In Bed With a False Prophet

I have to admit something.  I've been hanging out in a dark and fearful place for a few weeks now. 

This place is one where I imagine my husband dying at a young age (just like his father who died one year from the age he is now).  Every bump, mole, scab, and pain gets a scrutinizing, suspicious, and thorough going-over from me.  There was a legitmate one recently, which mostly explains my schlepping off to this poor choice of hangouts. 

My work in hospice bereavement also provides an abundant supply of kindle, matches, and gasoline to ignite and nourish the fire of my fears.  Sometimes, my husband has to remind me that the entire world isn't on hospice.  Everything isn't a big deal.  And this always comforts me.  At least for five seconds, and sometimes more.

I've been admitting this morbid and frankly embarrassing line of thought to a few people, lately.  Collectively, they have helped me turn on the lights, once I let them in. 

It helped to know that, at one time or another, they all had similar fears of losing someone close to them, or knew someone who felt sure they were going to die young.  Equally helpful was that none of the mentioned fears or hunches have come to fruition.

Maybe you've experienced this in your own life.  You find yourself figuratively holding your breath until you pass some heartrending milestone, like when you stayed married longer than your parents, or surpassed their age when they died, or carried a child longer than before, or you eeked by or leapt over some expectation of doom you didn't even know you had. 

This morning, one of my friends said fear is a false prophet.  It didn't resonate at first, but I kept coming back to this idea and am pretty sure she nailed it.  Yes.  That's the thing.  It's difficult to argue with it logically, because it's some ugly promise about the future.  And you just don't know.  Whatever the thing is, could happen.  But, just because you're afraid of it, doesn't make it any more likely to happen... 

I jokingly told my husband that it would probably be better if I was a polygamist (reverse-polygamist, he offered).  That way, I could spread all of the love I have for him over several husbands.  Then, the thought of losing him might not feel so threatening and he could have help with the house repairs.  "Richard, it's your turn to fix the refrigerator.  I did it last time."  He laughed, told me I was weird, and then said something about men not being secure enough to tolerate that arrangement.  I think it stopped being funny when I told him to scoot over, so we could make room for the others. 

But, the truth is, that sometimes, there is another where he doesn't belong.  This other, this false prophet, is boldly proclaiming what may never be, wildly waving his hands for credence, and convincing us that whatever is loud is true.

Thankfully, once seen and named, his gig is up.  So, clear the way, false prophet.  You cannot be trusted.  (And, have you looked in a mirror, lately?  You might want to comb your hair.)
 
 

     

Free to be Fearless

I've had a lot of incredible conversations, lately.  Conversations that skip the inanity of what the weather has done or is going to do, what's happening at work, or how the kids are doing in school.  Conversations that happen right inside the door none of us want to open.  Inside the door that fear and shame beg us to leave shut tight and locked up. 

When we are alone, the room behind this door is the coldest, darkest, and loneliest room we will ever inhabit.  It's the room where we sit with all of the lies we believe, chief amongst them being, "I'm not enough." and in some cases, "I'm too much."

These are confusing beliefs if you also believe that you are a child of God and created in His image.  "I am something other than what I should be" doesn't really seem like an idea God would build into His people.  So, did we learn it somewhere?  Where did we learn that? 

Most of us don't have to look far to find potential, probable, or unmistakable places and times these loud-mouthed, lying seeds were planted in very fertile soil.  I don't like to give the devil credit for much, but it seems he got around and didn't bother getting creative with the message.

Regardless of why or how those seeds took root and grew into patterns of thinking and ways of relating, they've become part of us.  We will often do anything in our power to keep people from discovering the truth about the lies we believe, wrestle with, or operate out of.

Since opening up about my struggle with insecurity and fear of abandonment in my marriage, I've had the comfort of hearing a lot of "me toos".  Sometimes, it looks exactly the same, sometimes different.  But, whatever the particulars are, fear and shame are at the root of it. 

Because my conversations keep circling back to the same things, because of the silent and devastating nature of the lies we believe, and because of our ever-increasing inability to get to places of honesty, vulnerability, and understanding, I want to invite you in and ask you to consider who you would like to invite in, as well.

