I think maybe the point to life is to take things apart, and then put them together again.

Either that, or it’s just my particular lot in life. All the things I once thought for certain in my teens and early twenties…..they’ve mostly all been torn down and are in varying stages of being recreated. I like almost all that I’m building, but dang, there’s usually a crap ton of pain and uncertainty that occurs in the tearing down and in between stages.

When I die and get to heaven or whatever happens after THIS, I’m going to ask God why they ordered things the way they did. Why did they allow immature people with little to no life experience give birth to children, and why do children have to spend the rest of their lives reacting to, healing from, and launching away from the hurts and patterns and beliefs they internalized when as little ones.

On one hand, it’s feels damned sadistic….another one of those cosmic games like the heaven/hell evangelical theology I’ve rejected. On the other hand, I can kind of get on board with the idea that to truly understand the Light, to truly love, to truly grow and become wise, there has to be darkness. And if I stretch my brain really really hard and squeeze my eyes as tightly as possible, I can almost imagine that maybe in the Big Picture….the BIGGEST PICTURE panned back as far as all things can go….maybe the darkness is not quite as terrible as it seems when we’re up close and personal. Like, maybe it’s the phrase that I love and tattooed on my arm….everything belongs. I think I have to believe that because if I didn’t, nothing would matter anymore. Ugh. It still feels cringy though.

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I was talking with a mentor doctor of mine the other day. He’s wicked smart, but he’s also gentle and wise. And when he tries to retire I’m going to sneak into the HR offices and totally mess up his employee file and resignation letter in some brilliant way so that he’s forced to stay on as long as I’m employed there. Please don’t warn him or HR of this.

He and I were discussing the challenges of getting through life well, and moving past the hard things that hurt you. His response was that everyone needs a handful of people, anywhere from about 3-5, throughout their life, that really step in and latch on and help show you how to carry your pain and transform it. He didn’t say it exactly like that, but this is my paraphrase through a Richard Rohr filter.

I agree wholeheartedly with him. I actually think I’m one of the lucky ones, because I’ve had more than 3 fo 5. Somehow, I’ve had at least 2 people walking me home through almost every stage of my life. Some of those stages had more people, some fewer. But I’ve never walked alone. It’s these people, who won’t agree to be pulled down in your pain with you, but who will repeatedly hold a hand out to pull you up, or to shine a light for your next step, or to run ahead laughing in their own joy while calling back over their shoulder to you that all manner of things will be well…these are the people that have make all the difference in a life.

Every single time I’ve had to deconstruct something big in my life….whether it was my theology, or my marriage, or difficult relationships, or my inner wounds, or my prejudices….people have been there to help lead the way, rooting me on as I started to reconstruct, lego block by lego block, my new understandings of the Divine, my new belief systems about myself, my new ways of being in the world.

These kinds of people help show you its not the end of the world when it feels like the end of the world.

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I have a bachelor’s degree from a billion years ago, in Missions….where I obviously took alot of Bible classes. One class that I took that completely rocked my world at the time was Revelation, with Dr. Ian Fair. Up until that time, I only knew of the premillennialist teachings of the Southern Baptist tradition that I grew up in….I just didn’t know the official term for it at the time. I remember the first day of class, and Dr. Fair told us to remember two specific names of Catholic theologians that had done tremendous work on breaking down Revelation and the Pseudepigrapha. A husband-wife couple, John Jay Collins and Adela Yarbrough Collins. Ha! Aren’t you proud of me for remembering those names from an undergrad class I took 21 years ago?

This class taught me that a literal reading of Revelation was only one basic way of doing it, and that there were multiple other views developed with ample scholarship behind them. I relished that class…it was fascinating to me. Mostly because I never completely bought into my church tradition’s understanding of Revelation…I thought it was kind of stupid and far fetched, but never had the guts to say so. As a result of this class, I quickly became an amillennialist with moderate preterist views. Or to put it succinctly….what was written about in Revelation wasn’t nearly as much about the end times for all of us, but was directly related to the plight of the Jewish nation under the Roman Empire.

Anyway, my view on Revelation is not at all why I bring this up. My whole point is that somehow….during this amazing class…I never retained the understanding that the world apocalypse, literally means “unveiling”. Oh. My. Word.

My friend Meagan pointed this out to me a while back at a point when I was literally coming undone. She referenced a daily meditation that was written by my beloved Richard Rohr. In it he talked about this unveiling, and how the apocalypse and laying bare all the things that really are as they are, can feel like the end of the world. Sometimes the truth is not soft and gentle and welcomed; it can hurt like a bitch.

