We all have good parts of our lives: fun events, good friends, adventures, trying new experiences. We all have bad parts too – deaths of people we love, arguments that end relationships, work disappointments.
In my life, I have had some amazing experiences and some really low lows.
Recently, however, I’ve noticed that something seemed to be broken with how I experienced the good in my life. Even really great things, I didn’t enjoy. I didn’t really notice until I could experience them normally again, but it was like I went numb. I would notice that I couldn’t taste my favorite food, or a delicious cigar…and I would wonder, what is going on?
I realized, some good things are so Big Good that it’s actually hard for me to process them. I get scared…and then I hide from the good. This is super annoying actually, and double bad, because it prevents me from both enjoying the good and also being thankful for the good.
We’ve talked previously about how developers drive organizational success: they deliver the applications by which companies deliver their competitive advantages. Because they are a way for companies to deliver products to customers, those delivered applications are critically valuable. Application development is a lot like extracting gold – it creates value out of raw resources.
Application development is a lot like extracting gold – it creates value out of raw resources.
Gold, wealth, needs to have some amount of protection.
We’re (hopefully) taught some important things as children:
you can do anything you set your mind to, so aim high
we’re all representatives of humanity, and being part of humanity comes with some responsibilities – vote, take care of the environment, take care of each other, etc
do what you think is right, even if all your friends are doing what you think is wrong
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10:11
The Bible talks about sacrifice a lot. Sacrificing for each other, sacrificing to serve God. The Gospel, the most important story arc in the Bible, is in part about Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice – his death, yes, but more his complete and utter separation from God when he needed God the most. Unfortunately, over the past 2000 years, the definition of sacrifice has been broken to the point where it’s used to do more harm than good.
There’s a relatively simple list of things that most people want. We want to feel important to our world. We want to be good, kind people – people who aren’t the bad guy, people who deserve good.
We want the freedom to choose what makes us happy, and to find things that make us feel fulfilled. We want to be able to choose the things that fill our souls to the brim.
Conflict
But the people around us don’t always want those things for us. They want us to work in their best interests, and they sometimes get hurt when we instead do what we want or need. When they get hurt, they try to control us into changing. They try to make us feel bad (or good) until we do change, until we do things that don’t make us happy or things that will hurt us – and if that doesn’t work, they decide that we must be an enemy and they begin to treat us accordingly.
Resolution
False Realities
I (Josh) didn’t like reality. Reality kept showing me that people may not always react favorably to the things I want or need – and I was scared of what might happen if I continued to fight for my right to those things. Ultimately, I was scared that they might leave if I continued to take care of myself.
I didn’t value my own soul enough to believe that it was worth taking care of, except…I kind of did. So in response, as a way to feel justified in fighting for my soul, I created alternate versions of people. I made people into monsters – monsters who manipulated me for their own selfish purposes. I saw them as willing to destroy me in order to get what they wanted. And since they were evil, I didn’t have to do what they said – I had the right to take care of myself, and I also had the right to control them into being not evil.
False Realities Believe in the Right to Protect Myself
Some of these people were not trying to manipulate me. I would see people as evil who were just trying to help me face my fears – deeply hidden, pressed down, and blocked away – and I would see people as evil who would shove me at God when I didn’t want to do that.
But…some of the people I turned into monsters were trying to manipulate me.These people weren’t evil though, they were just…afraid. They were afraid of the same thing I was, actually, that if they couldn’t control me or our relationship, I would leave. In their fear, they were trying to destroy me, but sort of as a…byproduct. They tried to destroy me to make me safe for them to love.
What I struggled with was the simple fact that I’m supposed to do what protects my soul, what nourishes and cares for it, and what keeps it whole so that it can serve God to the best of its ability. I don’t actually need to see evil motives in other people in order to do so.
I don’t need to see evil motives in other people in order to protect my soul.
Three Realities
“Hopeless.”
I realized that I believed in at least three realities:
the utopia, a perfect place, without fear or risk, that I had long ago lost all hope of getting to. I was angry at God, because I assumed he was choosing to keep me away- so really it was his fault that I couldn’t get there.
the horror, where the people I loved were evil and trying to destroy me, and where nothing would ever ever be good – where not even God could fix things.
actual reality, where things were mostly good, but not my previous understanding of ideal.
If life was intended to be the utopia, then I had seriously messed something up at some point, despite always trying as hard I could to do and be what God wanted from me. If life was the horror, I thought I could (and should) seize control from God and set my own destiny – but it turns out that seizing control from God never works. I tried, and tried, and tried with all my soul and strength to take control and make the horror world less awful. It was a terrible process, but I realized, eventually, that it was impossible. Also, thankfully, that it wasn’t even reality.
