Overcoming fear

Recognizing my fears and moving beyond them has been a big part of my spiritual journey.

Too often, I speak or act out of fear, then feel an interior uneasiness and later wonder what is hiding beneath the fear. What brokenness is waiting to be healed? What understanding needs to be awakened?

I have come to believe that fear is a shackle, and that only trust leads to freedom. My desire is to have nothing to fear, nothing to prove and nothing to hide—to live transparently.

During a recent day-long workshop on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, I thought of times I have felt excluded and was afraid to call attention to my situation. I also thought of times when I was with people who were different from me and was irrationally afraid.

One of the panels that day consisted of four white men—talking about diversity, equity and inclusion. Bad optics, I thought. And as I watched these men, I could almost see their fists clenched as they grasped tightly to their control. I wondered what needs to be healed or awakened in them that would enable them to share the stage with someone who does not look like them.

And then I wondered where in my life I am unwilling to share the stage with someone who does not look like me.

Another workshop session was about being an ally. One of the panelists shared a story of being singled out in a grocery story because her head scarf identified her as a Muslim. A man walked right up to her and called her a terrorist. I was shocked that someone would do that, but apparently it is not that uncommon.

The panelist said that as hurtful as it was for this man to accuse her of being a terrorist, what was even more hurtful was that no one came to her aid—neither to challenge the man nor to offer her support. No one asked if she was ok after the man had walked away. No one was an ally to her in her time of need.

Her story prompted me to consider if I would be willing to stand up to someone who is being confrontational or to stand beside someone who is being confronted—if I could be an ally to someone who is different from me.

Last week, our local newspaper ran a piece about a man wanting to make our county a more welcoming place for people in the LGBTQ community. He is organizing a Pride event. I was both happy that he is doing this and afraid for him. I don’t think of our community as being particularly welcoming toward any minority group, and I imagined his announcement produced some push-back from fearful people.

This week, I happened to meet that man, and I shared my reaction to the newspaper piece. I applauded his courage and offered my support because I, too, want our community to be less fearful and more inclusive.

Who is driving?

What more must I do? the rich young man asked Jesus. (Mark 10:17) That question has stayed with me since the beginning of Lent, popping up at random times throughout the day and often while I am praying.

The answer for the young man was to sell everything he had and give his money to the poor.

It seems that his possessions were a burden or a barrier which prevented him from being spiritually free. I am not rich, so I have been considering what other burdens or barriers prevent me from being spiritually free.

As I have been pondering the question these past few weeks, I have had greater clarity around the fact that I tend to focus on the doing part of the question. Do more, my inner critic prompts me. But God has often invited me to focus on being rather than doing, so maybe God is asking me to do less instead of doing more.

Perhaps I am being asked to silence my inner critic and step away from my need to achieve.

Then I started reading Luke 11:14-23, Jesus was driving…. I did not get any further into the reading because an image of Jesus driving a car came to me. Funny—and not how I usually imagine Jesus. But, I let the picture emerge.

Jesus driving; I am a passenger.

What kind of passenger would I be? Would I be giving Jesus directions? Suggesting alternative routes? Knowing a faster way?

Could I trust Jesus to drive? Let him choose the route and the destination? Could I just enjoy the ride?

A few days ago, something prompted the memory of my decision to move to l’Arche. When I made the decision, I didn’t think of l’Arche as a one-year volunteer stint, but as a way of life. It was the radical commitment I was seeking, the community I could see myself in forever. I had incredible clarity about being called to live in l’Arche for the rest of my life.

But that was not what happened. l’Arche turned out not to be the perfect fit for me—or me for l’Arche. My need to be in control and to be doing made me ill-suited.

It turned out that working in non-profit organizations was a better fit for my personality, giving me the kind of time and space I needed to grow in self-awareness. In the nonprofit world, being a doer is highly valued. Plus, my need to control and deep-seated stubbornness pushed me to accomplish things people said could not be done.

People praised me for what I achieve, and I loved hearing their praise.

A radio commercial for a local spa asks what would change if I really took care of myself (by spending an indulgent day there.)

I wonder what would change if I let Jesus drive the car, if I silenced my inner critic and focused more on being than doing. Perhaps I would be able to relax and enjoy the ride.

