Shh, it’s a secret

Just days before my mother died last year, she revealed a secret to me, a secret she had kept for almost fifty years, a secret that flipped a light switch in my brain. Suddenly, I could look at events from fifty years ago and see them in a different light.

The clarity was almost blinding, and I wanted to explore the implications of what I had learned, but my mother was dying, and I needed to pay attention to what was happening right in front of me instead of examining events from the past. So, I tucked her secret away.

And then one day last fall, her secret came rushing back to me like a tidal wave.

I was overwhelmed with a truth I had never even considered, a truth that explained my father’s attitude toward me after I got divorced. I realized that my life could have gone in an entirely different direction had I known then what my mother had revealed before her death.

I was hurt and angry.

Moreover, my mother’s secret dislodged a secret that I had been keeping for more than fifty years, a secret I was not consciously aware I was keeping.

Suddenly, disparate pieces of my early twenties fell into place like cogs on a gear. I had great clarity about my early life and things that had happened to me that had shaped the rest of my life.

At family gatherings, my younger brother liked to point to my mother and then to me and say, “Tree, apple.”

My mother was great at denial and at keeping secrets. She denied anything bad that happened to her and would not risk disclosing an unattractive (or downright ugly) truth about someone, in case it might be embarrassing (or possibly illegal). She protected people who were not worthy of protection, and she taught me to do the same.

Like my mother, I am a great secret keeper, a steel trap for people’s confidences, and I have held sacred the secrets people have shared with me over the years.

What I know about secrets, though, is that the shame attached to them can turn something innocent into something sinister, and I know how shame can paralyze.  

A few years ago, when I finally said the name of the man who raped me, I realized I had been protecting him by not saying his name; I was keeping it secret.

Saying his name—revealing the secret—broke the power of shame over me.

Back to the tree…apple scenario.

I have spent my adult life trying to unlearn my mother’s lessons, trying to be more honest and forthcoming. I have gone to ACOA meetings and worked the steps. I know that we are only as sick as our secrets, and I have tried to live transparently, without secrets.

And yet now I am faced with two new secrets from my past.

But those events are no longer buried, and I have begun talking about what happened to me.

On retreat–the bear got poked

Some years, my week-long silent retreats are days of rest, prayer, meditative walks and feeling God’s presence. Other years, some old wound in need of healing is revealed. This year’s retreat was the latter.

On the fourth night, I attended a Healing Service. The presider talked about the difference between being cured (disease is gone) and healed (disease is still there but attitude toward the disease is transformed).

He talked about holding grudges and how doing so is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

None of this was new to me.

Then he shared a story from his university days in Europe, and I felt resentful. “Lucky you,” I thought, and then I remembered that I had gone to Spain when I was in college. Why would I resent his time in Europe? It made no sense.

That night, I had a dream—one I had had before—about not knowing my place, about overstepping my bounds.

“The bear got poked,” I told my spiritual director.

I told her how I noticed my resentment during the healing service and how it had surprised me. And then I started to cry. Tears from some deep place, pouring out as if a scab had been ripped away from a wound.

I try to pay attention to when I am angry, and I try not to hold grudges. So how had I not noticed that my snide comments and eye-rolls were a sign of resentment or envy?

My director talked about how grudges can come from old hurts that seemingly have nothing to do with the current situation. She suggested I reflect on hurtful events from my past and try to get some distance from my emotional entanglements to them.

That night, I saw three deer walking along the edge of the woods. Deer are a sign for me of God’s presence, and in that moment, I felt comforted in the reminder that God is with me on this journey.

The next day, I walked to the wetlands and just as I was about to sit down on the dock, I noticed two deer about twenty feet away, partially hidden by the brown reeds. They looked at me but did not run. I sat down and watched them. 

After a few minutes, they disappeared into the woods.

I remembered my walk through the woods my first day of retreat and how the undergrowth made the woods seem impenetrable. Yet the deer we able to enter.

I took a walk through the woods and felt that God was inviting me to look again at the undergrowth, but with a softened gaze so I could see beyond what appeared to be a mess—like those optical illusions that require soft eyes to see the hidden picture.  

With soft eyes, I can see that the deer are hiding in plain sight.

With soft eyes, I can see that God, too, is right in front of me, desiring to heal my wounds.

Be present

Be holy (Leviticus 19:2)

Those two words from Leviticus—be holy—caught my attention when I read them during my morning prayer and then heard them at Mass.

