When Mother-Love Falls Short: A Christmas Prayer

I scoop up my wailing daughter, Esther Sophia, from the living room rug, her eyes blotchy-red from fitting, cheeks slippery with saliva, pink dress smelling milky-sour as she sucks air between sobs.

Cupping her ruffled bottom in my blue-veined palm—

I tuck Esther under my chin, neck-to-neck, heartbeat to heartbeat, her chick-soft hair tickling my cheek, our pink flesh and blood throbbing, mingling with the crimson pulse of living.

My heart fills with loving this daughter, my Only daughter.

I wish this love—fallible Mother love—could fill Esther’s soul well to the brim, fill it so deep she’d never hurt.

But in this broken and bruised world, Mother love can’t fill the soul well, can’t give lasting comfort, perfect peace.

My Father’s Only Son is the Only One who fills the soul well: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. . . . [I] will quiet you with [my] love.”*

Esther stirs, lifts head, little fists digging sharp with fingernails not yet cut. Holding squirming Esther on my knees, I glide on the rocking chair. Her back arches as balled fists flail. I smile saying, “Hello, my sweet girl,” and dimpled cheeks smile back as she babbles: “Aaah, waaa. Aaah waaa.”  I kiss her downy hair, gently brushing my palm across her scalp, fingers dipping over the soft spot—the tender spot—where bone has yet to cover brain.

And I wish Mother Love could cover the tender spots in Esther’s heart—the rejection and pain that life inevitably brings. But I’ve learned through dark days of my own:

My Father’s Only Son is the Only One who covers our tender places.

Esther, still perched on my knee, lets out a quiver-cry, and I pull her close, snuggle her against my heart. She lays her downy head between the curve of my cheek, the slope of my neck.

As Esther rests in the earthly comfort of Mother-Love, I deep-heart pray she comes to know the heavenly Comforter—Jesus.

Only Jesus—God-man born in a stinking manger stall, to a frail human Mother like me, because he Loved the World!—can fill the soul with perfect comfort, perfect peace.

As my mentor-Mother once said to me: “The prayer I pray for my sons and daughter is this: that they have more and more of Jesus, because if they have Jesus, they have everything.”

So this Christmas, and every Christmas, my Mother-prayer is this: Grace, eternal comfort—Jesus—overflowing in the souls of my children.

Isaiah 9:6

⁶ For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace

1. Isaiah 9:6 : S Ge 3:15; Isa 53:2; Lk 2:11
2. Isaiah 9:6 : Jn 3:16
3. Isaiah 9:6 : S Mt 28:18
4. Isaiah 9:6 : Isa 22:22
5. Isaiah 9:6 : S Job 15:8; Isa 28:29
6. Isaiah 9:6 : S Dt 7:21; Ps 24:8; Isa 10:21; 11:2; 42:13
7. Isaiah 9:6 : S Ps 90:2
8. Isaiah 9:6 : S Ex 4:22; Isa 64:8; Jn 14:9-10
9. Isaiah 9:6 : Isa 26:3, 12; 53:5; 66:12; Jer 33:6; Mic 5:5; S Lk 2:14
*Isaiah 66:13, Zephaniah 3:1

Related Post: When You're Not Woman Enough, Mama Enough: He is Enough

Hope Does Not Disappoint

Driving our Dodge Caravan down 95^th street at 3:30pm, the line of cars in front of me braking red because of the yellow light flashing on the white “School Zone” sign to my left, I see a boy-man swaying down the sidewalk, ear buds in ears, head bobbing side-to-side, backpack barely hanging onto wide shoulders, and a goat loaded up like a pack mule trotting down the sidewalk behind him.

What in the world?

I close and open my eyes just as our van passes the shaggy, brown-haired, two-horned, bearded goat and his teenage owner, and I yell at my boys sitting quietly (for once!) in the back seat, “Boys! Look over there! A goat!” As the boys look over their shoulders at the goat’s swaying rump, my mind wanders from 95^th street to the time my parents took my boys and I to Deanna Rose—a working farm in the middle of the city—to feed a tribe of shaggy goats.

I remember Dad pushing silver quarters in a gumball-looking machine that dumped out brown lumps of goat feed into waiting palms. I remember three-year-old Micah running into the goat pen, food pellets dropping from clenched fingers, only to fly out screaming when a grey goat with glossy black eyes gnawed on his white t-shirt, leaving behind a hole, slimy goat spit, and a kid who didn’t like goats anymore . . . .

It’s that time of year again—when the smallest (or strangest) thing triggers a mural of memories. You see a piece of jewelry, an old black-n-white photo, a sweater, a restaurant sign, and one memory leads to another, leaving you in tears of joy or tears of pain.

Even now, as I sit on the white couch in my living room typing on my laptop, I hear the deep bong-bong, click-click, click-click, of the electric clock on my buffet, an out-of-the-blue gift from a cousin earlier this year. Across the bottom of the dark wood clock is a silver plate with the inscription: Irma and Gil, 25^th Anniversary, 1937-1962.

