Brian considers being a follower of Jesus the most important thing in his life, and Jesus is his most essential travel companion down the long, hard road of his life. A close second is his wife Ingrid whom at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington and married in 1982, and two daughters Julia and Kirstie, their husbands Jeff and Travis and now 1.5 grandchildren. He earned a Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California and became an ordained Methodist minister for a time (20 years; and much more briefly an Episcopalian priest after that). He soured on "Church, Inc."--the business and religion people make up about Jesus. As a part of his exit strategy, he earned a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies / Greco-Roman Antiquity from the University of Sheffield, England as part of his exit strategy. He taught adjunct for Fuller Seminary in San Francisco and Asbury Seminary in Kentucky, and authored 5 books but just couldn't stomach the "Christian industry" mindset, and gave up teaching, writing and "ministering" for pay or profit. For the last 20 years he has supported himself in real estate sales and management. For Brian, "Christian" is a word that describes things in the United States that often look nothing like Jesus, and he has come to identify himself as a "non-christian follower of Jesus." He still likes to play guitar, walk along the river and has accepted pickle ball as the body-saving alternative to his love for competitive tennis.
When I lived in Kentucky I had dinner at the home of a veterinarian. Her practice was based mostly on seeing horses, dogs and cats. I asked her, “What is the most common problem you see in your practice?” Without hesitating she said, “J.A.R. disease?” I had no idea what that was so of course I asked, “What is J.A.R. disease?” In her winsome Kentucky accent she replied with a smile, “Something Just Ain’t Right.”
A lot of times we meet someone else and it occurs to us there is something amiss. A lot of times, we meet their family and that explains a lot. But, often we just can’t know–and maybe they don’t know what is wrong either.
I went through a significant part of my life not really understanding the complex trauma I had experienced, and how it affected me. I really had no idea what happened in my brain when some threat triggered those past traumas. Something wasn’t right–I just had no idea.
Accepting myself as I am and accepting others as they are–not as we should be–is our best, regular posture toward ourselves and other people as we pass through this world on this journey. Not everything is knowable, but everyone is deserving of love, care and acceptance.
Not everything is quickly fixable or quickly knowable. Some problems from our past and their effects on us now remain elusive and opaque, and some healing may remain upon our grasp for a good long time. It’s okay. God accepts as I am, not as I should be. I want to accept myself and you this way too.
#1 Everyone limps a little and few have a simply sweet life. It is okay to have struggles, problems and face-plant failures–this is the common human experience.
#2 Healing takes time, and some things take a long, long time to heal. Some people get over deep trauma and bad failures quickly; some take years to overcomes wounds and breaks.
#3 It is okay to walk with a limp, and not try to fake it. If we accept ourselves as we are and not as we should be, then we are where we are, we are what we are and we live inside our own skin the way it is.
#4 Hang on to those around you, warts and all. Accept them as they are, not as they should be. There is grace by association and healing among accepting friends.
*****
Some comments on the 4 Antidotes above:
#1 Being a recovering perfectionist is way freer and way more fun that being a compulsive perfectionist who has to have it all together. Life is easier, we learn a lot more and we’re more likeable when we like ourselves as we are. Maybe related is this factoid: children learn language(s) way quicker than adults because they are not afraid to make mistakes trying. Adults have much slower new language acquisition because they are self-conscious about making mistakes.
#2 “Get over it quickly” (Dysfunctional Rule #2) is for people whose solution is submersion of their true selves, denial of what has really happened, pretending everything is okay when it is not. They expend a LOT of psychic energy suppressing things instead of letting them come to the surface. Some people do just quit smoking the day they decide to do so, yes, but almost everyone else has to quit an average of seven times to actually, finally quit smoking (maybe). Alcoholics and other addicts who have learned to overcome do so by acknowledging the problem is not yet solved no matter how long they have been at it: they are “recovering addicts” not “recovered addicts.” Ask any of them–the distinction is important to their ongoing healing. Some things take a long time to heal. Often scars will remain.
#3 “Fake it if you can’t get over it” (Dysfunctional Rule #3). What a dark place to live, in dishonesty and shame.
