Shame and the Intuitive Art of Footwashing

May 25, 2025 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ Leave a comment

Last weekend I went and got a manicure and pedicure…the deluxe version that takes 2 hours. This has become a regular self care activity for me thanks to a couple of my coworkers who totally got me hooked on it last year. Following the completion of a 50k trail race back in March, my feet were in TERRIBLE shape and missing a couple of toenails. I wasn’t sure there was going to be much coming back from that foot trauma for a while, but as usual, the nail tech at my favorite shop worked his magic and made my feet look good enough again to embrace sandal-wearing and barefoot walking in public this summer.

While I was sitting in the massage chair, being vehemently kneaded in the back and having warm, lavender-scented foot scrub rubbed into my feet and legs, I started thinking about the stories of Jesus and foot washing in the Gospels…you know, as one automatically does when getting a pedicure. In John 13, Jesus wrapped a towel around himself, a sign of meekness and submission that would be totally unexpected from a respected rabbi, much less the Son of Man, and began to wash the feet of his disciples. Simon, the feisty disciple out of Jesus’ 12 followers, initially adamantly refused to allow Jesus to wash his feet. To which Jesus tenderly rebuked him and explained to him that his (Jesus’) message was that we are to serve each other, even in the lowliest of things, like washing the mud and grime and who knows what else from dirty feet. None of us is worthier or more important than anyone else, no matter our privilege or status.

When I was growing up listening to sermons on this story, and then as a Bible major in college, emphasis was placed on the importance of humbling oneself, letting go of ego and sense of status, and being willing to serve the least among us…those in society who may be considered unworthy, or untouchables, or generally “other” and beneath us. This interpretation is certainly a good one, and obvious from reading the gospel text; we all need to learn the lesson that we are interconnected and equally deserving, and it is good for us to learn to set aside our personal preferences and sometimes embrace any “ick” we perceive in various situations so that we can offer love and service to others. But as I was getting my feet tuned up during my pedicure, I flipped the storyline in my head and for the first time viewed foot washing from the perspective of the person having their feet washed. Foot washing, both literally and metaphorically, is a humbling and helpful practice for the washer, especially if they come from a stance of privilege and status and wellbeing. But just as, or maybe even more important, is the ability of the person having their feet washed…to allow it. Which made me think that maybe the whole point of foot washing (or general service and outreach to others, moving beyond this metaphor) is not to just reach out for the feet all those who are brave enough to strut up and stick a foot out… Maybe foot washing is about humbling ourselves to not only serve others, but also to do the harder work of gently and carefully coaxing out the ones who desperately need their feet washed but are too ashamed and afraid to reach for that help.

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For a huge chunk of my life, I had major shame issues around my feet. It’s not really relevant to go into details about why, but let’s just say it significantly affected me for a long time. Decades. As an adult, I largely got over the shame issues because they were related to a bunch of other topics I addressed in years of therapy and shadow work. However, about the same time I started getting over those shame issues, I became interested into long distance running. My toes and toenails have never been quite the same since. It took me running several marathon-length distances, especially on trails, to realize how much my feet swell at certain distances, and that my running shoes need to be at least a 1/2 size to a full size larger than the shoe size I typically wear on a daily basis. Even with bigger shoes, long distance trail running, with repeated downhill stretches, cause one’s toes to slam repeatedly into the front of the shoebox. Inevitably, blood blisters develop underneath your toenails and eventually some of those toenails will just give up the ghost and fall off. Big toenails will half break off and then never grow back quite normally; instead, they grow out thicker and with ridges.

This loss of toenails from running used to really bother me; I mean, if you’re wearing sandals during the summer and you’re missing toenails, people might not instinctively ascertain that you’re a runner and you legit earned those toenail losses by pounding mile after mile of pavement and single track. But I’m getting over this, and learning to just suck it up and ask for help in making my feet presentable. I was reluctant to go in to the nail salon the other day because of two of my missing toenails, but I did anyway, and wouldn’t you know…my summer feet were salvaged.

Now, I know that no one reading this really cares about my toenails, their color, or what shape they are in. And that’s really not the point of this post. The overall premise that I want to explore is how shame keeps people from asking for help from the people who can give it to them. And, on the flipside, the foot washers…the people who are capable of offering help….must learn to see the offering of help as an artistic practice that must be guided by empathy and love, intuition, and really good boundaries.

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Shame is the greatest cause of debility and loss of a sense of self-agency in life, in my opinion. The worst part about it is that it is often hidden behind masks of the people who carry it. Behaviors that result from shame in one’s life are so frequently misread and misunderstood by others, often leading to the shame-filled person being labeled as angry, or frigid, or snobbish, or aloof, or bitchy, or weak. It’s all the worse when the person driven by shame doesn’t KNOW they are driven by shame. To top it off, we have unspoken rules within cultures that prescribe who is allowed to admit and express that they are filled with shame, and who are told to just suck up their emotions and insecurities and get on with life. Thanks for the good reminder, Brené.