But, what if this painful unveiling is really not the end, but the starting point. (Maybe also, this is what is meant about the idea of Jesus returning. Not that he’s going to separate the saints from the sinners, but the idea that when we think that all is absolutely lost and ready to burn, we will see the Big Reality, have understanding, and realize that nothing is lost and we’re just getting started.)

Richard Rohr always rocks my world, and he came through this time again. What if what I thought was an ending was really a beginning? What if seeing the truth about people and learning who they really are, or having to throw out beliefs that no longer serve you, or having to recognize that something you wanted is not going to come to fruition, are merely starting points?

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I’m amazed, even at my age, at how fucking cruel some people can be. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. Which is funny because I’ve been intimately acquainted with cruel people at multiple times my life. I cognitively know that people can be terrible, but down deep I always have to convince myself that it really can be true. It blows my mind on a regular basis.

I’ve been knocked down hard, several times, by people being absolutely horrible. Cut deep.. Wondering what the hell I did wrong. I’ve lain on the ground, thinking “I might not get past it this time. This is too big; the truth is going to kill me; I’m going to bleed out”. This usually happens because I naively trust people I shouldn’t, or ignore the warning signs, or believe that love and grace can dramatically change things. All because of my difficulty in accepting that people can be cruel.

But I”m finally learning. I’m taking apart the logic that no longer adds up, piecing apart the hope that everyone is trying to move towards the Light instead of away from it; I”m allowing the painful truth to finally be unveiled, and I”m looking at it head on.

These are the deconstruction zones. When cruel people try to break you and you choose to change the patterns that allowed them to hurt you in the first place. When your theology no longer adds up. When your head is spinning and you can’t figure out which way is up but you are determined to do life differently. But taking apart your life, even voluntarily, hurts. It feels like seeking the truth is a dying.

This is the part where you have to face the pain and sit with it (or lie on the ground with it). I think this is akin to John of the Cross’s dark night of the soul. When you don’t have any certainty about anything but you just make yourself stay…and keep staying….and finally learn that when you’re at rock bottom you will either be sustained or you won’t. And somehow, in a really weird way, you are sustained just by the fact of knowing that you have no control. You just accept what is. And you live. After a while of laying in that pain, you recognize that you can still feel yourself. Your breath is still moving in and out of you. You didn’t die. Despair paused at your doorpost for a moment and then passed by. And, you gain Truth that is bigger than the past little truths that your old life was built on.

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According to Rohr this deconstructing and reconstructing life, or as he terms it “order, disorder, reorder”, is a pattern that has to happen again and again in life. Sometimes this idea makes me crazy, because it seems appealing to think about getting to a place of perfection. The disordering part of the pattern is so painful. I like the nice, ordered parts where I understand how life works and where I stand.

But then, at the same time, I look back on my life, where I started from, and where I am now. I’ve done some significant tearing things apart, working through the pieces, and putting them back together, and I like the Me now a whole hell of alot more than the me of even five years ago. I think maybe I’ve learned that as painful as they can be, this pattern of dying to live ultimately results in more joy, results in more meaning. Fear gradually is replaced by curiosity. Its like you are suddenly more willing to do hard things that ask alot of you because it is more worth it for you to see what is on the other side than to stay where you are and never engage in life. You start trusting that you will be carried through the dark nights and the morning will come again at some point.

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I think anger plays a role in this cycle as well. When I was growing up, there wasn’t a space for anger. My anger was either minimized or I was patted on the head while someone laughingly said, “Look how cute Julie is, she’s mad!” Bible verses like “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” further cemented the fact that me being angry wasn’t going to get me anywhere. And so I learned to cope in other ways when I was wronged or hurt. As a child you do what you have to.

But as adults…yeah, sometimes I think we have to get crazy angry at the injustices done to us, whether intentional or unintentional. I don’t mean raging in a way that harms others, but true, righteous, motivating anger. Anger that says you will no longer allow yourself to be treated in certain ways, anger that calls out hurtful and bad behaviors that were perpetrated against you, anger that is motivating and says you’ll be damned if you’ll let others or situations make you a victim any longer.

Sometimes its this anger that will help you start deconstructing old patterns in your life. And then, sometimes it feels like you might be angry forever….at those people, at those things done to you, at those societal values that were pushed on you and hurt you, at those institutions and systems that repressed you. But after a while, with the help of that apocalyptic truth you discovered when you thought you might die, you start building again. Creating patterns and relationships and belief structures that resonate with you….and you thank anger for helping protect you and for serving you, and then you let it go because you don’t need it anymore…..or at least not until your next deconstruction project.

