Growing Up

        This post is going to be very personal. As I have mentioned before, if that bothers you, don't read on!!  I write about my own experience and share it to help you reflect on yours.  But if that is not helpful, please don't read.

        Today I want to talk about growing up, and in particular my own maturing.

        I did not grow up quickly.  What I mean by that is that I look back on who I was as a young adult with something akin to a sense of shame.  I was incredibly immature.  I made many errors, but more, I just didn't understand the world as most adults do or can.  I didn't know what was expected of adults, I missed a lot of social cues, and I behaved, I think, as many who were much younger than me probably would have known better than to do.  Honestly, there are many people I wish I could apologize to for simple things that I just missed, didn't see and didn't understand. I lost friendships because of that immaturity, but at the time I could not understand what it was that I was doing or failing to do, or why people disappeared.  I can see it now.  But it has taken a long time to understand their reactions and more, my own lack of maturity in specific situations.

    As I look back through my life, I can have compassion for my own slow maturity.  I had suffered serious trauma as a young child.  I believe that people often become stuck in the age of their greatest traumas if they don't deal with them in healthy, constructive, healing ways. As a young kid, I did not have the tools to do that work. And so, when I look back, I think I had become stuck in that early, young age in many ways.  Add to this that I've learned as an adult that I have ADHD, or, to put it another way, I was and am, "neuro-a-typical."  ADHD has some other issues that tend to go along with it, including something called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria which I also had in spades. When I was a child, these were not diagnosed or understood.  Instead, the notes just went home to my parents: "She doesn't focus, she daydreams all the time, she's distracted, she's hyper, she's oversensitive and gets hurt easily."  Yep.  All those things.  But now there is understanding.  And while I find my ADHD to actually be very helpful in my current work (because my job has so many elements to it and it requires me to be "high energy" in order to get through the amounts of work I take on), it was not helpful as a kid.  It was a struggle, and the lack of understanding from the adults around me (because again, it wasn't understood then) meant that it took an enormous amount of my energy just to get through each day, each week, each month and each year, to cope, to be able to simply function in a world that was not set up to handle those differences.  Learning those coping skills meant that there were other things, like maturing in the ways others were, that simply did not get the attention that it did for other people in my peer group.  

         So what helped me to finally grow up?  Well, first I will say that I still miss some social cues. I'm aware of it. I work on it. I still struggle with rejection sensitivity dysphoria, though I now understand when that is happening and why. I have tools to deal with it now. But growing is a process, as we all know. And I still know that I've come a very long way.  

        Interestingly, while I believe trauma was a huge part of keeping me young for a long time, I also believe that it is the trauma I went through as an adult that helped me to finally grow up.  Then the question becomes, what was different about the adult traumas that helped me grow while the childhood traumas kept me stunted in growth?

        First, the amount of support I had while walking through the adult trauma was huge. I cannot look back on that time without still being incredibly grateful to my friends, my congregation, my family and my pastor-colleagues for all of their support as well as the help of a therapist and spiritual director.  That meant that I was working through it and processing it in healthy and appropriate ways while it was happening.  For all of that, I am, again, incredibly grateful!  

      Secondly, I think the writing I've done through and after the traumas was hugely helpful in processing through, healing, and helping me to grow up.  I continue to write, in part to continue to grow, mature and stay healthy.  It helps me to process the past and to stay in the present.  As many of you know, I've written a book about that time. I have yet to move on publishing it for the simple reason that I do not want to hurt anyone and I'm worried it might.  I'll get there, but it isn't time and I'm waiting until it feels right.  Still, the process of revisiting everything and editing what I had written at the time has been emmensely helpful both in growing, but also in maturing through it.  

    Finally, and I think this is a large part of it, despite the trauma, I had to continue to be responsible for caring for my kids and continuing to do my church work - to keep going and to do even more than I  had ever previously done to step up, to learn, and to figure out how to function as a full-adult. People kept saying to me, "you are so strong!" and my answer now is the same as it was then... "There was no choice in the matter."  I loved my kids.  I loved my church.  In order for them both to be okay, I had to figure out how to be okay myself so that I could help them and walk with them towards wholeness and well-being as well.  As I said before, I didn't do this alone. Thank God, I didn't do this alone.  But there also was no one else who could step into my shoes of being mother to my three kids, or to model what it was for their pastor to handle crisis with my congregation.  That forced me to grow up.  As simple as that, it forced me to do the work I had not done previously to be the adult I needed to be. 