That clock sat on top of the TV cabinet in Grandma Irma’s Chicago condo all through my childhood, and now, as its gentle bong-bong snakes around my living room, I remember the one time I played hide-n-seek with cousins in Grandma’s condo. I hid in the front hall closet with my cousin Josh, right next to the old Hoover, right under the moth-ball-smelling coats, and as we waited for someone to discover our hiding place, I asked him if he liked girls, and I don’t remember what he said, but I do remember my parents, uncles, and aunts sitting on Grandma’s floral  hide-a-bed and rose colored wing chairs, chatting about Chicago weather and memories of long-dead Grandpa Gil, avoiding politics and religion because no one (well, except Grandma) wanted to offend Uncle Jack, the lone atheist/agnostic Democrat. As the conversation flowed round the room, the clock rang out its gentle bong-bong, click-click every fifteen minutes, marking the seepage of time.

And now, twenty-some years later, I remember another family conversation, a conversation between Dad and I the morning after one of mom’s rages ended in scary suicide threats and crazy stories. I remember pleading with Dad to see a Christian counselor who specialized in such things, and he said:

“There’s nothing I can do. I’ve tried it all. There’s nothing a counselor can tell me that I don’t already know.  This is my life for the rest of my life,” his voice flat-line, cold, matter-of-fact.

No hope. No hope. No hope.

I remember saying to Dad, the pastor turned seminary professor: “But God can do anything, anything at all. There’s always Hope!” but even as I said the words, they felt soulless because I wasn’t sure if I believed them anymore.

No hope. No hope. No hope.

    And the memory of Dad’s hopelessness brings me back to my junior year of college—sitting in American Lit. with Dr. Sommers, the white winter sun beaming in through the narrow window of the fourth floor classroom onto the worn blue carpet, and I hear her voice reading soft:

“’Hope’ is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm- That could abash the little Bird - That kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me.Share this text ...?Twitter” Emily Dickinson).

According to Miss Dickinson, Hope keeps you warm in the midst of a storm, in the chillest land, on the strangest sea. Hope is like a bird—perching on the edge of your soul, singing a silent, sweet song that buoys you up in the hardest of times.

But what is the foundation of this Hope? What keeps Hope singing its silent song to your soul, even in the most hopeless of situations, the darkest of memories? What makes Hope more than mere wishful thinking: “I hope things will turn out!”

What makes Hope the sure anchor of the soul?

For years I put my Hope in family members getting help, in counselors giving answers, in research and understanding, in ME just being strong enough, fighting hard enough to fix all the problems in my life.  But I was left feeling betrayed, disappointed.

And this morning, as I ran my miles on the treadmill, I put this song on repeat, letting the truths sooth my soul:

Here we have a firm foundation,
Here the refuge of the lost;
Christ's the Rock of our salvation,
His the name of which we boast.
Lamb of God, for sinners wounded,
Sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded
Who on him their hope have built.

(Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted, emphasis mine)

This year, as my mind inevitably travels down the hall of memories, as my heart longs for healing in my family, I place my Hope in He who does not disappoint: And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.(Romans 5:5-8)

This year, when tears of sorrow fall--for lost family, for broken marriages, for the difficulty of life circumstances, I look to Jesus, the sure foundation of my Hope. He is love and peace, and works “all things together for good.”

May the God of hope fill [us] with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

 

Salve to the soul this morning: Fernando Ortega's Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted.

 

 You can view a live cello/piano version of this song here. The song was played at John Piper's Act the Miracle Conference. (My hubby got to hear it live! Said it brought him to tears.) The song is at 41:48 on the video.

Related Post: My Mamaw: Origins of Delusion

Seasons of the Soul

A couple weeks ago the boys and I propped waist-high scarecrows wearing burlap clothes and painted smiles on the front steps of our town home, and we picked out orange mini-pumpkins at the grocery store and dug out last year’s thrift-store-décor from underneath the basement stairs—six inch scarecrows with yellow straw poking out of orange-checked shirt sleeves—and I let Josiah arrange (and re-arrange and re-arrange) the mini-pumpkins and scarecrows on our china buffet.

Josiah's Final Arrangement:)

And this week I tripped on acorns hidden in our brown carpet and watched the oak tree out front shed curly leaves while squirrels scampered up and down the trunk with bulging cheeks. And in the late afternoon sun, I watered browning petunias in flipflops, crisp leaves tickling my bare toes.

It’s fall again.

Fall is my favorite time of year. I savor snuggling in bed under warm blankets in early morning, long runs in crisp air over leaf-strewn trails, and the promise of Thanksgiving and Christmas in cool breezes and 5pm sunsets. And last Fall I learned from an expert gardener that oak leaves make great compost for Spring plants, so I scooped up crunchy leaves and buried them in moist dirt, hoping for richer earth and stronger plants in Spring.

This year, as oak leaves pile round my front door and fill empty pots on my front steps, I ponder the reminder that fall brings: death—loss—births new life.  Just as fall precedes winter and winter, spring, so death precedes redemption: “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

When we were dead—consumed with Self—God, who is merciful, made us alive in Him!

