I find it quite humorous that all three of my kids have asked “How do I cook frozen waffles?” You see my kids all can cook mac and cheese, BLT’s, nacho dip, grilled cheese, pizza, fried eggs… you get the picture! I guess the fact that they do not know how to cook frozen waffles is a good thing.
Archive for June, 2007
Do Not Deny the Truth
I had an epiphany. I was really, unusually, nervous this past weekend in giving the welcome and blessing at church. I have a fear of public speaking, who doesn’t, and over the past several months it has been abating but this past weekend it spiked. As I said in an earlier post I have been struggling with some depression and the gray day didn’t help so I am sure those both factored in some what. The thing is I was hiking with a friend and as I was sharing my insights to something she was struggling with I realized that I was saying something I needed to hear too. Basically I told her “why try to deny reality instead push into it.” The litmus test is if the true emotion does not impair your day to day functioning than so what…allow it to exist and see what comes of it.
One thing that I did differently this past weekend was I tried to convince myself not to be nervous but it was a lie. I was trying to convince myself a lie was true. And it worked right up until the time I was to speak. In the past what I did was allow myself to be nervous. I had the butterflies for about 24 hours before I was to speak publically and then a few minutes into my presentation I relaxed. I let the reality that “this is no big deal and I am nervous about nothing” sink in rather than contrive the reality that I wanted to be true. Denying truth made the reality of my nervousness more daunting and I got flustered.
This returns back to the theme of authenticity. I believe emotional numbness has its roots in inauthenticity. Deny what you are really feeling out of fear, defensiveness, pain, insecurity, or whatever the motivation may be and one enters a state of numb. I cannot recall the amount of times I have heard “I don’t feel anything” or “I don’t know what I feel.” We have this idea of what ideal is and usually it is not real so we strive for the ideal and neglect the real. It’s like trying to define the word normal. We have a tendency to pathologize “abnormal” based on an arbitrary measuring stick. Statistically speaking normal is plus or minus 1.5 standard deviation of the mean. So technically speaking Michael Jordan is “abnormal” but we would not say he has a pathology.
Back to the public speaking jitters. I have believed that it is wrong or abnormal to have anxiety before speaking publicly which may or may not be statistically true but for me it is and to deny that or label it wrong is ludicrous. Feelings are not either right or wrong, they are what they are. Maybe the beliefs that lead us to feel one way or another are wrong or not helpful but feelings are feelings. I feel angry, I feel sad, I feel nervous, I feel joy etc. are true statements. To ignore them or stuff them, I believe, is the root of many mental “illness.” As an existential thinker I don’t just want to correct bad thinking but I want to validate feelings so that thinking is changed from an authentic emotion. I am nervous about public speaking. I need to validate my feeling whether or not it changes. My behavior will be to continue speaking publicly despite my feeling nervous because my desire is to teach which requires public speaking and as I do more of it the feeing of nervousness may or may not subside but if I deny the feeling it will blossom into this huge daunting entity and overwhelm me. So allowing the feeling to exists prevents it from becoming this monster of impairment.
Being Authentic is worth it
Today was a great day. Terry, my former supervisor, was my sub for case conference and it was great. I felt energized and I felt challenged to be authentic. You see when I am on campus I feel very unknown at times. I tend to retreat inward out of self preservation. But I knew I could not get away with that with Terry around. He would call me on it. And I felt completely safe speaking my mind around him. What I realize is, I hate to say it, but I have a facade that I hid behind at Western. I love my counseling program but overall I feel invalidated in essential parts of my being and I do not trust many of the people there to be transparent with them. I feel like I have to defend myself rather than dialog over differences.
I got so upset with myself when I realized how glad and peaceful I was being myself today in case conference. It was energizing! I have been struggling with some depression over the last couple of weeks and I think a big piece has been the level of inauthenticity in a part of my life hit a crossroads. There was a disconnect between my emotions and reality. I was pretending that it did not matter but it does! Today I was playing volleyball with some fellow students and afterwards I got in a conversation with some women about women in ministry and usually me voice would get quieter and my words would be toned down but this time I let it fly. I have no need to be absolutely right but I do have a need to be authentic! I said to hell with it if my fellow students cannot handle my views and engage in healthy dialog that is their lose. The woman I was talking to mostly agreed with me but did ask me to expound on how I reconciled the Timothy passages about elders being referred to only in the masculine and I did. It felt so good to be authentic. I even said that I am an Elder at Evergreen and one guy distinctly looked up. It may have meant something it may not have but if they are not going to say anything than I am going to resist reading anything into it.
