You Can't Wash the Truth Away With a Bit of Soap

My mouth got me into tons of trouble growing up, and it started early.  Here is a favorite family story (that for some reason has been put to rest in the past ten years . . . strangely, my mother hasn't told this story even one time to my children):  When I was three, I told my mom she was stupid.  My mom let me know we didn't say that and washed my mouth out with soap to make sure I understood.  As the story goes, when she finished, I looked at her and said, “You’re ‘till ‘tupid.”  Furious, my mom washed my mouth out with soap again.  Once again, when she finished, I said, “You’re ‘till ‘tupid.”  After seventeen rounds and a threat that I couldn’t be a part of the family anymore if I called her that again, I stopped.  Looking back, I think, “Wow, what a smart, determined, and truth-declaring three-year-old I was!”  I totally got that soap in my mouth didn’t change my mother one bit.  

You can't wash your stupid away with soap.

Getting to Forgiveness

In my dysfunctional family, forgiveness equals acting like nothing ever happened.  It doesn’t involve apologies or acknowledgements or even healing.   Forgiveness has everything to do with letting it blow over, sweeping it under the rug, and never mentioning it again.  If you aren’t successful in supplying the forgiveness (and the faster the better), well . . . to borrow the words of Abi Sutherland of Making Light, it “becomes a stick to beat [the sufferers] over the head with.  Holding grudges.  Unforgiving.  Hard.  Bitter.  Angry, with the subtext of unjustifiably.”  

I have been beaten with that “unforgiveness stick.”  Wow, it is hard to rush getting over something, especially while protecting yourself from that flailing stick!  I don’t want to linger in a state of resentment any more than anyone else wants me to.  Even so, all I have ever gained from “hurrying up to forgive” is a good case of suppression.  By the way, suppressing feelings and needs doesn’t leave me in a very functional place psychologically; it takes a huge amount of emotional energy to hold back my feelings and needs, and ultimately, it just doesn’t work out very well. 

So how do we get past resentment and get to forgiveness?  Rob Voyle, a psychologist and Episcopal priest experienced in guiding groups through the process of forgiving, says this: Resentment “is a current demand that someone or something in the past should have been different.”  Obviously, such a demand is futile.  The past can’t be changed.  So why do we hold on to these insane demands?    

Voyle explains that when we feel hurt by someone, it is because one of our values has been violated.   It seems to me that muscling our way through forgiveness often ends in our violating that value even more. 

So if our resentment is protecting a value, and the inability to forgive results from resentment, how can we move forward without further violating the value? 

This is the best part!  It’s easy and profoundly effective.  Voyle says we simply have to change our demand that the past should have been different into a preference . . . just a simple alteration in our thinking.  The preference affirms our values while releasing us from the impossible demand. 

Voyle suggests we do this by going through visualization exercises in which we tell our perpetrators our preferences.  Voyle says to be very specific in our requests during these visualization exercises.  (I should add that Voyle guides people through healing exercises that deal with trauma before he takes them through visualization exercises in which they speak to their perpetrator.  Voyle’s process includes significant foundational work to prepare people for this step in the forgiveness process. Here is a link to his website if you want to learn more: http://www.clergyleadership.com/).

So through visualization, we revisit our painful memories, expressing our preferences for how we would have liked to have been treated.

I love this!  I can actually do this!

Here is a very simple example.  Thinking of my mother becoming my cheerleading sponsor against my will and the pain that resulted from that throughout my high school years, I might say to my mother:   “I would have preferred that my boundaries had been honored, and that you would have heard my pleas that you not become my sponsor.  I would have loved it if you would have said, ‘If you would rather me not be your sponsor, I won’t do it!  I just want you to enjoy your experience as a cheerleader.’ I wish that you could have seen me as a separate person and could have seen that cheerleading belonged to me.  I wish you could have seen my cheerleading as my amazing opportunity to spread my wings and experience my teenage years in their fullest.”

One of the beautiful things about this exercise is that when I do it, I don’t feel myself getting wound up by the crazy details of the experiences.  Rather I feel the calm of hearing myself composing some amazingly compassionate and kind responses to myself.   I also hear myself articulating some powerful values.  It seems that in this process, I acknowledge and honor the good that God has planted within me.  It is a life-giving and loving process.

For me, this process moves forgiveness from an exercise in trying to “overlook” to an exercise in trying to “inward look,” with questions such as, “What value is it that I would have loved to have had honored?  What would I have loved to have had happen?”  It seems that rather than pushing forward, I am settling in.  Rather than turning my eyes the other way in order to get away from the pain, I am looking closer and naming the pain.  Even better, I am naming the actions and words that would have felt good and would have respected the values within me.        