Be holy.

I asked myself what I need to do to be holy.

And there is the rub. God is saying be and I am thinking do.

It is a familiar trap for me because I am much better at doing than I am at being.

Give me a task that needs to get done, some project that requires attention or a problem to be solved, and I will jump right in.

But just being? Well, I am not so good at that.

It was one of my biggest challenges when I lived in l’Arche, a Christian community where people with and without developmental disabilities live together. The invitation of l’Arche is to be and being is more highly valued than doing. Living in l’Arche was the beginning of my intentional practice of being.

I have gotten better at it, but obviously, I still have a way to go because I read and heard be and asked what I need to do.

Then I thought of the people I know whom I think of as holy and considered what it is about them that makes them holy.

It occurred to me that all the people I think of as holy are good at being present to the people who are right in front of them. It is not that they don’t make plans, because they do, but their primary focus is on the now. They focus on each person as an individual, and they see the humanity in every person.

One friend texted me the other day that she thinks of people as mosaics made up of broken pieces, some pieces weaker and more likely to break again; other pieces are made stronger by whatever glue binds them.

That honors each person. It doesn’t deny weakness or faults but sees beyond character traits to a more holistic picture of the person. She isn’t trying to fix people; she is trying to be present to them. That is holy.

At the customer service counter in the grocery store the other day, the cashier vented to another store employee about a customer who “went off” on her because the cashier had taken a phone call. The cashier was upset and lamented how angry people are. It was an unholy encounter, full of hurt and anger. I stood and listened, trying to be present to the cashier in her distress.

When she turned to me, it seemed she might have been expecting that I, too, would “go off” on her because I had been waiting while she vented.

“I’m not angry,” I said. “It is a beautiful, sunny day and I am in no rush to go anywhere. Take your time.”

She breathed out and smiled.

“Just be present to the person in front of you,” I said to myself “and that will be holy.”

Transform me

Transform in me,

judgmentalism into compassion,

insecurity into confidence,

fear into trust and

anger into acceptance.

Then I will be free to

love unconditionally,

forgive without limit and

let go of all that holds me back.

Or is it that if I love unconditionally,

forgive without limit and

let go of all that holds me back,

judgmentalism will be transformed into compassion,

insecurity into confidence,

fear into trust and

anger into acceptance?

Gratitude

Winter came early this year, unexpected.

I was not ready for it; I thought I had more time.

What else catches me by surprise?

Acts of kindness?

Moments of joy?

Flashes of fear or anger?  

Hold on loosely to everything because it is all passing.

Give thanks for everything because it is all gift.

God heals

At Mass last weekend we heard the story of Naaman being cured of leprosy after plunging into the Jordan River seven times (2 Kings 14). The passage immediately before the cure story, though, relates Naaman’s expectations of how a cure would happen and his disappointment when things went in a different direction:

But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not…the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage (2 Kings 5:11-12).

How often do we have an idea of what God should do in order to meet our needs? How often do our expectations limit our experience of God? How often are we like Naaman—so certain of how events should unfold?

Naaman believed he knew the best way for the cure to happen. When his expectation was not met, he “went away angry.” Sound familiar?

I work in a cancer support center, and I see plenty of people going away angry—after a treatment does not produce the expected results, or family and friends don’t act in an expected way, or employers are uncompromising about time off or our bodies don’t rebound as we had hoped.

Letting go of our expectations can be so difficult. Like Naaman, we can be blind to the possibility of other options, stuck in our way of seeing things, certain that we know what is best.

But when we can let go of our expectations and be open to other options, we can make room for God to do what God will do. Sometimes that means a cure, but often it means a healing—of past hurts, fears or insecurities.

Letting go of our expectations opens us to endless possibilities.

During the nine months my friend Jim had brain cancer, we had plenty of experiences of unmet expectations. Surgery and treatments didn’t work—the cancer came back with a vengeance—accompanied by more complications than we anticipated. And people often said or did things that were just not helpful, usually acting out of their own expectations.

Let go were the two words I said repeatedly.

And when I could let go of my need to be right or to be in control, I saw how God was healing me in unexpected ways. I wanted to continue to live in that state of openness, so I pledged to say yes to whatever was offered.