That cold, dark, and lonely room is transformed by an open door, the light in the hall, and the presence of another. 

As a guest in my room, I want you not only to know my fears, but to know what helps me live with and conquer them, too.

I believe God created us to be FREE.  Free to choose thoughts, words, and actions.  

Free to be fearless.  

I believe that God has allowed the circumstances, which have fortified my imperfection.  My imperfection/brokenness/weakness, is no longer something for me to fix, but a springboard to the One who can fix it, if He so chooses.  I finally see my struggle as part of His Will and not something outside of it. 

I have noticed something about the saints.  Their prayers always boil down to the same thing.  They want to love God, love His Will, and quite often, to love suffering. 

So, I'm pretending to be a saint.  I've copied a page out of their prayer book and am praying like they prayed.  Lord, please grant me the grace to love You, Your Will, and to love suffering.  Amen.

I cannot convey how dumbfounded I am by the results. Is it really possible that three simple prayers can transform a life?  I think so... 

I say this tentatively, as I'm only about a month in practice.  I've been tried several times, but only mildly.  I cannot remember the last time I've felt so fearless and free.  If I could actually love suffering, I would no longer fear suffering, which means I could use all of the energy I spend to protect myself from suffering, to love others.  And that sounds heavenly.

For the first time in my life, I am treating my insecurity like the spiritual battle it is.  I am no longer asking for it to be removed or healed, but accept that it might be here to stay.  God's will be done. 

Any time I start down a road I don't want to be on or get stuck in a vortex of negativity, which looks like doubt, fear, suspicion, jealousy, resentfulness, worthlessness, etc... I call on Christ.  I remind myself that feelings of fear and of being bound are contrary to what God desires for me, and it is time to suit up and step forward.  I name what I'm feeling, renounce (refuse to recognize or abide by any longer), rebuke, and reject it in the name of Jesus, and cast it to the foot of the Cross, reclaiming the victory that has already been won over it.  I don't have to do anything, but claim what has already been done.   

In these moments, I see myself as a little girl wrapped around my Father's leg and clinging to it for dear life, pleading not for one more ride around the living room, but for peace and love for all that is good.  I mean, have you ever tried to shake a kid off of your leg that is determined to take one more ride?  It's like that...

And I'm okay with this.  

Running away doesn't work.  Looking back doesn't work.  Introspection doesn't work.  Ignoring it doesn't work.  And looking to your spouse certainly doesn't work.  

Looking up works.  Clinging works.  And once this sinks in...oh, man I hope this is sinking in...it seems like maybe, just maybe, Somebody has been trying to tell me this all along.  

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.

Matthew 6:33 

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  

Matthew 11:28

Fear of Abandonment, Continued...

My second-to-last post about Fear of Abandonment was widely read (at least for my stuff), resonating strongly with many of you, and empowering a few.  So, I wanted to check in with you and update you on me.  If you're still standing in it, swimming in it, or sinking in it, I just wanted to let you know that you're not standing, swimming, or sinking alone.  'Cause I am, too.   

It's been a rough couple of weeks.  I could give you a thorough account of the few steps forward and the many steps back, but I want this to be fruitful for us, so I'm fastforwarding.  The latest development for me is a counseling appointment scheduled for next week.  First ever.  I am feeling excited, mad, hopeful, hopeless, and humbled about this.  

Recently, my husband recommended we "table" conversation on this issue.  It didn't feel great at the time, but since then I realized that "tabling" something can be progress.  The verb "table" means "to postpone the consderation of".  When two people are coming from two different places and speaking two different languages about a subject they disagree on, it is nigh impossible to feel like you're accomplishing anything, but insanity. 

In chess, I would call it a stalemate.  No winner.  New game.  If only.  

But, it's not chess.  It's my life and my marriage.  It feels like I'm standing inside the door of my heart and home, with my hand on the doorknob, and tennis shoes on my feet.  Despair is standing on the welcome mat on the other side, peering through the window, waiting to be invited in.  And I want to run.  

Physically, I hate running.  I abhor it.  But, emotionally, I feel like I could run forever. 