Today confirmed that the level of authenticity I live life from does affect my mental health. I will not be 100% transparent with everyone but what they do see will be authentic. The cost of living an unauthentic life is too great.
I know when to step down from my soapbox!
I am a Christian feminist. Being such I would say women as elders/pastors is a B+ issue for me and hinting towards an A- because when an essential part of your being, the feminine, is being used against you it tends ruffle some feathers, especially if it becomes a stumbling block towards Jesus. In light of that, I must share that I do realize that this is not THE most important issue and I do have a sense of priority. You see I have a dear friend who about 4 years ago moved to Washington with her husband and their 3 children. After months of church shopping and years of sporadic church involvement they found this great church. It happens to be in the Acts 29 network. The thing is my friend is a staunch egalitarian and shares my theology on women in ministry AND I have kept my mouth shut! Yes, that’s right I stepped off my soapbox and am letting it go. When she finds out her churches stance, I am sure she will, it will be her and her husband’s bridge to cross. They have finally found a church that they willing want to become a part of and for the sake of their children and their spiritual growth I will not meddle. If I felt that this would embitter them further in their walk with Jesus I may say something but I trust their maturity and Christ’s hand in their life to help them sort it out as needed. Why am I writing all this? In a couple weeks we will be spending 4 days in Whistler with this couple and there will be many opportunities for me to slip up so call this my accountability. If I share it in this public way I am less likely to say anything. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Tension
This week, I know it is only Tuesday but feels like it should be Friday, is full. Which always triggers a “are you saying yes to too many things conversations” between Tom and I. Don’t worry we have great talks about this kind of stuff. The thing is we are different in that I get energized being with people. I don’t mean to air out or process marriage stuff but to illustrate often times where marriages go awry. How does one frame the differences one sees in a relationship? If it feels like an attack on one’s person or values you’re done for but if one can frame it in difference language like “My spouse is energized in a different way than me” well then you have difference rather than a better or worse scenario. That can be talked through. One of my profs who specializes in couples therapy says you can boil most marital disputes into value debates. So a fight about chores is less about chores and more about values. I value people time and Tom values alone time but that does not mean the opposite is not true it just means we are energized in different ways. I look at a full calendar as yeah great and he looks at it as ugh! So how do we negotiate that. Consensus! We value each other more than self! It may on the surface feel like compromise but if you search our hearts, which you can’t so you must take our word for it, you will see that we truly buy into, the whole is as important as the individual thus we as individuals CHOOSE to deny self for the sake of the whole. Is it easy…yes and no! I am constantly driven back to my values. I do value the individual and one must be held in tension with the whole. I see this in my theology, sociology and psychology. If any of those ologies is too individualistic in focus it is guaranteed to be skewed (or visa versa but that does not seem to be the case in American culture). There is tension, I am sinful and want what I want and I am being sanctified and want the greater good, familially and socially. What also has helped me is to stop using the word balance and start using the word tension, realizing balance implies harmony but more often I feel tension which I think reflects my sin nature battling with my redeemed self. I take comfort in Paul’s struggles in Romans Rom 7:19 “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” This, to me, implies tension. There is nothing to be balanced. You cannot balance sin with holiness. Which is why I think Paul cried “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Rom 7:24. This is not a gnostic distinction between body(bad) and spirit (pure) but a tension of the two existing in the same time space continuum. I am justified but not fully sanctified. Sanctification, in my understanding, is a process of becoming like Jesus (not by our doing but by the work of the Holy Spirit) but never fully actualizing it until death and resurrection. This implies to me the whole biological life cycle as a season of tension for Christ followers. It makes sense that we wrestle in our relationships with tension over the ideal and the real.