In the year after Jim died, saying yes led to all kinds of unexpected opportunities, including a trip to Paris! Saying yes kept me open and helped me see that God is bigger than anything I could imagine.

Sometimes, like Naaman, doing the thing that seems least likely to work is exactly what we need to do.

Trust

I think that my blog post last week sparked my thinking about the ways fear has impacted my life. Since writing about love lost, I have been flooded with memories of other occasions when I made decisions based on fear rather than trust.

How many times have I lost love because I was too scared? How many missed opportunities for love have there been?

Fear is useless; what is needed is trust, I tell myself over and over. But living those words continues to challenge me.I recently watched Inside Out, an animated film about the emotions that influence our lives—joy, fear, anger, disgust and sadness. Riley, the girl in the movie, grows up in a loving family; when she is eleven, her father’s work takes the family from Minnesota to California. Everything changes, and she goes from primarily being joyful to being terribly angry. In her anger, she loses trust in her parents and makes decisions that are clearly misguided.As I watched the movie, I wondered about my own decision-making history. I wondered how many times my family and friends have watched me make decisions based on fear or anger—and stood by shaking their heads at my misguided choices.

After I had lived in l’Arche for about six months, I came back to Pennsylvania for a two-week holiday. My friends were shocked at my appearance. In those six months, I had lost twenty pounds or so and apparently looked unhealthy. I knew I was fatigued and generally unhappy, but my friends’ reactions were alarming.

“You can’t go back there,” one friend after another told me.

Not go back? I had to go back. I had made a commitment.

But, like Riley in the movie, I was having a really tough time. Change can be so difficult.

How could I admit—after just six months—that I had made a mistake or that I could not do what I had set out to do? Pride and fear paralyzed me.Going back meant my health would continue to suffer. Moving back after six months felt like a failure. Neither option held much hope for me; either way, I felt like I was a disappointment.

Looking back on that time, I can now see options and possibilities that were not clear to me then.

Back then, fear was motivating my decisions. Fear of failure, fear of looking weak, fear of disappointing. My judgment was clouded.

Inside Out shined a light on how memories stack up to create a preference or inclination. If I have lots of joyful memories, I am more likely to expect joy and to look for it. If my memories are sad, fearful or angry, I am more likely to see through that lens.

Moving from fear to trust is a conscious decision, and I have decided to recall two joyful memories every time sad or angry memories surface. Hopefully this small exercise will help tip the scales away from fear and toward trust.

 

Expectations

On our daily walks, my dog Detroit and I usually pass by Lucy, a small, brown dog who lives a few blocks away. Lucy always greets Detroit the same way— racing back and forth along the fence, barking, baring her teeth and growling. Friday morning was no exception.

“She looks how I feel,” I thought, all agitated and angry.

Then I remembered the Native American story of the two wolves that live within me. One is good and does no harm. She lives in harmony with everyone around her and takes no offense when none was intended. She is joy, peace, serenity, hope, love, kindness and compassion.

The other wolf is full of anger. The littlest thing will set her off in a fit of rage. She fights anyone, any time, for no reason. She is full of envy, greed, anger, regret, self-pity, false pride and resentment.

The two wolves vie for my attention and energy; whichever one I feed will dominate. Seeing Lucy reminded me that last week I had been feeding the angry wolf.

A series of unexpected events marked the week; each day brought new challenges—schedule changes, phone calls and emails to communicate among family members, and lots of uncertainty. I was frustrated, angry, concerned and scared. It was a week where I was reminded of how little control I actually have.

Unanticipated events are not new for me; I have had lots of them over the course of my life—opportunities to practice adjusting my expectations and letting go. I would say I am better at it now than when I was young, but I still have a long way to go.

One thing I have learned about unanticipated events is that I can make a choice in how I react. I can resist the change and hold onto how I think things should have been—and become an angry, resentful pile of self-pity. Or I can let go and accept that things have changed and I need to adjust my expectations.

A downside of choosing the former is that while I am focused on what I cannot change, I can I miss the good things that are happening right in front of me.

For example, on Friday evening, my mother invited me for dinner and gave me some things I need for my house. And when I got home from dinner, a package greeted me—a gift from my friend Michele who is living in Japan. Gratitude triumphed over self-pity. Agitation and snarling were replaced by appreciation and delight.

In the midst of upheaval, gifts continue to be offered. I need to let go of my expectations, live in the moment and be grateful—or else I may end up like Lucy.