       It's an odd thing: trauma.  Would I ever wish any of what we survived on another human being?  Of course not!  To say it was "awful" would be the understatement of my life, and I even "revisit" it with a PTSD reaction, though it has lessened a little with time.  At the same time, I find myself grateful for having survived it.  I find myself grateful that I was able to become the person I am today, who is so very different from who I was 15 years ago. I am grateful to have the strength, and the confidence of knowing my own strength.  I am thankful for my capabilities and for knowing what they are, as well as my limitations.  And I am grateful that I now know when I need help and to ask for it when I do reach those limits.  I am deeply thankful for my faith, which, while tested, came out much stronger on this far end.  It looks different now, and I'm grateful for that as well. Mostly, I'm appreciative of the fact that it gave me the chance to do the growing up that needed to be done. I come to this moment with a great deal more compassion, understanding, and grace than I had before.  I am more aware of what others expect of me and I am quick to try to give more than what is expected rather than less.  

      The truth is that growing up, I never liked who I was.  I didn't like me, but couldn't figure out how to be different.  Now, while I am very aware of my limits and my flaws, I mostly do like the person I am today.  I have learned to extend the grace, compassion and understanding that I have for others to myself as well.  That in itself has allowed me to grow up into a functioning, thriving, and for the most part happy, adult.  And that is something I can celebrate!

Rituals

         I've been thinking about the many rituals that are an important part of every culture.  There are rituals around birth: baptisms, naming rituals, brises. We have rituals for coming of age: Bat mitzvah's and bar mitzvah's, quinceaneras, senior proms, sweet sixteen parties and graduations.  We have marriages and weddings. We celebrate retirements as well as birthdays and anniversaries.  And we have rituals around the end of life: wakes, memorials, funerals, celebrations of life.  All of these rituals give our lives structure and help us to frame events into meaningful times.  We recognize the seasons of our lives as we recognize the seasons of the year. Those rituals are essential to our sense of movement and purpose as we age and move through lives.

       Mitch Albom in his book, Have a Little Faith shared the story of Rabbi Lewis who lost his young daughter through a very severe asthma attack.  Albom wrote that the power of ritual includes being part of something bigger than yourself, connecting to those who have gone before.  They give our lives rhythm and purpose, especially after loss, after the death of someone we deeply love.  These rituals are soothing, are comforting, and form patterns of self-care and other care.  He goes on to say that since faith is about how you act, what you do, rituals are essential. 

       As he pointed out, though, we in the white Western world are diminishing in our practice of these rituals. Fewer and fewer people practice daily prayer, fewer people are baptized, and fewer get married.  As adults, many of us forgo birthday or anniversary celebrations. And many people now are deciding that when they die, they do not want their families to have a memorial service or a celebration of life.  

                There are reasons for all these decisions, and I think that in many cases, people who decide they don't want these celebrations do so out of a sense that somehow celebrating the seasons in a particular life is self-centered or selfish.  

               But the older I get, the more important I find these celebrations to be.  And in particular, to decide you do not want your loved ones to hold a memorial service in your honor after you pass is the opposite of being giving and selfless.  This denies people a way to grieve, a way to work through the loss and death of someone they loved and love still.  Memorial services are not about the person who died.  They are rituals for those who have been left, for the living.  As such, they offer a way to grieve, a way to gather with others who are also grieving, to remember, and to assign meaning to a life that is no longer physically present with us.  It is a time to offer reassurance that though a body is gone, a spirit continues, and to give people tools for keeping that spirit alive.  They are invited to share their stories, to continue to talk about their loved one without fear of bringing pain, to remember how we each have been changed because of their life in this place.  Memorials offer an invitation to live out the good of the person who has passed by continuing their legacy of giving, of loving, and of serving in their own unique ways. 

               Will people get over the loss of someone without the memorial service?  Probably most will figure out a way to grieve on their own.  And there are always situations where it would cause more harm than good to have such a service (like in the case of family conflict).  But I believe that in the great majority of cases, celebrations of life help the grieving process immensely.  As such, I believe that to deny your loved ones the opportunity to gather, to remember, to share, and to grieve together is to make the grieving much more difficult. 

