In a prior post, I noted how difficult it was for me to find my place in the helping relationships I find myself in.  I must say now that I’ve gone through my first unit of CPE that I”m much more comfortable finding myself in my relationships.  I still tend to hold back, but I don’t hold back as much.  When I do hold back, I can at least know why. 
I find that I’m not only more in touch with myself when doing counseling, but less concerned about “how I’m doing”. 

My next unit of CPE is coming up tomorrow, so I’m curious to see how things continue to progress.

Trust is hard – that much is given.  And given that I trust in God only slightly more than I trust people, how can I ever trust anyone or anything totally?

One of the points in Manning’s Ruthless Trust that spoke to this was his discussion of self-pity and self-absorption as barriers to trust.  Like most semi-recovering Fundies, I was brought up on a diet of “put others before yourself”, “pray in your closet”, “do good for the glory of God and don’t take credit” humility.  I think I remember hearing from time to time that pride was the original sin that led to all other sins.  Unfortunately this turn away from the self became a sort of self-abasement and even self-punishment.  Seeking recognition for anything that I did was prideful, and if someone did actually recognize and praise me I tried to get it over with as soon as possible. 

I remember once going out to a Christian Counseling conference in Seattle to present a paper which ended up winning an award for the best student paper.  I sat at dinner with a couple other people and never mentioned the award until I had to go up to receive it.  When announced I ran up and barely shook the man’s hand before running back off the stage and taking my seat.  Part of this was due to sheer nerves – I wasn’t comfortable being up in front of large groups of people and felt that I had barely made it through the paper anyway.  However, my own thinking was that my paper was judged “best” because there simply weren’t any others.  I wouldn’t allow myself to take credit for it for fear of coming off as prideful.

Deep inside though, I rage whenever I don’t get credit for the things that I do and do well.  I stomp around when it’s not noticed that I washed all the dishes after making dinner, or when I fold the laundry, or got matching shoes on the kids.  I pout and self-pity, wishing others would tell me how wonderful I am so I could say “aw, ’twerent nothin'”.

Manning sees this for what it pretends not to be, which is self-absorption.  Funny how humility can turn in to that isn’t it?

Anyhow, long story short, CPE has shown me a lot about myself and I’ve even practiced giving myself credit for what I do and accepting good turns from others as well.  For example, when asked what grade I deserved at the end of the term I gave myself an A. 

No big deal, unless you consider that I gave myself a B- at midterm.

Previously I had noted that the book we are reading for this current unit of CPE is Brennan Manning’s Ruthless Trust.  I had also noted how the issue of trusting in God – what for? how much? how far? – has been something I’ve been wrestling with as of late.  Yesterday I spoke in the class about how one of the hindrances to our trust in God is our own forgetfulness.  Looking back on the history of Israel, it is not their lack of faith that is apparent, it is their lack of trust.  Manning uses the equation of faith + hope = trust in his book.  So if was not faith they were lacking, perhaps it was hope.  They lacked trust not because they thought He was less than God, but because they didn’t believe he had their best intentions in mind.  How many times do you read in the Exodus account of the Israelites moaning to God, “You’ve led us out here to die!  There’s no water!  There’s no food!  We should have stayed in Egypt!”?  No matter what God led them through in the past and how often they are called to remember it, you get the sense that the Israelites thought God was a lemming leading them over the cliff. 

In the same way, I feel – perhaps we all feel – about God in the same way from time to time.  We see the disaster in the world and wonder if that’s what God has in mind for us.  I felt this way when watching a 10 year old die of terminal cancer.  I felt this way when our house didn’t sell for over a year and we carried two mortgages on top of a pile of other debts.  A poster I saw that lampooned the current culture of motivational workplace artwork featured an ocean with the tip of a freighter sticking out at a precarious angle from the water, the caption reading: “It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”  Sick as it is, it makes sense in a world where, if we want, we can be surrounded with news of death, disease, mayhem, blood, tears, flood, loss and heartache 24/7.   Perhaps, like the author and cynic writes, “God is Not Good”?

But God is good.  Not only that but G-double-O-D good.  I know that.  But knowing and trusting are two different things.  Knowing is in the head.  Trust is in the gut (I was going to say heart but for some reason gut strikes me as more accurate and true).  Knowing looks at what is and what has been.  Trust looks ahead to what might be, which is never certain.  Even my knowledge is not really certain, for I do not trust myself.

And here is a turn – I don’t think I trust people either, for the same reason I don’t trust God.

“To be a healer, you need to be wounded.  But when you’re wounded, you’re angry.”

That’s the jist of a lot of what we talked about in CPE last week.  Those of us who go in to helping professions do so because we are in some way wounded.  All wounds involve pain of some sort, be it emotional, social or spiritual.  While we can work through that pain, we often avoid the anger going along with that pain.

Most of us hardly even know that we’re angry though.  We call it something else, avoid it, smash it down.  Personally I find that I’ve done this all the time and continue to do so.  Anger is for me (I initially wrote “was”, but that’s not honest) a cardinal sin.  I guess we all have some sin that is “the big one” that we avoid at all costs.  Other sins are forgivable, but for me, not anger.

