, saying I should never have become a mother. What was I thinking, thinking I could be a Mother? Sure, I can do the driving, and wipe away tears, help with the homework (not math!) and in the classrooms. My mother was a great homemaker. She cooked exceptionally well. I’ve gotten than from her but kids can survive without it. And she loved to garden as do i. She was a terrible cleaner, as am I. It is not that I cannot clean, I just do not.
But shouldn’t home be “a self-sustaining world unto itself. And mothers world-makers?” as David Griffith says in his essay Homemaker about his mother.
The fact of the matter is that I feel about as able to be a parent as a Mime.
I copy other people. I try to mimic Mothers that I admire. But I am mute. And a fake. I continuously hit some strange, solid and impenetrable internal wall. I cannot break through it to discover what it would mean to be a “normal” or “good” parent. A good mother. I have not found the answers in parenting books either. They are not the answer.
It’s something deeper. I don’t trust myself. And beyond that I do not even have words for it because I have never experienced it. There are missing pieces of my soul, my experiences, my character and person.
How can I ever hope to be a healer? Because that is one word I do have for motherhood.
Mothers are meant to be healers.
I am left with the knowledge that my only hope is that The Healer will infuse me with the Spirit of God. Then and only then, there and only there something good will come. I have to trust in that.
I have to set all my hope in that. Because left to my own devices there is only fear, insecurity, depression, addiction, rage, and broken hearts. There is only an inability to love, to connect, to nurture, to receive, to cohabitate — to be human. I am not being overly dramatic although it sounds so. When all you knew was rage you are unable to be normal.
I wrote this poem i 2004 after my father died. It felt like a betrayal then, when the words came out of me they were as much of a shock to me as to others I think. But now I see that they were s t e p s toward my own healing.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
I shed no tears today
for the warrior who has fallen.
Taken down by Cancer’s sword.
My heart is full of memories,
good and bad.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Constant worry.
Constant change.
Who could have foreseen
the Cancer overtaking his mind;
that became my liberation
in five short months.
The danger –
of loving too much;
needing tenderness,
and all the things Daddy’s are supposed to be.
PAIN. FEAR.
Emotions jangling around inside me
like some kind of white noise;
pushing their way into my conscious thoughts.
Invaders, threatening to undo
the weak hold I’ve found on The Good Life.
So many memories
good and bad,
bad and good.
Who was he? Why was he MY dad?
MY tormentor.
MY warrior;
Finally broken,
beaten by the Cancer
that was to become my friend.
Betrayal, these thoughts which plague me.
Broken; the unspoken promise
to keep our secrets to the end.
How do I remember?
How do I stay true and honest,
when the Truth causes an ache
too strong to feel,
to face,
to bear.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Who was he in the end?
A Demon? A Saint?
Now simply a Muse?
Remembered, but no longer feared?
Thought of in furtive,
anxious moments?
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Who is he to me now?
A man driven to despair
Living a chaotic, frantic life.
Not the Good Life I choose,
Not the legacy I will repeat.
Good Girl. Bad Girl.
Who will I listen to?
Who will I believe?
I am the woman I choose to become
today, tomorrow.
These are the Good Days
that I can change.
Yesterday is dead.
Burned in the funeral pyre.
Vapors.
Mist.
Dust settling around me.
Good Girl. Bad Girl.
Good.
Bad.
Good.
I certainly don’t know what it means to be a Mother. A Daughter. A Sister. A Wife. A Friend.
I
just
don’t
know.
But I can only take this life one day at a time and hope in God.
None of us can rewrite our history. Nor should we try. It makes us who we are today. And for me, it makes me strong enough to write tomorrow.
On Feb 17th, 2011 I decided I was going to stop. Stop contributing to the negativity in our culture. Stop verbalizing my negative thoughts about people. And criticising and not affirming or building up others. And perhaps become a more positive person.
So far, I haven’t made it more than a few days.
To be honest I haven’t kept track of how long I have gone but I know I have certainly not gone 21 consecutive days. But, the rubber band is still on my wrist. Remember the rubber band was the reminder. Move it to the other wrist when you fail. I said:
“I’m trying to lead by example and not complain about anything or criticize anyone, or gossip, for 21 days, which is how long it takes to form a habit apparently.”
And though I haven’t made it, I can say this.
I am fantastically aware of my mouth.
It’s not that I am an excessively negative person. But I am verbal. And I have been known to intimidate others — insert sinister laughter — and I am well aware of the “power” my words have. I am not consciously (I hope) hurting others at this point in my life. (I started working on giving up sarcasm approx. ten years ago and for the most part I’m doing well on that. But it’s tough.)
But I know how easy, almost habitual, it is to say something critical about another person. I include jibes or sarcasm here because, though (sometimes) funny, they are totally unnecessary and without a doubt do not build others up.
So, no more complaining, criticising and gossiping. I want to try. It’s not the number of days that matters. It’s the effort.
Another thing I’ve learned from this effort is that I DO use “complaining, subtle criticism and jibes” in a passive aggressive way.
When I am annoyed or upset about one thing, I jab at the person about something else. With the adult child or the tweens in my house I see directly how this simply wears down their self-esteem and it reinforces negative when it could be a learning opportunity. So, I am trying to be up front about behaviors that annoy me and let the cracks go. No matter how funny they may be I will bite my tongue!
And as this is the first day of LENT you might consider giving up being a “critical, complaining, or gossiping” person.
I have lofty goals for myself.
(Yes, that was sarcasm. But at my own expense!)