Undealt-with shame can lead to depression and other mental health disorders, anger/rage, and physical un-wellness…both as a result of self neglect and because the body has stored up trauma and unprocessed emotions for so long that it is forced to eventually express itself in the form of illness or the general manifestation of negative external events. Think The Body Keeps The Score and When The Body Says No. Even with my short time working in healthcare as a nurse and now nurse practitioner, the link between childhood trauma, complex PTSD, and the presence of autoimmune disease is so strikingly clear and obvious to me on a daily basis. But even more than autoimmune process triggering by environmental and interpersonal influences from one’s past and current circumstances, I see people who are struggling with poor health (emotional, spiritual, and physical) because they didn’t know that help was available, didn’t know what questions to ask get the help they needed, or they felt so unworthy and ashamed to ask for help, that their health issues piled up over time, eventually resulting in major un-wellness and disease in their bodies.

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The first time I saw a truly diseased foot was when I was a brand new nurse working on an ortho/trauma unit. I was in my late 30s by then, but really had little idea at the time how devastating diabetes could be to people’s extremities, especially their feet and toes. One of my patients on that unit, in my first few months of nursing, had a foot with completely necrotic toes. They were black and leathery and I remember being horrified when I was told that the physician caring for the patient expected the toes to “auto-amputate”…basically fall off on their own. In the meantime, I was to apply betadine to the toes on a daily basis to help prevent infection…my own literal task of foot washing, if you will. I had that patient for several days and prayed each day that his toes would not “auto-amputate” during my shift. I also recall wondering how and why a person could let their feet get to that terrible of shape before seeking help.

Since those first few months as a nurse, I’ve seen a ton of foot and lower extremity disease. Now, working in Infectious Disease as a nurse practitioner, I see patients with foot infections everyday, mostly resulting from uncontrolled diabetes or poor vascular flow to their lower extremities. I recall one patient who initially came to the hospital with cardiac concerns; but due to an odd smell coming from the patient, the attending physician pulled off the patient’s socks to discover a foot that was over half necrotic….tar black in color….that ultimately required a below the knee amputation. The situation was really sad, because if healthcare providers had been aware of the problem and able to intervene much sooner, the patient probably could have had at least some blood flow restored to the foot and avoided such a significant amputation.

So many people intersect with the healthcare system far too late to prevent or reverse many of their health problems. And while the reasons for this are usually complicated and numerous, I have seen countless situations where intense shame and embarrassment and a lack of self agency prevented people from reaching out for help until they were desperate and had no other choice.

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So how exactly is the act of metaphorical foot washing, or serving others who are shame-filled and desperately in need of help, an art?

I think the primary answer is that humans cannot be approached through a reductionistic, mechanistic model and be expected to achieve sustainable wellness.. Based on what I can tell and have experienced in my life, humans are complex, nuanced, layered beings who are not just a bunch of parts and systems that function together, although unfortunately, much of Western medicine approaches the subject this way. Pardon my woefully lacking knowledge of quantum physics, but I like to think of humans in terms of quantum entanglement…both in how all of the aspects of their bodies work together as well as how humans interact with each other in relationship. Simply put, quantum entanglement is the idea that particles become interconnected, such that the state of one particle affects the state of another, regardless of the distance between them. This concept has been extrapolated by some scientists and spiritual seekers, including well thought of theoretical physicists, as applying to things like intuition, the collective unconscious, empathy, synchronicities, and the possibility that we are all part of a larger, more organized, whole. I’m currently reading Wholeness and the Implicate Order by the late physicist David Bohm, and having my mind blown.

Formulas don’t apply to human healing…physically or emotionally. Now, for sure, at some level, there are general principles of medical therapy that tend to produce similar results. We have evidence of this through well designed and executed scientific studies and research. As for psychological and spiritual healing, we have general archetypal patterns we can reference, as well as various therapy modalities that we can offer to people that appear to “work” and help them overcome personal struggles, traumatic events, move forward in personal growth, etc. Some psychotropic drugs appear to offer relief from anxiety, mood disorders, and depressive states, at least for a while. We have medical protools and treatment guidelines that often move patients in the general direction we want them to go as evidenced by labs, imaging, and their overall clinical pictures. But ultimately, healing…in all the ways it is needed, is not achieved through a one-size fits all approach. Even “alternative’ avenues like psychedelics, breathwork, Reiki, and other “non-medical” mind-body modalities offer dramatic change in some people while seeming to barely affect others.

