As many of you who are close to me know, these past few (6+!) years have been pretty hard on me emotionally. I've been muddling through a quagmire of emotional muck that has found me unsure of my footing in many important areas (my spirituality, my physical health, my emotional health and much more). I've been hard to live with, hard to stay positive and hard to be around, I understand. I do truly apologize for that, and today I'm going to expand on what I've been sorting through all this time. It started with some relationship issues we were trying to help friends with, which then turned into just plain old hurling of insults back and forth amongst themselves, and we were caught in the crossfire. It became clear that we had to escape the drama before our own family was destroyed as well by the toxicity, but it was far too late to back-paddle our way out of the mess without acknowledging the depth of the damage.
Since then, I've removed myself from the source, and have been seeking my own healing. A lot of prayer, counselling, fasting, talking through the hard with trusted friends, Naturopathic treatments and supplements, homeopathy (Natrum Muriaticum) and more. By the way, Nat Mur (as it's affectionately called) opens up deeply buried emotional pain, helps you feel your emotions again, as well as relieving symptoms of rumination and long term grief. (Ignatia is for fresh grief, which I've also used). Just so you know, sorting through deeply buried emotional pain is turmoil. It's not for the faint of heart. In the book that I'm reading now (as per counselling), the author says it's "agony" to sort through years of guilt and shame, which has been the root of it all. I'm a trooper though! I'm not giving up until I've healed, and it's nice to finally be on the winning end of things at last. Admitting to our own sinfulness in the matter isn't easy either of those we damaged along the way (I've had plenty to repent of, with more to come, I'm sure) and those sins of omission we did to keep the waters calm. None of it is easy, but we're all learning as we go, hey?!
The big breakthrough this week happened in an unexpected way. Greg came home from work one day a few weeks ago with a story about my Grandpa Kurtti. He works with several men from our church background, and this one man told a story about how my Grandpa had gone fishing with another man one day. Grandpa had caught a beautiful fish, but it was snagged (the hook was from the outside of the cheek in, instead of from the inside out). Grandpa turned the fish back out into the water, because snagging fish was illegal. The man fishing with him had said, "that Ray Kurtti is above reproach!" when he was telling the story later.
Reproach means "to find blame, criticism or disapproval of". I pondered this statement, trying to figure out why my Grandpa was "above reproach". I knew he was a perfectionist, I knew that as a pastor he wanted to be a good example. I also know that he had a tender conscience after his conversion in his 20s. But were those truly the reasons? I still don't know as he's been dead for many years now. I asked one of my aunts and she didn't know exactly either, but told me a few more stories that were similar.
And then as I was sitting drinking my coffee one morning this week, still pondering this, it came to me clear as day. I've spent my whole life running, trying to stay above reproach too. I told Greg this (he was sitting there drinking his coffee too, a rare moment on a week day for both of us to be up sitting together!), and as I said it, there was this newfound freedom and clarity. There were lots of tears shed too (freely, not stifled like usual for me). There was this deep down sinking lump in my gut that was finally starting to melt away that I've had for as long as I can remember. As we talked about this, I pictured myself as a bowling pin, with a big, heavy bowling ball always rolling towards me (the reproach) while I tried to run faster. Weird thing to picture, I know! In my teens, 20s and 30s, I was able to stay a few steps ahead of the reproach by trying to do the "right thing", but now in my 40s, I can't. I'm tired of the lies (to maintain someone else's fragile false image or expectations), I'm tired of pandering to other people's "rules" and standards and judgments, I'm tired of it all. I'm tired of the phony behavior, I'm tired of the blaming, the victimhood, the excuses, the negativity. I'm tired of the shame and guilt they've laid upon me because I'm not measuring up to their royal ridiculousness. I'm tired of hearing all the complaints about others, that I know also include myself when I'm not around.
Just.so.plain.tired.of.it.all. I want to heal, to find joy, to laugh and cry freely (I haven't been able to for as long as I can remember). I want to enjoy my husband and children and not feel guilty about them (because I've screwed up so much that I don't deserve them, as has been told and implied to me).