               Frankly, planning and putting together a celebration of life is especially helpful to immediate family.  It gives them something to do with the pain they are experiencing.  It helps them to get out of bed in the morning because they have a focus and an important job that needs to be done.  That job includes continued focused on their loved one whom they lost (so it does not feel like just putting that person aside to go back to “normal” living), but it frames their time and gives meaning and purpose to the time following the loss. 

               I could go on…

               Please think carefully before you make the decision for your loved ones that a memorial service in your honor will be unneeded or unnecessary.  Please think seriously before you decide for all the people who love you what will be best for their grieving process. 

               If you are worried about the burden it will put on them to plan the service, plan it yourself.  Pick the place, the music, or the readings you would like as well as who you might want to have roles in the service. Pick what kind of party or service or celebration you might like to have.  You can make the arrangements ahead of time in many cases.  Still, you plan your own memorial with the reminder that again the service is for the living: so they may choose differently that your suggestions. 

               Again, though, please do not decide it is unnecessary for those left behind.  That is not your decision to make: and it underestimates what others may need to do to move forward after your passing.  Our lives touch many people, usually more than we think.  To celebrate that is a good and important part of life, it is an important piece of continuing to live despite the fact that the older we get, the more losses we will experience.

Societal Change

      When we were in Scotland for the first time (5 years ago), one of the bus drivers said to all of us that he could tell if another driver was from Scotland or not because the Scottish drivers always greeted each other with a wave of the hand, whereas people from other countries, and the US in particular did not.  At the time he said this, I remember thinking that it really depended on which parts of the world and even of the country we were discussing.  My own experience had been that hiking or walking, in particular, always met with friendly encounters from other people; that if I smiled at someone as I passed, this was almost always met with a returning smile or even a "hello."

    But I think this is changing, and not for the better.  The last time I went for a hike and I smiled and said "hello" as I passed someone, the young woman just stared at me like I was from outer space.  I found this very disconcerting.

    Then this weekend Jasmyn and I went to a Halloween party for Monterey Bay Aquarium members.  Everyone was dressed in costume, everyone who went had to be an aquarium member.  But still, as I walked by others dressed in their costumes and would say things like "Oh, I love your costume!" I would usually get those same glass-eyed stares. 

    At first, I wondered if this was because I'm now a middle aged woman and we tend to disappear.  Books, articles, studies all talk about the fact that middle aged women are just not seen.  Doctors don't listen to us, store clerks won't engage us (as I shared in another article), and people in public no longer actually LOOK at us.  But Jasmyn was with me.  And Jasmyn experienced the same thing I did.  Jasmyn is a beautiful young person, so that was not it.  And Jasmyn encouraged me to watch and see how the groups at the aquarium interacted with each other.  Were any of them friendly to the other aquarium members who were attending the party?  Did any of the other families or groups choose to greet, smile, or acknowledge one another?  And the answer was a very sad, "No."

    For fear of sounding like one of those crotchety old people who complain that everything was better "back in my day," let me just say that I can understand where this behavior has come from.  We've taught our kids stranger-danger (though statistics say it is usually people the children know who do the most harm), so is it any wonder they've now grown up to be people who do not interact with strangers?  We have learned to isolate ourselves in our electronic devices, only "meeting" new people in virtual ways, so is it any surprise that we no longer remember how to meet or greet or talk to potential new connections and friends in person?  Add to that that in this moment in time, the polarization in our country and the discomfort talking to anyone from "the other side" politically makes it difficult for many to feel they want to risk a conversation with someone who may not be on the same page.

    Nonetheless, I feel we have lost something vital.  I felt very sad that my attempts to compliment or connect with others at the aquarium were met with distance and even fear.  While dressing up, seeing the fish and being with Jasmyn was great fun in itself, for me, Halloween has always been a time to connect with others, to be a parade of costumes and celebration as a community. And, as I often say, how can we hope to heal our country without actually talking to one another and trying to cross those divides?

    So where is the hope in this?  I continue to believe that we make the world what we want it to be.  So I will continue to greet the strangers I see.  I will continue to compliment others in their costumes and to delight in those who will smile back.  I will not be changed by those who believe it is necessary to be cold to and distant from strangers.  I encourage you to do the same.  We can make the world a kinder place by expressing the kindness we hope to find in the world.  