The art of foot washing is not to just indiscriminately give out what we currently have to offer (or what we THINK we have to offer) to those in front of us who need help. This art, rather, involves some deep introspection on the part of the washer, to be able to read situations and intentions, perceive what may be needed or not needed in various settings, understand as best they can their own motivations, and be able to synthesize both analytical and intuitive knowledge in how they interact with the person whose “feet are being washed”. The idea of “intuitive art”, as described in this post’s title involves approaching service via a creative process that includes spontaneity, creativity, the ability to trust one’s “gut”, focusing on the journey and not just the final result, being open to experimentation (ethically, of course), and all of this done in a non-judgemental space….basically the exact opposite approach than that of interacting with others through a reductionist, mechanistic, black and white model. Whew…sorry for that really long sentence!

The following are a few considerations that came to mind that I think we must ask in order to creatively respond to and approach service to others, especially when shame is involved:

What do we, as the “foot washer” have to offer the person (or people) in front of us? What are we skilled at? What are we trained in? What are we absolutely not qualified to talk about or give advice about? How much time do we legitimately have to offer this person? Are we tapped into our intuition and do we trust ourselves and our instincts? Are we able to determine what role is ours to play in any specific situation?
Are we aware of the things that influence us personally and how we interact with others? Are we aware of our implicit biases? Are we aware of our own shadows? Do we have a history of specific traumas that might impact how we approach and interact with this person? Do we have any codependency issues? Are we aware of any lingering shame that WE carry and haven’t healed? Are we able to listen without judgements? Are we able to offer help without inappropriately becoming emotionally involved and overly invested in the situation? Do we approach life through a “right versus wrong” model or rules-based mindset? Have we every considered our attachment styles and how that might influence all of our relationships? Do we have healthy interpersonal boundaries and stick to them? Do we have a good sense of where we end and another person starts? Do we feel like it is our job to “fix” people?
Most important of all: has this person invited us or given permission for us to offer any level of help? Is the person we are aiming to help READY to receive help? Are they ready to receive help from US? Are we opinion-spewing all over them or have they asked us for our thoughts and insights? For those of us who engage in energy work and medical intuitive practices, have they given us clear permission to look within them and their energy patterns? Is the timing for helping right? Is the setting right? Are we inadvertently or unintentionally pressuring or manipulating the person to take help from us when they aren’t wanting it or aren’t ready for it? On the flip side, is the person asking for too much of us…beyond what we are capable of giving, wanting to give, or can appropriately give?

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So, clearly, that long list of questions implies that foot washing and service, as an art, is not necessarily easy. To do it well, we have to be good listeners and observers, to not be afraid to look deeply at our own “stuff”, and to be able to perceive what belongs to us and what belongs to others. Below are a couple of areas I want to extrapolate on related to the questions above – not all tied directly to each other, but definitely related, and not in any particular order. I’m not necessarily coming to any conclusions these extrapolations, but mostly thinking about how they might tie into the idea behind this whole post.