I am going to see if I can go three days without moving the wristband. Three days without saying something unnecessarily critical. Three days without talking about another person when they aren’t there. Three days without cracking a joke at someone’s expense. Some call it being snarky. Or kvetching. And three days feels long. It’s especially hard if you get a lot of your identity from being funny.
But it’s something to think about. It comes down to this: Do you build others up or tear them down?
I don’t want to be known to be a complainer. Or have a reputation for mean sarcasm. Or be remembered for being negative. And this is more than about giving something up. In that way it’s just a discipline. But if our heart is to be changed then we have to truely set that weakness or propensity or sin at the foot of the Cross. Let it go because if you’re totally honest with yourself, like me you want to build others up.
Three days. I know that’s about all I can do — in — a — row. If that!?! And then perhaps another three. Some day 21. Or the lenton 40. Or, forever.
What about you?
-MHH
Some verses, if you read the Bible
Ephesians 4.29 Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them
Ecclesiastes 10:12 Words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious, but a fool is consumed by his own lips.
Matthew 12:34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
Romans 14:19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
Romans 15:2 Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.
Ephesians 5:4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
Colossians 3:8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.
Colossians 4:6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
It occurs to me that I don’t write much about being a mother. The reasons are simple. I have no idea what I’m doing. I use my instincts. But I have no exact answers. It took me years to accept that my mom and dad “did their best.” They didn’t purposefully f*ck with me. And now, I take all that and do the same. I do my best. And I think that has to be enough. I will look back, when my children are gone, and know that I did my best with what I had. No matter the outcome.
interruptions & change
My daughter just woke up, her face is red and puffy from sleep. She’s regaling me with a play-by-play of a book she finished late last night. She is going on, and on, and on! Step-by-integral-step of the harrowing story of a boy who escapes an earthquake. I don’t care, but — it’ is important that I listen. All I want to do in this moment is sip my first cup of coffee of the day and write. But I listen. Nodding and “Um humming” at what I hope are the right moments. I am listening. Sort of. I am also distracted and hoping she doesn’t notice. Ironically, in this moment being her mom means listening to her.
That pull of my desires against the desires of my children is one of the most complicated things about being a mother. The choices we make, day by day, hour by hour. We’ve all felt that tension.
Children are always “interrupting” all the other things I’m doing. But when one comes running up the stairs in tears because they got walloped in the eye playing Wii they still run for the comforting kiss right on the spot, my ‘magic’ kiss still has power to heal. (Mothers have magic kisses if you didn’t know.) The day they stop wanting those kisses will mean they have moved on to the next stage of their development. I have four very different kids so that day will be different for each of them. I cannot prescribe it. But I won’t stop until they push me away.
They grow. I grow. We keep adapting, all of us. The whole family continues to change.
Tom declared on Wednesday that he thinks the kids are too old to sleep in our bed. This has been a long time in coming. It’s really the nine-year old that likes to go to sleep in my bed. Being a musician Tom is often up late in his studio, perhaps five nights a week. I get up at 5 am so I go to bed when the kids do. I savor those few minutes of reading myself to sleep. J just likes to be with me and so we’ve developed a habit (some might say an unhealthy one, to which I say rubbish!) of letting him “warm up” Tom’s spot by falling asleep there. I like the companionship.
Is this a bad habit? I don’t know whether I’ve let it go on for so long for myself or for J. Is he too old? Parenting is full of lots of conflicting ideas. And when Tom says J is too old to do it anymore, I really think Tom feels too old to do the required transporting back to the boy’s room, up the ladder and back into his own bed. And then we also have to deal with the other two who are jealous of this time. It then becomes something “special” for which they are compelled to compete for Mom. I’m sure plenty of expert mothers would want to tell me all the ways this is harmful. I don’t know. Mostly, I don’t care. But I respect Tom’s wish to fall into bed at one in the morning and not have to move a near comatose child. So we changed. And I must learn to go to bed alone. And so does J. It’s hard to grow up no matter your age.
unconditional love
I have had moments over the last seventeen years of asking myself what were you thinking becoming a parent? I write about how I was raised and what that did to me knowing that based on what I experienced I am not qualified. I realized the other day that I don’t know what it feels like to believe you are loved unconditionally by your parents. If that’s true, and it is, then how do I possibly convey unconditional love to my kids? Can I? I believe in it intellectually and even on a spiritual level. But I don’t get it. Tom shows it to me – for sure. So I wrestle with what he does that helps me believe him? And to this day, my internal voice is pure disbelief. You surely cannot love without conditions, without criticism, without expectation, without a grumpy disapproval, without your own insecurity pushing you to love … If you haven’t experienced it. Then how do I know my kids are feeling it from me?
I think unconditional love is the most important quality a parent should have. Then you can push, and you can encourage, and even disapprove. They will know they are okay. Somehow Tom’s parents managed to show him that kind of love. These are the things that I think make me unqualified to be a parent.
learn from others & trust your gut
Some days I think I’m just a reactionary. I react to how I was parented. I react to things my kids are doing. I react to books. I react to teachers. I react to the culture. I am not very good at deciding a good way of doing something and sticking with it — mostly because I don’t think there is a right way. I really needed about five years of study on parenting before I even got started. And that’s an absurd impossibility. Who has the time? So we learn as we go.
