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!

Times are different

          Lately I've had many days when I feel that I've said everything that I need to say.  Well, not, perhaps to individuals.  There are people I would like to say things to.  There are people I'd like to apologize to, and others I'd like to just catch up with.  There are even a couple folk with whom I'd really like to have a "come to Jesus meeting" - people I'd like to speak truth to, telling them how those I've loved or even I myself have been affected by their actions.  I'd like to have the opportunity to be strong and fix untruths.  I'd like there to be a sense of "wholeness" or closure or reconciliation with a couple folk.  But those are all individuals.
         For some time now when I go to write a new sermon, I've found myself looking to old ones for help to know what to say.  And when I go to write on this blog, I look at old essays I've begun but never finished to try to see if there are any of those beginnings that are now calling to me to finish them.  And now, after a month of limited contact and "shelter in place" I am struggling to write emails to my congregants that boost them, that support them, that offer the love I feel for them each day and the dismay and absence I feel when we cannot be together.  I've said it repeatedly.  And now, there is nothing more, nothing left, nothing new to say.
        For those who know me well, the idea that I may have nothing to say... well, it's new.  I usually have way too many things to write, to think.  I have 150 pages of "sermon ideas" or illustrations for anything I might want to talk about.  I have beginnings of books, beginnings of blog posts, beginnings of emails just waiting to be finished, written, sent.  They were just waiting for me to have space and time.  I have that now.  Well, I have the space even if the time may be a bit illusive.  But when there is space, when there is time set aside for writing, for speaking, for creating, I find that new words do not come easily.  And when I read the words I've written, they sound like empty echoes of words I've spoken before.
         Perhaps creativity is also a victim of this time - at least for me.  For many people crisis encourages art, spurs on new thoughts, new reflections, and new ways of looking at things.  The last time I went through crisis, my writing became prolific, my thoughts were opened and writing was necessary in many ways to process through what was going on.  But maybe in part because I've done so much "crisis writing," this time round I have nothing new.  And maybe that's okay.
        I've encouraged my congregants to be gentle with themselves during this time, recognizing that our reactions to crisis are varied and that we all need time and space in crisis to grieve, to process, to rest and to just BE.  I've reminded them that we will process more slowly and that taking the time to walk through trauma is not only okay, but necessary and important.  So perhaps I need to offer myself that same kind of grace.  I also need to recognize that where I am today may look very different from where I will be tomorrow.
        Grace, offered to others, but also offered towards ourselves, is very important right now.  The world looks different.  So do we.  And that needs to be okay.  God offers great grace.  And we can learn to offer that to one another and ourselves as well.

Can we change those early messages of rejection?