I can do this kind of forgiveness!  It is authentic, genuine, rooted, and it honors everyone.

Ahh, but here is the crux!  If you are trying to forgive while existing in a corrupt system that continues to violate your values, that forgiveness is going to be short lived as you continue to suffer and as resentment continues to arise to protect your values.  Here is where it is so important to distinguish between forgiveness and reconciliation.  Voyle says this:

“Forgiveness is purely about how I personally resolve what has happened to me in the past. Reconciliation is an agreement between two people about how they will live and work together in the future. And here is the big rule:

Never be reconciled to someone who does not share your values. 

Jesus forgave the Romans, he forgave the Pharisees, but he was never reconciled to them or their mission.”

Even after reading Voyle’s work over and over for a couple of years, this statement, “Never be reconciled to someone who does not share your values” still leaves me spinning.  Here, I think of the rules of a dysfunctional family.  These very rules that my family lives by violate my value system.  Never be reconciled to someone who does not share your values.   This looks, sounds, smells, and tastes like permission to step away from this crazy-making three-ring circus that is my family of origin.  But then I find myself gasping for air as panic sets in, Is this the end? Is it over with my family? And . . . is this loss or gain?   

I know that for now, I long for peace.  The pain by far outweighs the joy.  But wishing my family well and departing is bittersweet.  Fortunately, Voyle has a step by step process for dealing with grief as well.  Maybe I will tackle that in my next post.

   

A Glimpse of Glory

On Thursday morning, we got a call from my cousin Peggy.  Peggy lives in Texas and looks after my grandmother who lives in a nursing home within a few miles of Peggy’s house.  Peggy said Grandma’s mind was going fast and that if we wanted  to see her again when she would recognize us, that we better come soon.  Within twenty-four hours, we were in the car, headed to Texas to see Grandma. 

My grandmother and I have a rough history.  As a child, I didn’t think she liked me very much.  I know she didn’t like me much.  I learned as I grew up that it had more to do with the birth order in my family than it had to do with me.  My grandma had suffered from being booted from the baby position in her family when she was only 17 months old and her sister was born.   Her mother catered to her baby sister’s whims and Grandma ended up with broken toys and a bratty sister. 

Feeding My Child

When I realized that I was treating my eldest as the scapegoat in our family, treating her as a bit of an outsider and displacing my negative feelings on her, the ways in which I was doing it were there, staring me in the face.  I didn’t have to sit and think hard about the “how” of it all.  I had always been conscious of what I was doing, but always had excuses that allowed me to get by with it.  Now I have no excuses.  I see the excuses as the bunk that they are.    

One of the things that I routinely did with my eldest was I prepared food for the younger kids and didn’t prepare anything for her.  Why?  Well, my excuse was that she knew what she wanted and would get it herself.  Why not?  First, I can tell you that it was most certainly neglect,

When the Scapegoated Becomes the Scapegoater

Eight week ago, I lay on my basement floor sobbing and crying out to God, “I can’t do this anymore!  Why is this happening?  Where are you?”

I have had a devilish year with my family.  I can’t believe how many brewhahas there have been and how many of those brewhahas have left me bloody.  I have wondered if I could possibly pick myself up and keep going.   Here I was again, in the middle of another mess, and I was filled with the shame—deep, paralyzing shame.

                                                                                

I have never felt driven to look for a purpose for why bad things that happen to us.  I’ve been okay with the idea that bad things happen at times and there is no reason and not a blessed good thing comes from it.  But I do tend to look back to see if something miserable has borne a blessing.  It was about a month following this last family mess that I found an incredible blessing, maybe even an actual purpose, in the past two years of misery. 

A Kind, Gentle Perspective on Forgiveness to Soothe the Weary

I recently came across this blog post on forgiveness written by Abi Sutherland at Making Light.  This entry was posted on September 21 in recognition of the day Making Light has deemed "Dysfunctional Families Day."  (Go here to read the full post and enjoy the incredible comments section:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/015459.html).  

"So often, the social expectation is that someone who suffers harm will forgive the perpetrator. One is supposed to work toward forgiveness, choose to forgive, be forgiving. If the sufferer doesn’t forgive fast enough, this lack can become a stick to beat them with. Holding grudges. Unforgiving. Hard. Bitter. Angry, with a subtext of unjustifiably. Indeed, sometimes the topic becomes a way to blame the sufferer and make the perpetrator the victim: why haven’t you forgiven them? How can you do that to them?