I became a mother the day we married in 1993, a year before I was a footloose single woman planning on heading to the mission field. I didn’t think about kids. They simply weren’t. They didn’t exist in my worldview. Falling in love with Tom, hard and fast meant learning to love his four and a half year old daughter. And when we married I became an instant mother – the “extra” mom to a five-year old daughter. Extra or Other — whatever you get called, being a step-mom was a crash course in parenting. And like nothing I had experienced before in my life, it brought out my insecurities and need for control! Wow! Perhaps some day, perhaps, I will write about the years that I worked in full-time ministry while parenting a step child and having three biological kids. I’ll call it “How I was an Ugly, Paranoid, Controlling Step-Monster.” My daughter M graciously loves me still and has forgiven me for those years. When she moved back in recently, at 22, I realized God is gracious and gave me a do-over.
Here’s the thing. I believe kids just want to be loved and kids are the most forgiving of all people. All they know is you. You are their parent. Okay, later they will figure some things out. Like perhaps you didn’t know anything. That’s the risk. That’s the fun! And then when they become a parent, well, perhaps you won’t look quite so crazy.
Luckily we have twenty years with our kids and have time to make adjustments.
I have learned is that there are no rules. Rules in parenting is crap. The best guide for me has been my gut. My gut has never failed me. My gut disagrees or sometimes agrees with parenting books. My gut disagrees or sometimes agrees with other parents giving advice. My gut disagrees or agrees with pediatricians, teachers, supposed experts. If you follow your gut, your intuition, I believe you’ll be okay, eventually.
For many years I doubted my gut and my voice because I doubted myself. My own insecurities played into who I listened to and what I believed. I’d boomerang from one theory to another intellectually. But in practice usually my inner voice said do this or don’t do that. We make mistakes. We are unusually lax in response to having strict parents or vice versa.
asian vs. any other parenting
I have not read Amy Chua’s book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother mostly because there’s a lot about the stereotypical Asian parenting style that I respect, but I know I don’t have the will power to follow through on. So it would just make me feel bad and I am really not in to feeling bad about myself right now. So I’ve ignored the articles, reactions and furor.
Frankly many modern parents are far too lax with their children, but I have seen this with every kind of parent from many different cultures. I know that I could and perhaps should push my children harder. I mean, now I wish I had been pushed academically. In hind sight, I was a slacker, intelligent but insecure and I would have benefited from my parents lovingly pushing me just a bit more (or a lot more!) On the other hand, I felt I never measured up to what my dad expected of me. I lived in that limbo of that craziness. His insecurities drove him and we were a reflection of him. We were a mirror of his success or not. This is a very Asian characteristic I have been told by one of my friends who is also Asian.
And so I push my intelligent but lazy daughter, but not too much I hope. I consistently fight the internal shame that says I don’t expect enough of her and I am the thing standing between her and Harvard or Yale Law school. Me. And then the countering voice reminds me what I really believe. That she needs to find the balance herself. Know that she’s loved no matter what she chooses but also know that more opportunities will be open to her if she applies herself academically and learns to work hard. I want each of my children to be able to ask the question what they want? Then help them to see what they have to be willing to do, in order to get it. By empowering my daughters especially in those moments they learn their own power. It is a choice. I hope I am right. My gut tells me I am. In the end that’s all I have. My boys are different, completely and my approach is also different but instilling in them a sense that they control their future is important.
I have a Japanese friend and I love how she parents. She is an incredible mother and I learn from her every time we get together. “When I am cleaning my children are cleaning“, she tells me. Wha? I am so not there! To be honest my kids emulate Tom and I who hate to clean. Do I want to be more like my friend? Hell yes! I guess what I am saying is that there is something to be learned from a culture that promotes hard work, excellence, pride and discipline. I admire it. I want those to be things my children learn from me. But no, my ten year old does not know how to clean the toilet. I find that reflexively parent like I was parented — growing up cleaning is a pain! To be avoided or to be endured, … If I want to change this little legacy in my family it will take effort and discipline. I don’t know if I want to make the effort. I don’t know if I have the discipline. Which is where I started above. I find a lot of things are great ideas but practically speaking I am unable to maintain them. We all have to know ourselves.
what’s your highest calling?
This morning I read something that startled me but I agree with it:
“… parenting is not our highest calling! Faithfully serving & following after Christ is our highest calling! — SortaCrunchy
We are going to make mistakes, perhaps even a lot of them. You’ll compare yourself to others and wonder if perhaps their way is better. But in the end you have to look at your kids, unique individuals that they are as well as look at yourself and your partner/spouse who are also unique people, and do your best.
Parenting is its own religion, and engenders its own faith. Debating it serves no purpose other than inciting holy war. –@kmaezenmiller
Our calling is to follow Christ. Behave as he did. Emulate him. Do our best. And if I can let go of all of the above and relax, well then there’s hope for us all. It’s not simple nor would I ever want to imply that. But there is a level of trust you must have in yourself, in the person you partner with to parent and in God.
[in singular] a reassessment, especially one that results in changes being made.
I am thinking about many things including the future of this blog. I was particularly challenged by a conversation this weekend. My sister questioned why I “live so much in the past?” She was wishing for me that I would be able to “get on with my life.”
Long before that conversation, I have asked for a clear insight about what is next for me. I have been seeking — praying — listening.
Rethinking What I Know about Myself.
I need to know that my life contributes to a grander and larger story than simply my own.
I have certain passions — God-given, I believe. Most notable photography. biblical studies. women. any injustice.
One spiritual gift I have seems to be Mercy. My heart breaks over the corruption and greed in some that leads to poverty and pain for others. Over persecuted people groups. Over homophobia, racism, sexism. Over anyone being homeless.