That left only actual reality – and if actual reality was all that was available for me to work with, I was really scared that my life would never be what I wanted it to be.
Oh good, not just me then…
We realized that other people do this too – we saw it happening, we had it happen to us as the objects, and we were confused and hurt when people saw us as demons or monsters out to destroy them. But…then we realized that these people were just really scared. They wanted to control us into doing the things that would make them feel less scared – which we weren’t willing to do. The inability to control us made them more scared, which led to more attempts at control, and…
Scared people do crazy things.
It gave us a lot of new empathy actually. We realized that most of the people who ever did a bad thing to another person…they probably just created a false reality. Every mugger was just keeping himself fed and giving himself the life he deserved – it was only fair, only what he deserved from the people and world around him. Every despot was just preserving freedom or safety for his people – whatever meager amount could be eked out from this cold, dark world. “Because even meager safety in my kingdom is better than the horror of living under their regime.”
At this point, we’re pretty sure that even truly evil people create their own moral justification via false realities. Hitler believed in what he was doing so hard that he convinced thousands of people that he was right – his opinions were awful, and fueled by fear. But he was convincing. He was sure.
Scared people do crazy things.
What’s the answer?
What’s always the answer?
Faith. Trust.
I had to learn all over again how to trust. I had to trust that God loves me – and while he disciplines, he does not punish. I have already been forgiven, so…there isn’t anything to punish.
I had to be willing to see the people I loved, which I had been avoiding in case I was about to see them walk away from me. Once I saw them, I knew that they were not trying to destroy me – or if they were, I didn’t have to let them.
Once I could trust God, and remember that he loves me and wasn’t trying to punish me, it was clear(er) that the utopia probably didn’t exist. And once I could see the people I loved again, and I trusted that they were not trying to destroy me, it was clear(er) that the horror probably didn’t exist either. That left learning how to exist in actual reality, which…is an entirely other blog post.
I really love Halsey. Josh introduced me to her via a roundabout way that included Bishop Briggs and Amazon Music’s stations – and she grew on me slowly, because typically pop music about someone’s bad romantic choices is not my jam. But the more I listen to what she has to say, the more affected I am.
There’s a song called Sorry that I thought I understood. What I heard spoke to some of the broken ways I’ve approached relationships – and then I listened and…I realized it spoke to some of the deeper broken ways I’ve approached relationships.
It’s okay. You don’t have to love me. My fault, seems legit.
So I’m sorry, to my unknown lover, sorry that I can’t believe
anybody ever really, starts to fall in love with me.
This was the first part I heard. My default when I’m scared in a relationship is to retreat – shields up, and hide. In the past, that included looking for reasons that I should retreat – clues that I was about to be hurt, “proof” that the other person didn’t really want me around. And the clues and the proof that I found were always easier to accept if I believed that whatever I found was my fault.
This…well, it some kinda’ worked. It certainly kept me from being hurt – by anyone other than myself. It also made me blind to people truly caring about me, because all I ever saw were the “early warning signs” that the relationship was going to end.
It’s fine that you’re gone. I’m not hurt. Also, it’s still my fault.
I’ve missed your calls for months it seems.
Don’t realize how mean I can be
’cause I can sometimes treat the people that I love like jewelry.
I can change my mind each day.
I didn’t mean to try you on, but I still know your birthday and your mother’s favorite song.
And then I heard these words. And I noticed that she was lying to herself, because if she remembers their birthday and their mother’s favorite song, there’s no way that she actually changed her mind about them. But…again. Blame. “I was mean, I discarded you. It’s my fault you left. I accept that.”
And I know you’ll be happier with someone else.
Someone will love you, someone will love you.
Someone will love you, but someone isn’t me.
…Yep.
But really…I just…didn’t know.
I run away when things are good, and never really understood
the way you laid your eyes on me in ways that no one ever could.
And so it seems I broke your heart, my ignorance has struck again.
I failed to see it from the start, and tore you open ’til the end.
I thought the summary of this song was, “There’s no way you love me, no way you’d really want to. Someone else will love you better than I can, so I’m glad that you left and I’m sorry for the pain I caused you by trying to have a relationship with you.” I thought she was basically choosing, that she was saying “nope, I don’t believe people love me, so I choose good bye.”
This made sense to me. It fit what I thought I was doing when I ran away.
And then I actually heard this verse. And…I realized that the summary is more like, “I…didn’t know that you loved me. I couldn’t see it. And what I could see, I didn’t believe. Because I didn’t believe, I kept you away, and that hurt you. So…you left. So…I will let you go, and I will choose to believe that someone will love you better than I can.”