Service to others, especially in working with others who are experiencing shame (or are in a position often considered “less than” by our society, such as minority status, poverty, etc), requires that we let go of our egos and what may make us as foot washers feel good. Little side story: I grew up in the church, got a Bible degree, have been on some mission trips to various places, and have generally experienced alot of American-flavored Christianity as a whole. Something that has been very popular for decades is for folks from the US to go on short-term mission trips around the world, whether it be medical, to hold revivals, to support local long term missionaries, etc. At my current age, looking back over my years active involved in churches and these kinds of activities, I have alot of thoughts about the usefulness of mission trips. There are some absolute benefits for sure….they often open the eyes of people about the way others around the world live, and the struggles they may have that differ from those in our country. I can say personally that short term mission trips changed me as a person for the better and had a direct influence on how I wanted to live my life. And, short term medical mission trips, for example, can offer some quality, concentrated medical care to needed areas and people groups that they might not have otherwise gotten. BUT…there is a danger in providing these kinds of “services”, especially when we don’t evaluate our motivations, understand the culture we are serving, or when we drop in for a week or two to a complicated situation and then easily fly back home without having to wrestle with long term implications of how our little trips might have affected the people we left behind. I kind of suspect that short term mission trips, church-based or not, have frequently done as much damage as they have good, largely because it is very easy for us to, even unconsciously, feel like saviors going to help those poor people less fortunate than us. These kinds of trips don’t always stop and look carefully at what is actually needed in a certain area by specific people at a given time, but enthusiastically bombard them with what WE THINK they need and want.
Trying to serve people who struggle with shame can be so complicated for so many reasons. As mentioned earlier, some people can hide their shame so well, because they are high functioning and so nobody on the periphery may ever know they need help. Mental health issues can also dramatically influence the “foot washing process”, especially if the shame filled person has a personality disorder like border-line, or is just really needy because of anxious or other fear-based attachments. As I look back on my 20s and early 30s, I can see that I, in some ways, was a pretty needy person. Which makes me cringe because I personally know how hard it can be to have needy people in your life. I think when people who are dealing with shame, like I did for so long, see others outside of them who might be able to help either carry the burden of the shame or actually help heal it (foot washers), we (those who need our feet washed) can really latch on tight and ask for too much of the foot washers.
- This is where really good boundaries are important. People who are healing from shame often take a while to learn that healing is an inside job: they can receive help and insight and advice from those around them, but they actually have to do the hard work of healing themselves. Shame makes us desperately want a savior, a white knight to come and fix things for us and take care of us. But that’s not the way life works. Nobody is coming to save us. We must be our own saviors. Someone who understands the intuitive art of foot washing knows this, and will keep boundaries in place…making sure that each party knows what is an isn’t theirs. Side note: when we actually learn we can save ourselves….self-agency and trust in ourselves just grows exponentially.
- I’ve frequently looked back over my own life and the healing journey from shame that I’ve been on. I recognized that the people that inspired me the most to grow and become the person I am now where not the people who were emotionally entangled with me and had terrible boundaries. Nor were they the people who were there any time I thought I needed them. Nor were they the people who tried to “fix” me. Nope…the people that prompted the biggest growth in my life were those that had solid boundaries: they knew who they were and what they had to offer; they also had alot of faith in me and what I could be come, but they were not so invested that their sense of wellbeing and satisfaction was at all a function of how I was doing emotionally or physically. The people that helped changed my life gave me help when I needed it, but then expected me to continue to do my own work and to go search out other resources. And most of all, I was inspired to change by them by how I saw them live their lives…secure in themselves, curious and open-minded about everything, with a strong trust in their own intuition and gut instincts and self-worth.
I think we all need to work on our perceptions of others, and remember that what we see on the outside of a person is not necessarily indicative of all that is going on on in the inside. This is where intuition is so key: tapping into unseen knowledge that is all around us in the universe that might not be explicitly measured, but it real nonetheless. I think about this alot when caring for patients. For some complicated patients, it would be easy to just write them off as lazy or non-compliant with medical recommendations and prescribed medications, or as people who just make really dumb decisions in life that caused them to end up where they currently are. I think this reductionistic way of thinking, even though I can also be prone to it myself at times, is a really unhelpful way to view humanity. I refuse to believe that people intentionally try to make bad decisions and make their lives more difficult. I am convinced that people generally do the best they know how at the time with the information they have with their perspectives on that information, and that un-dealt with shame can be a noose around people’s necks until others help them recognize and transform it.
- Intuitive foot washing, per my musing during my pedicure, is the idea of seeing the ‘thing behind the thing”, which requires tuning in to who you are serving, using more than just the five senses…and learning to recognize that your perception of a person’s reality may not at all be what they are experiencing. The “thing behind the thing” is the real deep-seated emotions and beliefs that drive behaviors and how one interacts with the world. In my experience, when one has deep shame about something, it can influence a variety of external behaviors and reactions to the environment around them, and we need to hold alot of grace for them for all of that.
  - When people claim to be angry about something, or afraid of something, or annoyed by something…there is almost always a “thing behind the thing” that is really bothering them. It is almost always related to a core wound or big area of shame that hasn’t healed, and even they might not be aware of that core wound “thing behind the thing” that is driving their emotions or actions or beliefs.
- And, going back to quantum physics from earlier: we as the observer of the person in front of us are not objective. We individually can’t ever claim to have a grasp on “true” reality or have an absolute understanding of what is going on with a person or their environment. This is because there is a ton of information about that person that we aren’t privy to, but also because reality is subjective and is based on the relationship between us (the observer) and the person we are observing.

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I’ve kind of gone all over the place with this post, so will start wrapping it up now, but may come back with more thoughts on this topic in the future. I’ve really only scratched the surface of all I want to talk about here. In my nerd-ery, I like to think of these kinds of posts that I sometimes write as another form of quantum entanglement: I go to do something mundane and everyday, like getting. a pedicure, and then suddenly my thought process jets off into what might initially seem to be completely un-related, and I am ultimately reminded that all things are interconnected, no matter how distant they might appear at the macroscopic level.

I am incredibly grateful to all of the people in my own life who have helped me identify my past shame and heal from it, all while maintaining their own strong boundaries and showing me what it means to trust oneself, develop securely attached relationships, and learn to ask for help in healthy, appropriate ways when it is most needed.

And I am super grateful nail techs who can make my feet pretty again after I’ve beaten them bloody doing the things I love to do.

To grow exponentially, shame absolutely needs three things: secrecy, silence, and judgment. Shame cannot survive two things: being spoken and being met with empathy.” -Brené Brown

I’m Pretty Sure I’m Harder On Myself Than You Could Ever Be…

May 22, 2018May 22, 2018 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ Leave a comment

Photo credit: Frankieleon

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

-Brené Brown

You know how Jesus famously told his followers in Matthew 7:1 not to judge? And then how we have only taken that half seriously? Because we often give others tremendous grace and then lash our own backs with a cat-o-nine tails whip of shame, self-deprecation, self-loathing, and repeated mantras of how unworthy, stupid, and ridiculous we are.