In recent years the winter winds of trial stripped me bare—the loss of three babies, not yet named, the loss of my Grandpa, 95 years old, the loss of family relationships, the loss of expectations for what life should be, and in this bare-naked state—stripped of Self—I finally looked to Christ.  

“Not until self dies can Christ live in us; not until self dies can we possess the faith that works by love and purifies the soul.” (ST, October 11, 1899, emphasis mine.)

When Self dies (and continues, daily, to die) a willingness to risk all for Christ—relationships, material possessions, career, reputation—fills the soul, and you live FREE!

 "The deepest death to self lies in the motives and intentions, hence this all-consuming motive to want to be nothing but a capacity for Christ to live in, lies at the foundation of the death of self and the highest life of Christ.” (G.D. Watson, emphasis mine).

In other words, the deepest death to self is a genuine—all consuming—desire to let Christ be all. When Christ is all, my soul rests in the knowledge that the difficult seasons of this life are birthing new life in my heart—a deeper reliance on Christ and true, lasting Joy.

So, when the trials of this life strip you bare, when the winter winds of difficulty seem to last forever, remember that death births new life, that God is fertilizing your soul so that your reliance on him is deep, rich and true, and just when you think winter will never end, Spring blooms in your heart.

"Be not afraid, though every stay [foundation]
Should fail, or be removed away,
And thou be stript of all;
But lose thyself in that vast sea,
The ocean of the Deity,
And all thy cares shall fall.

In death which is the most profound,
The purest life is always found;
Then, blindly, all forego!
He ne’re shall find, who will not lose;
Who sinks from self, shall gain repose,
Which none but he can know."

(Gerhard Tersteegen, emphasis mine)

Seeing God in Everything

I read this poem in my devotions recently (while sitting on the couch in damp workout clothes, nursing Esther, and pausing to explain a math problem to Micah . . .) 

“SEE GOD IN ALL THINGS, great and small,

And give him praise what’er befall,

In life or death, in pain or woe,

See God and overcome your foe . . .

Life will, indeed, a blessing bring,

If we SEE GOD IN EVERYTHING.”

A.E. Finn

As I read this poem, I couldn’t help but wonder: why don’t I see God in everything?

The heart-honest truth is this: it’s hard to SEE GOD in the day-to-day “pain and woe” of midnight feedings, bad attitudes, sibling spats, failed homeschool days and hurtful words spoken in stressed-out-anger.

During weary mothering moments, I’ve preached to myself: I don’t see God in everything because I’m blinded by selfishness!  

But even after preaching “don’t be selfish, don’t be selfish . . . ” through out the day, I still fall into bed at night body-weary and soul-weary.

Then a couple evenings ago, while our kiddos ran around the back yard chasing bouncy baby crickets, I chatted with my neighbor, Jana. As we chatted, I sat in a green lawn chair patting Esther’s back. Watching my hand pat-pat-patting, Jana said, “I think mothering is the most unselfish thing you could ever do. I mean—you give up sleep, food, money, hanging out with friends, and all to raise a kid.”

I replied: “Yes, good mothering requires selflessness, but I’ve found mothering shows me over and over again how selfish I really am—I don’t like giving up sleep, time, or brain cells!”

But as Jana and I watched our kiddos run red-faced through the grass, as we listened to high-pitched-squeals of delight when they snagged a kicking insect leg, when they ran with wriggling insects between fingers to where we sat on lawn chairs and stuck kicking bugs under our noses saying: “Look! A cricket!” a verse popped into my mind:  “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11b).

My heart-eyes opened as I realized:  I’m trying to see God by focusing on Self! All day long I preach “don’t be selfish” and I miss the God-Beauty around me because I’m still the focus!

My focus must be outward and upward rather than inward!

My children—in spite of bad attitudes, screaming fits, and messes—reflect God’s beauty! They reflect his beauty as they catch insects (and let them loose all over my living room floor!), as they fight over who gets to feed baby Esther her bottle, as they learn a new concept in school, as they chase each other round the playground shooting each other with “super-hero” lasers.

Beauty: Three Boys Feeding Baby Esther

And there’s soul-purifying beauty in midnight feedings and newborn fussiness because there’s Beauty in focusing on the needs of my little girl rather than whining about my lack of sleep or inability to complete my tasks.

So, to change my focus from Self to God, I must bend my knees and pray this:

“One thing I ask from the Lord,
    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple.” (Psalm 27:4).

God is Beauty and his temple is everywhere!

Lord, grant me the eyes to see Beauty—to see You—in everything, especially the hard things.

Above: More Beauty: Boys Hunting For Crickets Below: Catching Crickets

\

In Hard Times--Lean

“Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?” (Song of Songs 8:5).

Micah “sent” me a note last night—sealed it in an envelope and handed it to me while three-week-old Esther wailed on my bouncing thighs. “I saw you cry, Mom, so I made you this,” he said. Patting Esther’s back with my right hand, I opened the white envelope with my left and pulled out the note written in green marker and accented with a smiley face and wavy lines: “be Happy even in hard times.”