…and then I realized what I was really doing when I ran away – I realized that I ran because I couldn’t see. This summary explained how it felt to find myself running away when I didn’t mean to – and it explained what I was afraid would happen every time I found myself running.
Why explain this? Good question.
When Josh told me that I should explain what I learned about this song, I sort of painfully asked him why on Earth I would ever do that. We’re pretty open about our souls here, but…this is deep damage. And it isn’t fully healed damage, and…actually I hate that I do it.
I also just…don’t have any stellar advice on how to not do it. I started to learn how to not do it on accident, because of a relationship that was more important to me than the sense of self-protection that came from running away. Since then, I’ve fought through multiple layers of this thing. At every layer, it comes down to deciding which is more important – the relationship or feeling (falsely) safe. I keep choosing the relationship.
The only way I know of to do that, to choose the relationship in the face of a lot of fear and the instinct to run and hide, is via trust – trust the other person and trust God. With trust, I can believe that the people I’m in relationships with love me and will stick around through all of the pain and confusion and…eventual wonder and joy of “figuring it out.” With trust, I can know that if they don’t stick around, God will take care of me – so the risk of them leaving is not enough of a reason to close myself off from people or run away.
But…this isn’t new information or helpful clarification or a good how-to. The answer to most soul damage seems to be trust. And I did not want to talk about it.
And then Josh, in a tricky bit of wisdom, asked me why understanding the song mattered so much to me. And…it mattered because it put words to my broken. It described it, accurately. The existence of words that described my broken told me that I’m not alone in it – and that I’m not alone in being blind to people caring about me. I’ve ruined relationships by retreating when I get scared, and that weighs on me. It scares me that I might do the same thing with the relationships that are so important to me now.
The existence of words that described my broken told me that I’m not alone in it.
I said that my new understanding of the song explained what I’m afraid could happen when I run away. When I run, it feels like no one follows me. And…really, it isn’t up to them to follow, it’s up to me not to run – which I do manage to figure out. Eventually. But…I worry that before I can figure it out, I will run too far. And, having run too far, it will take too long to find my way back, or I won’t be able to find my way back – and that if I manage to get back, by the time I get there, no one will be left waiting for me.
So…ultimately, I think I’m explaining this because hearing the words and knowing I wasn’t alone helped me get past another layer of this broken thing I do. It helped me identify it the next time I did it, and because I understood what I was doing, I knew that trust was the answer – even in the midst of sheer panic.
Sometimes seeing our broken, having the words to accurately describe it, is one of the most important ways to heal. And the words in this song helped me see this jagged stabby place in my soul clearly enough to be aware of when I was inclined to run. And it helped me remind myself to trust instead of run – and it helped make it easier for me to stay.
I used to think there was an emotional state of “no fear.” Entirely unafraid, about all things, all the time. I thought this was a real, legitimate place I should be trying to get to.
Laine (and God (L: it was mostly God…)) corrected me.
There are always new sources of fear. This world is broken. The people living here are broken. Things go wrong. Our dreams fail, and our hopes die. Our relationships can break, our jobs can suck, people can hurt us. We make choices and the people we love make choices, and it doesn’t always seem like it could possibly work out.
Fear is really hard to deal with. Fight or flight is an inherent human truth – we think that if we’re afraid, we must act. But…most of the time, action in the context of fear doesn’t make a ton of sense. It’s very logical in the comparatively rare times that our lives are actually in danger – but in the times we are simply (ha) afraid that we will lose an important relationship, action spurred by fear usually just does a whole lot of damage.
I recently had the great honor of going with a transgender friend to his first support group meeting. I was kind of terrified, because I am not transgender – just an extremely determined supporter of the people I love. I was worried that I would be seen as an interloper, or that I would make people uncomfortable.
As it happened, I didn’t need to worry about any of that. I was mostly quiet, and I listened, and I heard their stories with a great deal of thankfulness to be allowed to be included.
One story stuck with me, along with the way it was told as though it were a norm. A woman there had recently found out that a cis woman, someone she considered a friend, was something like neutral on being transgender. Not supportive. Not exactly “against.” Just…neutral. She said that it felt as though cis women in general don’t accept her, that they get defensive and say awful things like not a “real” woman, and the other women in the room nodded sadly in agreement.
Come, all you weary.
Come, gather ’round near me,
find rest for your soul.
– Thrice, Come All You Weary
“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
So I’m sorry, to my unknown lover, sorry that I can’t believe
Come, all you weary.