My voice, in writing, is loud and clear and sometimes even challenging. Out loud I am meek and unclear, which I experienced this weekend to my dismay.
Rethinking Biblical Translation & Interpretation.
I have a hunger to understand scripture for myself. Dare I say this? It frightens me that so much of (most or all) biblical interpretation throughout history was done by men. It gnaws at me from inside out.
I am not a raging neofeminist or even a strong proponent of a feminist or liberation theology. (I guess I don’t know enough about them to say one way or another.) Simply put, things have been stacked against us:women.
A patriarchal society& culture brought us the message of the scriptures that we live our lives by.
Another group of men translated it into the language for “everyone.”
And, then in most churches today men stand up and interpret scripture every Sunday and all week long.
“The Bible has shaped the life of the church in a way that nothing else has done and Christians today are the product of the history of its interpretation.” 1
Why should I trust their translations and interpretations categorically without question? This is simply foolish, in my opinion. And still I pray for a spirit of humility — that I would be a fertile ground. I ask why do I think these things and if my motives are wrong or I am simply being foolish in my thinking, that this thinking would change. And, I have thought of many responses to this conundrum, from applying to be an unpaid intern at my church in biblical hermeneutics, I would hope, to bring a feminine voice to the teaching being done, to going to seminary.
Rethinking My Role.
As I seriously consider the perception of being a “woman of leisure” which I wrote about recently, I get mired in my own frustrations and can’t pull together clear thoughts. Because it is emotional for me! I don’t care about the money (perhaps I should) but I want respect. And I know if I don’t respect women who stay home, then how can I expect others to respect me?
And before you email me about the value of being at home with kids, know that I’ve had more than ten years to ponder this subject. I don’t need “encouragement” in that regard. It is an incredibly complicated personal decision for every women and I do respect the difficult place women (so much more than men) are in. So if you are a man, butt out. No one can make this choice for a woman or explain away her doubt, fear, aspirations, goals, or desire for “accomplishment” or get why she cries to be away from her babies.
Recently, First Lady Michelle Obama was named Most Powerful Woman of the Year, beating out heads of state, chief executives and celebrities in Forbes magazine’s annual listing. Some women came out saying Ms. Obama talks about herself as a wife and mother and were questioning how that makes her influential? Gr…..
But I digressed into an issue that is only a side story in my search for a place to make an impact and contribution.
And I am still left thinking at this point, is this blog much ado about nothing? Is it time to stop?”
Rethink Everything.
It is difficult for me, at times, to look back over the last decade of my life. In human terms — quitting a meaningful, challenging job, succumbing to clinical depression, becoming addicted to alcohol, and straying far away from the LORD — it was all failure on my part. And yet, it was through those experiences, as mortifying as they are and were to me, that I have come to recognize many things.
I am actually grateful to have been brought so low. I can only hope that I am still learning and am becoming a person useful to the LORD. I had to trudge through the violence of my childhood and my feeling of betrayal and disappointment towards my parents — and forgive them. This has opened me up to a new life.
Christ’s broken body for me was real and meaningful in a new way never understood until my humiliation. And gratefully I can say, this drove me to my knees. I went from someone who felt she was competent, powerful, knowledgeable and puffed up with my importance to a broken reed, hardly knowing up from down. Alcohol devastated me — became the thing that I lived for. The passion, the dreaming, the hoping, the living stopped.
I am so grateful to not have lost everything. It is humbling to sit here in the comfort of my home knowing that I am loved by my husband and adored by my children. Undeserved, as I know how close I came to losing all that I now hold dear and even my life.
As I consider what the future holds for me I want to be fertile ground. Looking back, mostly glad to have fallen. To have learned. As I look ahead there is no perfect plan. I must trust while serving, not knowing the future. Trust that I have a contribution to make, but if that “thing” the “plan” never happens, hope that I will continue to be grateful and if I am never made whole, still I will ask for it. And hope. And stay open.
===================================
I have more than fifty poems I have written here. This one, is called addict.
Being an addict catches me by surprise. Today,
seemingly innocent things — a drink, a smoke, a purchase, food, even exercise can become
urgent
need.
In the time that it takes to feel a flash of happiness, sadness or regret;
less than 60 seconds of my life
and I remember,
I am an addict. How could I have forgotten?
Today I must ask what brought this on?
For tomorrow I must fill the need
with OTHER.
As for yesterday, I can only look back and remember
I am an addict, but I am stronger than my need.
And as for this moment — I know I am an addict;
I am. I was. I always will be, always will be
an addict.
ADDICT written april 9, 2009 by melody harrison hanson
Those that have no background in addiction look at the word ADDICT and the word alcoholic as kind of wicked and weak. Face it, our culture doesn’t understand. But if you’ve been there, if you live there, if you love someone who does or has you know exactly what I mean. And I thank you for understanding.
