I'm in love.
I don't know how many people are looking at close to 9 years with another human being and say that with great frequency...but I am. I know that those first few month, I wore my newly minted "in love" status on my face... the bounce that new love brings. A few months down the line and for many, it fades...maybe into something slightly business like... you shift from " I'm in love" to "I'm in a relationship". So official!!! Then, you start the process of the contract... I'm engaged.... I'm getting married... I'm the bride.... I'm the groom.....I'm married. And then, you stalemate at "Married" for a while. Six or seven years go by and the enormity of it all settles in...thoughts of scratching the seven-year-itch and you face that you are just young enough to try to get out and move on with your life, but by this time next year, that won't be true anymore. I've watched this pattern time and time again...I've heard the words of others and even wondered if there was something I missed, because I am still in love.
The interesting thing is that there is nothing that is outstandingly lovable ( by conventional standards) about either my husband or myself. We are both a bit thicker than standard definitions of beauty imply ( okay...alright... we are fat. we are fatties....happy now?). We both came readily prepared with enough baggage to fill a corner in a name-brand overstock discount store. We are flawed, a little hopeless, kinda fucked up...and completely in love.
So, what makes our love story different? Well, there are some who might say that we both lowered our standards enough to be realistic. I would argue that we both changed the standard for ourselves and realized that love is realistic for each of us. Nether of us shy away from the work...and it is work. There is no lack of emotion in either of us (this is especially true of my husband, who's emotion resides right under his skin,while mine is a little deeper buried, but not too hard to find, especially if the scratch is deep enough).
In the end, though, the bigger truth is that we are each other's best friend. That sounds trite... the title of a chapter in a book called something incredibly lame like " Rediscovering the Love in Your Marriage"... but trite does not always mean untrue. He knows me better than anyone else on the planet...much better than my parents...better than any other friend.... better than I know myself most times. A friend is someone who you feel safe occupying the same space with, and a best friend is someone that you not only feel safe with, but prefer. That defines how I feel about my husband. There aren't many places I would prefer to be than at home with my husband and my kid, and even places that might rank higher ( a vacation at the beach would be nice) would only be preferable if he was there with me. There have been nights where I feel my age...out at a bar with friends and I feel the urge to go home, where the music isn't so loud and I'm not required to binding clothing, and I start dreaming about my PJ's, my bed, my husband and a podcast. It doesn't take me long to walk into our bedroom and feel the relief of being back where I am happiest. That might actually be my favorite place on the planet.
None of that sounds particularly romantic... but when you have loved someone as long as I have loved my husband ( and as deeply as I have loved my husband), you start to understand romance as something different. Sure, there are times I think about beautiful romantic gestures...flower... dinner... a reason to get dressed up and feel sexy ( and this post is not meant to discourage those things.... really.... David... you heard that, right?)... but the truth of romance is that it is a gateway to a home.
When we leave "the nest" of our parents home and venture out into the world, looking for another person, we find ourselves a little homeless. We have apartments and condos and furniture and all of the makings of a home, but it's not really a home. We are nomads, and we search for a home by way of relationships. In him, I found my home, and it really is the place I am happiest in.
Now, it's not always sunshine and rainbows...we have times that are not that great. We have times that are downright shitty. The interesting part of those times is that they are usually earmarked by the fact that one or both of us has lost sight of the other person's place in our lives. We shut them out or shut them down... we try to take on the world ourselves and don't let the other one come along for the ride. We stop asking our best friend to take part in our lives. This can happen slowly... where we let days on mindless activity slip by without really talking to each other about what is going on, or quickly, where we start handling something big without involving the other person. But either way, we jump on different tracks.... and soon, those tracks are nowhere near each other.
So, what is the great part about my relationship? The moment that one of us realizes we are too far away, we shift gears and immediately start our way back to the other person. We realize we are missing that person- the one standing right in front of us- and that them not being right there with us is exactly what is missing.
The moments we are most in love is actually when there is a problem and we are both in it together. Those are really great moments. The kid is having problems, or work is kinda shitty, and we are in it together as a team. One or both of us can be completely losing it, but we are there together... and the sting of the crappy thing still exists... but there is a relief in the form of feeling great about being in love. My husband and I have both handled the weight of a shitty experience with one hand, and the gravity-defying lift of being in-love with the other. It's slightly insane to say that you have been at your happiest when you where in the fox-hole...but if you are there with someone you love... the fox-hole ends up being a perfectly acceptable home.
The thing about being in love is that it's never going to be those first few moments again...and some people mistake the lack of butterflies in their tummies or face-aching grins across their face for falling out of love. Their error is forgetting why they looked for to begin with. That feeling, the one you get in a new relationship... it's not love, it's nerves. It's the anxiety that comes with letting a new person into your life. It's the physical response your body has in knowing that this could be the end of facing life alone. It is the excitement that your nomadic life could be a thing of the past and you might actually have the opportunity for a home right around the corner.
Last night, I went out to Starbucks to catch up on some work, then came home to my husband working on homework with my daughter. I ate the eclair he had brought home for me ( hey, I admitted we were fatties!) and he beamed as he talked about making dippy eggs for the first time ever. We had a completely boring conversation about how I make her dippy eggs, and we feel asleep listening to a podcast... both of us warm in the thought that we got to fall asleep next to the person we trusted most in the whole world. It's not fancy...it's not traditionally romantic...and most 20-somethings would roll their eyes at the boring, suburban-minivan-mediocrity of it all....and what they don't know ( and perhaps we didn't know) is that it's exactly what we were both looking for 9 years ago.
And,if I'm really lucky, I'll get the chance to do it all again tonight.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Motivating the unmotivated
This blog entry might actually be an act of procrastination in the making.
I can't lie... I have about 40 things that I need to do right now, and not a speck of motivation to actually do any of them. I knew this was a possibility.
See, here is the problem with figuring out that your motivation is fear.... you get rid of that, and what are you left with? I don't know how to propel myself, and with my stellar combination of vulnerability and emotional honestly, I am quickly vanquishing the demons of my past and feeling good about life. I am without guilt, without shame, and have rid my life ( at least in the present) of the fear of the dread dropping of the other shoe
(,,,, complete side note... when the hell did this "other shoe" drop and why the hell was it such a horrible experience? I mean... shoes drop... is it really that bad!?!?! Why was one shoe dropping okay, but the "other" was a tragedy. This is clearly a subject for research for another day, since it is likely just sustaining my procrastination...)
SO, here is what I'm going to do. I am making a plan! in 5 minutes ( at 10:30), I'm going to put down the computer, turn on Pandora Radio, walk into my kitchen, and clean of my counter, empty my dishwasher, and fill it back up with dirty dishes. I'm going to get that all done by 11am. At 11am, I'm going to sit down and do the three hardest things I have on my list of things to do. I'm going to get those done- pull of the bandaid- and then, I'm going to feel good about having done those things, and everything else will be a cakewalk.
That's the plan...wish me luck!
ETA: 10:58 EST- I have successfully cleaned my kitchen, done dishes, and even tackled the floors and a round of laundry. I would like to thank those who helped me get through that:
-Usher
- Beastie Boys
- Justin Timberlake
- OutKast
- Michael Jackson
- A special shout out to ll Cool J circa 1995, whose well timed MTV unplugged version of" Mama Said Knock You Out" started off my adventure, and themed the whole excursion nicely.
I can't lie... I have about 40 things that I need to do right now, and not a speck of motivation to actually do any of them. I knew this was a possibility.