Forgiveness can be prescribed like a medicine. If you forgive, you’ll be able to heal. Then a failure to heal becomes the fault of a sufferer who is “refusing to forgive”. (That feels like a Catch:22 to me, because pressuring someone to forgive too quickly shuts down the necessary process of figuring out what actually happened.)

As a society, we have a pretty muddy view of how to actually forgive someone. Some people expect the emotional transformation of forgiveness to just happen, perhaps after the sufferer says, “I forgive you” or lets some time pass. Others have a vending-machine model, where the perpetrator puts their apology in and forgiveness pops out.*‡ Some people expect that forgiveness comes hand in hand with forgetfulness, and suggest that the sufferer should, rather than learning from their experiences, pretend that they did not happen.

Those models really don’t match my reality.

From what I have seen and experienced, forgiveness is a product and symptom of the healing process. It’s one (but, note, not the only) possible outcome of moving beyond the hurt: a way to close the accounts**. It may involve trusting or interacting with the person again, or it may be a separate peace. In either case, it’s a recognition that the incident is now (primarily) in the past, notwithstanding any ongoing repercussions.

Given that, it seems to me that asking whether someone has forgiven yet is like asking them if their bleeding wound has scabbed over yet. Telling them to forgive is as effective as urging them to grow a scab."

This piece has become like a sweet, loving friend to me.  It gives words to the pain I have felt as I have tried and failed to heal fast enough to satisfy my dysfunctional family of origins.  Thank you to Abi Sutherland! 

Make Me A Scapegoat Any Day!

Or Why I Couldn’t Trade being a Scapegoat for Being the Golden Child

(This post is a bit tongue and cheek. It is not meant to disregard the deep and profound pain that comes with being the scapegoat or suggest that one would ever choose such a role, rather it is an acknowledgment of some of the very valuable qualities and values that have landed some scapegoats in their role.  I believe that my place in the birth order was the beginning of my painful childhood.  The qualities of sensitive, strong and truth teller emerged over time and increased my struggle even more.  If the stories my dad told me are true, and I have no reason to doubt him, it was long before I was old enough to be living out these values that I was singled out to suffer the wrath of my mother--I would never suggest anyone choose such as that for themselves or anyone else.  This is just a reflection on what I value and am unwilling to sacrifice in myself.)
                                               

I couldn’t be my Golden Child sister.  I wouldn’t want to be.  She rarely if ever talks about her feelings or even her life in general.  Over the years, she has gone through nasty spells of moodiness and sullenness, and panic attacks plagued her for years.  In other words, I am glad I didn’t master the art of suppressing my feelings.  As difficult as it is to be sensitive and feel acute pain, I prefer it over a mysterious cloud of moodiness and panic.

                     

But it is more than this that keeps me from longing to be the Golden Child.  Here is a story that sums it up for me.

Within a year of my grandparents moving in with my mom to be cared for in their old age, my mom got abusive.  My family (my husband and kids and myself) went to my mom’s house to eat lunch with her and my grandparents every Sunday.  During those Sunday visits, I would hear my mom snapping at my grandma for all manner of insignificant things:  for losing this important piece of paper or that bottle of pills, for breaking another dish, or for getting the pills all mixed up in the pill caddy again.  One day, my grandmother dropped a crystal glass that was a part of the Christmas china.  My mother went maniacal.  She was raging and screaming.  My nine year old, began to exclaim, “The antique store has those!  The antique store has those!”  My mom heard her and quickly calmed herself, taking rapid deep breaths and saying over and over, “yes, yes, I can get another.”  But the damage was done.  Trauma to all of us, especially my frail grandmother, who was sobbing. 

Each Sunday, I would leave my grandparents at my mom’s house feeling sick.  It was too much to watch.  My grandparents, they were stuck there.  They had sold their house and almost everything they owned, under my mom’s pressure to do so.  Now here they were, old, fragile, dependent and being treated as burdensome inconveniences. 

I would tell my sister about the things said and done.  Consistent with her way of being, she gave little response.   One day as I was expressing my angst and concern, she said, “They have been doing this dance for years.  Let them do it.”  Jaw drop.  What?  Yes, they paved the way with their treatment of mom when she was little, but come on!  That doesn’t make it okay or give us permission to turn a blind eye.  This is abusive! 

I still really can’t understand this response.  The strong, sensitive truth teller in me can’t watch these sorts of things quietly.  My sister always watched quietly.  She learned not to make waves and gracefully to accept the tyranny that existed, at times even to justify and excuse it; are these the necessary coping mechanism of a Golden Child, I wonder?  I don’t know, but if this is what it takes to keep oneself Golden, please God, make me a scapegoat any day!