It feels like the cycles we see in nature. You die, you lay dormant a while, then you spring to life after that time of being quiet and still. The cycle repeats. Then there’s spiral dynamics at play, because in our lives every time we allow ourselves to go through that painful cycle of order, disorder, reorder, we keep growing and moving forward to places we haven’t been before. And every single time we survive one of these cycles, it takes something so much bigger to knock us down…..and we recover so much faster, with increased resilience after every blow….because we have learned that we will be sustained, and that there is always light after darkness.

I have this troublesome trait of tending toward all or nothing. When I latch onto things, I usually dive all in. I frequently experience big pendulum swings in how I approach new projects, ideals, and just about everything else. I can be wicked intense, too often for my own good.

I’ve been working really, really hard on improving this, because while fierce loyalty and commitment and doing deep dives are often necessary and can do alot of good when solid buy-in is needed, this steering wheel jerk hard to the right or left often causes me to be miserable and get stuck – both in relationships and in what I consider to be my responsibilities in life.

It seems pretty clear to me when parts of my life get stuck with my rigid thinking of this or that, black or white, all or none, I pay the price in specific ways. The following are a little of what I’ve been discovering and pondering over the years.

What Is Mine, and What is Not

The other day I was driving back country roads to work, listening to NPR. A story came on about how the concrete industry is contributing massively to the climate problem. My ears perked up (I kind of geek over environmental policy and stuff) as I listened to the reporters talk about innovative ways to make concrete while diminishing the deleterious effects on the atmosphere. Midway through the broadcast, I immediately began trying to formulate ways in my mind that I could help the process, that I could contribute something useful to the science of concrete manufacturing, and I was wondering how I could reduce my use of concrete in life.

Try not to roll your eyes so hard. I was really doing this. Earnestly.

This is just one of many examples in my life where I try to take on problems that are not mine to carry, and are not problems that I am even equipped to solve. And even if I dramatically reduced my concrete usage ( I have no clue how I would even do that), my miniscule efforts would have literally no impact on the overall global concrete usage. Yet, there I was, at 8 in the morning, stressing about how I was single handedly ruining the environment because I have a cement driveway and sidewalks in front of my house.

I have SKILLZ, y’all, in taking on what is not mine. But it’s not because I’m selfish or greedy or think I need more to be happy. My big problem has always been twofold, depending on the situation, although sometimes, both of the following have felt true: 1) I’m not enough, meaning that I have to make up for my deficits and prove that I deserve to have a place in this world, and 2) I’m too much for everyone, and so I have to help everyone deal with my intensity and “otherness” by making their lives easier and filling in whatever gaps I perceive in their lives that I could have possibly contributed to or could address..

If I can just make this problem go away, or if I can help this person and make his/her life better, then I will have earned my keep…or I will be less of a burden because I decreased their burdens.

This mentality developed over decades, and like so many things seem to do, they stem from beliefs and untruths that I internalized as a child. I love Jesus, but rigid, dogmatic religion didn’t help me much back then other than to make me neurotic while slapping labels on it that said “piety” and “spiritual”.

It’s kind of funny that just now, at age 41, I’m finally getting a decent sense of what is mine and what is not. I don’t really appreciate the fact that the Universe decided to fast track much of these lessons and compress them into the year of COVID, but…whatcha gonna do? I’m really grateful that I finally believe that it is not my responsibility to fix every problem that exists, and that, in fact, I don’t have to take any sort responsibility for every problem that exists. Stop snickering, you all know I’ve been a hot mess for a long time. There is SO much freedom in finally coming to the deep, true, gut knowing that I am only responsible for a doing my best in a very small chunk of life, and that it is NOT my responsibility to fix people or to single handedly overhaul the world’s broken systems and institutions. Because when you carry the belief your entire life, as stupid as the belief is, that you have to do this…it is WEARISOME. DEFEATING. Makes you just want to check out because it is all impossible.

If I’m honest about it, Life has only really given me a small little plot of people and tasks to tend. And, I’m not responsible for the outcomes. The point is to just live, and do the next thing, and when I know better, do better.

Setting Real Boundaries is a Pipe Dream…Or is it?

Years ago I read a book called Boundaries, by John Townsend and Henry Cloud. I really enjoyed the book, and loved the idea that you could create protective fences around yourself, so that you could moderate what and who you would accept into your personal life space and what you wouldn’t.