1 Bray, Gerald. Biblical Interpretation: Past & Present, 1996, IVP
it’s fall and yet i walk about the yard in shorts, constantly aware of the heat. cool enough. gorgeous leaves, made of reds, yellows, browns chewed into smaller pieces, set aside for the spring. the grass is still green and growing, fighting. for it has something more to show for itself. as i blow the remaining sticks and other fall debris i wonder if it is tomorrow that will bring the cold?
it’s fall and yet the windows are open, as i sip a cold clausthaler and listen to the neighbors’ rowdy party music, i long hop the fence. i’m not finished with summer yet. somehow the heat makes it linger on. the nights are starry and the moon was bright last night. with the windows open a perfect sleep comes. down comforters likely out too soon but feel anticipatory. as i put the fire pit aside to mow, perhaps the last of the fall, i hope we use it again!
one last fire, outside before the morning dew on the lawn freezes and i wish again for a heated garage. i blow the leaves out of the garage — again — and again as they seem to fight me. wondering how it got this way, again. the indiscriminate pile-up of bikes, discarded furniture, forgotten projects, and garage sale finds all manage to keep it something other than what it was supposed to be.
and as i sweep the summer’s storm of activity away i think of winter wishing, wondering, what will it hold? if summers are for friendship, and water toys, laughter, smoky grills, and cold beer what does winter’s promise hold? for those of us who hold on tight to the warm weather and outdoor chores, the possibilities and hope that come from growing things. Somehow, i must allow winter to come.
then i will settle in to short nights and freezing toes in the morning. pull out the wool sweaters, accepting that summer is fully gone.
As I spoke those words to my father on the telephone, I meant them. I could not remember the last time I felt genuine joy. I was coming off of three pregnancies in rapid succession and being a person that worked 60+ hour weeks in a rewarding but stressful job.
Tom and I had decided together that I would stay-home with our three kids who were all still in diapers for two reasons. One, because I wanted “out” of my job. And secondly, it made sense financially to not put three kids in daycare. But I hadn’t found it to be a positive change for me and after a year at-home I was suffering from major depression — although I did not yet know what to call.
I was expressing a desire for something that I could not have defined exactly.
Happiness.
This was one of the last real conversations I remember having with my father. It was the summer of 2002, and I recall my father saying, “Do you need me to come? I will come if you need me.” and I deflected, thinking as usual that my need was not important. I said, “No, I’ll be okay.” Which was the farthest from the truth.
I wasn’t okay and wouldn’t be okay for a very long time. But that day, sitting on my back stoop looking out at my yard with unseeing eyes, I couldn’t imagine what he could do to make things any better.
You see the idea of him coming was better than the actuality. My parents did visit in October, and my father was preoccupied with work — on his laptop and cell phone the entire visit. He was critical of our choices — We took them out to a Thai restaurant for dinner instead of cooking. That was wasteful or indulgent, which he did not approve of, never mind that we were buying.
But I was depressed still five months later. And when you are, things like grocery shopping and cooking are impossible to do. I didn’t stick up for myself at the time. And I knew Tom felt no criticism of me for not cooking. So we went out.
It turns out Dad was suffering from brain tumors (though no one knew at that time) which would be diagnosed a few weeks later. He had brain surgery in early December. He died five months later, in May of 2003.)
Recently we were dining (at home, if you must know) with some new friends.
Tom and I are both making an effort to make some new relationships, as this has been a theme at church lately. We were gathered in the kitchen — as often happens in the minutes before enjoying a home cooked meal together — and Tim asked if I needed any help? I usually do leave some things for when guests have arrived, because it gives me something to do with my hands. (I’m a nervous, socially introverted tongue-tied person, especially with new people.) And a task sometimes makes a guest feel good.
I flippantly and off the top of my head said “No, I’m a woman of leisure, so I finished everything ahead of time.” Where in the hell did that come from, I thought immediately?
I’d never described myself that way before. Haven’t even put those words together in a sentence before. And I haven’t felt bad about being a stay-at-home for a good long while.
Oh, it creeps in now and then, as people ask the “good ol’ American get to know ya questions” like “What do you do?” Awkward when you have all your kids in school and you’re not “working” outside the home. My self-esteem would definitely be enhanced by a salary and some hours working at tasks that have a higher purpose or a more obvious result. But no, for now this is working for us. I am at-home. I am a full-time MOM, two-hour a day max home-keeper, and working on my health.
It all leads back to that desire to be happy.
Am I a woman of leisure? God help me, no! But I guess I joked about it because I don’t know how to tell people what my life really involves. It’s not typical for someone to admit ,
“My #1 job is staying healthy mentally. What do you do?”
Yup, I have a mental illness (there I said it) and it’s chronic (meaning it comes back, all too frequently) and I am learning through trial and error, research, and lots of effort and hard work what it takes to get healthy, stay healthy, and be healthy.
I know that I could do a 9-5 job and sort these things out on the weekends. But I am grateful that I don’t have to and so I’m working on my health every day (or most days. Many are too full to think about me. I am a mother of four, active in my church, and writing…)
Major depressive disorder was the diagnosis and it has led me to a half-dozen different therapists, psychologists as well as psychiatrists. A near fatal suicide attempt. Medication. Hospitalization. Alcoholism. And …the depression comes back. I start all over again. Well, the truth is …
I work, work, work …
on my sanity. And on the good days I think why the hell does it take so much time just to be healthy? On the bad ones, well, I just can’t think. I struggle to be functional. But it’s not quite like that. A depressive episode builds, like a few rolling waves at first sliding into a tsunami.
If you’ve never been in therapy, you’ve no idea how much work it is. It’s hard when you are not depressed. Hellishly difficult if you are. If you are committed to getting better and growing and changing, you haveto do it. There is no other choice. No one wants a relapses, of which I’ve had more than a half dozen over six years.
It feels like two to three months of going through life like The Undead. Your body is heavy all the time — It feels like you are filled with sand. And your head, your mind, your soul, your psyche is a Black Hole. Everything swirls around into it and nothing worthwhile comes out.)