I just read "Understanding the Las Vegas Killer", and was intrigued when it said, "He once owned 27 residences in four states...".  And I realized he was a "runner", too.   If I actually ran when I wanted to run, and had money to buy actual places to run to, I shudder to think how disconnected I could be from life in one place and from the people who live there.  Blech.

This is why "tabling" is a good thing.  You can't table something, if you don't come back to discuss it.  It doesn't allow for one-way tickets.  It implies taking more time to work at something that isn't working.  

We love to say "Timing is everything."  If that is true, and I think it is mostly true, in that it is critically important, we need time.  A continuation of time.  Not five minutes, not two weeks, but as much time as it takes to get back to good.  And this is one of the many places my husband is better than I am.  He is good at being a grown-up, and being where he's supposed to be, and doing what he's supposed to do, while I'm listening to a broken record that no one else can hear, and wondering where can I run to?  

So, I think of all of the couples I've met who have been married over fifty years and how many of them say none of their married years could be described as easy.  And I think of one woman, in particular.  She was married to an alchoholic for sixty years.  When I asked her how many of those years she would consider good, she said, "The last ten."  Her husband finally stopped drinking when his grandchildren came on scene.  She and her children learned how to love him in those last ten years, which was a real blessing, because it meant they could miss him when he died.  And they do. 

So, in this case, and in mine, and maybe in yours, it is good that "Nothing stays the same." 

May God and time and change be with us, and may no one sell us a one-way ticket.  Amen.    

      

Fear of Abandonment

I have a fear of abandonment.  I've been writing in this space for five years and you probably don't know this about me.  Family members who have known me for most of, or for the entirety of my life, didn't know until recently, when I invited them in to this secret and shameful place.  I imagine this feels akin to an alcoholic's public admission of being an alcoholic.  It feels liberating.  And yucky.

I've been married a month and a half shy of fifteen years.  This fear, dressed as insecurity, has been an intermittent, spasmodic struggle throughout.  Interestingly, as far as I can tell, it doesn't show up anywhere other than in my marriage, and show up it does.  Always with full force.  It is triggered by occasions when my husband is in mixed company, and I am elsewhere.  In my body, it manifests as an unininvited pit in my stomach that demands my full attention.  In my mind, it travels like suspicion, and in my emotions, it feels like fear and betrayal.  I've tried to whisper reassurances to it, suffocate it with reality, smash it with Scripture, pray it away, ignore it, bore it to death, and nothing works.

It must be confronted.  But, not until I am fully humiliated by telling my husband that I am struggling with this.  Again.  UGH.  There is not a bold enough bold or italicky enough italics or a large enough font to properly convey the feeling behind that little three-letter word.

Through my education, some periodic bursts of internet research, and discussion with friends and family with degrees in personal development, I have learned that this fear stems from forming insecure (as opposed to secure) attachments in my childhood.  Depending on who is writing and reflecting on attachment theory, it seems the nature of these attachments are established as a model for future relationships, some time by the age of six.  (Man, that seems like such a short period of time, to be screwed up forever).

I have a very, very poor memory, so, I cannot consciously recall or point to the reasons this problematic manner of attachment is my very own.  But, I have parents and siblings and the collective experience of our life together.  This history includes my parents' divorce when I was four (while divorce is consistently hailed as a major culprit for insecure attachments) , and a string of possible contributing events and relationships for the next twenty years.

It may become important to more fully understand these reasons, as I move forward in the healing/managing process, but for now, I think it is enough to know that the reasons were a real and sufficient cause for being periodically and devastatingly afraid.

I'm afraid of being rejected or replaced.  I am afraid of playing the fool.  I am afraid of not being enough.  I'm afraid of coming up empty-handed, through some fault of my own.   I would say I'm afraid of being alone, as the word abandonment implies, but I am not afraid of being alone.

And so, I write.  I write to understand myself and I write here, because I believe sharing this with you is my duty.  Maybe you don't have the words.  Maybe you haven't had somebody who will give you fifteen years of grace to look at something you don't understand and will put up with your hiding or lashing out when you are afraid of it.  Or maybe you can't relate to any of this, but you know somebody who can.

God only knows.