See, here is the problem with figuring out that your motivation is fear.... you get rid of that, and what are you left with? I don't know how to propel myself, and with my stellar combination of vulnerability and emotional honestly, I am quickly vanquishing the demons of my past and feeling good about life. I am without guilt, without shame, and have rid my life ( at least in the present) of the fear of the dread dropping of the other shoe
(,,,, complete side note... when the hell did this "other shoe" drop and why the hell was it such a horrible experience? I mean... shoes drop... is it really that bad!?!?! Why was one shoe dropping okay, but the "other" was a tragedy. This is clearly a subject for research for another day, since it is likely just sustaining my procrastination...)
SO, here is what I'm going to do. I am making a plan! in 5 minutes ( at 10:30), I'm going to put down the computer, turn on Pandora Radio, walk into my kitchen, and clean of my counter, empty my dishwasher, and fill it back up with dirty dishes. I'm going to get that all done by 11am. At 11am, I'm going to sit down and do the three hardest things I have on my list of things to do. I'm going to get those done- pull of the bandaid- and then, I'm going to feel good about having done those things, and everything else will be a cakewalk.
That's the plan...wish me luck!
ETA: 10:58 EST- I have successfully cleaned my kitchen, done dishes, and even tackled the floors and a round of laundry. I would like to thank those who helped me get through that:
-Usher
- Beastie Boys
- Justin Timberlake
- OutKast
- Michael Jackson
- A special shout out to ll Cool J circa 1995, whose well timed MTV unplugged version of" Mama Said Knock You Out" started off my adventure, and themed the whole excursion nicely.
Monday, March 10, 2014
The real problem... the parent problem
So, let's review where I am. I'm a little bit broken... I am starting to see how deep my fear and shame really are contained within me, and I am starting to see how my actions are tied into all of this. And then, I begin to see something different...the aftershocks that might actually be more dangerous than earthquake itself.
My child is my life. She is the reason I was born, the reason for everything I do. When she was born, so was I. My job is to make this child's life better than mine...to keep her safe from the hurt and the pain of it all...to fight off those demons until she is strong enough to fight them herself, and to teach her how to fight them in the meantime.
But what if what I have taught her so far is how I learned to fight them...and what if that is the wrong way?
Let's face it, I've learned that my method of coping is not exactly sound.. I strive for perfection, beat myself up over every single failure ( or even perceived failure) and blame myself for not being good enough. Worst of all, I tie all of this into how much I am love by everyone else. Fail, and I am not lovable...succeed and.... well, I'm not even sure there is an option to that, because even success is never really successful enough.
I have been seeing the edges of it for a long time. I have this little girl, my heart in human form, and I can see her struggle with fearing failure. She struggles when we go over spelling words...she takes an uncomfortable stance and even though she knows the answer, seeming scared to answer. She stumbles over things before she tells me that she's afraid she's wrong. I can see her desire to please people...her almost desperate desire to have people approve of her. Worst of all, I can see how badly she beats herself up when she makes a mistake. When she doesn't clean up after herself, or she makes a mistake on her homework, she is sad, and says things that just absolutely break my heart. " I'm a terrible kid".... can you even imagine the heartbreak that I feel when she says those things?
Not long after my discovery about myself, I realized that I had, inadvertently, imposed this idea that only perfection is acceptable to my child. That ranks highest in the growing list of battles that I have to fight.
So, now prepared with some tools, I look toward this idea of vulnerability...the lessons of Dr. Brown.
If you have watched the videos I posted, you know what Dr. Brown says about children... but here is a review.
Children are not packages of perfection, and it is not our job to be keep them perfect. They are, as Dr. Brown says, "hardwired for struggle". When I think about these things, I think about why we set children up for...what I had set my child up for. The truth is that I did set my child up as a mold of perfection. I don't know what it is... maybe the concepts of tabula rosa had let me to this idea. She was a perfectly mold-able blank slate. She arrived into my world as perfection, and it was my actions that would make her into what she would become. Looking at it, it's a terribly unfair thing to do... to her and to me. I see parents struggle with this all the time... wondering why their children can't just be a reflection of the perfection they see in them. We don't mean to, but we tell them that perfection is what they are, and then crush them when they aren't perfect.... and at the same time, we take all of that onto ourselves... another failure to add to the growing list of failures. If I was a better parent, my child's room would be clean. If I was a better parent, my child wouldn't struggle at school. If I was a better parent, my child would eat all their vegetable, hate sugary sweets, and would never ever cry. In my own head, she was perfection, and all of her failures and struggles were a direct result of my failures.
What Dr. Brown says is correct. My child is not perfect. Strange thing is that I agreed with this idea before I was introduced to Dr. Brown's work. I would joke about how children are not 'special snowflakes' and that we shouldn't treat them like that. But, thinking this and internalizing it are two different things. I saw treating children as 'special snowflakes' as setting them up for thinking that the world owed them all the privilege that being special would entail, and that is a dangerous thing. But, this concept is so much more than that. Dr. Browns explanation of children is right- they are not perfect... they are hardwired for struggle..... and they are worthy of love.
Worthy of love is a big concept that I will likely deal with in another post, but here is the basics. Being worthy of love is likely a key to all of this. It is the difference between guilt and shame. It is the difference between " I made a mistake" and "I am a mistake". It is a reason for self-motivation based on worth, instead of based on fear. I think about all the problems I have faced in my life, and if I look at them through the lenses of feeling worthy of love, I wonder how many things I would have done differently.
And, in looking at the struggles my child faces most often... fear of failure...allowing others to treat her badly because she wants people to like her.... thinking that she is a terrible kid... all of these things come back to one idea. My daughter does not feel worthy of love.
Of course, I can't help but take this back onto myself. I've worked so hard to tell my daughter how much she is loved. There isn't a day that goes by where she's not told 100 times that she is loved. There isn't day that passes where she isn't hugged and kissed at least 20 times. My daughter has never closed her eyes to go to sleep where she hasn't been told " I love you". But maybe being told she is loved is different that being told she is worthy of love.
So, we are trying something different. Inspired by some friends of ours, David and I have started telling her that she is worthy of love. More specifically, we say " You are strong, beautiful, smart, independent, and worthy of love." Our new stance on struggles is to teach her how to "cash in" on her worthiness. We talk to her about working hard and not giving up in terms of her happiness being WORTH it. We are teaching her that she is worth the effort, and that what we do everyday is because we know she is worth those efforts.
Our shift in perspective comes with other conversations. I have started talking to my daughter about how she doesn't have to be perfect, and she doesn't have to be afraid of failure. We tell her about our failures... we have let down the walls and allowed her to see us struggling. In my young daughters eyes, mommy and daddy are perfection... the thing she should be like. It's not unusually for parents to hide their imperfections from their children. I can see the reasons. You need your child to respect you... to live by rules and ideas...even if only to keep them safe. When I tell my daughter to stay in the yard and not talk to strangers, I require an amount of " because I said so" in that. The mistake we make is the mistake we make on the larger scale...
..Imperfection does not equal not being respectable.
Again, that's a post for another day, but here is where we are. We are owning our mistakes and talking to our daughter about them. We tell her what we struggle with and why we struggle. We tell her we are going to try to learn from our mistakes, because we are worthy of that...and are acting as models of what we are expecting from her. Our new goal is not perfection...it's not perfect grades or a clean room. Our new goal is focused on one thing... teaching our daughter that she is worthy of love...regardless of mistakes...regardless of things not being perfect... regardless of the struggle.