It had been a hard afternoon, for sure. The hard part started when I picked up Micah from school. Micah stood on the curb, forearms extended with palms up, like a monk in deep meditation. His teacher said, “Micah was quite the vigorous monkey-bars climber today. He’s got some pretty bad blisters.” I stared down at Micah’s palms—yellow flesh hanging loose over raw, red skin. “It stings, Mom,” Micah said, grimacing.

“Well, I’ve had blisters like these, and they healed nicely. We’ll bandage them when we get home.”

We’re too much alike—Micah and I—always fighting to be the toughest, the fastest, the strongest on the playground, and in the adrenaline pumping moment of competition, we numb to pain. It’s only afterwards that the throbbing begins . . . .

After Micah hopped into the van and buckled in without touching raw skin, baby Esther began her I-hate-this-car-seat girl-wailing (which Jon swears is much louder and higher pitched than a boys!) Even after I drove home and pulled her sweaty-from-crying body out of the car seat, Esther kept on wailing, face red, legs kicking.

Once inside our cool house, Esther wailed on, but Micah’s raw palms needed tending, so I placed her in the pack 'n play. While I snipped tape and gauze, my head began throbbing in time with Esther’s wails. Fifteen minutes later, Micah’s palms bandaged and taped, I picked Esther up and held her close, but she beat my chest with curled fists, as if to say, “why did you leave me?!”

With fist-beating baby in arms, I stepped into the bathroom and discovered my potty-training three year old dropping his Lightening McQueen pull up—full of poop—onto the tile floor. He’d also left a little trail of deposits round the house, just for me.

So I put screaming Esther back in the pack 'n play. As I scrubbed the three-year-old’s poop smeared legs, scooped up deposits from the carpet, and carefully wiped down the fabric loops on the green rug in the boys’ bedroom, the throbbing in my temples began pounding in tandem with Esther’s now operatic screaming.

Clean up complete, I picked up Esther’s squirming body and stuck the green hospital paci in her open mouth. She arched her back, spit green paci on the floor, beat fists against my chest, and wailed at a higher decibel.

For the next two hours, I bounced, squatted, back-patted, nursed, and changed Esther while yelling at the boys to “go in the basement and be quiet!” When every muscle in my still anemic body gave out, I sat down at the kitchen table, slung Esther over my knees and cried. Micah—unbeknownst to me—witnessed my little meltdown, and that’s when he wrote and ‘sent’ his note: “Be happy even in the hard times.”  

There’s something sweet and oh so humbling about receiving sage counsel from your eight year old son.  It’s not easy to “be happy in the hard times” because my selfish self would rather the hard times just “go away already!”

When Esther finally stopped screaming, the boys scavenged up a dinner of corn chips, string cheese and tomatoes. Then I put everyone—myself included—to bed, hoping a little sleep would help me “be happy in the hard times.”

Then in early morning light I read in my new devotional, Streams in the Desert:

God said:

Child of My love, lean hard.

And let me feel the pressure of your care;

I know your burden, child. I shaped it. . .

Even as I laid it on [you], I said,

“I will be near, and while she leans on me,

This burden will be mine, not hers.

So I will keep My child within the circling arms

Of My Own Love. . .”

You love me, [child] I know. So then, do not doubt,

But loving me, lean hard.  (Streams in the Desert, 347 emphasis mine).

All too often, just like my monkey-bar climbing son, in hard times I “vigorously” lean on Self. Doubting God’s goodness and care, leaning on my own strength, I grow throbbing blisters on my hands and in my heart.

So, the next time my son injures himself while my baby screams and my three year old poops all over the floor, (or we have a bad school day, or I feel the pain of not having a "normal" family, or __________) I pray I remember to Lean Hard on Him who holds me in His Loving Arms.

For only in His Loving Arms can I be “Happy even in hard times.”

Overcoming Shame Part 3: Seeing Jesus

(This is the third post in a three-part series. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here )

Sitting in the sagging 1970’s green chair in my writing professor’s office, tears flowed down my cheeks. Rough copy #3 of my Spiritual Essay lay open across my lap, my tears dropping, smearing black ink. Avoiding my professor’s, “I-can-see-right-through-you” gaze, I shuffled the white papers in my lap and stared at the frayed blue carpet under my feet.

I couldn’t figure out how to end my essay on the Samaritan Woman, and I didn’t know why I was runny-nosed sobbing about it in front of my professor. (Talk about embarrassing!)  But one thing I knew for sure—I understood the Samaritan Woman, was just like her—looking for Living Water in all the wrong places, filling my water jar— heart—with good grades, guys and the affirmation of others.

Just like the Samaritan woman, I felt like an outcast. She was a ‘worthless’ half-breed and I the naïve, homeschooled ‘nobody.’ And just like the Samaritan woman, hoping for redeeming love, I’d thrown myself into bad relationships with guys who cared nothing for my soul. Just like the Samaritan woman, I felt shame for what I’d done and what others did to me.

Just like the Samaritan woman, I longed to be worthy of love.

But as a 20 year-old college student melting down in my professor’s office, I didn’t understand how to overcome my feelings of worthlessness. I knew “Jesus is the answer” but couldn’t explain what that meant in the day-to-day of life (which is why I couldn’t figure out how to end the dang essay!).