If your commitment is to health you have work on it EVERY DAY:
On your spirituality,because I’d hate to give you the impression that “healing” only comes from doctors.
On your physical health, I have learned that exercise and diet are probably most important, after Psychotherapy.
On your friendships. Isolation is a big danger and a signal that you’re slipping backwards.
On your relationships with family, which must stay positive and healthy.
You have get off drugs or alcohol, because at least alcohol is a depressant. [The story of alcoholism well, it will have to be another day for that. I am two years and two months into sobriety as of this writing.]
You have to do the therapy, which only works if you do the work.
So what does a woman of leisure do?
This one works on her stuff. And sometimes keeps house and cares for four kids — nine, 11, 12 and 22. Our youngest has learning difficulties which have involved years and years of advocacy and therapies and doctors appointment. Being an advocate for him meant getting an education on many things including how the public school system works to help children with disabilities, pushing the insurance company and doctors and teachers, learning about hearing, and speech and attention-deficits. Learning about nutrition and medication and side effects. Just regular stuff mom’s do if they have the time. Most women have much less time for this than I do, so I feel fortunate. But managing all that, during the same years that I’ve been ill has been hard. Rewarding but difficult.
I volunteer my photography skills and writing when I can or when asked. I ventured into a photography business for about three years, but decided that I didn’t really want it that badly. I serve in various places with a variety of things — as I hear of needs at church and school. I study further on things will help me do all this in an intelligent way. When they were little I was in the kid’s classrooms volunteering every week and was going on field trips.
I do love being at home when my children come home from school — world-weary, and kind of beat up from their day — offering a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen or a word of advice. It just happened last night with my 22-year-old and it is awesome.
We only have a few years with our children and so I have concluded – selfishly perhaps – that if I can take these years then I will. Gladly. Joyfully. And try to best of my ability and with all the strength I have in me to live well.
For them. For myself. For the pure sake of being happy to be alive.
Who knew, as a child, that just being happy would be so much work. What does this woman of leisure do all day? Some days I wonder that myself if I’m truthful. But I hope I will look back, in the years to come, and have no doubt it was time well spent.
MHH September 15, 2010
For more of my story scroll down to TAGS and click on MY STORY.
Here’s the thing. I have had a lifelong yearning for connection.
I think Henri Nouwen had the same thing going on. Nouwen’s understanding of the nature of life involved cultivating one’s self — inwardly, outwardly, and upwardly.
But if I am very honest with myself the very things I long for with people I resist! It is much easier to be alone.
I avoid — the telephone, Christian small groups or even just “Mom” groups, making new friends, more than a wave to my neighbors, calling my family, and even at times real conversation with Tom or my shrink or my friends!
No, not all the time. Not every time the phone rings, but often. Not every email or someone asking to get together. Not my best friends, usually. But — I— just— avoid. I recoil at church when I have to talk to strangers and duck and hide when I see a acquaintances in the grocery store.
Am I shy? Yes. Am I as arrogant as I come off? No way. I do have a social anxiety, badly. I can “talk” at length on-line or via email, but I sweat bullets to talk to the same person face-to-face. I go to a church of 6,000 so the chances of seeing someone I know at church is slim to none. But on the occasion that I do see someone I know I don’t scoot over to say hi and catch up. I am persistently filled with dread to see people! I stammer and stutter and end the conversation as quickly as possible. I shut down. Getting away is all I can think about. And then on the long drive home I think to myself “how lonely church is and how I don’t know anyone. Does anyone even care? Poor me….”
It’s— quite —pathetic.
For almost fifteen years now, Tom and I have had one conversation more than any other.
Me: “Why are we so disconnected?” Or, around the holidays “We rarely talk to your parents.” It’s infrequent at best that we see my sister and her husband and we see Tom’s siblings once or twice a year and all live in the same town. I can go a month without seeing my mother and weeks without talking.
And we always come back around to the same place.
Tom: “Tons of people love you Melody — Love you and are always conveying that to me!” Or, “We just have to make some effort. People are busy.” Or “If you really wanted closer relationships you’d [fill in the blank.]”
If you really wanted deeper relationships you would …
That is what I want. I have a hole in my heart you could drive a semi through in the shape of people. I need people and I don’t know how to be with them. So I’m shy. And I have social anxiety in most settings. And I am terrible, I mean terrible and I don’t even want to try to be good at small talk. It makes my skin crawl! And the hole comes from (trust me my shrink and I have been through this many times) my low self-esteem thanks to my crummy upbringing.
So what can a person do to change all that?
In the past my best approach has been to have incredible vivacious outgoing friends. They sought me out. They made plans. They were a party in and of themselves. But, I am now a forty-three year old mom and I don’t work outside the home and my church is mega- and I just don’t have it ‘happening’ any more. I’m frumpy and middle-aged, and I don’t drink. How droll!
So who is this strange person that I don’t even recognize (me) that needs her friends more than ever
and seeks people
and connection
and community
more
than e v e r!
Nouwen describes this longing I have, saying: “The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human beings and to our God. In the midst of a turbulent, often chaotic, life we are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God. To do that, however, we have to face and explore directly our inner restlessness, our mixed feelings toward others and our deep-seated suspicions about the absence of God.” From Reaching Out— The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life by Henri Nouwen.
How and where do you find community? What do you do to develop and keep it in your life? What is important for you? Yes, this is a response question posed even for the lurker (you know who you are and you don’t even have to tell me who you are.) I hope to glean from your wisdom.