OK, maybe YOU personally don’t do this, but trust me, I’m not the only one out there who judges themselves more harshly than the rest of the world could ever possibly. I meet people on a very regular basis who fight a constant battle against demons within their own minds about their self-worth. I once thought that Satan was a real being. But now I know what the Accuser really is: it is all the lies that we’ve been told about ourselves, and all the traumas we’ve experienced and were never counseled through; it is all of our internalized fears and failures that have never had an avenue for expression and the chance for the light of truth to be shed on them…all of these tangle together into a dark web of, dare I say, evil?, in our minds that taunt us and judge us and hinder us from grasping on to the divine within us.

Some days, like yesterday, I sink into a state of despair where all I can see when I look back on my life is failure upon failure upon failure. It’s the kind of despair that paralyzes your breathing and your mind plays a non-stop reel of memory after memory where you could have done better, acted more kindly, been more patient. And after the reel slows, you teeter on the edge of panic, knowing that you won’t get a do-over. Your kids won’t get younger; you can’t undo the decisions you made that have lingering consequences; you can’t ask the questions of your dead loved ones that you should have asked years ago. As far as we can tell on this side of death, we only get this one shot at this life. (Who knows, maybe there are parallel universes where we’re living the same lives but making different choices…I find that doubtful.)

I called my best friend for help; she is brilliant, is a therapist, and knows these places of despair intimately. She reminded me using the rational mindset she always takes when dealing with my life drama, that my despair and self-judging of myself to be a failure is a learned behavior. The reason my mind can only remember my mistakes and failures in the past is because that is what it was trained to do. The neural grooves of my brain have been firmly set over the years, and so the paths of self-hatred and judgment are much easier trails for electrical signals to travel down then trying to forge new paths of self-acceptance, and reframing, and learning to focus on the things I’ve done right and well.

I am getting better over the years at being easier on myself, and not sitting in self-judgment for as long as I used to. But I still face the same triggers again and again and know that only by being aware of the pain and discomfort that comes with them will I be able to rise against the shadow monster in my mind.

Here’s an example, maybe you can relate:

This last week I had a nursing clinical to attend based on a varying schedule. On the day of the clinical I looked at the schedule twice, but somehow managed to misread it twice, and thus retained incorrect information about where I was supposed to be and when. I’ve prided myself on the fact that so far in this program, barring ice storms with resulting standstill traffic, I haven’t been late or missed any school or clinical events.

On this particular clinical day I made my way to my afternoon session only to find that I was 45 minutes late – and all the while I had thought I was 15 minutes early. I made a quick explanation to my preceptor, who I don’t think was particularly thrilled with me….and the self-judgment commenced.

For the next hour and a half I struggled against the lies and self-deprecating thoughts that came flooding down my brain’s pipeline: “Julie, how could you be so stupid; Julie only horrible people are late for clinicals (this is a stupid thought from the start because I don’t generally judge other people for being late to clinicals); Julie, you’ve just defined your character to your preceptor – you’re irresponsible, have substandard morals, and possess poor character.”

It’s totally like the “devil on one shoulder and angel on the other” image. My brain projects an untruth out in front of me, and the little bit of me that is learning to discern my true-self musters up the courage to refute those accusing comments. And it really seems like a battle…I have to force those signals in my brain to go off-road from their traditionally laid paths and forge new connections that are based in new beliefs. I can almost feel my brain heating up in exertion when I do this. Anyone feeling me here? Know that I”m talking about?

The good news is, this struggle is getting easier over time. If the above scenario had happened to me a couple of years ago, I would have shamed myself for the next three days before finally feeling some relief. But that particular day I was able to let go of my self-judgment after only two hours, accepting that I had made a mistake but that it offered no real reflection of my true character and intentions. I simply needed to apologize and make corrections for the future to try to make sure similar things don’t happen again. And my preceptor – she may or may not have formed a poor opinion of me for the rest of my life, but that’s really out of my control.

For the population of we people who are cruel and harsh with ourselves…it’s because we’ve never learned to question our thoughts. We think we ARE OUR THOUGHTS. But there is a real YOU, and a real ME, that reside beneath our thoughts, separate from them. Our thoughts are simply streams of consciousness that pass through our minds, random lava flows of miscellany from all the stored up memories, knowledge, and experiences bound up in synapses. And all of those stored bits and pieces are there in particular forms because of how we perceive the outside world and what happens to us – they aren’t definitive truth and reality.