Growing in self-awareness

ring the Day of Reflection I recently facilitated, I introduced the volunteers to an adaptation of the Johari Window—four panes of a window designed to increase self-awareness.I suggested that their year of service is a wonderful opportunity for them to come to deeper self-knowledge because of the spiritual framework of their community and their service to marginalized people—two invitations to touch their own vulnerabilities.

Preparing for this day, I remembered a break-through in my own self-awareness journey. It happened a few years after college, when I was the caretaker for my university’s guest house.

Fr. Shawn Tracy was the director of Campus Ministry, and he was also a leader in the Handicapped Encounter Christ (HEC) retreat movement.

HEC is a weekend retreat where people who have physical disabilities come together with able-bodied people to pray, ponder and celebrate their lives. HEC creates a prayerful atmosphere for people to reflect on their lives, to learn from one another and to support one another in a lively celebration of community.

The planning meetings were held at the guest house where I lived, and I got to know those involved with HEC—and they got to know me.

By the time I went on my first HEC retreat, the planning team knew me quite well, and Fr. Shawn asked me if I would give one of the weekend’s talks. I agreed.

I don’t remember the topic of my talk or even what I said; what I do remember was Fr. Shawn’s introduction of me to the group.

It was a fall day and dark clouds skidded across the sky. Occasionally, the sun would break though, filling the meeting room with bright light. In his introduction of me, Fr. Shawn compared me to the sky that day. He talked about how I could be like the dark clouds gathering and casting a gray pall over everything, and then, suddenly, like the sun, break out in brightness. He talked about the mystery of me, the complexity of me and my passion for life.

Hearing myself described in those terms was like a thunder bolt. How could he see all that in me when I saw none of it?

Was I really that tumultuous? Was I a complicated mystery, a passionate person?

Rather than give my talk, I wanted to go outside, stand under that tempestuous sky and contemplate the words and images he used to describe me.

I knew that I could be moody, and I knew I kept secrets—two things I saw as negative. But Fr. Shawn made them sound appealing. It was as though my moodiness and secretiveness invited him want to get to know me and understand me.  I remember thinking, “He cares.”

After that introduction, I had a difficult time pulling myself together and giving my talk. As soon as I was finished, I went outside and stood under that dark sky and anticipated the breaks of sunlight. This is me, I thought, mysterious, complex and passionate.

 

 

 

 

Envy

We took my mom’s car when we went up north a few weeks ago; it is a classic “low mileage, only driven to church and shopping” elderly person’s car. As I adjusted the mirrors, I was aware that the blind spot on the driver’s side was a bit different from the blind spot in my car, and I made a note to pay attention.

A few days after that trip, the idea of blind spots came back to me—not the car kind but the psychological sort. I had been reflecting on a conversation from earlier that day; I had been criticizing someone’s behavior. In replaying my words, though, I realized I was actually envious.

It was an epiphany.

I pride myself on being able to accept life as it is, on being content with what I have. But, I now see that this has been a blind spot, and I am not as content as I like to think—at least in some parts of my life.Our brains are predisposed toward patterns (or so says the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon) so once our brains register something new, we are naturally more inclined to see this thing again.

My first awareness of being envious happened a few months ago, and I was surprised to recognize this trait in myself. But now, a few months later, I can see much more clearly that envy has long been part of my life. It was probably there all along, but I was blind to it.

Now that my eyes have been opened, though, I am quite aware of how often I think and say things that betray my idealized self-portrayal.

And upon reflection, I see past times when I thought I was merely being observational, but really I was envious.

I remember one incident from college that I now see in a different light. I went to a Catholic college run by Augustinian Friars who take a vow of poverty. Fr. John was my confessor. He was smart, kind and compassionate. And he was a frequent traveler—to Florida over Christmas break or Rome on spring break or someone’s shore house in the summer or….

“My goal,” I told him, “is to be as poor as you are so I can see the world on someone else’s dime.” He laughed. At the time, I thought I was merely being observational (and perhaps witty); now I can see that I was envious.

Ironically, I have traveled the world on other people’s money. I have been showered with an abundance of opportunity, generosity and kindness. And I am deeply grateful.