Yes, I quit Facebook (for the time being) because I’ve been lulled into the sense that I am — “so connected” — with people all over the globe and it’s crock. It really is. I need and want some face-to-face time no matter how scared that makes me.
What does community look like, feel like, smell like? What does it require of a person? Where do you find it? This is what I’m thinking about.
God has shown me twice this week, by marking time in my past, to show me how I have changed. When this happened I was blown away by how much God loves me, something I have long struggled to believe. And that in and of itself is so sweet. So good. I just sat in the moment, feeling precious. God loves me enough to show me the changes, the progress, the healing that has come.
When I fell into my first major depression in 02, I didn’t really know what was happening to me. At first I just sat absorbing the fact that I couldn’t think, or sleep, or make decisions, or read; I couldn’t do anything. It was strange. Foggy. A bit like being in slow motion. A ten-hour day at home with three small children didn’t feel like a day at all. It felt like a flash, because I wasn’t really conscious. I had no words to describe what was happening to me. Depression took everything.
Lost My Way
After five weeks stranded in this place, I finally told Tom that something strange was going on. And then my friend Carol, then at some point I told my parents. I remember sitting on my back porch talking on the phone to my father who had called. Of course he said he would cancel all his plans and come straight away if I needed him. He was good in an emergency. But I declined his offer knowing it wouldn’t be that pleasant nor likely to be helpful. And I don’t remember much about that conversation except saying “Dad, I just want to be happy. I can’t remember the last time I felt happy.”
Looking back today, from the perspective finally of joy and contentment, I have to admit that I never believed I deserved happiness. It wasn’t something on the conscious level or anything I thought about very clearly. But at a deep, foundational level I couldn’t remember happiness. And didn’t believe I deserved it. I would reach out for it sometimes. Usually that resulted in hurt because I did it in such needy or aggressive way. And more than how others treated me, my thinking about myself was so bad, so low; I had a deep hatred for myself.
I can only guess that this was caused by being yelled at so often and so unexpectedly as a child, young adult and adult. You knew it might come at some point, but you could never guess why he was mad or what you might have done. My father was unpredictable in his rages. Berating. Pushing. Demanding that you admit wrongdoing. Keeping at you, over and over again verbally — until you concede to him, whatever it was. The subject didn’t matter. You must apologize. You must ask for forgiveness, absolutely. Looking back, he was Psychotic.
And so, inside I slowly disappeared. Life was numbing and I was without opinion. Without question I began to do whatever he expected of me. And that too reinforces your own loathing. I was a classic under achiever, my one way of getting his goat.
Every once in a while over the years, the last time happened in the late ’90s, I would meet someone who seemed to see right through the walls and ask me “Why are you in so much pain?” It was if I was translucent and they could peer into my heart and soul in a way that I couldn’t even do any more. I just looked at this person who didn’t even know me, with shock and disbelief at what they saw. I felt exposed and yet I had revealed nothing. They felt the pain I had stopped feeling. It was horrible. And yet, looking back it was so important. Again, one of those markers God gives me to see how far I have come.
I worked for my father for many years. My reasons (I see now) were to receive his affirmation. And it worked, though I worked too much and became a workaholic. I worked unreasonable hours, had no boundaries between work and my life, and I had hardly any personal life until I met Tom. Even then, I really had trouble getting home for dinner, worked through lunches, lived and breathed work. I worked 150% and knew that I couldn’t fail, which was what I was sure was going to happen if I stopped striving, because it was my father’s reputation and his good will toward me that were hanging in the balance. His love?
It wasn’t until I had my third baby in five years and quit that life to be at home that it all came crashing down around me. Thank God it did. I say that because it began a nine-year process of finding myself , FINDING LIFE — Oh, the mistakes I had to make in order for that to happen. But hey, I was doing the sped up version of adolescent rebellion I guess. Growing, learning, expanding, reaching, feeling. Finally feeling. And it felt terrible, and good at the same time.
Nine long years. And in those years I found
Photography.
Writing poetry and thought put into words in general.
A study of the Bible and the power of prayer with faithful believing women.
I developed opinions, thoughts and ideas that originate with me!
I found gardening and theology.
I have been slowly overcoming of anxiety – mostly social anxiety which I get so badly even still. I really do hate that.
I have found joy. I’m actually glad to be alive.
I have found love from humans and cats,
And more important than any of this I have found that Jesus loves me. No really, he does and I never believed it. After the phone conversation with my father he sent me a postcard in a frame that said “You are the One Jesus Loves.” I was so uncomfortable with it that I buried it in a sock drawer for years. Long past when he died. I really couldn’t fathom it. Sunday, right before church, I found the post-it that he included on it which said: “And your father loves you too. Love, Dad. 7/02” (Yes, in the strange third person.)
I don’t want to die anymore.
I started smoking in that time, which was a slow suicide and last year I quit smoking.
I starting drinking, socially at first, and then heavily and began to abuse it. And I quit drinking over a period of three or four l o n g years. When I started to think about quitting, I thought I would never have any fun again. I actually thought that. No fun, ever again. I had no idea what true contentment and joy, even happiness was until I quit drinking, accepted my powerlessness against it, and faced the shit I had been so cleverly (or not so cleverly really) been avoiding.
When I was depressed I thought I would never be happy. When I overdosed, a small part of me must have wanted to live because I woke up and told Tom what I had done and I lived. But only a tiny piece of me still wanted life, mostly I still hated myself.