I'm sure this is not the last post I will make on this subject, but let me end it with this. Parents, be aware of what you are putting on your kids. Be aware of how much you hide from them, and that respect without vulnerability is setting up the idea in your kids that they will never be worthy of respect. Being a child is a vulnerable position...they are smaller, they don't have all the tools, and they are constantly being forced to admit they are wrong. We have choices... and too often, our choice is to take advantage of their vulnerability...leading them to that terrible place of EXCRUCIATING vulnerability...instead of the healthy place of emotionally honest vulnerability. Be careful they you are not teaching your child that perfection is the goal, and that imperfection needs to be hidden away. Be careful that you are not just teaching your child that they are loved, but that they are worthy of being loved by anyone. Our job is to send them out into the world prepared to take on all of the struggles that life brings... and teaching them now that they are worthy of love can change so much for them. Teach them how to handle the struggle..not just how to hide it.
My child is my life. She is the reason I was born, the reason for everything I do. When she was born, so was I. My job is to make this child's life better than mine...to keep her safe from the hurt and the pain of it all...to fight off those demons until she is strong enough to fight them herself, and to teach her how to fight them in the meantime.
But what if what I have taught her so far is how I learned to fight them...and what if that is the wrong way?
Let's face it, I've learned that my method of coping is not exactly sound.. I strive for perfection, beat myself up over every single failure ( or even perceived failure) and blame myself for not being good enough. Worst of all, I tie all of this into how much I am love by everyone else. Fail, and I am not lovable...succeed and.... well, I'm not even sure there is an option to that, because even success is never really successful enough.
I have been seeing the edges of it for a long time. I have this little girl, my heart in human form, and I can see her struggle with fearing failure. She struggles when we go over spelling words...she takes an uncomfortable stance and even though she knows the answer, seeming scared to answer. She stumbles over things before she tells me that she's afraid she's wrong. I can see her desire to please people...her almost desperate desire to have people approve of her. Worst of all, I can see how badly she beats herself up when she makes a mistake. When she doesn't clean up after herself, or she makes a mistake on her homework, she is sad, and says things that just absolutely break my heart. " I'm a terrible kid".... can you even imagine the heartbreak that I feel when she says those things?
Not long after my discovery about myself, I realized that I had, inadvertently, imposed this idea that only perfection is acceptable to my child. That ranks highest in the growing list of battles that I have to fight.
So, now prepared with some tools, I look toward this idea of vulnerability...the lessons of Dr. Brown.
If you have watched the videos I posted, you know what Dr. Brown says about children... but here is a review.
Children are not packages of perfection, and it is not our job to be keep them perfect. They are, as Dr. Brown says, "hardwired for struggle". When I think about these things, I think about why we set children up for...what I had set my child up for. The truth is that I did set my child up as a mold of perfection. I don't know what it is... maybe the concepts of tabula rosa had let me to this idea. She was a perfectly mold-able blank slate. She arrived into my world as perfection, and it was my actions that would make her into what she would become. Looking at it, it's a terribly unfair thing to do... to her and to me. I see parents struggle with this all the time... wondering why their children can't just be a reflection of the perfection they see in them. We don't mean to, but we tell them that perfection is what they are, and then crush them when they aren't perfect.... and at the same time, we take all of that onto ourselves... another failure to add to the growing list of failures. If I was a better parent, my child's room would be clean. If I was a better parent, my child wouldn't struggle at school. If I was a better parent, my child would eat all their vegetable, hate sugary sweets, and would never ever cry. In my own head, she was perfection, and all of her failures and struggles were a direct result of my failures.
What Dr. Brown says is correct. My child is not perfect. Strange thing is that I agreed with this idea before I was introduced to Dr. Brown's work. I would joke about how children are not 'special snowflakes' and that we shouldn't treat them like that. But, thinking this and internalizing it are two different things. I saw treating children as 'special snowflakes' as setting them up for thinking that the world owed them all the privilege that being special would entail, and that is a dangerous thing. But, this concept is so much more than that. Dr. Browns explanation of children is right- they are not perfect... they are hardwired for struggle..... and they are worthy of love.
Worthy of love is a big concept that I will likely deal with in another post, but here is the basics. Being worthy of love is likely a key to all of this. It is the difference between guilt and shame. It is the difference between " I made a mistake" and "I am a mistake". It is a reason for self-motivation based on worth, instead of based on fear. I think about all the problems I have faced in my life, and if I look at them through the lenses of feeling worthy of love, I wonder how many things I would have done differently.
And, in looking at the struggles my child faces most often... fear of failure...allowing others to treat her badly because she wants people to like her.... thinking that she is a terrible kid... all of these things come back to one idea. My daughter does not feel worthy of love.
Of course, I can't help but take this back onto myself. I've worked so hard to tell my daughter how much she is loved. There isn't a day that goes by where she's not told 100 times that she is loved. There isn't day that passes where she isn't hugged and kissed at least 20 times. My daughter has never closed her eyes to go to sleep where she hasn't been told " I love you". But maybe being told she is loved is different that being told she is worthy of love.
So, we are trying something different. Inspired by some friends of ours, David and I have started telling her that she is worthy of love. More specifically, we say " You are strong, beautiful, smart, independent, and worthy of love." Our new stance on struggles is to teach her how to "cash in" on her worthiness. We talk to her about working hard and not giving up in terms of her happiness being WORTH it. We are teaching her that she is worth the effort, and that what we do everyday is because we know she is worth those efforts.
Our shift in perspective comes with other conversations. I have started talking to my daughter about how she doesn't have to be perfect, and she doesn't have to be afraid of failure. We tell her about our failures... we have let down the walls and allowed her to see us struggling. In my young daughters eyes, mommy and daddy are perfection... the thing she should be like. It's not unusually for parents to hide their imperfections from their children. I can see the reasons. You need your child to respect you... to live by rules and ideas...even if only to keep them safe. When I tell my daughter to stay in the yard and not talk to strangers, I require an amount of " because I said so" in that. The mistake we make is the mistake we make on the larger scale...
..Imperfection does not equal not being respectable.
Again, that's a post for another day, but here is where we are. We are owning our mistakes and talking to our daughter about them. We tell her what we struggle with and why we struggle. We tell her we are going to try to learn from our mistakes, because we are worthy of that...and are acting as models of what we are expecting from her. Our new goal is not perfection...it's not perfect grades or a clean room. Our new goal is focused on one thing... teaching our daughter that she is worthy of love...regardless of mistakes...regardless of things not being perfect... regardless of the struggle.
I'm sure this is not the last post I will make on this subject, but let me end it with this. Parents, be aware of what you are putting on your kids. Be aware of how much you hide from them, and that respect without vulnerability is setting up the idea in your kids that they will never be worthy of respect. Being a child is a vulnerable position...they are smaller, they don't have all the tools, and they are constantly being forced to admit they are wrong. We have choices... and too often, our choice is to take advantage of their vulnerability...leading them to that terrible place of EXCRUCIATING vulnerability...instead of the healthy place of emotionally honest vulnerability. Be careful they you are not teaching your child that perfection is the goal, and that imperfection needs to be hidden away. Be careful that you are not just teaching your child that they are loved, but that they are worthy of being loved by anyone. Our job is to send them out into the world prepared to take on all of the struggles that life brings... and teaching them now that they are worthy of love can change so much for them. Teach them how to handle the struggle..not just how to hide it.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
My own personal Jesus....