Happy Halloween!

We must do things differently!

     Today as I was driving back to church after a meeting, I was stopped at a red light and noticed a very skinny and very dirty homeless man who clearly had some mental health issues, standing on the side of the road staring at his fingers and talking to them.  

    Suddenly a police officer drove through the red light, stopping in the middle of the street.  He jumped out, grabbed the homeless man, threw him on the ground, kneeled on his back and grabbed his arms in a way that I am certain broke at least one of them, screaming at him the whole time and eventually handcuffed him.  I swear, if the light hadn’t changed, I would have been able to video at least the end of this unfortunate encounter. I couldn’t believe it. Or rather, I could believe it but the fact that this behavior still continues is utterly baffling to me. This was a 6 lane road, so there were many of us who saw this, but the officer didn’t care and didn’t think he’d be challenged or corrected, probably because, again, this was a homeless and mentally ill person: someone many feel it is okay to reject and to treat like they are sub-human.

    Someone reading this might say that I had no idea what proceeded that and they would be right.  Nonetheless, this man was not putting up any resistance at all, he was laying on the ground crying in pain but not fighting this officer at all. He had nothing on him, nothing with him, nothing that could have been damaging or threatening.  There was no reason at all why this officer could not have talked to him politely, asked him questions, taken him gently in, if that is what needed to happen.

    When will we start caring about people enough to take seriously that this kind of behavior from the people who are supposed to “protect” us does not, in fact, protect us, but instead creates a society of violence, retribution, vengeance and fear? This behavior will never lead us to remember that we are all connected, and that those people we dismiss as “other” and “not worthy” are our siblings: they belong to us, and we have a responsibility to care for them, to HELP them, rather than harm them more.  

    I keep thinking of a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenging it?”  She said that a long time ago, but have we moved any closer at all to true understanding, compassion, and caring for one another?

    Our Old Testament law of “an eye for an eye” was supposed to mitigate the amount of retaliatory damage we could inflict on the other.  Jesus took it even further, “I say to you, do NOT return evil for evil!”  So many people claim to believe and yet I know very, very few who really want to help those who do damage rather than try to avenge them.

    The truth is that our retaliatory responses make nothing better.  Our punishments do not lessen the amount of crime in our society.  I’ve written about this before so I will not go into the details here.  But this doesn’t work.  Restorative justice DOES.  It goes so much further in terms of changing people for the better so that crimes are not repeated and people can re-enter society better and more able to be well-functioning and contributing individuals.  

    This has to begin with what we see as acceptable responses by our law enforcement to those they don’t like or those with whom they are angry.  Being okay with the way police abuse even those we reject has to stop.  And it has to stop with us.  

We become what we believe ourselves to be

        I've been thinking about a person I knew who was a professional victim.  What I mean by that is that this is a person who, given the attention of anyone at all, would take the opportunity to share how their life, their parents, their current family members, their friends and their community were unkind to them and had done them wrong.  This was such a central part of their identity that at a job interview for a leadership position, they lost the job because they took the interview time as an opportunity to share how badly they'd been victimized by their life.  

    With prompting, this individual finally chose to go to therapy.  But unfortunately, the therapist they chose and loved was someone who supported them in this victim stance.  The therapist would listen and lament about how horrible this person's life was and how awful it was that she'd been treated as she had.  For those of us who knew this professional victim well, we saw a different picture.  We saw a person who manipulated and controlled those around her with this victim stance.  If she whined long and hard enough about something that she believed was "unfair," those around her tended to jump to fix it or give to her what she wanted, even when it was unhealthy and damaging for her or those around her.  Her victim position was one of power, but an unhealthy power.  Those who loved her grew tired of being made out to be her perpetrators, those who loved her also grew tired of her choosing this position of what appeared to be weakness when she had so much potential for true strength and joy.  Unfortunately, it was a rare individual who offered her a different way of being in the world, one that celebrated the gifts in her life and gained strength from surviving what was difficult in her past. The rare people who did offer this different option were usually, then, added to her list of "perpetrators" who did not understand her, could not help her, and did not love her when it fact it was out of love that a different possible view of the world was offered.  She believed herself to be a victim at every turn, and could not begin to see other options for how she might walk through this life.  She was never able to move into a different stance, and I believe fully that her therapist caused more harm than good in this woman's life.     