Years later, as a 35-year-old woman, I picked up my Bible and read the Samaritan woman’s story with  new eyes. As I read her story in John 4, I saw how Jesus looked at her—with compassion and grace—and I longed for Him to look at me as he looked at her. Jesus knew everything she’d ever done: “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband!” Jesus also saw through her feeble attempt to deflect Her shame onto Him: “you Jews . . . ,” and Jesus, knowing and seeing ALL of this woman, still offered her Himself. In offering her Himself, he offered her Life and Dignity—worth.

It was only after seeing Jesus for who he was: “I, the one speaking to you—I am [The Messiah]” that the Samaritan woman put down her water jar—the one filled with bad relationships, poor choices, hurt and pain—and accepted Living Water.

Then, full of Living Water, full of Jesus, free from shame, this woman invited other Samaritans to see Jesus: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did!”(John 4:29, emphasis mine).  After the Samaritans saw Jesus for themselves, they declared: “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:39-42).

For the Samaritan woman and her people, the cure for shame was truly seeing Jesus!

For most of my life, I tried to “cure” shame with performance. Just like the Samaritan woman, I filled the water jar of my heart with human effort: reading the Bible, going to church, singing worship songs. I thought my efforts alone would somehow make me worthy of love and acceptance. But performance didn’t heal shame, and when I inevitably screwed up, I fell deeper into the black pit of believing “I’m just one big loser!”

For years I tried climbing out of the black pit of shame by preaching biblical truth to myself: “I’m made in the image of God, so I’m worth something!”  and “God loves me, so I am valuable!” But, as the Christian counselor Ed Welch says, merely telling yourself the truth over and over again “usually doesn’t work.” (61*).  Just knowing I was made in God’s image, that he loved me, didn’t make me believe I was worthy and loved.

Ed Welch offers this wise advice to people who, like me, were/are trapped in the pit of shame:  “Try a counterintuitive approach to escape shame. Try changing the subject so it is more about God than about your shame. The basic idea is to focus on the matchless worth of the Lord God and then get connected to him . . . . The cure for shame will always be found in how we become connected to God. ”(Welch 61, 103).

In other words, the key to overcoming shame is getting your eyes off Self and on God. Just like the Samaritan woman, we need to stop filling our water jars—hearts—with human effort and truly behold the face of Jesus.

But how do you do that?

Scottish pastor Robert Murray McCheyne, says this:

Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in his beams. Feel his all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and repose in his almighty arms . . . . (Robert Murray*, emphasis mine)

Looking outward—towards Jesus—instead of inward, towards Self, isn’t easy. Setting aside human effort to seek and savor Christ requires acknowledging that our worthiness is found in our connection to Christ Alone. We must learn to be like Lazarus’ sister Mary, who understood, “few things are needed—or indeed, only one . . .  [Sitting] at the Lord’s feet,” (Luke 10).

When our eyes are on Jesus, shame loses its power, and we see ourselves as He sees us—Beautiful, Worthy, Redeemed. And just like the Samaritan woman, when we see ourselves as God sees us, we are free to share our story with everyone we meet because Christ covers every part of that story—good and bad—with Himself.

“Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely,

and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ² looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12: 1, 2, emphasis mine)

* Ed. Welch quotes taken from his book Shame Interrupted. You can view this resource on Amazon here.

*Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne [(Edinburgh, 1894), 293].

Overcoming Shame Part 2: Covering Shame with Blame and Denial

(This is Part 2 in a three part series. Read Part 1 here.)

Beeep. Beeeeep. Beeeeep. I sat up in our four-poster bed and pulled my blue phone off the bedside dresser, the black numbers—12:00AM—flashed too bright across the white screen: Why on earth is my alarm going off now?

I threw the phone back on the dresser and pulled cool sheets up to my chin. Beeeep. Beeeep. Beeeep.

I rolled over again, fingers searching dresser-top for that stupid phone! Squinting at the name flashing across blue screen, I hit the mute button. My sister. Why is she calling at midnight!?

Eyes blurry with sleep, I gazed at blue screen until the beeping silenced. But when the beeping started up a third time, I realized: Something’s wrong!

Heart pounding in my head, I hit the green button saying, “Hello?” my sister’s words flooded fast: there was an email in her inbox saying a family member was about to commit suicide.

What do we do?

Hands shaking as adrenaline pumped, I prodded Jon awake. Together we sorted out the fearful situation and responded the best we knew how. It was 3AM before we turned off the lights and pulled up the bed sheets.

But I never fell back asleep. 

The next morning, I opened the laptop and found an email from yet another family member in my inbox. I wasn’t surprised at the words that popped off the computer screen: “Please contact N______ and apologize for what you’ve done and try to help N_____ before N____ does something drastic and you regret it for the rest of your life!” Somehow—in the mind of this family member—I was to blame for the suicide attempts of a sibling I hadn’t seen or talked to in over two years.

Shifting blame—it’s one way dysfunctional families (and individuals) cover up the painful feeling of shame.  