So, I posted about my problem to my fellow Mommies, searching for a therapist. Of course, what is so interesting is that my control-freak nature drove me to search for the PERFECT therapist. Here is how I described my ideal therapist:
So, I'm looking for a therapist recommendation, but I'm looking for something very specific, so please bare with me for a moment.
I need someone very...pragmatic I guess is the word. I have gone to review sites and to my insurance company listings and looked up options, but in the end, none of those tell me the thing I'm looking to avoid, and I don't really want to go once and never come back. I'm looking for help with a very specific ( anxiety related) issue, but I want to avoid things that are ( searching for the word.....) crunchy??? I am not looking for spirituality or eastern philosophy, and if there is a dream catcher, I will head for the hills, even if it's symbolic in nature. I have no problem with emotions or metaphors, but I am looking for someone who doesn't take "sensitivity" to another level where it becomes about the vibrations I'm putting out into the universe....does that make sense?
I know this sounds incredibly nit-picky of me, but my experience has shown me that there are a number of those types of therapists that exist, and while I can appreciate that might work for some people, I do not believe it will work for me. I would like to avoid that, especially since I doubt my insurance is going to pay for 5 or 6 "new patient" visits. Any and all recommendations would be appreciated.
Well, I got a few recommendations, and made a few calls, when one of my mommies tells me that I should look into Dr. Brene Brown, and led me to a YouTube video of her TedTalk.
I can't lie, I'm now totally a Dr. Brown junkie. I spent the next week watching everything I could get my hands on of hers, making my husband and my friends watching these. Some of my vagueness on the subject at hand will make sense after you watch these.
Disclaimer: These are not touchy, feely, embrace-your-inner-goddess videos...they are TEDtalks, and it has completely changed how I see the world
First Video
Second Video
Third Video
Now, perhaps you can see why Dr. Brown is my own personal Jesus. She speaks to me in a way that I crave- practical, reasonable...solutions and tools. You can also see where I got the idea that I am stepping into the arena...I found that through her, and I am grateful.
And, perhaps, now it makes sense why I need to go through this journey publicly...without shame or fear. My chronicalling of this is me being vulnerable...honest...authentic. I am telling the world where I am and how I got here. Through this, I might have struggles...I might need to be called out and forced to be vulnerable.
But, embracing vulnerability is what I am all about right now. In upcoming posts, I'll talk about how this is changing me as a person, a wife, a friend, an employee, a leader, a parent ( that's a big one!) and as a person in general.
Fear and Shame in Matthews, North Carolina
So, I've talked about how I have fear and shame, and it's likely important to talk about what I mean. Everyone is afraid sometimes... everyone is ashamed sometimes... what make me different?
Well, nothing really, except that I have seen how paralyzing mine is. Fear mostly...some shame.
So, this is how I got here:
I am not depressed, and I don't have any other mood disorders. That is not what this is.
I have a very good life- a happy marriage, a great job that I love, a great kid, great friends. I am college educated, smart, focused, determined...I'm know for my determination. All of this was achieved despite some misspent youth ( drugs, mostly coke and bad relationships), but I recovered from that in my early 20's, and went on to be a pretty normal, healthy person.
I had some things happened... again, details don't matter, but here is what does... I've been taught that things need to be perfect...nothing can be out of place, nothing can be even a slight disruption to anyone else. If my purpose is not to improve, I am in the way and I am a to blame if anything is wrong. I'm conditioned, as it would be, to feel that I am the burden in someone's life that they have to survive, and that I'm wholly and entirely undeserving of love.
Fast forward- I grow up into what I THOUGHT is a normal, well adjusted adult. I'm known for being controlled- responsible- and over-achiever. Most people work 40 hours...I work 60. My husband jokes that I can't possibly volunteer for everything, and I "credit" my quick need to drop everything to apologize and attend to his every need to 16 years of catholic schooling and the associated catholic guilt. I pride myself on having packed away the issues my problems with my misspent youth, but about 7 months ago, something changed.
A particular incident culminated in an 8 hour long panic attack on the side of a highway(the first serious panic attack I've ever had in my life). I was left a complete mess. I thought I was going to die. I had been triggered, and saw feelings that I had never been able to identify before rise to the surface.
Since then, with increasing regularity, I am recognizing that "the me" I have become- controlled- reliable- over-achiever...these qualities that I have actually been PROUD of- they are entirely fear based. That my only motivator in life is that I am afraid ( terrified, at times) that I will let someone down. At it's worst moments, I am afraid that people will think I am careless, thoughtless, or stupid. Without these incidents last summer, I don't know if I would have ever connected these ideas, but now I have, and I've realized how broken I really am. Over time, these ideas have become more cemented, and last week, something happened that completely threw my world upside down. A fairly innocuous incident undid me....I was right back there- afraid, terrified really, that my husband would see me for what " I really am"- careless, thoughtless, stupid. I'm realizing that I spend my life like this- and while there are moments of it being worse, I can't really think of any moments when I am not motivated by this fear. I have no self-motivation....there is no sense of self-achievement except that people don't hate me ( yet, the voice in my head says), and good is never ever good enough.
So much of who I am is tied into these things, I don't know where to begin. I don't know how to motivate myself without being afraid...I'm scared of what kind of person I will be if I'm not afraid of letting someone down. I don't even know the "healthy" lines of guilt and responsibility anymore. Because, apparently ( according to my husband and friends) "normal" people don't feel guilty when their husband can't find his pajama pants, and they don't feel bad that they worked late the other night and so they weren't home to put the laundry in the drawers. Apparently, "normal" people don't feel so guilty that they go to CVS at midnight to buy cake mix and make cupcakes for a class event the next day because the teacher sent a last minute email that there weren't going to be enough treats for the class party the next day, even though you've already made the 12 you signed up for. Apparently "normal" people don't feel responsible when it starts raining because your husband wanted to go and play disc golf, and if you hadn't been so careless and thoughtless, you would have woken him up an hour earlier on the weekend so he could go before it started raining. Apparently "normal" people don't feel guilty when someone they know does something wrong simply because they know them, instead of twisting because if you were a better, smarter person you would have found some way of preventing that person from doing the bad thing.
The best way I can put it ( and I put this on my FB wall the day that I realized exactly what this all was): When you walked on eggshells for so long, you think you are responsible for every egg. I think I am responsible for every single egg....even eggs that haven't happened yet....even eggs that exist far outside my reach.... they are all my responsibility, and every cracked egg is all my fault.
Every moment of my life is like that. I don't have these expectations for anyone else, but I turn myself inside out, and I destroy myself over even the idea of failure.... and even exceeding goals isn't enough. I can't continue like this... I'm killing myself slowly by doing this, and it's truly not fair to the people in my life....
..... but I'm scared to NOT be like this.
Like THIS, I found love, success... I found a good life being this way!!! The truth is that I don't know who I am if I'm not this person...I don't even know if I can be a "good" person if I wasn't so afraid of people thinking I'm a "bad" person. Hell, I'm afraid of even talking about this, or posting it on here, and I'm currently thinking about how stupid my problems are and how inconsiderate it is of me to waste your time with my stupid First World Problem. I'm such a mess.
The real thing that messes with my head is that I spent that last 14+ years of my life thinking that the misspent youth of drugs/bad relationships was the "bad result" and that this "regaining control" was the "recovery"...but ( OMG- SHOCKER!) THIS is the "bad result"...I don't know how it took me so long to see it. OR, I'm also really messed up because I've spent years being proud of the fact that I wasn't a "victim"- that I survived despite it all and was able to walk away unscathed, and now there is this ghost ( a ghost I didn't even know was there!) and I HATE the idea that all this time, all these feelings...I've been victimized this whole time... being victimized isn't what I "DO".