Back to Jesus and judging…the end of his statement is “lest you be judged.” I really don’t think here that he means God will judge you. And I don’t necessarily think he means that you will be judged based on a one to one ratio for every time you judge. I really think it’s all about attitude and perspective on life. Even though it may sound a bit woo-wooey, I believe on some level we manifest stuff in our lives. Or maybe, as a different way to frame it, we unconsciously seek out those things that align with the way we understand the world.

For example, if we believe the universe to be stingy and stacked against us, we will project that onto everything we come across and thus truly experience it as stingy and mean. But, if we perceive life to be one of abundance and the universe as good, then we will see those qualities in everything we encounter. The same is true in our interactions with people: if we view ourselves or others through a lens of judgment, we will see whatever comes to us through that same judgment lens. So ultimately, Jesus isn’t just giving us another injunction to govern our external behavior. He is trying to teach us that how we see the world and approach the world is how we will perceive the world is treating us.

So, if you’re anything like me…if you berate yourself regularly, if you are harder on yourself than any other person has ever been with you, if all you can see are your mistakes and not your wins…you need to commence with some hard questioning of all that comes down the thought pipeline that you grab onto without thinking. A huge help to me with this has been The Work of Byron Katie. This systematic inquiry practice has shown me that if you relentlessly question everything that happens to you, it is easier to see what is really true and what is just the story we believe about ourselves and the world around us.

Disappointment in Parenting

May 3, 2018May 4, 2018 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ 3 Comments

disappointment — Photo credit: Brit-knee

Being a parent is HARD, y’all. You know, we often ask new parents of young babies how they are sleeping, and we set up meal trains to bring them food, and we offer to clean their houses and watch the infants so Mom and Dad can go on a date.

Can I just say, after having had three babies, that parents need way more help when the kids are older than when they’re fresh out of the toaster? When your kids are tiny, parenting is really only about being able to stay awake and learning the technical aspects of keeping a little human alive and well. Parents end up exhausted and cranky, but usually, the true existential crises don’t come until those little humans start talking and showing their personalities and wills.

I tend to laugh at movies and other programs when teenagers are handed fake babies to care for as a method of birth control. This is so ineffective in my opinion. They should hand the teenagers toddlers up through eleven-year-olds, and a house with laundry everywhere, a sink full of two-day old dishes, toothpaste all over the bathroom walls, and pee everywhere but the toilet. I believe this would be a much more effective form of contraception.

Now, I should preface before I go much further that I’m totally riffing off Rob Bell’s latest podcast on disappointment. And, I also know I’m setting myself up to be crucified by people who have their lives more pulled together than me. But I suspect I”m not alone in what I’m going to write about here, and I also admit that I’m processing my own thoughts about parenting while I write this.

I’m so disappointed as a parent. Remember that book from years ago, Disappointment with God, by Phillip Yancey, where he voices questions about God that you’re not really actually supposed to ask out loud? I don’t remember much of the book, but the title stuck with me. Here, in this post, I’m just going to say the things that you’re not supposed to say out loud about parenting – because it’s true, and real, and sometimes you have to say hard things out loud to be able to move forward.

Parenting is not what it was supposed to be. My kids are not who they were supposed to be. Furthermore, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and I have no certainty of the outcomes. I really hate that – I want to have a foolproof plan for childrearing and I want to know that my plan will succeed with all of me still intact.

Disappointment, it seems, comes because the expectations we have about something aren’t met. I had alot of expectations when I had my kids. First, I didn’t expect to become a parent when I did. I had other plans in mind, another agenda in place, which was abruptly taken off the table. So, disappointed as I was at the time to have to suddenly change directions, I threw my shoulders back and took on the mantle of parenting. At the time, I saw my goal to be raising children for Jesus – get them on the straight and narrow from the get-go, and pave the path for them to cruise straight into heaven after they die, all the while growing up to be compassionate adults who engage in some meaningful work among non-Jesus-ified people before then. I would also homeschool them, push them to their limits academically, and mold them to be sweet, tactful, helpful little people. And all the while I would do it as a model parent, sure of myself and my role as their authority figure.

Yeah, well, those idealistic notions lasted about two seconds. It took me only a couple of months with my first kid to realize I had no clue what the hell being a parent was all about. And it didn’t take me very long to recognize that we tend to become parents for reasons and with expectations that will inevitably be tested.

Children, as it seems, have very little interest in helping us become fulfilled as humans. They aren’t concerned with how their personalities and temperaments trigger us. They refuse to stay cute, calm, cuddly, and docile. Now that all of my children are in elementary school, I have concluded that people should be warned against bringing these little creatures into the world unless they want all of their faults mirrored back to them on a regular basis, have every single decision they make questioned again and again, and be repeatedly brought to the brink of insanity.