Blame: The Shame Cover-up

 For most people, personal association with issues like mental illness, pathological lying, abuse, eating disorders, and alcoholism is shameful. Families who struggle with issues like these fear being labeled “crazy” or “messed up” and, therefore, unworthy of friendship or value. So, out of fear of being deemed “unworthy/unacceptable,” dysfunctional families work hard to keep the shameful issues hidden. If anyone dares point out or talk openly about the issues, that’s when blaming starts: “We aren’t the ones with the problem—she (the person exposing the issues) is the one who’s really messed up!”

"When we are feeling shame and fear, blame is never far behind. Sometimes we turn inward and blame ourselves. And other times we strike out and blame others. . . . When we try to get out from underneath the pain of shame and fear by blaming others, we often explode. We lash out at our child, our employee, our partner or maybe even the customer service person standing in front of us." (Brene Brown, PhD.* 23).

And the truth is this: everyone—not just members of dysfunctional families—feels shame.

Picture this scenario: it’s mid-morning on a Saturday, the kids are playing nicely in the basement (for once!), the hubby is relaxing on the couch with a book, so you decide to pop on Facebook for “just a second!” In that second, you stumble across Suzie Q’s pic of her newly decorated kitchen in her $500,000 home. Her children sit primly at the kitchen table reading books while Suzie kneads bread dough on her new granite counter tops in her size zero Lucky jeans, and the caption below this blissful snapshot reads: “Just another average day!”

As you gaze at Suszie’s pic, you begin to feel your postage stamp kitchen with thrift store décor is simply not acceptable, your kids sure don’t read as much as they should, and you remember that you still can’t fit into your size 8 jeans (never mind that baby is only 4 months old!). And, suddenly, you feel ashamed of who you are—your house, your kids, your body. But, rather than address the painful feeling of shame, you snap the laptop shut, yell at your hubby to get his “lazy butt off the couch,” and scream at your kids to “stop wasting your time and do your homework for Monday!” As you scream at hubby and kids, you indirectly blame them for your shameful feelings of inadequacy.

Sadly, I’ve been guilty of similar episodes of blaming to cover up my own shame. Ashamed of bad parenting decisions, hurtful words spoken in anger, a less-than-perfect body, house, child, life—I have lashed out at husband, children, and others. (See Part 1 of this series for an example of this with my son, Micah, here..)

Denial: The Shame Cover-up

Another method families (and individuals) use to cover up shame is outright denial of painful issues: “Problems? What problems?” And to convince themselves “our family is problem-free!” they gather for Christmas, Easter, and birthdays, smile at the camera and post “happy” pictures to Facebook, as if the photo-façade somehow proves: “We are the perfect family!”

In my dysfunctional family, denial is accomplished through simply pretending (or purposely overlooking) the family history of various forms of abuse, mental illness, pathological lying, adultery, fornication, porn addiction, and so much more. The issues are never dealt with. They are simply buried and “forgotten.” Family members frequently use phrases like this: “The past is in the past. I don’t dwell on it. I live for the good in the present,” which really means “the shame of the past is too hard to bear, so I’m just going to pretend it didn’t happen.”

But if you cover shame with denial, the dysfunction of the past never stops—the physical abuse becomes emotional, the old lies give birth to new ones, and yet another generation suffers with unresolved shame.

Biblical Origins of Shame, Blame, and Denial

Covering shame through blame and denial is nothing new—it’s the Garden Story repeated in the Now. Adam and Eve felt guilt over their apple-stealing disobedience and this guilt led to feeling naked—ashamed. Afraid of God discovering their disobedience and shame, they hid. Then, when God found and confronted them, they refused to take responsibility for their actions; instead, Eve blamed the serpent and Adam blamed Eve.

"In an attempt to ward off shame’s grip, often a person (or institution or nation) will project blame on another. The perfect control model doesn’t work, life’s imperfections and insecurities are disturbing, so blaming and scapegoating are enlisted, giving an illusion of control." (Kathleen Curzie Gajdos PhD, emphasis mine).

Control—the root motive for blame and denial.

Adam and Eve attempted to control God and cover up their shameful disobedience by blaming the serpent and each other. And, just like Adam and Eve, all of humanity is guilty of trying to control people and circumstances to avoid dealing with shame. We surround ourselves with people who tell us we are “beautiful, amazing, and right-about-everything.” We set up strict rules for our kids so they turn out “great” and make us look good. But the sad reality is this: “the control model doesn’t work.” Eventually your kids make poor choices, a good friend talks about you behind your back, your husband betrays you or you betray your husband, and deep down you feel unacceptable—shameful.  

So, how do you truly overcome Shame and view yourself as God sees you--worthy and acceptable in spite of your imperfections?

For me, the first step in dealing with shame was admitting how shame characterized virtually every aspect of my upbringing and how I repeated those family patterns in my own life. But simply seeing and understanding shame in family/self was not enough to overcome the shame woven deeply in my psyche.

Only through truly embracing the power of the Gospel have I been able to address the deep roots of shame.

Read Part 3 here.

*Brene Brown, PhD. in her book I Thought It Was Just Me (But it isn’t.)

*Kathleen Curzie Gajdos PhD. in her article “Mind Matters—Guilt and Shame.”