I think that for me it’s not due to seeing too much anger and disagreement – it’s seeing not enough of it.  My parents rarely fought, and discord was not tolerated in the home.  God never tells you to be angry at people, because anger is the opposite of love.  Anger, therefore, is sin.  If you were angry with someone you must hate them, and hate is wrong.  And if you’re angry at someone they’ll hate you back and love will be lost forever.  Make sense?  No, not to me either.

I was at a facility yesterday where a couple of the staff were watching a show featuring a young girl with severe anorexia.  Her arguments and rationalizations for her behavior were bizarre and nonsensical, and this was plainly aware to anyone on the outside.  “She thinks she’s fat!“, one nurse shouted.  The girl recognized that her beliefs regarding her self-image didn’t make sense-at times.  But she always rationalized: “I eat some“, “some” in this case meaning pita bread with mustard.

In the same way I rationalize my own anger away.  “It’s not a big deal – don’t make it one.”  “Turn the other cheek.”  “Whatever.”  “Just go along with it for now.”

The path to healing and being a healer, though, lies not with avoiding the anger that is there but in going through it.  If I am Angry, to deny it is to deny part of my self.  Worse, how can I help someone who is angry when I haven’t really even dealt with my own anger?

This will be an ongoing struggle, I’m sure.

Late last week I was driving through a busy intersection during rush hour.  A group had planted themselves on all four corners of the intersection with placards graphically depicting the fate of the aborted unborn.  There was no screaming or shouting, just these sickening signs with the words ABORTION IS MURDER! in big letters.

The intended goals I suspect were to try to dissuade those who were considering abortion, to try and sway public opinion by overwhelming the senses with violence, and in some way to “shame” proponents of, practitioners of, and participants in abortion.  I’m sure that these goals were all achieved in some manner or degree.

However, I don’t think that their primary goal – that of saving the unborn – is served well by this strategy.  I don’t know how many women changed their minds by viewing this spectacle, instead I think that it galvanized folks more in their own opinions.

First of all, it affirmed to those who were pro-life that abortion is a grisly evil that should be stopped.  Second, it affirmed to those who were pro-choice that the pro-life side is made of folks who care so much for unborn babies that they will traumatize everyone else, including the children driving by, to get their point across, thus proving how uncaring they are.  Third, it affirmed to everyone who ever had an abortion that they are a despicable, shameful murderer.  “Shame on you!” the signs proclaim, and lo they are ashamed.

That third point struck me.  I’ve thought a lot this past week about shame and self-judgement.  Christians deal a lot in shame.  That shame can be focused outward on sinful society in order to bring it back in line.  Just another tool in the evangelist’s arsenal.  After all, one might say when looking at our culture’s daily diet of Jerry Springer and TMZ, it looks like we could use a heaping helping of shame.

However I also find that many Christians, myself included, overdose on shame.  We’re loaded down with how we should be living our lives, raising our children, studying the Bible, praying, tithing, witnessing, disciplining ourselves, reading, singing and joyful.  And more often than not we are not.  The answer unfortunately comes in the form of harsh and hard self-judgment.  We lash ourselves with our own thoughts and wear our hairshirts on the inside, and lo we are ashamed.

During my CPE classes my personal reflections were usually rebutted to my surprise with a “don’t be judgmental”.  These reflections, I thought, were objective.  I had done a bad job with something and felt bad and wanted to try and do better.  “Don’t be judgmental.”  “Huh?” was my first thought.  I thought I was only reporting reality as it was.  I started to see though that my observations were not simple record of fact but almost always included a therefore I should…

I thought to myself that it wasn’t wrong to do so, to think that I should be trying to improve, to be better, to have done something else.  If I am judgmental, is it wrong to judge myself?  I was confused.

I asked a social worker colleague what she thought the difference was between being objective and being judgmental.  She replied, “objectivity is just the facts.  Being judgmental means putting a value on those facts.”  To say that stealing is taking things that aren’t yours is objective.  To say that stealing is wrong is a judgement.   To say I am a wrong person for stealing is to be judgmental.  “But”, I thought to myself, “stealing is wrong, therefore I should be judged and be judgmental of myself, shouldn’t I?”

I asked, “do you think I’m a judgmental person?”

“Oh no – not at all.  But you totally judge yourself.  Harshly.”

I felt like I had known that the sky was blue, and then one day looked up and actually realized that the sky was blue.

I had felt for a long time that I was hard on myself, but I also felt that I needed to be hard on myself.  The verdict was just and fair, I thought.  But when I turned the lens outward, would I be as harsh on someone else as I am on myself?  The tyranny of the should was finally exposed.  I refuse to extend to myself the grace that I so freely give others.

We’ll see if a healthy should comes out of this anywhere.

CPE week 2 came and went so quickly I barely caught it.  However week 2 was much more significant than week 1, as most of us in out group started to share our stories together.  For me, this was a pretty big exercise, as there are parts that I barely tell friends and loved ones about and wouldn’t dare dream of mentioning to folks who were in many ways strangers to me still.  Doing so was quite helpful though, and although not explicit in the story itself I noticed several things during my own telling as well as during the following week. Continue reading →