#4 Much power of a “Twelve Step Group” like AA or Gamblers Anonymous is finding a group of others who not only accept you as you are, but really understand the struggles and failures you face because they face them also. Group honesty is powerful, when combined with tenacious and relentless acceptance and tender and gracious care and commitment to stay walking together with one another, no matter how rough the road gets, no matter how hard a bump in that road one of you may hit.
Of course, we learn to fake good in our families and social groups. The skills for self-glossing are forged in our families and reinforced in our communities. Do these four “rules” sound familiar, even if you’ve never heard them spoken out loud?
Rule # 1: Don’t have anything wrong with you.
Rule # 2: If you do, get over it quickly.
Rule # 3: If you can’t get over it quickly, fake it.
Rule # 4: If you can’t get over it quickly or fake it, stay away from me because I don’t want anyone to think I have it too.
This is perfectionism manufactured into a carnival mirror that distorts our view of our own self, our faults, our foibles and our weaknesses. These rules describe much of what goes on in an alcoholic family. Self-medication is needed because they just don’t work. The same rules, ironically, function in many churches and seminaries, and explain the bizarre practice of disfellowshipping–voting off the island–people who were up until that moment considered family.
The most flummoxing part of these rules is that they are not written down anywhere and are never spoken. But, in dysfunctional families and groups everyone somehow knows them by heart, and complies with them without thinking.
The reason radical self-acceptance is so essential to staying on the path to humble self-honesty is that there can be so many voices around us that make it sound like it is unacceptable to be who we really are, faults and all.
The question that inspired the title of this entry and the address of this website came from a student who was in a class I was teaching years ago. It was more of a declaration than a question: what is WRONG with you!?! She barely knew anything about me, but she wasn’t used to someone who had turned his back on faking good.
One absolute rule of dysfunctional families is this: don’t have anything wrong with you. This absolute command drives self-honesty away, and fuels denial and self-deception. We are groomed to fake good, pretend and rationalize and excuse inexcusable things around us.
The story of the emperor’s new clothes is a metaphor about this dynamic. Everyone pretends the emperor is not naked in his imaginary “new clothes,” and they go out of their way to fake good with him. The little boy who says, “You’re naked!” violates the most important command of faking good and punctures the lie by simply stating the obvious.
Many of us grew up in such dysfunctional families where the first and great command is “Don’t have anything wrong with you!” Many communities and churches and groups are formed around this same unspoken command that everyone conforms to and upholds.
Radical self-acceptance and humble self-honesty free us from this oppressive command, and free us from the pressure that can be brought to bear on us by the scowling eye and sharp tongue and constant condemnation of those still faking good around us.
What is wrong with me? A lot, probably more than is worth taking time to talk about. How about discovering first what is good about me? I have some charming and redeemable features that can be quickly learned. 🙂
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” [click on title to see full poem]
Admitting our faults to ourselves, to others—to God—is a powerful tool of healing and self-transformation. It is not easy to chase the darkness from your soul, but light kills darkness instantaneously. The Good Book puts it this way: “If we admit our faults, God is sure to help us heal and become clear and clean. If we say we have no faults, we deceive ourselves” (very rough paraphrase of 1 John 1:9).
Alcoholics Anonymous is built on this principal, no small thing when we observe 90% of alcoholics who are recovering are doing it through AA’s powerful principles and practice. Admittance, self-honesty to another person, is crucial.
It is the “road less traveled,” and often not taken. But, there is much to commend it as a path to a healthier self. Here are four principles in the direction of self-honesty and admittance:
(1) We all have faults, foibles and weaknesses.
(2) Some problems are not easily overcome, and many of us will limp through life walking, but still limping.
(3) We do better honestly facing and embracing ourselves and our problems.
(4) Learning to accept and be patient with other broken, limping people teaches us to be more patient and realistic with ourselves.
We all probably have heard the saying, “Confession is good for the soul.” Truer words were never spoken.
Veterans of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) are familiar with the distinction between admittance and acceptance. Admittance means that I have acknowledged that I have a problem to myself and maybe one or a few others. This step down the road less traveled has a transformative effect.
But there is a normal human tendency to be afraid of others finding out. After all, what will they say about me or do to me if they find out what I really struggle with? So, this invisible court of public opinion keeps us locked in and locked down. Yes admitting a little that we have significant issues feels freeing, but then fear of pushback or putdowns can push us off the path.