Yet, here I was the other day, grousing about someone getting a workshop paid for—even though a month earlier, I had attended a workshop that someone else paid for. Talk about a blind spot!

Now that this blind spot have been revealed, I can be more attentive to the insecurity that causes me to be envious and take steps toward being more grateful and content.

Finding my voice

When I approached the presenter at the cancer caregivers workshop to share my reaction to her words about hope, she responded, “I wish you would have said that at the mic.”

At the end of each presentation, we were invited to come to the mic and ask questions or share reflections.

But, I don’t do that; I don’t share in front of groups.

Ironically, I love public speaking and have done a fair amount of it for my nonprofit work. But there is a difference between telling other people’s stories and sharing my personal stories. Other people’s, ok. My own, not so much.

As a child, I was told that what happened in our house stayed in our house. We also did not talk inside our house about anything that happened. I felt invisible, as if no one cared what I was going through—or even noticed that I was there. I didn’t seem to matter.
By my late twenties, I was an emotional mess and started going to therapy to help me process growing up in a chaotic house and to reconcile my past.

However, growing up in a home where I was told never to talk about what happened made sharing extremely stressful. Every time words formed about an experience or feeling, an alarm would sound inside my head. Do not say that!I was incapable of identifying what I was feeling, much less talking about it.

Early on in therapy, I shared one of my earliest memories.

I was four years old, playing in my back yard, when I found a dime. What luck! Even at that young age, I knew a dime could buy me something special. I remember how shiny it was and how fortunate I felt. And then my older brother saw what I had and claimed it was his. “No!” I shouted. “It’s mine!” He tried to take it from me, and I knew he would triumph, so I swallowed it.

My therapist commented, “And you have been swallowing every challenge since them.”

I once heard Fr. Richard Rohr talk about our shadow side, and he described it as a sack where we stuff all the negative things from our lives. The image that popped into my mind was of something like Santa’s bag—this huge sack, dragging behind me. I could feel the weight of it pulling me back.

My shadow bag was filled with twenty-eight years of negative experiences that I had swallowed and tamped down deeper and deeper.

As I began to unpack my shadow bag in therapy and at retreats, and look at my history, I started to realize that surviving those experiences had made me who I was; they had made me strong and resilient. Learning to talk about it—especially at the mic—is still a work in progress.

 

 

Abide in love

My Advent reflection book contained portions of a story by Bishop Ken Untener called the Dream Fixer. The reflections were about our being God’s dream, and the ways we are broken dreams. One piece read:

Let me put it in terms that have a familiar ring to them because they’re taken from the story of…Jesus.

~I am the sheep that wandered off into the wilderness, alone, hungry, afraid.

~I am the younger son who took the inheritance and squandered it…

~I am the one the robbers beat and left half dead on the road to Jericho…

 As I pondered each of these people from Scripture, it came to me that while I can easily imagine myself in these sympathetic roles, I can also see that:

~I am the failed shepherd.

~I am the older son, resentful and angry.

~I am one of the robbers, using someone to my advantage.

It seems natural for me to align myself with the innocent victim—and more challenging for me to see myself as the less sympathetic person. But, I can be both.Preparing for my retreat last month, the phrase, abide in love (1 John 4:16) came to mind. I have been pondering the many manifestations of love and also thinking of February as the month of love, so it did not surprise me that this phrase popped into my mind.

Loving family and friends seems a like a good first step in the practice of abiding in love. Being loving toward those closest to us can be enough of a challenge, but I believe God’s calling is to go deeper and wider.

God calls me to love myself, to see myself as God sees me and to accept God’s version of me. God calls me to love those seemingly unlovable parts of myself—the failures and anger and aggression. How do I take responsibility for my failures, my resentment and my aggression? How do I love myself in those unlovable places?

And, as important, how do I love others who fail or are angry or cause harm to others? Can I see them as God sees them? And love them as God loves them?Abide in love instructs me to do just that. To live in love, to continually dip back into the love of God to remind myself what it means to see people as God sees them and to love them as God loves them—that is the invitation and the challenge.

When I can embrace the failed, angry, aggressive parts of myself, perhaps I can have more empathy for those traits in others. Maybe a greater awareness of my own darkness will make me more understanding of others, more willing to forgive, more willing to be compassionate and accepting.