Overcoming Shame Part 1: What is Shame?

“We do not talk about shame. We experience it, we feel it, we sometimes live with it for an entire lifetime, but we don’t talk about it.”

(Brene Brown PhD.)

 

I stood on brown linoleum in the parsonage kitchen in Illinois. The red-check curtains over the chrome sink on the far side of the room fluttered in the summer breeze as Mom leaned over a pile of dirty dishes. I planted bare, dirty toes on linoleum squares, crossed nine-year-old arms across my sleeveless shirt and pleaded at Mom’s backside, “Mom!. . .  Mom!” Her stonewashed jeans brushed the counter as she wiped pewter plates in the kitchen sink with Palmolive bubbles and rinsed each plate under water. One plate—wash, rinse, slide into dry rack. Two. Three . . .

“Mom!” I pleaded again.

“What?” she sputtered without turning from sudsy plate in hand.

“Mom, listen to me! It really hurt my feelings when you said that about me in front of everybody. It wasn’t nice, what you said.”

Water dripping from plate, shoulders arrow straight, Mom sing-songed: “Nobody loves you, everybody hates you, guess you better go eat worms!”

Plate in one hand, Mom pulled a holey dishrag off bare counter saying,

“Becky, just get over it! Stop your whining!”

With Mom’s sarcastic song echoing in my brain, I felt weak, exposed, like I was some kind of big baby. Tears welled, but I willed them back. I didn’t know how to respond to Mom’s sarcastic song.

So, I said nothing.

And in that dish-washing, song-chanting episode, I felt shame—like I was a bad person for feeling hurt.  

As a kid I understood guilt—that bad feeling you get when you lie or call your sister a “brat!” But shame? What was that?

Then, twenty-some years later, when my five-year-old son Micah stood on my brown kitchen tile crying crystal tears and saying, “You hurt my feelings!” I remember how I knee-jerk sang Mom’s song, “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me. . .” and as I sang, I felt like mean-mom and the song died on my lips.

That night I talked to Jon about singing Mom’s song to Micah, how it felt wrong, but I didn’t know why. Jon said: “Because you invalidated Micah’s feelings by making fun of them.” That made sense to me—the invalidation part.  But what I didn’t understand back then is that song stemmed from a deep well of SHAME I didn’t know existed.

Edward Welch Mdiv, PhD, defines shame as: “the deep sense that you are unacceptable because of something you did, something done to you, or something associated with you. You feel exposed and humiliated . . . . Guilt can be hidden; shame feels like it is always exposed” (Shame Interrupted, 2, emphasis mine).

In the first few years of motherhood, I found myself repeating the shame-based parenting habits of Mom and Dad. Just like my parents, I felt unacceptable and unworthy, and to cover those uncomfortable feelings, I denied them or projected them onto my children, husband, and others.

When Micah expressed, “You hurt my feelings!” I felt like a Mom-failure, like I didn’t measure up, like I wasn’t acceptable. But, rather than acknowledge my feelings of shame, I made fun of my son, shamed him instead.

The truth is, every parent, every human, feels shame. This battle with shame began in the garden. After Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they felt guilty, but they also felt naked—ashamed—for the first time “And [Adam] said, ‘I heard the sound of you [God] in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10, emphasis mine).

Just like Adam and Eve, when we feel shame—because of something we did or that was done to us—we go into hiding. Adam and Eve covered their naked shame with clothes, we cover our shame with denial: “I never did/said that!” or “No, I was never abused/hurt/mistreated!” or “The past is in the past. I don’t dwell on it!”  We also cover shame through blaming others for our shameful feelings or actions: “I’ve dealt with my issues. You are the one who just can’t get over it!”

So, through denial and blaming—we protect our shame, grow it, and hurt our friends, spouses, children . . . .

This post is Part 1 of three posts on the topic of shame. Read Part 2 here. and Part 3 here.

Boy Meets Girl

For Jon on our 11^th Anniversary

(This post is part of the Redemption Story Project, which you can view here. )

In the fall of 1997 I sat in front of a Northwestern College library computer. I was talking to it, the computer that is, giving the fat monitor and its mystery-to-me software a piece of my non-techy, English Major mind.

Sitting at the computer next to me was my husband-to-be. We hadn’t met yet. I didn’t even know his name.

He, on the other hand, knew my name, though he didn’t tell me at the time. As he told me months later: “The other football players were talking about you in the cafeteria and they pointed you out and told me your name, but I couldn’t tell you that!” . . . .

So this boy-stranger sat in the chrome-and-plastic library chair next to me, and in the midst of my computer tirade, he leaned over and whispered in my ear:

“The problem isn’t the computer. It’s the person staring at the screen . . . .”

I turned from the blue screen in front of me and wide-eyed stared at the brazen, blond-headed freshman leaning back in his chair with a smirk on his face. He was wearing a gold chain round his neck and a white T-shirt with a picture of the cartoon-character-Hobbes gleefully flushing little-boy-Calvin down a toilet.