So, after sharing all of this in hopes of finding a decent therapist, a fellow mommy pointed me in a direction for which I am wholly and completely grateful for. I think I have found my solution, and all I had to do was watch a TED talk.
Those details will come in the next post.
Why "Step into the Arena"?
There are a few things that inspired this journey, but here is the cornerstone of the reason that this is entitled Step into the Arena:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt
I am no longer going to be the critic, or the person who stands outside the arena... waiting for the day when I am good enough, strong enough, brave enough...something enough. I'm stepping into the arena...daring greatly, without fear or shame.
Step into the Arena
The past year has been...interesting. This time, last year, my family faced an uncertain future, but felt secure that everything would be fine. Here, a year later, and not only is everything fine- life is better than we could have imagined. My husband is at a fantastic new job that he loves, I'm continuing in my career at The Mommies Network, and our little girl grows taller and smarter every day. This life is almost unrecognizable, and my life is wonderful. But as the year has passed, there has been a gnawing sensation....a growing unrest... and a realization that there was something that was holding me back from being whole...something bigger than money and career and love.
As the year passed, I walked closer and closer to the problem, making new discoveries along the way about who I was, who I have become, and what led me here. A few particular instances and moments gave me glimpses at this larger problem, but I couldn't really see it. Until I did.. and then it was blinding.
Sometimes you can be whole, but still be broken. You can function, but not be fulfilled. you can be great, but not be well.
In a moment of clarity ( brought on by a moment of absolute breakdown), I realized something fundamental about myself...something life changing.
I live my life in perpetual fear.
My only motivator is fear.
Everything I do is the result of fear...and shame.
The details of the reasons for this may matter to me personally, but they don't in the context of me chronicling this journey, and I will explain why. What I have discovered is that it doesn't matter.... almost all of us have something that does this to us...makes us live in shame and fear. My details don't matter because it doesn't change the end result, and it certainly doesn't change the solutions.
I'm going to be walking my way through this process of healing here, labeling the posts with the topic at hand, and listing them on my Step into the Arena page. Please feel free to read, comment, or use anything you find. I just want to share this with the world...and putting myself out there is a part of this. Being honest, being authentic, and stepping into the arena. Feel free to step in with me.
As the year passed, I walked closer and closer to the problem, making new discoveries along the way about who I was, who I have become, and what led me here. A few particular instances and moments gave me glimpses at this larger problem, but I couldn't really see it. Until I did.. and then it was blinding.
Sometimes you can be whole, but still be broken. You can function, but not be fulfilled. you can be great, but not be well.
In a moment of clarity ( brought on by a moment of absolute breakdown), I realized something fundamental about myself...something life changing.
I live my life in perpetual fear.
My only motivator is fear.
Everything I do is the result of fear...and shame.
The details of the reasons for this may matter to me personally, but they don't in the context of me chronicling this journey, and I will explain why. What I have discovered is that it doesn't matter.... almost all of us have something that does this to us...makes us live in shame and fear. My details don't matter because it doesn't change the end result, and it certainly doesn't change the solutions.
I'm going to be walking my way through this process of healing here, labeling the posts with the topic at hand, and listing them on my Step into the Arena page. Please feel free to read, comment, or use anything you find. I just want to share this with the world...and putting myself out there is a part of this. Being honest, being authentic, and stepping into the arena. Feel free to step in with me.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
The Beauty of Faithlessness
Inspired by the diatribe I just left on a fellow mommy's Facebook page, I have decided to clarify a few points about how the faithless exist, and why being faithless makes sense.
There a millions of blog posts out there that cite reasons why religion shouldn't be believed. Historical concepts, conflicting accounts of biblical text, issues with accuracy and proof that being "of faith" doesn't make you a good person. I don't know that any of those address a gnawing problem that those "of faith" have with the faithless.
" How can you exist without faith?"
Wow...big question- I know! The truth is that faith gives the faithful something. It makes them whole and gives them a sense of peace in a world full of chaos. This is something I understand, even as someone who is faithless...and it's might be the reason I hold on to "agnostic" with two tight fists, instead of jumping right off my fence onto the atheist side. I will explain.
I am envious of the faithful. I don't know that you can have children and not be. Here is the truth: I want there to be a heaven....I want there to be a god....I don't want there to be a time where I'm not with my child, and should she or I pass away, I want there to be a way for us to be together again. That is a testimony to my love for this child. That is unshakable and more real than anything that has ever existed.
But... I want a lot of things.
The truth is that faith gives peace to that kind of love. It makes it okay to be scared, and it makes the fragility more palatable. It lessens our vulnerability. It's a safety net for the worst that life can bring. It punishes the people who do wrong and it rewards the people who do right in a world that often doesn't. It allows us to sleep at night without being terrified that it can all slip away. The deepness of that kind of love comes at a cost, and the cost is being constantly afraid it will leave us, and faith gives us the ability to not really pay that price. I want that...but, again, I want a lot of things.
So, to the faithful, imagining a world without that seems pointless and sad and hopeless in a way that they can't even imagine. Trust me, I feel that sometimes...but even the most faithful feel that sometimes. I'm not here to describe what despair feels like. I'm here to describe why the faithless don't live in a state of constant despair.
" If there's no hereafter, there's no point in trying"
This is a largest fallacy that exists in the minds of the faithful. I've often heard it cited that without faith, there is no reason to do good, to fight evil, or to strive for being better. There is one glaring problem with that: this perspective dictates that this life is not enough, that our place in it is insignificant, and that good is only worth something if the doer of the good deed is rewarded in some measure. For this, I have some questions:
- If you knew tomorrow that there was no heaven, would you never do another good thing again?
- Is your intent for your good deeds a reward?
- Does a good deed cease to be good if there is no reward?
- Is your battle to be a good person only measured against the punishment of being a bad person?
- Do you not ever want good things for others just because you want it?
- Do you not think that you have the capacity to make life better?
- Finally, who is the more moral person: the one who does good because he wants to, or the one who does good because he is rewarded for it?
With all of these in mind, I propose this: I am a good person without god. I am a good person without fear of punishment or promises of rewards. I do good things, and every time I do, I am taking a risk that those good things will either impose good into the world, or they will not. I do good things because I see the worthy of this life and the people that inhabit it. I am good not because god told me to be, but because I want to be, and my "good" could come with no reward at all. I am not kind to you because someone or something told me to be, but because I think you are worth being kind to and deserving of good things in your life, and that is the only reward I will receive.
" I know God is real because I have seen him make my life better."
I have heard this one a number of times. Would you believe me if I told you that I have a good life? Seriously- without god(s), I have found love, happiness, success, fulfillment, and joy. I live a very very good life... and the credit goes to the people who made that happen. Those people are not invisible or secretive or off in another realm. They are flesh and blood. They are me... my husband...my child...my mother...my sisters...my brother... my friends... my employers...my teachers... strangers. Those people made my life good, and I do not for one instant want to detract from what they have done for me.
In fact, since really finding my agnostic side, and letting faith slip away from me entirely, I've been a much happier person. When I did explore areas of faith, bad things happened to me. In the last 20 years, since I've been faithless, less bad things have happened. I've seen bad things happen to people of faith. Using this rational, having faith actually makes you more likely for bad things to happen. I've seen not believing in god working in my life!