May the God whose ways are not our ways, and the peace that surpasses all understanding, be ours.  Amen.

Fear, Hope, or Love - The Reasons for Every Action Since the Beginning of Time

Fear.  Hope.  Love. 

One of these three things motivate every action of our life.  They dictate how we suffer interiorly, and how we treat others.  They are often very hidden, but the absence of clamor doesn't nullify their existence or change their power.  If anything dictates everything in my life, I want to know about it.  I like to know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.  If you don't have clarity about what you're doing, it is impossible to act with purity.  Purity of intention is acknowledging and removing all selfish intent when performing an action, and doing it for love alone.

To do good to others in the hope that, in turn, our Lord will be good to you is a supernatural motive, even if it is self-centered.  To do good to others with the consciousness that Christ asks it of you is less egoistic.  To do good to others because you are convinced that Christ will consider it as having been done to Him personally is a sign of pure love of God.  To do good to others because you can please God, and you want to give Him the best you can, is perfect love of God.
The Hidden Power of Kindness, Lawrence G. Lovasik

Fr. Lovasik didn't refer to doing good to others to avoid going to hell, but it is a possible motivation nonetheless.  In the same way, fear, hope, and love dictate our response to suffering in our lives.

According to Rt. Rev. Dom Lehodey in Holy Abandonment, there are three degrees of conformity to God's will in response to suffering:

In the first degree, we have no desire for suffering; in fact, we avoid it as much as possible.  However, we are willing to endure it if it is the only way that we can avoid committing a fault [for fear of condemnation].

In the second degree, we don't wish for suffering, but when it comes, we accept it and endure it willingly because we know that suffering is a part of God's plan for us.  We have a love of suffering, but this love is only a consequence of our love for God. [Hope in God's goodness and plan]

In the third degree, which is the most perfect of all, we are not content with just accepting the trials that God may send us and suffering cheerfully out of our love for Him...our love for God is so great that we long for trials and we rejoice when they come to us because we know that they come from the hand of God and are ordained by His adorable will. [Love]

 [What is contained in brackets is my interpretation, based on St. Bernard's summation]

According to St. Bernard, beginners as a rule have only resignation derived from fear; proficient bear the cross with a willing heart, a more generous conformity begotten of hope; the perfect embrace the cross with ardor, which complete conformity is the fruit of holy love.

Since we are all looking for happiness, it is good to know that we can have something even greater.  That something greater is joy.  It transcends happiness because it is not dependent on people or circumstances.  "Authentic joy is a deep interior peace and satisfaction that we experience as the fruit of wisdom and understanding." (Endow study guide)  It is the result of placing our expectations on Jesus, and not on others.  It comes when we do all things with purity of intention - the intention to love our neighbor for love of God.  Even, and especially, in our suffering. 

In his letter Salvifici Doloris, Pope John Paul II gives us four reasons our suffering can be seen as a reason for joy:

1.  It clears the way for the infusion of grace which transforms human souls.
2.  In it, there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ...
3.  ...human sufferings, united to the redemptive suffering of Christ, constitute a special support for the powers of good, and open the way to the victory of these salvific powers.
4.  Faith in sharing the suffering of Christ brings with it the interior certainty that the suffering person 'completes what is lacking in Christ's afflictions'; the certainty that in the spiritual dimension of the work of Redemption he is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters.

So, basically, our suffering (IF we unite it with Christ's suffering by our intention to do so), can serve for our own salvation and that of others. 

That is a reason for real joy.

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for the rain, roofs that don't leak, and bread machines.  Thank you for loving us.  Thank you for fear to motivate us when our love is not yet perfect.  Thank you for hope along the way, and your love to imitate.  Please give me the wisdom to know what motivates me.  I want to do all things for love of You.  Please grant me the grace to act with purity of intention and detachment from all that is not You nor leads me to You.  Please give me the joy that comes from understanding your love for me, and your plan to bring good out of everything, especially suffering.  Thank you for the opportunity to participate in my own salvation and that of others.  Thank you for Pope John Paul II and the continued guidance of your Church since you gave Peter the keys to your Kingdom.  Thank you for Pope Francis and for his love.  Amen.

Pope John Paul II, pray for us!