I think my disappointment in parenting comes from the fact that I didn’t know, years ago, that raising children is nothing short of a spiritual practice. We are not really our children’s teachers at a certain level; they are here to teach us about life and what matters. They are here to wear off our rough edges and make US fit for the Kingdom, (drawing from Christian language) not the other way around. They are here to pave THEIR own paths, not meet our emotional needs or help us feel successful.

I didn’t decide to be a parent so that I could be perpetually disappointed, but that’s where I am. I’m not a masochist; if I had known how hard it is to be a parent, I doubt I would have willingly signed up. Now, before people start beating me up and saying I’m heartless and evil: me being disappointed has nothing to do with how much I love my boys or how I would die for them without thinking about it, or how they have brought with them so many unexpected gifts into my life.

Disappointment is not always a bad thing, I don’t think, even though it hurts. It has made very clear to me so many of my attachments to things that aren’t healthy or helpful. It has shown me that my children do not belong to me; they are simply passing through my hands for a short time. And most importantly, I think, my parenting disappointments have taught me to be much more gracious to other parents who may be doing this raising kids thing differently than me, because parenting is damn hard and we are all just fumbling and doing the best we can.

Richard Rohr frequently talks about how we must become disillusioned with our own personal salvation projects, realizing they don’t get us anywhere, for us to really move forward. He’s primarily talking about how we relate to God, but I think it applies to things like parenting, too. It’s only when we absolutely reach the ends of our ropes with our kids can we truly begin to parent out of grace, and maybe, out of our true selves and not our egos.

I think I’m edging to this point. I’ve read SO VERY MANY parenting books from people across various philosophies. I’ve taken parenting classes. I’ve tried to be the authoritarian parent and the benevolent democratic parent. I’m tried behavior modification, begging, threats, and though I no longer use it because it has only made things worse-spanking.

What I’ve found is none of these is a silver bullet solution. There is no one-size fits all pattern to parenting. And sometimes, even when you’ve done every single thing right, you’re kid, OR YOU, will still screw up tremendously.

One of my boys has really been struggling this year. Behavior issue after behavior issue, hitting, tearing things apart, being steely in his obstinance. I get call after call and email after email from his school. He’s been in the office this many times today for such and such. He’s going to have in school suspension tomorrow for such and such. He just got kicked out of his after-school program for such and such.

At a certain point, all I hear is the Charlie Brown wah, wah, wah, wah. I hear it again when everyone in my life starts throwing out suggestions, trying to be helpful. Maybe he has ADD. Well you know, Julie, divorce is hard on kids. Maybe you should get him tested for this, or that, or that. Julie, you need to institute some real structure and consistency in his life. Julie, you need to be less demanding.

My kids tend to work in cycles, too, and sometimes they tag team against me. As soon as I put out a fire with one kid, another one flares up with a different kid. It is exhausting. And SO disappointing. Because I wanted to be the GOOD Mom. The one who is always emotionally available. The one who always knows the right thing to say. The one who is always fair and just. The one who never spoils but is never rigid.

I’m disappointed because I’m not the person I thought I should be and wanted to be, and I’m disappointed in my kids because they aren’t the people I wanted them to be or who they were supposed to be.

Back to the personal salvation project idea. This is what I’m tentatively realizing: life seldom brings to us what we think we want, but rather, it serves up daily what we truly need. If there’s one thing I know for sure, life undoubtedly brought me the perfect kids to reveal every flaw, and every shred of greed and selfishness, and all the lazy bits hidden down deep within me. I thought my personal salvation project was supposed to be about rocking it as a parent and raising brilliant, charming kids, all the while, never repeating the mistakes my own parents made. But I should have known, growing up with the words of Jesus ingrained in me…to find yourself, you must first lose yourself. I’m disappointed because I was secretly hoping I could bypass this part – maybe I’d get lucky and it wouldn’t apply to me.

My final great disappointment in parenting is that you can’t just fix things by finding the right book or parenting technique or just working harder. Sometimes no matter what you aim for, things will be hard and you will do the wrong thing and you’ll feel like throttling both yourself and your kids. Don’t you just hate this? It’s so counterintuitive in today’s world – we believe that if we just apply the scientific method and a bit of logic -Voilà!- problem solved and we will all get along splendidly!

My one great consolation right now as a parent is this: since my children have done such a magnificent job of tearing apart my ego and my understanding of what things are “supposed” to be like, I’m starting to believe that maybe there isn’t a “supposed to” anywhere. Is there one right way to parent? I’m thinking not. Is there one particular way children are supposed to act and behave? Really, who are we to say?

Maybe the whole point, if there is a point, is not to try and make our lives “look” like anything. Maybe we are just to accept what comes, deal with it the best we know how, and receive the results as gifts, even if at the moment they feel like anything but gifts. Maybe our attachments to outcomes and our expectations are causing us all of our problems and disappointment in the first place?