Now, clearly I don't mean that... total hyperbole. But, let's try this on for size: Good things AND bad things happen to you regardless of what you believe. If something good happens to you, it was going to happen no matter what. If something bad happens to you, it was going to happen no matter what. Just for a moment, let's stop thinking that good and bad are related to somehow to something else, and just accept a reality. Things just happen. We are far too easily swayed in some idea that one thing is related to another. If my house is robbed tomorrow, it's not because I didn't pray, and it's not because my house is tan, and it's not because just the other day I said "I've never been robbed" and didn't knock on wood. My house got robbed because a series of unconnected events led someone to my house to rob it. That's it...end of story... shit happens. There is a pattern, and the pattern is chaos. There is nothing wrong with embracing that.
I have seen, several times, where people have " praised God" for something that is entirely man-made. Too often, I see praise for god in medical situations... that god intervened and made someone who was sick better. Well, there are two points I have to this. First, you misspelled "science". That medication was the result of the efforts of people...people who sacrificed time from their families and time for themselves to give you something amazing that would heal that sickness. By George...it's almost like their good deeds were the result of them wanting good in the world without reward! Is it "kind" or "good" of us to heap praise onto an invisible force when there are real people who deserve credit for these things? I have seen people throw money at their church for their answered prayers, but nobody is getting into their car to drive to Cleveland to shake the hand of the scientist for all of their hard work to create that medicine. In my faithlessness, I am able to see those people for what they are- a flesh and blood "blessing" that I can give proper credit to in this life. THEY make my life better. They are beautiful and amazing and worthy of the praise they deserve.
They took a risk...they poured everything they had into giving other people more moments together in this life. Under the ideas of religion, it was all "for a reason" and it was in god's hands, so those professionals- scientists, doctors, nurses... had they embraced that idea, would have just walked away.... because clearly they can't compete with the power of god's plan! Interesting how "god's plan" is only apparent to us after the fact, and "our plans" don't really ever play a part.
There was a Frontline special on assisted suicide I saw a few years ago, where a man with ALS flew overseas to have a physician assisted suicide. At some point he said ( I'm paraphrasing) " People say that killing myself is interrupting God's plan. I tell them that if I went by God's plan, I wouldn't be in a wheelchair and I would have starved to death long ago because I can't swallow. It's only through science and man that I'm still alive. God would have killed me long ago."
My second point is a much more serious one, and it is really the inspiration for this post. A mom I know, that I wish I could call "friend", but unfortunately, I've only had the chance to meet her a few times in person and so "Facebook Friend" is a more accurate description, lost her baby girl a few years ago. She "lost" her faith ( although, I would argue she found something else) after this horrific experience, and on one ( slightly drunken) night when I did get to hang out with her, she told me what made her an atheist. She told me that, while her child was sick, while there were HUNDREDS ( if not thousands) of people praying for her daughter, people told her that god would provide and heal her little girl, and in the aftermath of her daughter's passing, she was hurt and angry at the idea that her daughter was not "chosen" by god to heal.
To the faithful, I want you to absorb the enormity of that and do the world a favor; Please do not tell a person in the midst of a crisis that god will intervene, because if and when that doesn't happen, it is devastating. Then, to backtrack, and tell her that "there's a reason" or to tell her that her baby girl is an angel being taken care of by god... her "creator". Let me very very clear about this. This mom was this child's creator. She held that beautiful little girl in her belly for 9 months. She loved that child before ever laying eyes on her, and continues to love her with a deepness that is unmatched by any invisible force. She earned the right to see who that little girl would become and to say that her being robbed of that right was 'for a reason" and that some invisible force gets to enjoy her little girl, while the mom just gets to suffer in her grief and loss....I'm sorry, but anyone who has done this should be ashamed of themselves, because you have allowed the band-aid that your faith provides to cloud your judgement on being a good person. What you have said is that god deemed this mother unworthy... you have unilaterally diminished her place as that child's creator, undermined her place in that child's life, and told her that her pain is justified by an invisible something that she is not allowed to question or argue against without fear of punishment. You may have the best intentions, and I'm sure you do, but, again, you need to think about the impact that you actually have on the world around you, and that your place in this life, and in the lives of others, is not insignificant. This mother is worth more than that.
"See, the world is too horrible to live in without god!"
No, the world is just horrible. God or no god....still horrible. Life is hard...it is filled with pain and chaos and fragility. Now that I've appropriately bummed you out and chastised you for not giving proper credit to both yourself and others for the impact we do have, let me arrive back at my point. We have the ability to take it all and make something beautiful out of it.
There is wonder and awe in chaos and fragility. Being vulnerable to the fact that there is no safety net, no reward, no punishment, and no hereafter, it frees you, and empowers you.
Last year, I sat in the carpool line, picking up my kindergartner from school as news of the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary poured across my newsfeed on my phone. Tears welled in my eyes and for the next few weeks, I was paralyzed in the face of my worst fears as a parent. See, I know what panic looks like on my childs' face, and I know where her cries sound like when all she wants is her mommy there to protect her. Those pictures and sounds in my head...every parent knows them, and if forced to see them when they close their eyes... there only relief from that pain is to grab your child and hold them tight, feeling the realness of them next to you and knowing that, if just for that moment, they are safe.
In the days after Newtown, a friend of mine, a fellow non-believer, was relaying a conversation she had with her faithful sister, who was undermining the impact the tragedy must have had on my non-faithful friend. My atheist friends reaction was perfect. " No, you are wrong. To you, this life is temporary, and these kids..their stop in this world was just shorter than most and they get to go on to a better place. To me, this is a fucking unspeakable travesty, because this was all they had, and it's gone forever. I want to make this life better more than you do because this is all there is."
THAT is how I feel. To me, I have to make every moment count, and I have to do as much as humanly possible to make this experience of life as amazing as possible because this is it...for me...for my daughter... for everyone. I'm not passing the time between realms with an eternity of happiness to look forward to. My happiness has to exist here and now, because I don't get another chance. If you knew that you only had one moment to experience, and nothing after that, wouldn't you make it the best one you could? Wouldn't you invest in making it beautiful and amazing? I don't get to love my daughter forever...I get to love her NOW, and so I love her as much as possible while I can.
The only time you will ever see me quoting a country song... Live like your were dying. We are all dying...some more slowly than others. We don't want to think about that...we usually spend our days feeling like we aren't dying, and in the moments where death is real to us, we tell each other that it's not important, because death isn't really the end...there's an afterparty!!! We have funerals to have an entire ceremony devoted to the idea that it's totally okay that this person died, because they didn't really die... you totally get to see them later. And just so that you know where they are going to, we are going to revisit all the great things they have done so you know they they are going to be having a great time while you can't see them. So, we push away death... we make it seem like it doesn't happen...but it does! We die...we just do... it's the great equalizer. Instead of pushing it away, I'm embracing it. I'm going to die and that is all there is... no more Noel forever and ever.....and I'm not taking advantage of the moments have been between now and then for anything.
Can you see how freeing that is? Can you see how beautiful it is to live in what you know is real, instead of viewing it as a stop before something you can't be sure of? My little girl is not just beautiful now and ethereal in the hereafter that might exist later... she is everything now and every moment of thinking about later is a moment wasted.