    Another person I know similarly decided that he was a failure in life, could not function normally, was "broken" and could not heal.  This person, too, found a therapist who would support this self-view.  This therapist even used the phrases, "deeply wounded," and "broken" to describe her client.  The individual with this self opinion had functioned in life: he graduated from an esteemed university with honors, was invited to be part of significant and important conferences, held down good jobs, and was even at one point written up in the local paper as someone who was extremely gifted and capable.  But he chose to entrench in a self-image that said he was incapable. As a result of that self-definition, he chose to no longer be functional.  He decided that his life wounded him too deeply for him to do even the basic behaviors necessary to live in this world. As a result of this self-image, he became the person he decided he was.  He became the incapable, broken person he believed himself to be. And like the professional victim above, he blamed those around him, with the support of his therapist, for his "brokenness." Honestly, it was heart-wrenching to watch.

    When my family was going through our terrible trauma, I went to seek help from a spiritual director.  In contrast to the two therapists mentioned above, this person told me that there are three responses to trauma: we can become victims, we can become survivors, or we can thrive through our traumas to emerge better and more whole.  This spiritual director told me that he saw me as that third kind: the kind who was a thriver, growing stronger and clearer about who I am in the world and how I choose to be because of my traumas, not in spite of them.  He told me that being a thriver did not mean I would always be happy: tears, and genuinely going through the trauma with all the emotions attached of anger, grief, even despair at times, were part of emerging as a thriver.  But making the choice to go on, to continue, to do what needed to be done and to do it as well as I could, to focus on who I chose to be and what I chose to do rather than what had been done to me, but more, to look for the good, to find things each and every day to celebrate and to be grateful for: to seek out help for myself from appropriate people in appropriate ways that would allow me to continue to care for the others around me (like my family and congregation) who were also in pain: that these were the choices of a thriver.  He said this with such conviction, and emphasized repeatedly my strength and my thriver choices to seek out and live in gratitude, that I became who he said I was.  I leaned into being a thriver, someone who has grown from my traumas, rather than being hemmed in or restricted by them, someone who claims my own decisions in life rather than living in a place of blaming others for my situation.  And I continue to be a person who looks for the good, who chooses gratitude for the gifts of each day, and who works hard to grow and be better tomorrow than I am today.  I choose to be a thriver because someone whom I trusted told me that was who I was.  Again, this does not mean I don't have feelings.  To the contrary, I continue to believe we have to go through the traumas, through the feelings, through the hard times to come out the other side in a healthy way.  But I choose to do that, knowing that on the other end I will still be a thriver who can function and who makes the decision to live fully and with gratitude and joy.

        While this may sound like an anti-therapist rant, it is not.  There are very good therapists out there, and I believe most of us can benefit from a good therapeutic relationship at one point or another or even throughout our lives.  This is also not an "avoid going into your past or the things that have hurt you" proclamation.  There is great power in looking at our pasts to see what has shaped us and what struggles we still need to work through in order to emerge as thrivers.  

    What I am trying to say is two things: 

    First, do not let your past determine who you are.  Work it through so that you can move forward into being who you are called to be. Deal with those early hurts and then let go of the stuck blame game which will not help you to be the person you are meant to be.  It will also not help you to have positive and loving relationships if you are continually blaming those around you.  You are adults.  You make the choices you need to make for your lives.  Step into those choices and take responsibility for your lives from this moment forward.

    Secondly and more importantly: we need to be careful and intentional about who we decide we are, and how we let others tell us who we are.  Who we believe ourselves to be greatly impacts who we become.  Our self-image, then, can be either a gift or a curse, depending on what you tell yourself and what you allow others to tell you about who you are.  

    Let me be the first, then, to tell each of you my readers: You are loved. You are beautiful. You are STRONG to have made it this far and to live each and every day in a challenging and difficult world.  You have been gifted with every breath you take, with bodies that, even if they have some challenges, still carry you through each day, with friends and family who love you, with the seasons as they come and go, with the birds that sing and the gardens around us, with music and dance and books and art.  All of this has been given to YOU because you are worthy to receive it all.  You are kind, you are smart.  You are loving and generous. You are capable.  Most of all, you get to have a hand in deciding who you will be as you step forward into the rest of your lives.  Take that opportunity.  THRIVE!