My Advent reflection fits into my retreat invitation—and into a Lenten practice.Lent is a time of conversion, a change of heart. The fact that Lent began on Valentine’s Day this year magnifies the invitation to abide in love.

 

 

Becoming visible

“I bought it because it made me more visible,” I overheard a young woman say. She was talking about her new car and went on to explain that she had test-driven this car in different colors until she found the one she believed people would notice.

I thought back to when I was her age and bought my first new car. I chose one that was the most efficient for the least amount of money. It had a manual transmission and no extras, not even air conditioning—luxuries were for others, I believed—not for me. I never thought that it could help me be visible.

I am a second-born child. A Google search on my birth order brings up articles using phrases like “fighting for attention.” I’ve always wondered if the person who created the slogan for Avis rental cars was a second-born child—We try harder.

After all the excitement over the first-born, the second can seem rather ho-hum and been there/done that. A second-born child can easily feel lost in the shadow of the first-born.

I grew up believing that I was invisible, and it was not until my mid-thirties that I got a clue to the contrary. It was during a transition time, and I was flitting back and forth from Pennsylvania to Virginia to Michigan and back again to Pennsylvania, trying to figure out where I wanted to live.

“You can’t keep coming and going like that,” a Philadelphia friend declared, with tears in her eyes and her voice full of emotion. She explained how difficult it was for her to say good-bye and grieve my leaving, only to have me come back a few months later—and then leave again after another few months.

“You noticed that I left?” I asked her, incredulous that my leaving even registered on her radar. Until then, I believed that I had zero impact on anyone; it did not occur to me that my actions were seen, let alone impactful.

I took her words to heart, though, and started paying attention to how others saw me. Once I realized I was not invisible, I reviewed my life and could see a trail of hurt in my wake—a divorce, ended friendships and more inappropriate relationships that I cared to remember.

Being invisible had equaled not taking responsibility for my actions. I was like the tree falling in the woods that no one is present to hear—if no one saw me, how could my actions have consequences?

Knowing that I was visible produced a sea change in my self-understanding and my behavior. Over time, I came to understand that not only was I visible, but that I am actually quite a strong personality. Who knew?

Believing in my visibility took a long time, and I am grateful to that Philadelphia friend for opening my eyes.

The young woman who bought the car with the highest visibility rating? She was the baby in her family and accustomed to being seen.

 

 

Four Panes of the Window

My spiritual director shared a self-knowledge tool called four panes of the window: The first pane is what you and everyone else know about you; the second pane is what you know about you, but others do not; the third pane is what others know about you, but you do not know; and the fourth pane is what only God knows—you and others are clueless.

The third pane intrigued me—how can others know a “me” who is so different from the “me” I know? Although I had not previously had this image for it, I was aware of the phenomenon.

One of my earliest insights into this mystery came soon after I graduated from college and was considering what to do with my life. Should I move back to Virginia? Back to Michigan? Stay in Pennsylvania? Try someplace new?

I decided to move back to Virginia to see how it would feel. A friend invited me to stay with her, and I was fortunate enough to find work. But after a few months, it did not feel right, so I moved back to Pennsylvania. I stayed for a few months and then moved to Michigan. That lasted a few months and then I was back in Pennsylvania. At this point a friend confronted me and told me how difficult it was for her that I kept coming and going.

I knew it was difficult for me to be so unsettled, but it never occurred to me that it would be difficult for anyone else. Up to this point, I had moved through my life believing I was invisible, that no one took any notice of me and that whether I stayed or left had no real impact. She corrected that perception, and with a fair amount of emotion, she told me something others knew about me that I did not know: I was visible. Eventually, I came to see that not only was I visible, but that I can actually be a fairly large presence. Who knew?

The idea that I was visible totally contradicted what I had believed about myself, what I thought everyone else knew about me and what I thought God knew about me.

Even after all these years, I am still adjusting to the notion that I am visible. While I still find experiences of being invisible familiar, I now also find them curious—how is it possible that I am completely invisible to some people and so very visible to others? It is a mystery.

What I have learned to do, though, is to try to be more attentive to the third pane of the window, more sensitive to the impact I have on others and more aware of how I move through the world.