Discovering beauty

A prayer I kept taped to the bathroom mirror for many years read, Lord, help me to accept the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is. This prayer was given to me by a friend who was aware of my insecurities and low self-esteem.

When I first read this prayer, I gasped when I reached the word beautiful. “Ugly” was the word I had anticipated. Lord, help me to accept the truth about myself, no matter how ugly it is. That was the prayer I had been praying for most of my life, to accept my ugliness, my inner darkness, my sinfulness.

This new prayer challenged me to first find my inner beauty and then accept it.

I recently celebrated my 70^th birthday, and several friends wrote messages in their cards about the positive impact I have had on so many people.

Praying to see and accept the truth about myself seems to have shifted something inside me, because I smiled as I read each of these messages and thanked God for how I was created and the woman I have grown into.

Speak up

My throat has become blocked,

as if beavers had built a dam and

snagged my words as they tried to

flow up the river,

as if concrete was poured and

has hardened into a barricade.

How can I speak my truth

when the path is impassable?

What we hear

In the early days of our friendship, Ted asked me to go out for dinner. The conversation went something like this:

“You probably don’t want to…you will probably say ‘no,’ but would you like to go to dinner with me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s ok,” he said. “I didn’t think you would want to.”

“Ted, I said ‘yes,’” I countered, but he could not hear me. He was so certain I would say “no” that he could not hear my “yes.”

Over the next thirty years, Ted and I had many dinners together—always as friends.

He often returned to that initial conversation, saying, “Remember when I asked you out and you said, ‘no’?” I would remind him, “I said ‘yes.’” It became something of a joke among our friends, like a scene in a pantomime, because he loved to retell the story, “I asked Madeline out once and she said ‘no.’” They would say, “She said ‘yes.’”

That memory came back to me the other day when I was thinking about how open I am to hear God. I wonder if I predisposed to hear a message that may not be the message God is sending or if I shut down before something has a chance to take root. I sometimes wonder if I am exasperating God with all the times I say, “yes, but…” in the same way Ted’s retelling of our first-date conversation could exasperate me.

I know I can jump to a conclusion that shuts God out of the process, perhaps because of negative messages I have heard about what I can and cannot do, my low self-esteem, fears, anxieties, past failures, etc.

God asks us to try and try again, even when we don’t succeed at first or second or third. God asks for persistence (like the story of the widow who kept pestering the judge in Luke 18:1-8) and openness (let those who have ears hear, Matthew 11:15) to hear what God is saying.

Often these blockages are blind spots—we don’t even see them. What can help us become aware of our blind spots is to listen to what others might see in us and say about us.

Those conversations can be difficult to have. I remember the first time someone tried to tell me I was smart and capable. I thanked him, but he could tell I did not believe him, so he repeated it. “I heard you,” I said. “No, you didn’t,” he replied, and then he told me again that I was smart and capable. He could see my discomfort, because smart and capable were not words I associated with myself.

That conversation was the beginning of my questioning what I believed about myself and trying to see myself as God sees me.

I don’t know how Ted and I would have gotten on romantically (mutual friends suggest we would have had a rocky relationship because we were both independent and strong-willed), but we never had the chance to try.

The next chapter

“Don’t buy me any green bananas,” my mother likes to say. We are celebrating her 95^th birthday tomorrow, and she jokes that she might not live to see green bananas ripen. On the other hand, she bought a new dishwasher this week.

Her optimism is a constant reminder to me to welcome each day, to embrace what life brings and to look forward to whatever is coming down the road.

For the most part, my mother does what she wants; she is fiercely independent. When I once called her stubborn, she said, “Don’t call me stubborn. I am not stubborn. I just know what I want.”

And when she knows what she wants, she goes for it with gusto, not caring one whit what others think.

In many ways, I am like my mother (my younger brother likes to point to us and say, tree…apple), but I don’t have her self-assurance in going after what I want; I am easily swayed by the desires and opinions of others.

I am at a crossroads in my life. It is a familiar place because I was basically at the same place a year ago. I made a decision then, announced my decision and then did not follow through because I was dissuaded by what someone else wanted. Ugh.

Again this year, I have come to the same decision about my future, and when I told a friend, she said, “You already made that decision,” sounding like she was speaking to a fickle child. Yes, I make and remake the same decisions. I move toward a new direction and then step back; it is tedious.

I feel stuck at the crossroads. This is one of those ways I wish I was more like my mother—decide and then do it, others’ opinions be damned.

I recently found a note I had written at the beginning of last year, asking, What do I need to do, believe in or allow for myself? It was probably a message to bolster my decision, and it is still relevant.

More than enough

During my morning prayer on Christmas day, I asked, what is being birthed in me? Where is God inviting me to grow? In what ways am I being called to live more fully alive?

I went through a list of new projects I am pondering for the future or already working on, of my dreams to visit distant friends and my hopes to travel in Europe for an extended time. I thought about my writing and considered attending a workshop on writing a memoir.