I couldn’t let this big boy’s insult linger too long in the air, so I glanced past his blue eyes to the computer screen behind him, and seeing a muscle-flexing picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger I responded,

“Well, at least I’m not a metal-head!”

And with a toss of my shoulder-length brown hair, I turned back to my computer, propped my elbows on the desk in front of me, and stared straight ahead.

But this boy leaned across the open space between us and gently squeezed my flexed bicep with his fingers, saying, “Wow, it looks like you work out!”

I recoiled, flinging my tan bicep towards my chest, nearly smacking myself in the face with my own hand. My cheeks flamed as I said: “Don’t touch me! You’re a stranger!”

And the boy laughed saying, “Hi. I’m Jon, what’s you’re name?”

“Becca” somehow escaped my lips, and he replied, “Well then, now we aren’t strangers. I know your name, you know mine.”

And so, we met for the first time in the NWC computer lab, in 1997, and the rest is history. . . . Sort of. (Is it ever really that simple?)  

He was 18. I was 19, and as Jon puts it, “We were really immature back then!”

But from that first moment in the computer lab, I liked the fresh football player from Northern Minnesota. He was funny and honest—he didn’t try the flatter-a-girl-to-get-her-to-go-out-with-you kind of crap. He didn’t perform. He just was . . . himself.

That computer-lab-encounter year,  Jon and I began “accidentally” meeting up at the library to “study.” That’s how I found out he was a public-schooled German Christian with a back-woods vocabulary and a philosopher’s mind. He didn’t care about grades and he always asked why. I thought that--asking why—made him a rebel, and I wanted to be a rebel like that.

And I, I was a homeschooled Preacher’s kid from the Midwest who cared about pleasing my parents and making straight A’s. I was a prisoner to other people’s opinions, forever an actor on a stage—performing the dreams and desires of others. But secretly I longed to  live the God-given beauty of my own breath, thoughts, and feelings.  

With Jon, perhaps for the first time in my life, I could just breathe and be the me that God created.   

We laughed together, ran miles of road together (I left him on a park bench in the middle of nowhere, once, and he still ran after me), drank way too many mochas at Caribou Coffee together, and talked about our mutual struggle to fill the hollow spaces in our hearts with God.

And, somehow, Jon saw in me what so many others didn’t: I longed to draw God close, but I didn’t know how, was too scared to try. So, out of fear, I kept God and others from filling the open, hollow spaces in my heart.

And, just as he did in the computer lab so long ago, Jon reached across the hollow, open spaces in my heart, drawing me close, talking about God and life in a way I’d never heard before—intimately, personally.  After our first summer home from college, Jon shared how he talked with God as he worked alone all summer, re-building his Dad’s garage. He shared how his talks with God led him to change his college major from Kinesiology to Bible.

And even though Jon’s parents thought his degree-changing was “crazy,” he took that step of faith because he knew God was in it. And that school year, as I watched Jon follow God’s plan for him, I realized Jon’s faith was for real—his own, separate from his parents.  

But my God was inextricably tied to my parents. The God I knew lived in my parents daily sermons and the pages of the Bible. God did not live in the day-to-day joys and pains of my life, my heart. Or, at least, I’d never felt His presence in that flesh-and-spirit kind of way.  

But I wanted to know Jon’s God—a God who lived close, intermingling flesh and spirit.

And ever since the day Jon and I finally became one flesh at Immanuel Baptist Church,  a country-like church in a the heart of a Minneapolis neighborhood, he’s shown me what it means to know God like that—in flesh and in spirit, in head and in heart.

And the very thing that drew me to Jon back in 1997—his ability to see, share, and pursue the heart-honest-truth about God and Self, no matter the cost--has freed me to do the same.  I’ve come to know God in the day-to-day of my life’s joys and pains. I’ve learned to see God move in flesh and spirit, drawing me close, and closer still. 

And with a husband like Jon, I know the next eleven years will bring more Calvin-and-Hobbes humor, more rebel-like discussions over a cup of Starbucks about the whys of life, and an even deeper awareness of God-with-us, every day, every hour, every moment.

“And the two will become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one.” (Mark 10:8)

Happy 11^th Anniversary, my love. 

 

Related Posts: Husband Love, Making He/She, We, 

Redemption Story Project Writing Assignment #6

"If God truly is good beyond our wildest imagining and if God takes evil and uses it for good, then how God redeems the tragedies of our lives will be nothing sort of glorious. We may not see the redemption in this lifetime. But then again, God just may do the redeeming right now. Our tragedy is also our redemption. God allows tragedy because he can use it to soften our hearts and make them more his own. . . . We can't love in a way that is truly selfless until we are broken. "(To Be Told, 96).

Part 1: Think back over your life to instances of "shalom (peace) shattered," when tragedy, no matter how minor/major, struck? Think about the first kid who hurt your feelings/called you a name in school, think about hurts from your parents (intentional or not), think about different forms of loss you've experienced (loss of relationships, loss of a loved one, etc.) How has God used tragedy in your life to draw you to himself?

Part 2: Write out the story of one of your life's tragedies. Capture how you felt/responded to the situation at the time. Now, think about and then explain how God has used that tragedy for good in your life.