But it has been the process of becoming ME that has made it possible to consider forgiving my father and mother. I know I am a strong person. As I begin to want more from life, I can accept and voice what happened to me. Yes, my father had to die for me to have the courage.
This near decade long process made it possible for forgiveness. And it isn’t a short or easy road. Truly, it has taken all those years.
My first honest words expressed about my dad were in a poem called “Good Dad. Bad Dad.” It felt so risky, so bold at the time. After reading it again after all these years, I think I’ll post it here:
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
I shed no tears today
for the warrior who has fallen.
Taken down by Cancer's sword.
My heart is full of memories,
good and bad.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Constant worry.
Constant change.
Who could have foreseen
the Cancer overtaking his mind;
that became my liberation
in five short months.
The danger --
of loving too much;
needing tenderness,
and all the things Daddy's are supposed to be.
PAIN. FEAR.
Emotions jangling around me
like some kind of white noise;
pushing their way into my conscious thoughts.
Invaders, threatening to undo
the weak hold I've found on a Good Life.
So many memories
good and bad,
bad and good.
Who was he? Why was he MY dad?
MY tormentor.
MY warrior;
Finally broken,
beaten by the cancer
that was to become my friend.
Betrayal,
these thoughts which plague me.
Broken;
the unspoken promise
to keep our secrets to the end.
How do I remember?
How do I stay true and honest,
when the Truth causes an ache
too strong to feel,
to face,
to bear.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Who was he in the end?
A demon? A saint?
Now simply a Muse --
remembered, but no longer feared.
Thought of
in furtive,
anxious moments.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Who is he to me now?
A man driven to despair
Living a chaotic, frantic life.
Not the Good Life I choose,
Not the legacy I will repeat.
Good Girl. Bad Girl.
Who will I listen to?
Who will I believe?
I am the woman I choose to become
today,
tomorrow.
These are the Good Days
that I can change.
Yesterday is Dead.
Burned in the funeral pyre.
Vapors
Mist
Dust settling around me.
Good Girl. Bad Girl.
Good.
Bad.
Good.
by Melody Hanson, 2004
So how does it work, to forgive a tormentor, an oppressor, an abuser? Does it mean taking someone’s anger and rebuke over and over again? I’ll never know if I could have stood up to my father? I have never met someone who did and stayed in relationship with him. That’s daunting.
Forgiving is “the opposite of ignoring and excusing. It is moving toward the offense.” And that’s been my path. Naming the pain. Drawing attention to it in my writing. My father’s anger and rages were ugly and dangerous and as a child I was constantly afraid of him. With some amount of distance – his death – and my personal work, I’ve worked to let go of it. But there will never be restoration and reconciliation because he has gone.
On the other hand, I’ve also experiences anger toward my mom over the years for her lack of action, defense of us and for shutting down. She also disappeared into health problems, depression, and eventually alcohol. But we, two fragile and broken people are working on a long healing process and I try every day to trust her and not expect or need her to change.
My pastor said recently about forgiveness: “Let go, open your heart, move toward the pain. Recognize the person’s humanity, their broken heart and sense of failure.” I can do that with my mom.
For the longest time I couldn’t have said that my pain and hurt belonged to my father. I had a blessedly complex relationship with him. I longed for his approval while at the same time had much hurt, anger and resentment for his controlling behaviors. I learned to be exceptionally passive aggressive and sarcastic because that was, I thought, the only safe way that I could express myself.
“Safe” is so ironic. I don’t remember ever feeling safe growing up. I was anxious, afraid, tense, doubtful, insecure, wracked with shame, self-loathing, and fear. Fear of the ambiguity of my home growing up — I actually said to a boyfriend “Treat me well or treat me badly. I don’t care. Just be consistent.” I longed for it.
But grace, coming from God in the life of Jesus and the sacrifice done for me — that’s changed everything!!! He takes the most broken and restores. Better put, he heals.
He makes like new but different, strong; his touch, attention, and gaze are profound. I will never be the same.
I have a new life. I have a life. I have started living. I have hope. I have joy. I may not ever feel loved by my human father …but I’m going to be okay. I don’t expect the way forward to be simple because as I grow God continues to ask things of me that are difficult.
Will you obey? Will you choose my path? Will you give such and such up? Will you forgive? Will you seek me? Will you be disciplined to know my words, the Word? Will you exercise because you know it helps your mood, and eat right? Will you pray? Will you have a generous heart? Will you sacrifice your desires for mine?
“If you’ve ever been part of a loving, healthy family
you have smelled the sweet aroma of heaven.
If you’ve ever lived in a troubled, broken home
you have breathed the foul stench of hell.”
I have never heard someone put it quite that honestly before! Except myself and I have done it with a bit of trepidation.
One of the things that is so difficult for me to reconcile was my father’s anger issues and other dysfunctional behaviors with being a Christian, an ordained minister and a ministry leader.
It is not that I think anyone can or should be perfect by any means, but it was disproportionate, it didn’t improve, and it was very confusing as a child. (And as an adult for that matter!)
Turns out half of evangelical kids walk away from Christianity as adults. I’m surprised the numbers aren’t higher actually.
Christian leaders get caught up so often in the doing, the work, others.
We all need to have to have more intentionality with our children. It isn’t too late. I choose not to repeat the things I learned growing up. It is such a relief to know isn’t to late!
The quote above is from the book It Starts at Home. I’m thinking of reading it. I only have 102 titles in front of it on amazon.com. (Sigh.)
Logic & Imagination 