       A while ago I posted a quote on Facebook and asked for thoughts/comments.  The quote was "By the age of five you've either learned that the world is good and everything and everyone in it stretches out toward you with love.  Or you know that you're a reject.  No one ever unlearns that first lesson."
       The responses to the quote varied though there was universal questioning of the absoluteness of the sentence. "No one" is a phrase that is almost always problematic.  A few people were distracted by the author of the quote, making comments about who she was and whether or not her opinion was important or to be valued. (Notice I'm not naming her here... it is, again, distracting.  It was the idea I was interested in, not who said it. And while who a person is does affect what an idea means or the place of orientation that dictates the idea, sometimes an idea is worth considering for its own merit or lack of merit, distinct from the person who said it.)  The people whose first lessons taught them that the world was good tended to respond by saying the idea was patently false. I understand that. Their early experiences were positive.  They want that positive world view for everyone else.  They are hopeful that it is something all of us can obtain.  They learned the world was good, so the idea that it might always remain a bad, scary, or rejecting place for some folk is not an idea easily accepted.  But it is the responses and thoughts of those who learned otherwise, who were taught that they were "rejects" on whom I would like to focus this blog post.
        People whose early training inclined them towards feeling unsafe in the world were not all in agreement.  Some stated that with a great deal of work they were able to work through those early training sessions and to come out on the other end.  Others said they agreed with the sentiment on the whole, and that, despite the work they'd put into it, their initial reaction to most situations tended to be one of defensiveness, mistrust.  These folk, all very thoughtful, insightful, self-reflective and deep people, said that they choose to act in the world as if it were a safe place, a place of grace and compassion. They choose that way of behaving, despite the fact that the internal alarms yell something different to them.
       Children are very resilient.  We know this.  We also know that early events impact us more than anything else can.  They become part of our DNA in a sense, part of our make-up.  As brain studies show, path ways in our brain thinking and chemistry get emphasized, cemented even, early on in our life times.  Once a path way is formed, especially one that is a response to trauma of any kind, training our thinking to go a different way, to respond in a different way, to follow a new path way can be very, very difficult.  Depending on how deeply those early path ways were carved, re-training those thoughts to not automatically follow the deep gullies dug through out thinking can sometimes be near impossible. We all receive many messages as children, from different sources and in different ways. We know the value of a good care giver and role model for children who are living a hellish home life or who have survived a trauma of great proportion: it can make all the difference in the world, turn a life around, change the way a child moves into adulthood when there is something positive, someone affirming, when an adult takes the time to offer a different possibility, a different world view.  We know of stories of kids who have lived through hell but turned out okay because of someone who took them under their care and reflected back to them a different image of who they are than the one they had originally been given.  But we also know of kids who never have that alternative reflection, who don't ever have someone to tell them that things could be different, that they could be different, that there is good and love out there.
      When the early messages of rejection are strong, many kids' reaction to that message is so negative in itself that they begin to create and recreate the unsafe world around them. They become the bullies that first victimized them.  They act out the violence or abuse that they have experienced. Then it becomes even harder to change that initial message. They end up in gangs, and later in prisons, in a cycle of abuse and abusers, of violence and rejection.  This is the reality for too many of our kids, though truly, even one kid living through a hellish childhood is one kid too many.
      The bottom line is that trauma and early rejection are hard to overcome.  For some it is harder than for others.  And for some it is nearly impossible.  I'm reminded of a story in the book Leaving Northhaven by Michael Lindvall in which a pastor is reflecting on the life of a young man who was adopted early on but who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome.  Jason had lagged behind his peers, had been completely impervious to direction, was not changed or impressed by any kind of discipline or correction because he could not live beyond the moment.  He had no internal moral compass, but coveted approval from anyone, which eventually led him into a bad gang of kids and finally led him to a lifetime jail sentence.  The parents who had adopted him loved him but could not overcome the condition he was born with.  The story continues, “Ardis, Jason’s adopted mother, had told me that some shocking percentage of FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) kids end up in prison, that they still loved their boy, but had come to accept the hard truth that they could never have heard when they were young, namely, that their love – unbounded and powerful as it might be – could not conquer all….The boy was an incarnation of all the things that cannot be fixed.  Perhaps his parents love had somewhat deflected his heedless course, but it was never enough.  Jason was Jason.  He was the emblem of that which we may fear the most; not evil, not even death, but the terrible truth that love cannot conquer all.  Like Jimmy and Ardis, Jason’s parents, I once struggled to believe that this was not so, namely, that love – faithful enough, deep enough, tireless enough, bottomless love – could not but win.  Now I sat in an eight-by-eight room in a prison across the table from what looked for all the world to be a loss….Some broken things just cannot be fixed.  There are broken people who cannot be healed in this world, neither by our love nor our cleverness….Some wounded souls heal; but some go to their graves pulled into the earth by darkness no mortal love can ever lighten.”

      We all carry scars from our early years.  Some are easily worked through.  Others are more serious.  Serious ones can prevent us from living the lives we would choose to live, whether that scar be a lack of self-worth, a message that we can't do better, a belief that the world is against us no matter what, a vision of the world as evil and violent, a message that we are rejects, not acceptable, not okay, that we can't do what we want or whatever that message may be. There are sometimes (often based on economic and national privilege) opportunities to fight these early messages, to work through traumas and to strive to live a life not controlled by our early experiences. But not everyone has those chances.  And some people's genetic make up mixed with those early traumas make a true recovery extremely difficult if not impossible.  I understand that we don't want to believe that there is anyone beyond healing. But the stories of our world show us otherwise.
       Personally, I imagine I will continue to work my entire life against early negative messages.  And while I would hope for something different, I have come to accept that I will watch my children spend their entire lives fighting their early experiences of trauma as well. We do the best we can do. And we hope to learn how to avoid imparting these messages to other children.  Faith helps.  But it doesn't fix everything.  Love helps.  But it too, has limits, at least in this world.  The early years of our children are so important.  Spending time working to make those early years the healthiest possible for each child will go a long way, not only towards healing individuals but in healing communities, nations and the world.  We have a long way to go.  But looking towards the children is an important start.