From role to identity
There has been a theme vicariously present in my life over the last few days. It all began during my clinical supervision. I stated my hypothesis about a situation I was dealing with. I said “…functioning in a role instead of an identity.” My supervisor caught it and repeated it back to me. And here I am almost 1 week later still pondering it. The other night I watched Fight Club with a group from my community and an overarching theme I saw in that movie was identity. We get stuck in a rut. What we should do, the responsible thing, the one that causes the least amount of waves and then WHACK reality…life as it is sucks. Then while praying for a member of our community he talked about the expectations of his “role.” There is this distinction and continuity between role and identity. As one functions in a role is one being true to one’s identity or does one get trapped in a role? I think it is so easy to get stuck in a role even a role one loves. I love being Tom’s wife, Mackenzie, Victoria, and Ryan’s mom, student, friend, counselor etc. but if I do not keep a healthy distinction between the role and true identity I can easily become enmeshed with the role so that I loose myself. When I am not functioning or functioning well in any given role I feel lost…despair. But when I have the presence of mind to ground my identity in Jesus I realize that all my roles ultimately are means to the end…being a representative of God here on Earth, a follower of Jesus. In other words my roles are not necessarily false but are pieces of who God created me to be if I function in them from a grounded identity which for me begins and ends with Jesus.
The hardest part for me is not getting caught up in expectations or labels from those around me. People see me, analyze me, make assumptions about me, as I do others I must admit, and then interact with me based on those assumptions. I can live with that, I understand human nature and am learning to not be threatened by it. But what I cannot live with anymore is feeling like I need to live up to or buy into every assumption other’s make about me. I can accept or reject or better yet ask is this consistent with what I believe about myself or how God wired me to be? I have found that I have learned things about myself from other’s that I did not even realize about me. This is a basic principle behind the Johari windows. Basically there are 4 boxes:
1. Things I know about myself and other’s know about me-the Public Self or Arena
2. Things I am blind to but other’s see – Blind Spots
3. Things I know about myself but other’s do not – Facade
4. Things neither myself or other’s know about me – the Unknown
I am not nearly as afraid of critique or insights other’s have of me, there may or may not be truth in them but if I do not examine them I will not know. As identity develops I think the danger is to be too individualistic, I create my own identity, and too collective, I am what other’s say I am. The tension of individual and community needs to be traversed and thus for me I need a foundation that I can turn to for the core of who I am – Jesus and His Word. If I can with the guidance and enablement of the Holy Spirit cultivate and manifest the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control then I know my identity is being transformed by Jesus. Easier said then done. It reminds me that Jesus is less concerned with my role and more concerned with my character which to me is the essence of my identity. I will not try…I will practice.
Thanks Mom and Dad
One thing I must thank my parents for is their practical and simple way of life. I remember watching my Dad sew his leather shoes when he would get a tear on the seam rather than just junk them and buy new ones. He would even go so far as Shoe Goo the soles when they wore through. It took an act of God to get him to splurge on new shoes. My mom took old clothes that were not Goodwill suitable and torn them into strips and made rugs. They rarely threw things out. They didn’t even realize they were being so ecologically minded. It was just a way of life for them. They both grew up on farms in Finland in the 30’s and 40’s. Neither of their families were wealthy. When they immigrated to the States they came by ship with 2 children and $500. My mom told me how they built their first house. They borrowed about $1,000 at a time and built the basement first, moved in while my Dad finished the main floor. They would not borrow any more money until they paid back the first loan. My parents have never had a mortgage, those days are long gone except for a select few. I am grateful for the tools I gleaned from my parents. Today I was at the REI garage sale and came across these shoes:
They are Born and retail for $72.95. I bought mine for $1.83 the catch is the side of one shoe was completely detached. I hemmed and hawed and finally gambled that I could fix them and if not no big lose. I got home and went to work. I happened to have the right size needle and cording, except it was off white, oh well I will worry about that later. The holes were well marked on the shoes and so I began stitching away. About 30 minutes later the side of the shoe was successfully re-attached! Now to fix the color of the cording. I hunted down a brown marker and voila! The best part is when the shoe is on my foot covers up the repair job not that you could tell anyway. The next step is to put a little Shoe Goo on the repair spot for a little extra insurance of long wear. I also bought 3 pairs of pant one with buttons missing, one’s snap broke, and another had a small tear near a seam. I also bought one more pair of pants in perfect condition and a pair of high end flip flops for $9. After they applied our dividend refund my grand total was $33.83, that’s for 4 pants and 2 shoes! Not bad when your parents equip you to make minor repairs and improvise. Parents, as you rush your child through the educational rat race don’t forget to equip them with some basic life skills, they will thank you!
Sexual Purity
I was trying to refrain from writing again about that class I despise. This past session we talked about sexual purity and here is some of the advice:
Women:
Don’t were t-shirts with words across the chest, you are encouraging men to read your chest!