As I let these ideas play out in my imagination, though, another thought popped into my head: Heal your need to please others.  

What? Is this the secret to my being able to live more fully? To give greater glory to God? Do I need to move past my fear of disappointing people and my need to please in order to give birth to my true calling?

Ugh, I sighed. It is so much easier to work on external projects than to deal with my old nemesis, that voice inside my head that tells me that I am bound to disappoint people, that I am not enough and that whatever I do is not enough.

It is a message I heard from early childhood through my teens, this idea that I am not enough. For many years, I have worked on erasing that message and replacing it with more affirming words, reassuring phrases that shift parenting from my mom to God or to my adult self, changing the messages in my head to ones that remind me that I am not only enough, but that I am more than enough—I am plenty.

But every once in a while, my you-are-not-enough button gets pushed. It happened just before Christmas when two people made demands on me that I could not meet.

Their needs were real, but I was already taxed by other responsibilities and could not do what they asked of me.

My internal critic spoke up, telling me that I was not enough, because if I were enough, I would be able to do what these people want.

I was in a snit all day and night, feeling guilty and angry. The next day, after talking it out with a friend, I got a different perspective.

That is the thing about those old messages—they are powerful and can take control in a blink of an eye.

Maybe it is time to tape up affirmations around my house and read them multiple times a day to remind myself that I am enough. Things like:

I am good enough.

I am loved.

I respect myself.

I honor my own needs and desires.

And perhaps it is time to return to Scripture passages that affirm that I am precious to God, that remind me that I am wonderfully made (Psalm 139) and a royal diadem (Isaiah 62:3).

Maybe I need to create a screen saver that says, I am an exquisite gem, and God delights in me.

Pick me

I am enrolled in an Internship Program in Ignatian Spirituality, and during a recent session, the leader affirmed something I had said. I was filled with pride because of his affirmation. Still seeking approval, I acknowledged to myself.

The next morning at prayer, I replayed that moment—the leader’s acknowledgment, my pride, and then my awareness of my neediness. In that moment, I was my nine-year-old self again, except at nine, I would have voiced my pride in a kind of nah, nah, nah, nah, nah way. At least now, I stopped before that step.

The first image that came to me in prayer was a child in school, arm waving high in the air, wanted to be seen and chosen. Pick me, she says.

Of course, when I was nine years old, I would not have had the confidence to raise my hand, even if I did know the correct answer. Even at twenty-nine, I was reluctant to offer an answer. Probably even at forty-nine.

My lack of self-confidence ran deep.

As I sat with the image of the child waving her hand in the air, a second image occurred to me—it was God waving at me, trying to get my attention, wanting me to acknowledge and pick God.

God is trying to snag my attention in every moment—no matter where I am or what I am doing. I only need the desire to see and hear what God is saying, to be open and paying attention. It can happen at any time.

The other day, God snagged my attention when I was reading a novel about Auchwitz, and I had an aha moment that invited me to be more compassionate.

And then I started watching Mad Men, and the deep loneliness of the characters reminded me of the loneliness of so many people today—and I felt invited to reach out.

My cousin shared a video clip of her eight-month-old granddaughter, crawling over an obstacle. After several tries, she managed to roll over to the other side. She is one determined little girl, I commented and then realized God invites me to be that determined.

During the Internship session, someone commented on a something I had said, a throw-away line for me that caught him. Throw-away lines can carry great truth, I said, remembering that when my friend Jim was preparing for death, he recalled many throw-away lines people had said to him that seemed insignificant at the time, but that gave him great consolation at the end of his life.

We can easily miss the messages of God, the invitations to spiritual growth, because we are not paying attention. We can forget that God speaks to us through the mundane as well as the magnificent—even novels, popular culture, the actions of a child, and casual comments.

Ignatian spirituality reminds us that we can find God in all things. Everything holds the potential to reveal God, if we are paying attention and open to see.  

Developing new habits

“Stop apologizing,” a friend said to me.

“It is a bad habit,” I replied.

She is reading a book about over-apologizing and trying to change her own habit; I am caught in her new-found awareness.

I am grateful for her insight, though, because it is helping to develop my own awareness. When I am with her now, I swallow every “I’m sorry” that attempts to escape my lips.

But, why do I apologize for things over which I have no control?

Bad weather? I’m sorry.

Bad hair day? I’m sorry.

You didn’t see my text? I’m sorry.       

Trouble with your car? I’m sorry.

The store was out of your favorite whatever? I’m sorry.

On and on it goes. At first, I had thought to count the number of times I apologize in a day, but it quickly became apparent that the number was just too many.

So why do I apologize?

I don’t really feel responsible for the weather or car trouble or most of the other inconveniences of life. I know I am not that powerful that I can control any of it.

In the bigger scheme of habits, this one may seem inconsequential, but I am beginning to see how my over-apologizing is connected to my self-image.