That is the difference between “admittance” and “acceptance.” Admittance is acknowledgement you have a problem. Acceptance is not caring who finds out because they will have no leverage over me. Acceptance is a big step forward. Acceptance means that not only do I admit my issues, but I accept myself as someone with these issues. When I come to a place of radical self-acceptance, then public opinion no longer pressures me. It doesn’t matter who finds out what about me, because I accept myself as a person with problems–these particular problems.
The funny thing is that when we try to people-please instead of self-accept, we end up reacting to petty criticisms or even untrue ones. When I came to a better place of acceptance, I could hear unfounded criticism and laugh a bit, acknowledging that I am actually far worse than what they are unfairly criticizing me for. Another benefit of acceptance is that it takes a lot less energy than what it takes to manage and curate your image for real and imagined public expectations.
Do we all tend to hide our faults and exaggerate our strengths in our own minds? And, when we write about ourselves do we put a halo over our self-portraits like artists did over the “saints” in Medieval paintings? Photoshopping the selfie of your life, airbrushing over the ugliness and using a fuzzy filter on the lens may be the only way our ego can really let itself be recorded. Perhaps, but we don’t have to go that over-traveled way.
When I was a teenager I went to a youth group that had a poster on the wall of a Raggedy Ann doll being squeezed through the rollers of an old hand cranked washer-wringer tub, the precursor to an electric washing machine. At the top of the poster it said, “The truth shall set you free,” and across the bottom it said, “but first it will make you miserable.” The truth about ourselves may really bother us, like aching eyes when we come out of the darkness and into the light.*
That poster began a long, uneven journey for me that has been sometimes one step forward, two steps back. Sometimes I have fallen down, only to get back up again. In the Good Book it says, “Confess your faults to one another that you may find healing and restoration” (James 5:16), and I have found that candid discussion with another gracious person on the journey to self honest can be very helpful (especially if they are a humble and gracious person who knows they too have the same struggle).
It is possible to begin a journey toward self-honesty, but you can’t get there overnight. Over a lifetime—after you have walked a thousand miles down the road toward humble self-awareness—you may despair that there is so far left to travel. I sometimes feel that way.
When you first begin your journey, you’re not sure of who you are and, if you are anything like me, you are unconsciously unaware, not knowing what you do not know about yourself. After a long while, you may only arrive at consciously unaware, honestly admitting that you learn that you fake good to yourself a little too much, and you put on a face for others to see more often than you ever knew. Today, though I’ll take another bite of humble pie.
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” — Jesus.
(*This quote may attributable to President James Garfield).
I no longer wake up at 2am like I am running for my life like I used to. (See “The Long Hard Road” first entry if you don’t know what I mean).
For a long time, I used to think I could avoid this or fix me. Then, bam, I’m shot out of a cannon at 2am and I have to deal with it. It reminds me of that scene in the movie “Groundhog Day” where Bill Murray wakes up over and over at 6am to a an obnoxious radio DJ on his clock radio, who then plays that sappy Sonny & Cher song, “I Got You, Babe.”
The picture above is of a 2000 year old Roman road made of stones. The two grooves were cut there by chariot wheels, worn in by countless chariots and wagons passing by day after day, year after year, decade after decade for hundreds of years.
Some of our problems and traumas are like this. If you were traumatized over many months and years as a child, your behavioral, mental and emotional ruts may be very deep indeed and criss cross all over the place (some professionals even name it “complex trauma” or develomental trauma). But, a significant, intense horror like witnessing violence or murder or war, or experiencing rape or abuse can imprint such ruts deep and quick.
I have two kinds of ruts in my road: permanent, deeply worn grooves, and more transient, more easily removable grooves:
1. One kind, is the chariot ruts in the Roman road of my character that are not going away any time soon. They are not just permanent scars. They are continual reminders of the well-worn path I was on for so long that I EASILY go back to and get tripped up on if I am not paying attention, get stressed out or just lose my way. If I just start wandering around I will 100% hit that rut with my bike tire and flop on the ground. I have to live with focus, joy and intentionality if I want to keep from tripping and stay on my feet.