You may wonder, as I have, why we stay in these negative, draining relationships for so long. Well, for a few reasons. 1) It's all we've ever known. We've been micromanaged every day of our life by well meaning but emotionally damaged people. Even if they aren't in our life much anymore, the echoes in our brain don't stop. 2) They are in our family and to set boundaries feels like betrayal and we get shamed for it. Their neediness is higher on the priority list than everyone else's health combined. 3) As a Christian, we understand grace and mercy, and we just figured they needed a lot of it. In giving it freely, we received the repercussions of their emotional damage instead, and yet they still don't understand God's free grace and mercy. 4) We also understand our own sinful nature, so we figure these judgmental people are just saying out loud what we know is already true. We do suck at many things. We aren't as righteous as we'd like to be. We fail much every day, although degrading someone never does help them to do better, does it?!
In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;
Colossians 1:22-23
Last summer was another eye opener leading to healing. Greg's aunt recommended a book called, "Stop Walking on Eggshells" to me that has helped her navigate some difficult relationships. In it, I learned about Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (the link above gives the telltale traits). I realized that 4 different people who are/were instrumental in my childhood/life likely have these disorders. I saw all of these people daily and weekly, and now in our 40s they could all easily be diagnosed with these (personality disorders are rarely diagnosed because the people with them think it's everyone else who has the problem, and never themselves). I've walked on eggshells all my life trying to stay in their good books. The problem is that it's a never ending tightrope walk. A darned if I do, darned if I don't. It's never enough. I could hang the moon and stars above them, and they'd still find criticism with how they were hung, and blame someone (or me!) for them not enjoying it. I feel like I've been living a double life all these years. The one they expect me to live (swinging between despair and still trying to somehow measure up), and my own life (with authentic people who do love me unconditionally, the majority thankfully).
So the book that the counselor is having me read right now is called, Tired of Trying to Measure Up, and it's about addressing shame. Shame is the sense that we are defective, not good enough or flawed in some way so that we don't deserve love and acceptance (as opposed to guilt which is how we feel when we've actually done something wrong). I've had to remember the difference between the two. I've had a lot of what I thought was guilt these past few years, but it was actually shame. I read all of Brené Brown's books on shame back in 2018, so this is nothing too new. But back then I had less understanding on how I myself needed to search deep to heal from it, and just how deeply it had affected my life. I also didn't find that she really gave tools to heal from it, and that's likely because only Jesus can heal these things. We can't do it with the power of positive thinking, or with more good deeds. We can expose it though! It loses it's power when it's talked about and brought to light, but not too many people want to hear about it (it brings up their own shame which they've been stifling quite nicely). Or not so nicely. And we're too tired to try any new schemes. We need forgiveness for ourselves, we need a right understanding of who we are in Christ (and how God made us in His image!), and then we need to forgive all those who have "heaped heavy burdens" on us that we're unable to bear. Hint: One of those someone's is often ourself! We each tend to weigh ourselves down with burdens of expectation and performance too. Anyhow, this book was really good, and I highly recommend it. No more to-do lists, just learning or relearning what God says about you, what Jesus did for you, and how you can be free of all the weights you are carrying that aren't yours to carry. (Whether it's an inaccurate view of God based shame, or people based shame).
Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that
condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.
Romans 14:22
Shame-grid based behaviors say,
“You have a high need for control. Since your sense of well being and security is based on externals, you’re preoccupied with the status of things and the behavior of people. Every time things or people don’t look or act the way you need them to; you fix, correct, adjust, improve, remedy, solve, reform, remodel or punish. This goes beyond the usual adult responsibility to guide: You need things to be ‘just so’ in order to be able to relax. But that time never comes.”
“You don’t allow yourself to make mistakes (or admit them). When you’ve been taught that performance is the way to be valuable and acceptable, mistakes bring shame.”
I have learned that I can't be around these type of unhealed people anymore though. I see through their façade that I've tolerated for far too long (in the name of love but it was actually codependency, this topic coming up next!) I want authenticity. I want truth. I want real. I want vulnerability. I want to hear about your struggles and your failures, not just your overinflated successes so you can one-up me to make your pride/ego feel better. And until some introspection and then healing occurs, I'll just stay away as much as necessary. Healed people aren't victims anymore, they are victors!
Another aspect of this whole shebang is called midlife. Some people call it a crisis, but Brené Brown calls it "an unraveling". In her fabulous (but profane)
article on midlife, she says this:
"Maybe, like me, you are the perfect pleaser and performer, and now all of that perfection and rule-following is suffocating. Or maybe you work hard to keep people at a safe distance and now the distance has turned into intolerable loneliness. There are also the folks who grew up taking care of everyone else because they had no choice. Their death is having to let go of the caretaking, and their rebirth is learning how to take care of themselves (and work through the pushback that always comes with setting new boundaries).