I grew up feeling invisible and believing that being invisible was the best I could be. If someone saw me—if I became visible—that was a bad thing, as if I was the inconvenience and I needed to apologize for being a bother. It was as if my very presence was the problem.

Therapy helped me understand the flaws in this belief system. But changing the habits I developed during those early years has taken a lifetime, and obviously, I still have a way to go.

What I need is another way to express my concern that something bad has happened or that someone has been troubled in some way—without taking responsibility for what has happened. I need to develop a new habit that expresses empathy or sympathy.

I hadn’t anticipated this as a New Year’s resolution, but it is the gift that has come to me, and I will try to honor it.

What habits are you trying to change?

The truth will set you free

The House of Mirrors at the Michigan State Fair fascinated me as a child. I loved how the slightest movement could cause great distortion. I could go from tall and skinny to short and fat with just one step.

In a way, these distortions reflected my everyday life, which could shift from peaceful to chaotic in a moment. Except, I was not the one creating the chaos; I just had to live in it and learn to keep silent about it.

So I lived on two planes—my interior life, where I knew the truth of my life, and my outer life where I pretended not to.

Of course, holding tight to secrets caused me a great deal of anxiety and shame. I worried that someone would realize I was a fraud—that the life I projected outwardly was nothing like the life I actually lived.

I felt trapped within walls of lies and deceptions.

I have had more than one conversation with Jesus about how knowing the truth would set me free (John 8:32), because that was not my experience. I knew the truth, and I was not free.

Only recently have I come to understand that I need one more step to be free—I need to speak my truth in order to be truly free.I have been experimenting with speaking my truth through this blog, continually revealing more and more of who I am and what I have experienced. It has been very freeing and has given me the confidence to continue to reveal my story.

My hope is to get to a place past shame, where childhood secrets have no hold on me, where I can see myself as God sees me and accept myself without judgment. Step by step, story by story.I have also realized that it is not only traumatic events that I have kept secret. Recently, I shared a story of a Good Samaritan who helped me after a car accident. When I get to the part of the story where this man paid for my car to be towed, I am overcome with emotion and tears fill my eyes.

Why would I cry in recalling an act of great kindness? And why have I not talked about this incident before?

I think my sense of unworthiness prevented me from telling it. I kept it secret because I felt unworthy to be so richly blessed, as if someone would challenge me—who are you to be treated so well? I knew I was not worthy and so I kept quiet.

But, in truth, my whole life has been filled with great blessings, with incidents of God’s abundant love being poured out on me.

I have only recently begun to share openly the good things God has done for me and the amazing way God has cared for me, and in doing so, am undoing my negative self-image.

I want to know my truth, to speak it and to be set free.

 

 

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.

 

 

Diverting the stream

“When we meet,” I used to tell Jim, “God is going to say, ‘Good job with what you did for Nakisha.’” While I was taking care of Jim when he had brain cancer, he amended my statement. “When you meet,” he said, “God is going to say, “Good job for taking care of Jim.’”

Taking care of Jim was a lot of heavy lifting, figuratively and literally.

My role with Nakisha was much less hands on. If I think of life as flowing water, my role with Nakisha was to divert the stream.

Nakisha was twelve years old when we met. She had been institutionalized as a toddler and had a vocabulary of approximately fifty words. She attended a segregated, special-education school where her main goal was to chop fruit into exact one-inch pieces. When her “team” decided she would have the same goal the following year, I knew I had to act.

I learned about becoming a Surrogate Parent for Education and tracked down Nakisha’s mother to get her to sign the paperwork.

With my new, official role, I confidently approached the “team” and informed them that Nakisha was transferring to the local middle school.

The next week, Nakisha started classes at her new school, where she flourished under the tutelage of a dedicated teacher and his aide. She began learning sight words, her vocabulary grew and by the end of the school year, she had begun to read.One year later, Nakisha and I were checking out Halloween displays at a local store and she pointed to one contraption and said, “Look, it is making steam.” Steam? She knew what steam was! I cried tears of joy.

Then, I began instigating for her to move out of the institution. Catholic Social Services offered a life-sharing program, and at fifteen, she moved in with a family. As at school, Nakisha blossomed with her new family.

By the time she was seventeen, she had family, friends and interests—and a life that looked completely different from former life.

So many people helped to change Nakisha’s life—people who did most of the heavy lifting. My role was to divert the stream so that changes were possible.

A few years ago, I was reflecting on the people who had diverted the stream of my life. Then I began to contact them to thank them. I called or wrote to friends, former employers, spiritual directors and professors. But my ninth-grade English teacher proved a bit more difficult to track down. After numerous attempts, I let go.

Then, a few weeks ago, a Facebook message led me to this teacher. We chatted by phone, and I thanked her for the way she impacted my life. I reminded her that she had asked me to be the narrator for our school play and I thought she was delusional. Me? Read out loud? No way.

She was persuasive, and I did it.

Her faith in me gave me confidence and changed how I saw myself.