Recovery (Part 2 of My Soul-Excavation)

When life does not turn out in the way you have spent decades envisioning that it would (and I say "when" because very few of us get to see the life we envisioned actually play out), it can be crippling to face this new reality. I have been sitting in this space for several years now - watching a life I had not envisioned unfold - but, it just seemed to keep becoming more and more what I did not want it to be. What the heck?! I'd claimed all the promises, I'd believed and taught all the principles, I'd hung with all the people just like me (bad company corrupts good morals, ya know). Yet, here we sat... Life did not look like we'd dreamed as we sat dreaming so many years ago. As each domino would fall, I'd fall into a slump of overwhelming sadness, try to process all the reasons I had failed, why I hadn't been able to make it happen the way that SURELY God wanted it to happen... and then I'd pull myself back up, get my warrior boots on and get back in the fight. Because that's how I saw it - it was a fight that I had to win. There had to be something I could DO, something I hadn't said but could now say, to fix this. To fix them (whoever "them" was at the moment). I could go days - even weeks sometimes, feeling mostly pulled back together. And then the next domino would fall - and I'd start all over again.

When the most recent domino fell, I think something finally broke inside of me. I just couldn't muster up the muscle to keep fighting. So I quit. I quit fighting. I firmly believe now that this quitting, this giving up, was a good thing. However, I did not quit blaming myself. The self-condemnation was killing me. I could still say all the right words. After all, I'd been trained for 50+ years in all the right words - but I just did not believe most of them anymore.

After sitting in this space for a while, I finally came to the point that I wanted out of it. I didn't know what that would look like, or even how to begin, but I wanted out. I wanted to feel whole. I wanted to stop living in self-condemnation, in "not enough", in shame. Whatever else I couldn't understand, I KNEW that God did not mean for us to live this way. I started with a book - The Sacred Slow, by Alicia Britt Chole and slowly began to let God dig around in the dirt of my heart. About a month into going slowly through the book (I still haven't finished it), I decided to start attending a Celebrate Recovery support group. I struggled with that decision because I kept thinking, "but I'm not an addict" - but yes, come to find out, I am. As I sat with this group of women week after week, it became abundantly clear that I am addicted to control, to being the fixer, to managing outcomes. It's taken me a long time to face it and to face the pain I know I've caused others in that process. This can dress up really pretty in Church circles. It fits in perfectly with having a servant's heart and loving others unconditionally and taking up your cross daily. If you're good at it - and I am - you can disguise control as a caring, giving, martyr and saint of a person.

I'm learning that I cannot control outcomes. I can kick, scream, cry, beg, plead, manipulate. I can even believe I'm in control. But I am not. I am learning that sacrificial love does not mean carrying someone else's responsibilities around for them. Unconditional love does not mean saving someone from the natural consequences of their choices. Valuing excellence does not mean that I do a million things poorly because I don't want to give up control of the outcome or never allowing things to go undone. Following all the rules and claiming all the promises does not prevent others from making choices that bring pain to themselves and those around them. Caring deeply for others necessitates that I take care of myself first. I cannot give what I do not have. 

I'm learning to let go - "it is what it is" is a phrase I repeat multiple times a day to myself. Each of us gets to determine what our future will look like, what kind of person we're going to be. For good or for bad, we each choose. When I try to constantly redirect people that I've decided are on the wrong path, I'm usually just delaying the inevitable. I'm learning to just let them get on with it. Love them, yes. Control and manipulate, no. I let go. I pray they get to the end sooner rather than later, but the journey is theirs, not mine. (As a side note, I'm also learning that sometimes they're not wrong. They're just different than me, see things from a different perspective or have different goals and that's okay. Good even.)

I'm coming to terms with this part of myself, slowly but surely. I'm learning to catch myself much sooner in the process: when I'm trying to move from my responsibility to someone else's - from my life to someone else's. I have a couple of dear friends that I've leaned into in this process. They know my weaknesses, they know my fears. They will call me on it in lightening speed when I begin to veer into someone else's lane. One of them uses the phrase, "Keep your eyes on your own paper." This has been more helpful than I can say.