That mom, the one who "turned her back on god".... she has spent her time going to school, becoming a nurse, with the intention of working with families going through exactly what she did. She saw those people, the medical professionals who worked hard to keep her child in her arms...she saw them for what they were... her blessing. She didn't see them as insignificant...pawns in a game that an invisible force controlled. They gave her moments that wouldn't have existed if they didn't do their good deeds without reward. She took the hurt and the pain and the chaos and the fragility and turned it into something beautiful . She had completely embraced it all and decided that she is not insignificant... she can matter to someone else. She isn't "doing god's work". She is doing HER work...the work set in motion by her pain and her loss that is the result of her love. Her reward is that others benefit, in THIS life, from her love for that sweet baby girl. By embracing the randomness of it all, she finds her strength...not bestowed by god...this isn't "the reason" her daughter died...it's her...and she deserved the credit for that. She is free from being a pawn and is owning THIS life and her place in it. Nothing can take away her pain.... her work doesn't diminish the immense loss that she feels every single moment of every single day. She took feeling that insignificant...being told that she was deemed unworthy by god, robbed of her moments with her child, and turned it into something amazing and beautiful. She is part of the system that gives more moments to families in this life. She is someone elses' blessing, and she deserves all of the credit in the world for that. I'm not particularly interested in what invisible forces can do when there are amazing women like this mom right here in my own backyard.
So, the world is horrible...and instead of turning to something I can't see to make me feel better about it being horrible, I'm going to turn to myself and ask how I play a part in that. I'm going to see this for what it is...short, fleeting, fragile...and worth so much more than I can put into words. I'm going to not allow the world to say that I'm insignificant... I'm going to embrace my worth and your worth and the worth of the grandchildren I might never meet and make it worth it. I'm going to be someone else's blessing. Along the way, many people will likely credit god for my hard work, and I'm okay with that. I just hope that they can stop seeing themselves as insignificant, and truly embrace this life and their place in it.
I know that faith gives people something, but please do not discount that being faithless does too. I prefer to exist in my life, knowing it's fragile and short, being full of the richness that is promised to others after this life in religion. Maybe if we stopped thinking that our potential comes later, we would take better care of each other now.
There a millions of blog posts out there that cite reasons why religion shouldn't be believed. Historical concepts, conflicting accounts of biblical text, issues with accuracy and proof that being "of faith" doesn't make you a good person. I don't know that any of those address a gnawing problem that those "of faith" have with the faithless.
" How can you exist without faith?"
Wow...big question- I know! The truth is that faith gives the faithful something. It makes them whole and gives them a sense of peace in a world full of chaos. This is something I understand, even as someone who is faithless...and it's might be the reason I hold on to "agnostic" with two tight fists, instead of jumping right off my fence onto the atheist side. I will explain.
I am envious of the faithful. I don't know that you can have children and not be. Here is the truth: I want there to be a heaven....I want there to be a god....I don't want there to be a time where I'm not with my child, and should she or I pass away, I want there to be a way for us to be together again. That is a testimony to my love for this child. That is unshakable and more real than anything that has ever existed.
But... I want a lot of things.
The truth is that faith gives peace to that kind of love. It makes it okay to be scared, and it makes the fragility more palatable. It lessens our vulnerability. It's a safety net for the worst that life can bring. It punishes the people who do wrong and it rewards the people who do right in a world that often doesn't. It allows us to sleep at night without being terrified that it can all slip away. The deepness of that kind of love comes at a cost, and the cost is being constantly afraid it will leave us, and faith gives us the ability to not really pay that price. I want that...but, again, I want a lot of things.
So, to the faithful, imagining a world without that seems pointless and sad and hopeless in a way that they can't even imagine. Trust me, I feel that sometimes...but even the most faithful feel that sometimes. I'm not here to describe what despair feels like. I'm here to describe why the faithless don't live in a state of constant despair.
" If there's no hereafter, there's no point in trying"
This is a largest fallacy that exists in the minds of the faithful. I've often heard it cited that without faith, there is no reason to do good, to fight evil, or to strive for being better. There is one glaring problem with that: this perspective dictates that this life is not enough, that our place in it is insignificant, and that good is only worth something if the doer of the good deed is rewarded in some measure. For this, I have some questions:
- If you knew tomorrow that there was no heaven, would you never do another good thing again?
- Is your intent for your good deeds a reward?
- Does a good deed cease to be good if there is no reward?
- Is your battle to be a good person only measured against the punishment of being a bad person?
- Do you not ever want good things for others just because you want it?
- Do you not think that you have the capacity to make life better?
- Finally, who is the more moral person: the one who does good because he wants to, or the one who does good because he is rewarded for it?
With all of these in mind, I propose this: I am a good person without god. I am a good person without fear of punishment or promises of rewards. I do good things, and every time I do, I am taking a risk that those good things will either impose good into the world, or they will not. I do good things because I see the worthy of this life and the people that inhabit it. I am good not because god told me to be, but because I want to be, and my "good" could come with no reward at all. I am not kind to you because someone or something told me to be, but because I think you are worth being kind to and deserving of good things in your life, and that is the only reward I will receive.
" I know God is real because I have seen him make my life better."
I have heard this one a number of times. Would you believe me if I told you that I have a good life? Seriously- without god(s), I have found love, happiness, success, fulfillment, and joy. I live a very very good life... and the credit goes to the people who made that happen. Those people are not invisible or secretive or off in another realm. They are flesh and blood. They are me... my husband...my child...my mother...my sisters...my brother... my friends... my employers...my teachers... strangers. Those people made my life good, and I do not for one instant want to detract from what they have done for me.
In fact, since really finding my agnostic side, and letting faith slip away from me entirely, I've been a much happier person. When I did explore areas of faith, bad things happened to me. In the last 20 years, since I've been faithless, less bad things have happened. I've seen bad things happen to people of faith. Using this rational, having faith actually makes you more likely for bad things to happen. I've seen not believing in god working in my life!
Now, clearly I don't mean that... total hyperbole. But, let's try this on for size: Good things AND bad things happen to you regardless of what you believe. If something good happens to you, it was going to happen no matter what. If something bad happens to you, it was going to happen no matter what. Just for a moment, let's stop thinking that good and bad are related to somehow to something else, and just accept a reality. Things just happen. We are far too easily swayed in some idea that one thing is related to another. If my house is robbed tomorrow, it's not because I didn't pray, and it's not because my house is tan, and it's not because just the other day I said "I've never been robbed" and didn't knock on wood. My house got robbed because a series of unconnected events led someone to my house to rob it. That's it...end of story... shit happens. There is a pattern, and the pattern is chaos. There is nothing wrong with embracing that.
I have seen, several times, where people have " praised God" for something that is entirely man-made. Too often, I see praise for god in medical situations... that god intervened and made someone who was sick better. Well, there are two points I have to this. First, you misspelled "science". That medication was the result of the efforts of people...people who sacrificed time from their families and time for themselves to give you something amazing that would heal that sickness. By George...it's almost like their good deeds were the result of them wanting good in the world without reward! Is it "kind" or "good" of us to heap praise onto an invisible force when there are real people who deserve credit for these things? I have seen people throw money at their church for their answered prayers, but nobody is getting into their car to drive to Cleveland to shake the hand of the scientist for all of their hard work to create that medicine. In my faithlessness, I am able to see those people for what they are- a flesh and blood "blessing" that I can give proper credit to in this life. THEY make my life better. They are beautiful and amazing and worthy of the praise they deserve.
They took a risk...they poured everything they had into giving other people more moments together in this life. Under the ideas of religion, it was all "for a reason" and it was in god's hands, so those professionals- scientists, doctors, nurses... had they embraced that idea, would have just walked away.... because clearly they can't compete with the power of god's plan! Interesting how "god's plan" is only apparent to us after the fact, and "our plans" don't really ever play a part.