Hurry! Hurry! Offer ends soon!

     We are bombarded with ads that come to our houses, to our emails, through our televisions, on the websites we visit, and even through our phones via texts, apps and phone calls.  There is always an urgency in these ads: "Hurry, hurry!  Offer ends soon!" 

    We know why they do it this way: if they can create a sense of urgency, people are more likely to purchase whatever it is before their rational brain can kick in and point out that we don't actually need whatever it is they are selling, and often we don't even want it.  There is danger from companies that want to sell more! more! more! in giving people time for them to think about what they are doing.  There is also the fallacy that if you buy something on sale that you are saving money.  You are still buying whatever it is.  You are still paying money for that item.  Unless it is something you were looking to buy and planning to buy that you then found on sale, you have not saved money.  You have spent money on something you probably didn't need.  Most of the items people buy in this way might be used once, maybe, but then end up in the drawer or garage and are not used again.    

    While some of us can see through these sales tactics, other people also use this same method to trick us into believing certain things or reacting quickly in other ways.  If they use the scare tactic of, "If you don't do this NOW, then these bad things will happen!" it effectively turns off people's ability to think and make rational, logical decisions.  Propaganda ads use this urgency to convince you that dire situations will follow if you don't vote such a way, for example.  

    Scammers also use this urgency effectively.  Those phone calls from "the IRS" that insist you better head down to your local target and buy copious amounts of gift cards or else you will be arrested within an hour affectively scare people into failing to consider how likely the whole scenario really is.  I was reading an article about the latest scams, one of which is to use AI to impersonate loved ones' voices who urgently ask for money to be wired in order to keep them out of jail or to save them in some other way.  Scams using Zelle or Venmo have also become common, and again, one thing they all have in common is the urgency with which they push you to respond.  

    I've seen this happen so often that at this point, anything that is presented to me with urgency I receive with great suspicion.  

    But today I found myself wondering if this manufactured urgency is part of the mental health crisis in this country.  That urgency creates anxiety, and if that anxiety cannot be addressed or attended to, it can lead to serious depression. We run around feeling that we have to move fast, fast, fast to get things done.  We make decisions based on urgency and how quickly we can move so that we have time for other things that we will also zoom through as fast as we possibly can.  We aren't living in the moment anymore.  We aren't taking time to enjoy the day.  Everything feels urgent.  

    My challenges for all of us today:

    First, be very wary of the urgencies others bring to you.  The faster others are pushing for something to be done, perhaps the slower we should move to respond so that we genuinely have time to think things through with our non-anxious, rational brain.  

    Second, and again, this is for all of us: I want to encourage us all to breathe!  This life is for living, for enjoying, and that means we need to take time to be in each moment and savor what is good, what is beautiful, to see where God is, where the good is, where love is, without letting our brains run to what must be done next.  

     Finally, try not to let the urgency of others become a contagious way to functioning in the world.  We change the culture by acting differently in the world.  For today, I encourage you to find the moments of quiet, of peace, to rest in those moments and to slow down.  What must be done will be done.  What does not need to be done in this moment or today can wait.  Maybe we will find it didn't really need to be done at all!      

How We Communicate... or Lessons in Vulnerability

    I've been thinking about what we communicate without intending to do so... what we say with our words, our tones, our facial expressions that leave people with impressions other than what we'd hoped or planned.  

    I see the difficulty in communicating that happens between other people all the time.  Most of the time when people are offended or upset, it is usually a misunderstanding of what the other has said: there has been a miscommunication.  To say it another way, what was intended to be communicated was not what was actually communicated.  This is why one of the counseling tools I've often used when couples come into my office is just to ask each person to tell the other what they have heard the other say.  Most of the time, it is not what the first person was trying to communicate.  This is more true when people are having conflict.  What you hear when you are already upset tends to be skewed in the direction of your upset.  We give each other more grace when we are happy in a relationship of any kind and therefore if we aren't sure what the other is communicating, we are more likely to ask.  We are also more likely to assume the best intentions of the other when things are going well.  