Our grandson is mobile now - crawling like a speed demon. He often gets into things that could cause him harm or perhaps to destroy something that belongs to someone else. I find myself saying, multiples times a day, when I have him, "No, that's not Harvey's work," as I move or redirect him. I've also begun to say this to myself. When I'm tempted to step into business that isn't mine, to try and manipulate others (with my carefully crafted words) into doing what I feel is best, to carry someone else's responsibilities, to save someone from their own choices... "Is this my work? Nope. It's not. Move on, Sherrie." Because the hard truth is, when I continue on in work that is not mine, I'm not just hurting myself - I'm hurting that person I'm attempting to "fix", and perhaps others around us as well. 

I'm learning that much of my overwhelming sadness came from the fact that I set ridiculous expectations on myself and others. (Also not my work.) When those expectations were inevitably not met, I would crash. I had dreams for people that were not mine to dream. I leaned into promises that were not mine to claim. I placed ridiculous expectations on God. "I do my part, You must do Yours." So, I found myself frequently, as Jonah, sitting "outside the city" pouting because God didn't do things my way. He's God. He gets to choose how things will go. And He chose, in His abundant, extravagant love for us, to let us choose. If He can do it, I can learn to do it as well.

I'm not saying we don't invest in others or that we don't help others when they are in true need. I'm not saying we don't sacrifice for the good of others. I'm not even saying we shouldn't speak up when we feel like someone is making dangerous or foolish choices. We often should. But I am saying we (and by "we" I mean "I") have to stop trying to control the outcomes of their lives. I have to stop intervening in every tiny detail. I must stop trying to manage emotions when I sense tension building between people I care about. I've come to believe that perhaps I should just let it fly. Let people figure it out. I'm not that important. I don't have to fix it.

God is big enough.

The plus in all this giving up? I'm finding myself. I can love better - even the people that I think are screwing up in royal ways. It's not my job to fix them. It's my job to love them. I can truly pray for them now - rather than just talking to God about how I can fix them. This giving up frees me to love better. It frees up a lot of time I spent worrying to laugh more. It frees up a lot of time I spent figuratively carrying other people around to experience Joy. 

More to come...

Starting Over (Part 1 of Soul-Excavation)

The last year has been one of the best and most painful seasons of my life. Much good was happening, but I was slowly losing my ability to rejoice in the good. Through a series of mostly unrelated events over the last several years, I had allowed myself to become jaded. Cynical. Angry. Critical. It wasn't pretty inside my head. Anger and cynicism are easily directed outward, allowing us to ignore what is happening inside our hearts. I think that's why often, when we see the angriest of people, we can almost certainly know that there is something else much deeper than anger going on inside their hearts. I heard someone say once that often anger is really grief in disguise. I believe that. And I was definitely grieving... But I was not dealing with it. Bless Brian - he has loved me so well through all of this. He clearly meant it when he said "for better or for worse". He has walked with me through my darkness and has let me vent and rage and cry and eat lots of potato chips and chocolate. He has listened with patience when I was totally irrational. He allowed me long stretches of quiet, almost reclusive times. He has kept encouraging me to balance - to keep running (physically, not emotionally), to talk it out, to hang with my girlfriends, to keep sitting in community. He is truly my better half. Again I say, bless him.

Church, even though we were not attached to any specific place for much of the time, did help. The comfort of scriptures read together, the common prayers, coming to the Table each week - the quiet, simple, peaceful routine of it, began to do it's work in my heart. We found a place to call home and I slowly began the process of building new relationships in a new place. God began to use that to chip away at the wall I had spent years  carefully constructing. This last Advent began to create some cracks in that wall - and then Lent blew it apart. For this I am thankful. The Anglican/Episcopal tradition leaves huge spaces for sorrow, for lament, that I somehow missed in the traditions I had been in up until this point. Perhaps they are out there, but I missed it and I needed that space. God began to give me the desire to look inward - to find the root of my discontent, my anger, my grief, and dig it out. So, in little baby steps, I began to dig around in there.