Even though I liked the book alot, and thought it would be so freaking amazing to have strong boundaries with people, I sucked at it. I used to have the absolute worst boundaries. Because the thing is, to have boundaries that stay put, you have to believe that you’re worth protecting yourself…that your wants matter as much as the next person’s….that you are not required to take on everything that people want to dump on you.

This is where alot of religion failed me. Or maybe, it was the interpretation and application of sacred texts that failed me. All those great stories about giving people your cloak AND tunic, or how no greater love exists than when you lay down your life for someone else, or how you should just keep turning the other cheek and allow yourself to be assaulted by people who were thoughtless or wanted to exploit you. Clear hyperbole there, folks….I know that’s not what the text said explicitly. But the problem is, when sacred texts are read without nuance and without a good healthy psychological foundation, you can teach people that accepting abusive behavior is loving. That sacrificing your dignity and desires and giving into what makes you uncomfortable for the sake of others’ comfort is virtuous. Misapplication of religious texts in general, and so freaking often, the Bible, is what leads to an absolute obliteration of healthy boundaries and creates codependent, abused, and exploited people….and it also empower those who are in a position to abuse and exploit.

Not all that long ago, I read a new book on boundaries. I picked it up because I kept having that nagging, soul feeling that I was being exploited by specific people in my life for what I could offer without an equal exchange in return. As I did the exercises in the book, I took a hard look at the boundaries in place at the time. And to my utter amazement, it was a STRUGGLE to identify good, solid boundaries. Now, I definitely had some hard core ones that I never waiver on…like “No one is allowed to put their feet on my dining room table, ever”, or “If you want to ride in my car, you put a seatbelt on.” You know, some of the big stuff. But when I looked at more of the specific boundaries, the ones that are more subtle in relationships…well….I realized that most of my fences were trampled down far enough that they could just be stepped over. Except they couldn’t be trampled because they’d never really been built properly in the first place. Because I believed from a young age that those fences were bad. “If we say no to things that come our way in life, then we are thoughtless. If we don’t give when people ask then we are selfish. If we are not vulnerable and transparent with everyone all the time, then we are frigid and uncaring.”

This time, when I read about boundaries, I actually had enough years of shadow work and therapy under my belt to lean towards believing that I”m worth getting to decide who and what comes into my space. Although it still blew my mind a while back when my therapist told me it was perfectly OK and legit to walk away from anyone the first time they wronged me and had not interest in recognizing they did so or trying to make amends. I was seriously like, “WTF? I can DO that? And it doesn’t make me a horrible person?” Pipe dream…(’cause y’all, with certain people, I’ve taken hundreds of hits, day after day, and thought I couldn’t walk away with a good conscience),….and yet, this has been one of the most liberating ideas that I have ever encountered.. That it is my right and freedom to not accept everything that comes my way, and it is my right and freedom to welcome and accept the things and people that I want to. Mind still blown.

By the way, if you want to read an amazing book on boundaries (but be forewarned, you may be like me and feel like someone was videotaping your life secretly and then actually writing a book about you), then check out Setting Boundaries Will Set You Free.

Life is Like a TightRope…but Really More Like a Slackline

I’ve dabbled a bit in Buddhist thought over the last decade, find myself returning to certain teachers again and again, especially in the time of COVID. Buddhism often refers to the idea of the Middle Way…where you avoid overindulgence on one hand, and asceticism and severe restriction on the other. Other philosophies teach, similarly, the ideas of moderation. Some of my favorite progressive Christian thinkers speak of the “both, and…”. Different scenarios in life also make me think of the gray areas that lie in between the polar opposites of black and white.

I’m a rule follower. I always have been, although now I would call myself a recovering rule follower. I like picking a side, whether it’s picking a sports team, or self-identity labels, or deciding clearly what is right and wrong. I like doing this because it lets me know where I stand; it gives me a sense of security, albeit an illusion. I like knowing the rules to play by because life can feel topsy turvy and chaotic when I don’t know the rules of the particular game of the moment.

But, polar extremes have sharp edges. They hurt people. They close our minds up and keep us small. They tether us on short leashes. The place of freedom is to walk the middle places, to know that everything belongs and multiple things can be true at once.