Right now I’m trying to learn to just “sit” in my disappointment, to let go of my attachments to what “should be.” And I’m grasping on for dear life to the words of people who have been frequently disappointed in life, yet have found it to be an avenue with which to truly find themselves.

““Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings…” – Thomas Merton

How I Killed Jesus, and Brought Him Back to Life.

December 28, 2017May 16, 2018 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ Leave a comment

A friend of mine gave me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for Christmas. I had picked the book up by accident way back in college when I mistook it for a required text for a particular class. Instead of returning the book, I tried to slog my way through it. Needless to say, at the time I had absolutely no idea what Robert Pirsig was trying to say. After a valiant attempt to decipher his thoughts, I gave up and toted the book off to Goodwill.

But this time around, almost two decades later, the book came alive to me within the first few pages. I even hauled it to work with me to read during my break. Pirsig is giving verbiage to nebulous ideas I had circulating in my brain but could never pin down, never sink my teeth into. I suspect many of my future posts will be referencing this book, which is destined to become one of my favorites.

I’m about a quarter of the way through the text right now, and came across a passage that brought with it a wave of “Aha! This!”. To explain why, let me give a little back story. Until I was in my early 30s, I was a devoted Christian, fitting well into mainstream evangelical culture. I believed in the virgin birth, the literal resurrection of Jesus, and was convinced that in some form or fashion, Jesus would return and transform all that is ugly and broken. I did have a few nagging doubts during those years, concerns that could never quite be reconciled. But, hey, if my mother, who was a physicist and professor, could hold the enormous paradox between a literal understanding of the Bible and what she knew to be true of the cosmos, who was I to interject my uncertainties?

I ran into problems when I discovered that many of the “Christian” precepts that had ushered me into adulthood through a safe, and albeit, naive childhood, were no longing serving me well. In fact, I was wondering if some of them had ever served me well at all. I began to ask hard questions that I apparently had hidden in my subconscious-cautiously at first, and then headlong with abandon. The result: I killed Jesus. At least, I killed the projection of Jesus that I had carried with me for so many years. The Jesus I had prayed to, the Jesus I had worshipped, the Jesus I hoped would save me from some eternal damnation.

In the pages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I stumbled across this:

“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.” p. 81

In my case, the analytic thought was the science and logic that I know to be true from my education and continual learning. This knife broke down my theological scaffolding, and the Jesus I believed in who was teetering, precariously, came crashing down with it. I grieved this dead Jesus, because he had been my everything for thirty-some-odd years. All that I did and all that I believed myself to be centered on this story of him. But Pirsig also describes what I began to discover over time:

“And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, it just is.” p. 81

The fact is, I could have gotten stuck at the death of Jesus in my mind. I could have gotten angry and cynical and believed that since there is no Jesus anymore, life is pointless and haphazard and completely impersonal. But with the help of writings from Marcus Borg and Joseph Campbell, I began to see that me killing Jesus was necessary to rebirth him in my mind as something bigger and beyond all the petty little questions I had been asking in the first half of life. So many of those questions stopped being questions I really cared to ask.

““So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don’t have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power – And How They Can Be Restored

I also took Campbell’s advice when my understanding of the way the world works imploded…it’s SO good!:

“If you are falling….dive.”
― Joseph Campbell

Campbell said if you’re going to fall, you might as well make it a voluntary act. So, I went with it and found that the abyss I thought I was falling into was actually a wide spaciousness that caught me. And that expanse birthed a new Jesus for me.

No longer is Jesus the only saving resurrection story. Rather, he is the archetypal human that revealed to us how we must die to enter into real life. As Richard Rohr has remarked, the death and resurrection story of Jesus shows us the growth and change pattern for all of life.

The new Jesus story I cling to is so much richer than the one I used to recite to myself. Jesus is now to me someone who worked to overthrow the domination system with a non-violent ethic. He was someone who died repeatedly to his ego and lived out of his true self, leaving us an example of how to do the same. He was someone who lived in such union with the divine within himself, that one couldn’t tell where his humanity ended and divinity began.

The primary reason that this resurrected Jesus means so much more to me is that I am no longer enmeshed in a belief that I am inherently a horrid creature in need of saving by some external being. This new Jesus has shown me I only have to go inside of myself to find all that I need, and that at my core, I am light. And at the same time, I no longer have to be afraid of the darkness. It all belongs. Death and crisis and tragedy are transforming agents that let the light in, and grace is the vehicle that carries them all.

I now happily wield my analytic thought knife, and allow others in my life to slash away at beliefs I am clinging to with their own knives. The person who gave me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been stabbing away at me, and I welcome it. I’m not so afraid any more of dying things, or of dying myself, because I know that life is ever on the other side.

“The secret of life is to die before you die – and find that there is no death.” -Eckart Tolle