There was a Frontline special on assisted suicide I saw a few years ago, where a man with ALS flew overseas to have a physician assisted suicide. At some point he said ( I'm paraphrasing) " People say that killing myself is interrupting God's plan. I tell them that if I went by God's plan, I wouldn't be in a wheelchair and I would have starved to death long ago because I can't swallow. It's only through science and man that I'm still alive. God would have killed me long ago."
My second point is a much more serious one, and it is really the inspiration for this post. A mom I know, that I wish I could call "friend", but unfortunately, I've only had the chance to meet her a few times in person and so "Facebook Friend" is a more accurate description, lost her baby girl a few years ago. She "lost" her faith ( although, I would argue she found something else) after this horrific experience, and on one ( slightly drunken) night when I did get to hang out with her, she told me what made her an atheist. She told me that, while her child was sick, while there were HUNDREDS ( if not thousands) of people praying for her daughter, people told her that god would provide and heal her little girl, and in the aftermath of her daughter's passing, she was hurt and angry at the idea that her daughter was not "chosen" by god to heal.
To the faithful, I want you to absorb the enormity of that and do the world a favor; Please do not tell a person in the midst of a crisis that god will intervene, because if and when that doesn't happen, it is devastating. Then, to backtrack, and tell her that "there's a reason" or to tell her that her baby girl is an angel being taken care of by god... her "creator". Let me very very clear about this. This mom was this child's creator. She held that beautiful little girl in her belly for 9 months. She loved that child before ever laying eyes on her, and continues to love her with a deepness that is unmatched by any invisible force. She earned the right to see who that little girl would become and to say that her being robbed of that right was 'for a reason" and that some invisible force gets to enjoy her little girl, while the mom just gets to suffer in her grief and loss....I'm sorry, but anyone who has done this should be ashamed of themselves, because you have allowed the band-aid that your faith provides to cloud your judgement on being a good person. What you have said is that god deemed this mother unworthy... you have unilaterally diminished her place as that child's creator, undermined her place in that child's life, and told her that her pain is justified by an invisible something that she is not allowed to question or argue against without fear of punishment. You may have the best intentions, and I'm sure you do, but, again, you need to think about the impact that you actually have on the world around you, and that your place in this life, and in the lives of others, is not insignificant. This mother is worth more than that.
"See, the world is too horrible to live in without god!"
No, the world is just horrible. God or no god....still horrible. Life is hard...it is filled with pain and chaos and fragility. Now that I've appropriately bummed you out and chastised you for not giving proper credit to both yourself and others for the impact we do have, let me arrive back at my point. We have the ability to take it all and make something beautiful out of it.
There is wonder and awe in chaos and fragility. Being vulnerable to the fact that there is no safety net, no reward, no punishment, and no hereafter, it frees you, and empowers you.
Last year, I sat in the carpool line, picking up my kindergartner from school as news of the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary poured across my newsfeed on my phone. Tears welled in my eyes and for the next few weeks, I was paralyzed in the face of my worst fears as a parent. See, I know what panic looks like on my childs' face, and I know where her cries sound like when all she wants is her mommy there to protect her. Those pictures and sounds in my head...every parent knows them, and if forced to see them when they close their eyes... there only relief from that pain is to grab your child and hold them tight, feeling the realness of them next to you and knowing that, if just for that moment, they are safe.
In the days after Newtown, a friend of mine, a fellow non-believer, was relaying a conversation she had with her faithful sister, who was undermining the impact the tragedy must have had on my non-faithful friend. My atheist friends reaction was perfect. " No, you are wrong. To you, this life is temporary, and these kids..their stop in this world was just shorter than most and they get to go on to a better place. To me, this is a fucking unspeakable travesty, because this was all they had, and it's gone forever. I want to make this life better more than you do because this is all there is."
THAT is how I feel. To me, I have to make every moment count, and I have to do as much as humanly possible to make this experience of life as amazing as possible because this is it...for me...for my daughter... for everyone. I'm not passing the time between realms with an eternity of happiness to look forward to. My happiness has to exist here and now, because I don't get another chance. If you knew that you only had one moment to experience, and nothing after that, wouldn't you make it the best one you could? Wouldn't you invest in making it beautiful and amazing? I don't get to love my daughter forever...I get to love her NOW, and so I love her as much as possible while I can.
The only time you will ever see me quoting a country song... Live like your were dying. We are all dying...some more slowly than others. We don't want to think about that...we usually spend our days feeling like we aren't dying, and in the moments where death is real to us, we tell each other that it's not important, because death isn't really the end...there's an afterparty!!! We have funerals to have an entire ceremony devoted to the idea that it's totally okay that this person died, because they didn't really die... you totally get to see them later. And just so that you know where they are going to, we are going to revisit all the great things they have done so you know they they are going to be having a great time while you can't see them. So, we push away death... we make it seem like it doesn't happen...but it does! We die...we just do... it's the great equalizer. Instead of pushing it away, I'm embracing it. I'm going to die and that is all there is... no more Noel forever and ever.....and I'm not taking advantage of the moments have been between now and then for anything.
Can you see how freeing that is? Can you see how beautiful it is to live in what you know is real, instead of viewing it as a stop before something you can't be sure of? My little girl is not just beautiful now and ethereal in the hereafter that might exist later... she is everything now and every moment of thinking about later is a moment wasted.
That mom, the one who "turned her back on god".... she has spent her time going to school, becoming a nurse, with the intention of working with families going through exactly what she did. She saw those people, the medical professionals who worked hard to keep her child in her arms...she saw them for what they were... her blessing. She didn't see them as insignificant...pawns in a game that an invisible force controlled. They gave her moments that wouldn't have existed if they didn't do their good deeds without reward. She took the hurt and the pain and the chaos and the fragility and turned it into something beautiful . She had completely embraced it all and decided that she is not insignificant... she can matter to someone else. She isn't "doing god's work". She is doing HER work...the work set in motion by her pain and her loss that is the result of her love. Her reward is that others benefit, in THIS life, from her love for that sweet baby girl. By embracing the randomness of it all, she finds her strength...not bestowed by god...this isn't "the reason" her daughter died...it's her...and she deserved the credit for that. She is free from being a pawn and is owning THIS life and her place in it. Nothing can take away her pain.... her work doesn't diminish the immense loss that she feels every single moment of every single day. She took feeling that insignificant...being told that she was deemed unworthy by god, robbed of her moments with her child, and turned it into something amazing and beautiful. She is part of the system that gives more moments to families in this life. She is someone elses' blessing, and she deserves all of the credit in the world for that. I'm not particularly interested in what invisible forces can do when there are amazing women like this mom right here in my own backyard.
So, the world is horrible...and instead of turning to something I can't see to make me feel better about it being horrible, I'm going to turn to myself and ask how I play a part in that. I'm going to see this for what it is...short, fleeting, fragile...and worth so much more than I can put into words. I'm going to not allow the world to say that I'm insignificant... I'm going to embrace my worth and your worth and the worth of the grandchildren I might never meet and make it worth it. I'm going to be someone else's blessing. Along the way, many people will likely credit god for my hard work, and I'm okay with that. I just hope that they can stop seeing themselves as insignificant, and truly embrace this life and their place in it.
I know that faith gives people something, but please do not discount that being faithless does too. I prefer to exist in my life, knowing it's fragile and short, being full of the richness that is promised to others after this life in religion. Maybe if we stopped thinking that our potential comes later, we would take better care of each other now.
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