In the midst of this digging around the last several months, I've found myself wanting to write again. I had virtually given it up entirely, even personal, private journaling (which I have done for many years). I felt void of any thoughts that felt edifying enough to share. (This should have been a red flag that my heart and head were in trouble, but it was not.) I am still struggling to get words from head to fingertips to keyboard. I'm certain I will write and rewrite a thousand times, but I'm determined to try to find words again. I'm starting. I don't know how it will look, or how often it will be, but here's a start. God has taught me much about myself over the last several months, and I'm feeling strong enough, brave enough, ...just enough, to begin sharing parts of it, so maybe today, with these words, is as good a place as any to start.

In today's installment of what I've learned in this soul-excavation project:

For this last season of Lent, I gave up Facebook. This was not some super-spiritual decision. It was not a sacred or holy choice. I was angry. The newsfeed readily helped me feel justified in my anger. I was anxious - it was happy to feed this too. I chose to give it up because I snapped. Within the space of a couple of days, I found myself so angry over things said by people I rather enjoyed in real life that I just simply snapped. So I took it off my phone. I continued on Instagram (because this continues to be a happy space for me) and shared those pictures to Facebook. I still responded to private messages and I checked notifications once a week from my computer, but that was it. I spent zero time on the newsfeed. What I found during that 40+ days, was that Facebook was giving me a place to hide. 

Can't sleep? Facebook. 

Bored? Facebook. 

Waiting in a line or a doctor's office? Facebook.
 Need a break? Facebook. 

It kept my mind busy, occupied, distracted. Unfortunately, it was often feeding anger, anxiety and cynicism...making it easier to justify my feelings rather than looking inward to find their source.

During this time, I slowly began to replace that distracted time with other things:

Can't sleep? Pray. Meditate.

Bored? Read a book.

Waiting in line? Engage the people around me. Make eye contact.

Need a break? Read that same book. Call a friend and invite them to lunch.

Something funny/sweet/sad/puzzling happen? Again, call or text a friend and share it with one actual, in-my-life person, rather than my Facebook virtual world.

After finding better ways to fill that down time, I made a few other intentional decisions:

• I started in Genesis and I'm reading deliberately through the Bible again, this time, letting God answer some questions for me that I've been asking for a long time.
• I read a lot of books, both fiction and non-fiction.
• I take lots of long walks and short runs.
• I listen to podcasts.
• I continue to find peace and healing in the liturgy and sacraments.
• I am learning to embrace silence again, to allow my mind to wander, to feel my grief, to feel my joy. To feel.

I learned that I need to connect in real, substantive ways a lot more often than I had been. I'm not saying that sharing those things on Facebook is bad - some of it is good, edifying, connecting. Some of you use it in fabulous ways - it's another tool in your tool belt of healthy living. Though I began that way, that wasn't me anymore. Often, for me, and I know for others, it's a way to hide from real relationship. It filled in times and spaces that I needed to be using to deal with my crap.

I can present only what I want you to see on Facebook. Sitting across from you at lunch? It's going to be harder. Walking through hard things, in real life, with you? Dang near impossible. I value many of my online relationships and I'm thankful for connections I would not be able to have otherwise. But now, real-life, in-my-face, you-can't-hide-from-me, relationships are much more valuable - they are where I want to invest the best parts of my time and my energy. If something beautiful presents itself in my day, I'm much more likely to take a picture of it and send it to a particular person that I know well (or someone that I am building a new relationship with) and think they would appreciate it....connection. If I read an article or a quote that speaks deeply to me, I'll share it via text with a specific person that I believe would value its merit along with me...connection.  - but for the most part, I'm choosing to make what difference I can in the circle of people right around me - my family, my friends, at my office, in my neighborhood, in my church, in my community, with my vote, with my money. I'm trying to learn to use my voice in personal, close proximity ways.

I'm dabbling a bit on Facebook again, but not much. I may choose occasionally to share on Facebook - I will likely still make some of you frustrated with my opinions and the articles I share because I will continue to refuse to be silent on some issues. It's probably still a good idea to tag me if you need me to see something.

What I'd really love most is for you to call/text/message me and let's have lunch if you live close enough.