    But lately as I've thought about this, I've been taking it to a more personal place.  What I mean is that it can be difficult to see what it is we are communicating.  And if others aren't clear with us about what they are seeing or hearing, we often don't realize what we are communicating that was unintentional or even the opposite of what we are trying to say.

    Recently I was told that there is a disconnect between the way I write and the way I present myself at my job.  If I understood the person correctly, in my job I come across as competent and capable, but in my writing I come across as broken and hurting. I have to be honest and say this was surprising to me: VERY surprising to me. I write about what I have experienced as a way to connect life lessons to real stories.  I write about what I am experiencing as a way to connect with others' stories and experiences so that we can all grow together.  I always end my posts with hope, with lessons, with the gifts of each day.  But that is not what is coming across.    

    So, let me be clear: I am not "hurting" or "broken" except in the ways that all humans are.  We all have challenges or traumas we work on, deal with, and grow from. And while I have been choosing to share those, it is from a place of strength that I can be vulnerable and open in my sharing. I have lived through many things that have been incredibly difficult.  Whatever I experience now cannot possibly compare to those things, and I came through those times with strength and courage.  I do the same now: I am resilient and I know how to take care of myself.  I also know where there are resources if I need more help and I'm not afraid to ask for help.  Again I share my own journey as a way to help others learn the lessons and find the hope that I find.  I am not, ever, asking to be fixed.  Nor am I asking for sympathy or pity.  I am certainly not wanting people to be concerned or to feel they have to walk on eggshells around me. 

    Henri Nouwen talks about there being, in general, two kinds of pastors.  The traditional pastor is distant, removed, and appears, as apparently I do in person, as competent and capable.  The other is a "wounded healer": someone who shows their vulnerability and wounds as a way to be more accessible, but also as a way of communicating that they, too, are human and understand the pain that those around us experience. I have always tried to be transparent because I cannot relate to the distant traditional pastor and therefore have never wanted to be that. 

    Nonetheless, I learned early in my ministry not to use my personal stories in sermons unless they were resolved.  I use stories of past injury or past struggle as a way to present that honest but human "wounded healer."  I learned early on that I cannot share current stories or people will feel they need to step in, to fix me, to "help" me.  That's not an appropriate role for parishioners, so I don't share current struggles in sermons unless, again, they are resolved.  But I felt that, if I could make it clear in my blog that I was not asking for help and that I found hope and goodness and lessons for the journey in the daily struggles, that I could be more current in my writing, present a more authentic "wounded healer" who is on the journey of life as you all are.  

    I realize now though, that I can't, though I feel very sad about this.  Like the lesson I learned early on about not preaching current struggles since they would be misunderstood and distracting, I hear now that there are parishioners who read my blog in this public place and when they are about my current challenges, that my words are, again, often misunderstood and distracting for people; causing worry rather than inviting people to reflect on their own lives and to see both the lessons and the hopes that their own circumstances and situations share in common with my own life walk.  

    I am writing about this here for two reasons: first, to say that I will work to omit current challenges from my blog.  But secondly, I would like to challenge those who read my blog, have read it, continue to read it, to do two things.  First, I encourage you to read more closely.  Again, my intention is to share in a way that we all understand we walk this journey called "life" together, that there are lessons we all learn on the way, and there are experiences we can relate to our own lives in ways that help us to reflect and grow as well.  And that leads me to my second request: rather than focusing on me when you read my writings, I invite you to take it into a place of self-reflection to see where you, too, have similar experiences and how my own words might touch your own lives.  Most of the feedback or comments I receive on my blog have been from those who do exactly that.  And for that I am grateful.  

    As I always do, then, I choose to end this blog with the lessons learned and the hope I carry forward.  The lesson for me is one of paying more attention to the needs of those with whom I interact: in this case, the needs of my parishioners who read my blog.  The lesson for my readers, I hope, is also one of paying more attention: reading more carefully for the lessons, the gifts and the hopes in what they read, and applying it to their own lives.  The hope, then, is that we can grow together, as the hope for me always is.  That we can learn a way to be, even in this blog space, that is not upsetting or hurtful, but is still honest and vulnerable.  For again, the greatest strength is not found in protective walls, but rather in honest vulnerability.