Staying in this middle place is like walking on a tightrope. Though, I actually think it’s harder than that, and is more like a slackline…because there is movement and non-rigidity in the middle paths. It takes concentration, and work, and letting go of judgements and fears and our need for control to stay there. Falling off to one side or the other is the easy route to take. And when we’re tired and beat up and uncertain of where we, and this world, and this life are headed, it can be tempting to just let our focus go, and collapse into our familiar, rigid, sharp places, no matter how deeply and often we and others get cut as a result.

The Problem of Living By Exception

I have learned that one of my greatest faults (as in the fault that hurts me personally the most) is my tendency to deal with people according to their exceptions. There are multiple people in my life that I can think of who have shown me on a daily basis for years exactly who they are, and yet I’ve failed to believe them. I have tended to latch on to those exceptions in their behaviors….where they actually were kind or thoughtful or generous, or even just acknowledged me in a meaningful way…and I held on to those moments, thinking they were signs that the person would change, or move my way, or understand my point of view finally.

These exceptions are polar extremes, and their edges are knife blade sharp.

This is a hard lesson for me to learn, and I’m not really sure why, but I’m working on it. Why do I spend so much time and energy on the people who will never change, who have no interest in changing.? Why do I go to the far ends of their behavior spectrums to find those isolated moments that felt loving to me and hold on to them for dear life? I know in my head that I need to pull back to the middle, and to work off the average of their behaviors and actions. It’s that damned tendency of mine again to fall off to the edges…

Paralyzed by Hope

I once thought that hope was a ALWAYS good thing. There’s my polar extreme thinking again. Because I’ve learned recently that hope can also keep you absolutely stuck and unmoving; it can pull you in to holding tight to people’s exceptions; it tells you to let people machete slash at your boundaries and treat you like shit, and all the while you take it because “there’s always a chance for redemption, right? People can change, miracles can happen, things can get better, one day they will see us for who we truly are.” Hope is what keeps us codependent, abused, exploited, overlooked, dismissed. Instead of allowing us to walk away in search of better, we wait just a little bit longer, rationalizing away our pain and our gut voices that are desperately trying to get our attention.

But, at the same time, you can’t just throw out hope, either, right? Because then, why bother getting up in the morning? We’d all just be despairing or completely emotionless because we would never expect anything to ever change for the better. This is my great pressing question these days: when do you hold out hope for people and when do you leave them where you found them and move on? When do you try to continually resurrect broken situations or worn out projects or fractured systems, and when do you let go of that last flicker of hope? And how do you approach the broken things in life without being directed by cynicism or the fear of exploitation?

The Middle Path of Holding to Ourselves

Glennon Doyle talks about how it is so important to disappoint others as often as necessary so that we don’t disappoint ourselves. This feels like the biggest slackline ever to try and walk. To choose myself before everyone else. To create that space around me that allows in what is good for me and does not allow what doesn’t feel right to my soul. While deep down, my gut tells me this is truth, my fears ask the following questions: “Isn’t this how a narcissist would live? Didn’t Jesus say we must die to ourselves? Don’t we have a responsibility and duty to give to the greater good and sacrifice our wants? What if people need you and you write them off because they don’t feel good to you?”

I have to tell myself repeatedly, often, that each of these statements has a little truth to them, but they are not individually the entire truth. I have to ask myself almost the polar opposite question to get myself somewhere aligned back in the middle. “If I were a narcissist, would I really even be concerned about any of these matters to begin with? And, didn’t Jesus mean that we need to die to our false selves, the illusions of ego and attachment to identity? And is it possible for us to give to the greater good if we are depleted or exhausted or in unhealthy and abusive places? And the biggest question for me, that I have to ask myself again and again and again….why do you have to sacrifice yourself every time for others? What makes their life worth more than yours? And why should you take more responsibility for someone else’s life and health than they do?

Settling

I realized this weekend that I”m really, really tired. There was a long time early in my adult life when I was miserable and depressed, and I didn’t do much. I was beaten up by others for it, and I beat myself up plenty. Now I have discovered that I swung to the other extreme. I’m curious and happy about life, and have taken on more and more. All good things, but way too many good things to fit in my one little plot. And, alongside my curiosity and excitement about all that I want to do and achieve (both out of healthy and admittedly unhealthy motivations), I’ve let myself become paralyzed by hope instead of believing what has been right in my face all along, instead of leaving things where I found them and passing by,

I’ need to come back to the all the things in the middle. The places of balance between rest and activity, work and play, catching and releasing without fear of missing out, knowing what is mine and what is not, and tending my little plot in life with fluid, flexible boundaries that allow in safe people and protect my heart and soul from those people and things that are careless and prone to dropping fragile things.