Just because men are courteous and show kindness to you it does not mean they are flirting!
Men:
Look at women only from the neck up, you have no business noticing anything else.
Do not, I repeat do not be alone with any other woman then your wife or daughter. (Aaron E. you broke this one when you asked me for a ride from the airport to Western).
Those were just a small sampling of advice. The message being conveyed subversively is women are evil except your wife. They are trouble. Our prof was telling us about shooing some women parishioners out of his office when they would seek counsel. (I know that men need to be careful especially pastors in light of our culture but there are ways to handle and ways not to handle it). No wonder women have historically felt like they are dirty, temptresses, that men need to guard themselves from except their wife of course. Then we wonder why women have a hard time embracing their sexuality. It’s ironic that in Song of Songs the writer speaks of the woman’s beauty being noticed by many. Female beauty and passion and sexuality is beautifully expressed. Yes the context is marriage. I think a big problem in our society is we have objectified women and they are objects rather than complex human beings with passions and intellect.
I think what is cheesing me most about this class is the patronizing tone. I feel lectured at. In fact my friend and I sit in the back of the room and pass notes as we play solitaire on our computers. What does that sound like to you…Bingo…High school. I feel like I am being treated like a teenager and I hate to admit it but I have a rebellious attitude when I am in there. In fact, the prof was saying how men desire respect and then he causally says I don’t know what women want and I, in a loud whisper, said “Respect!” Aurelie and I just about lost it. The prof didn’t hear me or he chose to not address my comment.
As graduate students who are at least in our mid twenties and committed to Christ we know what to do. We have the behavior modification and boundaries down but that does not seem to be enough to guarantee purity. But that is all we got from this lecture do xyz and you will avoid sexual impurity. I do not buy it. On some level it works but I think we need to begin talking about the underlying discontent, feelings, values and beliefs that lay the foundation for sexual sin. I am a firm believer in the notion that most sin behavior is a symptom of an underlying deeper sin/issue, usually a motive or belief or action perpetuated by oneself or from someone else as in abuse, emotional, physical and spiritual. In my theory one needs to couple behavior change with exploration of feelings and beliefs. If you do not address the heart issues I believe relapse in the behavior is virtually guaranteed. I think the tendency to focus on behavior is because it is measurable. Motives and heart issues are hard to assess from an external perspective. It is also harder work to change and usually involves more pain before healing can begin. We do not want to deal with pain but ironically by not dealing with the core pain we set ourselves up for greater pain sooner or later.
I am not saying everyone needs years of psychotherapy often all people need is a good friend or mentor. Someone who has a little more wisdom than they do who can walk alongside them compassionately and gently speaking truth and healing into their life. The problem is we usually wait too long to seek help and our problems are too big and burdensome and the symptoms are too great that a professional counselor is warranted. I am convinced that if the church would be the community of God embodied in and modeled by the person and life of Jesus that there would not be a need for counselors for Christians. We, collectively, have lost the art of discipleship.
No Asshole Rule!
My supervisor was telling me about this book, “No Asshole Rule” written by an Organizational Psychologist Bob Sutton. I found his blog and he has a couple of great self-assessments. As I read through the questions a few people came to mind, not myself of course! As I was reading through his blog I read something I loved. He was telling about a company that requires every employee and manager to sign a no asshole contract! I love it. Can you think of a few people you would want to sign a contract like that or maybe some people would want you to sign one hmm…..!
Sexism in Politics
First I must give a disclaimer that I have not read the book but I heard the authors give an interview and that is what I am responding to. Basically the authors of a book on Hilary Clinton said that Bill and Hilary had a political vow when they got married. They seemed to imply this was wrong, or dishonest. First of all where were they when Bill was elected? Why bring this up now when Hilary is running? It seems to me that men with political ambitions have been selecting a wife that best suits their career, JFK anyone. What if Hilary was so selective as she decide who her life partner was to be? I am not endorsing theses types of arrangements. In fact I think they are bad premises for marriage in any circumstance. But the fact that these authors are calling Hilary and Bill out when Hilary is running seems sexist and a double standard. The thing is her stance on the Iraq War should be up for critique, that is one of the key issues about her presidential campaign. When the press digresses down the path to what were Hilary and Bill’s motives to marry it seems dishonest. I am not a fan of Hilary, although I would love to have a female president I would rather have the best person for the job elected. I just am amazed at the double standard that is evasive in our so called progressive culture.