Whatever the issue, it seems as if we spend the first half of our lives shutting down feelings to stop the hurt and the second half trying to open everything back up to heal the hurt."
We sang this hymn below in church today, and it reiterates how the gospel message can heal our shame. There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ. Not from God, not from men. As I was singing it though, these thoughts all came to mind (and this is how a shame based mind works, now that I'm beginning to recognize it). Why am I singing? Because I'm supposed to? Because I want to? Because I always do? Because people might judge me if I do or if I don't sing? Because I'm worshiping God? At this point, I'm having reevaluate everything I do in my life and seeing what the root of it is. In the past, if I didn't feel like singing a song, or would just prefer to listen to the singing once in a while, I'd feel guilty/shame. Words like, "singing heals the heartaches, so you need to sing" and "our church is so small, everyone should sing" or "so and so doesn't like singing"(said in hushed tones of disgust) or whatever lines (and variations of them) I've heard all my life in regards to the importance of singing. No one sees what's going on in someone else's mind though, and it's hard for me to explain. But it's so tiring. It's exhausting! I just want to rest in what Christ has done for me and be free from it all! I feel like it's not just a battle of the Spirit against the flesh, but also a third battlefront of discerning the truth from lies, of which I often can't tell, because legalism often sounds and looks a lot like righteousness. The same battle happens every time I think about reading the Bible. Every.single.time. But up until now, I've never known what the root of it was, just felt the weights of the burden of it.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
Romans 8:1-3
Once For All
1 Free from the law, O happy condition,
Jesus hath bled, and there is remission;
Cursed by the law and bruised by the fall,
Grace hath redeemed us once for all.
Chorus:
Once for all, O sinner, receive it,
Once for all, O brother, believe it;
Cling to the cross, the burden will fall,
Christ hath redeemed us once for all.
2 Now we are free, there's no condemnation,
Jesus provides a perfect salvation;
"Come unto Me," O hear His sweet call,
Come, and He saves us once for all. [Chorus]
3 "Children of God," O glorious calling,
Surely His grace will keep us from falling;
Passing from death to life at His call,
Blessed salvation once for all. [Chorus]
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned (the gospel!); and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly (pride/ego); and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
Romans 16:17-18
Jordan Peterson says these two quotes below, and I feel they put in words some of the things I've been navigating. (Women are included in the first one, except the last sentence of the first paragraph, haha!) Italics are mine for emphasis."A lot of men today have lost their backbone, they’ve lost the fire in their belly and the passion in their soul. Most men today aren’t living, they’re merely existing (and bleakly existing at that). Every day, they are given an opportunity to speak their truth, to stand their ground, to authentically express themselves and share with the world who and what they really are. But they rarely take it. Through years of subconscious social conditioning, we’ve been taught to bite our tongues. To avoid rocking the boat. To play it safe and try to please everyone around us. Even when those around us need to be called out and held accountable for their words or actions. Quote “when you have something to say, silence is a lie”, serves as a helpful reminder that it is your duty and obligation to speak up when necessary. While others ignore injustice and bury their heads in the sand, it is your duty to speak up. To stand for your values and ethics. To make it known when boundaries have been crossed. Anything else is a lie. And over the long term, those little lies will castrate and corrode your masculine spirit."
"When you truly work on yourself, healing your culturally conditioned ego and becoming more and more conscious about your actions and surroundings, your energy is on a higher frequency than most people, because a lot of them are culturally conditioned. It’s not even them, it’s their egos, and they are possessed and acting out of it. If you’re conscious and know something about yourself, it’s easy to predict what they want or what they say because it’s like a program installed in people's brains. They aren’t conscious of their actions, and that’s why the healing/healed version of you will offend a lot of traumatised/culturally programmed/unconscious people. You won’t be acting like them, or want to participate in their unconscious games, conversations, and all kinds of activities, because it’s draining, and most of it is just a complete waste of time. If you can’t have a conscious conversation with the person, what’s the point? Talk with their conditioned ego? There is nothing new, exciting, or truly worth listening to, because there’s always some kind of game involved. When you’re possessed and acting out of your conditioned ego, you aren’t conscious. There are all kinds of games involved; that unhealed ego is always starving. So the best you can do is stay away from people who aren’t trying to get better/be conscious and those whose presence is draining. They are toxic to everyone, including themselves, and negativity just attracts and breeds more negativity."