2. The other kind is more like the ruts that bike tires make in mud when you ride through. Sometimes they are wet. Sometimes they dry and harden. When they are wet we lose traction. When they dry out, they can be more treacherous than Roman chariot ruts. The chariot ruts have been there a long time and are always in the same place so they are known. The mud can move (though it is usually in the same low spot), and the hardened mud ruts can have sharp or high ridges that catch my bicycle tire more easily and flop me down. The great news about these kinds of ruts is that the next rain can make them easy to smooth out and IF the rain is hard enough it smooths them out all by itself.
“Heavenly Father, help me thine to be. You let the rain fall on the good and the bad so let the rain fall down on me.” (Larry Norman)
Sometimes you have to walk more than a mile in someone else’s moccasins to truly understand them.
No one has a simply sweet life. Most trauma survivors have problems that others see as too complex, too hard to understand, too messy to deal with. What others think of us is sometimes none of our business because they have not been through what we have been through, and they don’t understand it.
The truth is BEHAVIOR MAKES SENSE. That is, if we really understood what someone has lived through, then how they are acting would be completely understandable to us. Messy? Yes, and complicated too. Maybe only a god could really make sense of us and accept us like this, but I can at least try to be a little more humble in my assessment of others, a little less harsh in my judgment of them, a little more patient in trying to understand them, a little more kind in my assessment, a little less shallow in looking at how things appear instead of taking the time and effort and patience to understand what things they say and do really signify.
Maybe you are not ready to be that unconditionally accepting of the flaws of other people, so how about trying it on yourself first? What if you completely accepted yourself as a person with a lot of problems and flaws as well as a person with some good qualities and promise? What if you stopped feeling ashamed of what you have done, habits you have and quirks you carry? What if you told yourself, “My behavior makes sense. I act this way for a reason, and “If they only knew what I’ve been through, they would get me instead of judging me”?
What if, for a moment, you said hey, the road goes a long way back behind me. I would not gladly again choose to go through some of those things, trust some of those people nor do many of the things that I did. But, that is now water over the bridge…uh…water over the dam and under the bridge (well, let’s face it, a lot of things in our past can feel very overwhelming, like floodwaters swamping a bridge).
Life is a play you can’t rehearse. Sometimes it just comes at you too fast. Sometimes other people hurt you bad. Sometimes you let yourself and others down. 20-20 hindsight doesn’t help do anything other than cultivate shame or guilty gazing at your own behavioral belly button.
Today, I am going to forgive myself and accept myself as I am, without shame, guilt or self-condemnation. I’m going to try to accept myself like God accepts me. I’m not going to worry about what other people may think or say or do. Yes, I have fallen down many times, but today I choose to get up and start walking anew. There are lots of places yet to travel, things to see and people to meet. When I fall down, I’m going to get right back up and keep going, even if everyone can see me limp.
And, I am going to remember that all the help of heaven is with me and following after me: “Surely, my goodness and my mercy will follow you all the days of your life” (God, Psalm 23).
When our children were small, we bought Walker from the local animal shelter. The officer who helped us told us she thought he would be a great family dog and that he was full size at his current 40 pounds. Ultimately, she was right that he became a dearly loved family member, but she was wrong about the 40 pounds–he was only half grown.
Having just met Walker he kept jumping up on us, biting at our wrists and acting very unruly. She explained that he was acting like the 6 month old puppy that he was, and that he had lived on the street until now. We sort of understood the puppy part, but we had no idea what being a street dog meant for a whole slew of behaviors he had learned while roaming. We later realized that was a very important piece of information, to say the least.
We took him home and discovered he would continually jump all over us, nip at our sleeves, bolt all of a sudden bark loudly enough to hurt our ears and was quite a lot to handle on a leash. It was very clear he considered a leash an affront to his being and he would chew through them if we left it within reach. If we let him off the leash, goodbye Walker! Wow could he cover ground, and he’d be gone in a moment.
The worst for him the thunder that was a daily occurrence in Florida. If we left him outside and it thundered, he would find a way over or under our fence every time. One time we came home from our daughter Julia’s graduation and found him in the front, leather seat of a Porsche a half mile from our home. The driver pulled up to get out, and Walker jumped in, across his lap and into the passenger seat. Oh yes, he was wet, muddy and stinky. That proud Porsche owner didn’t have the same warm feelings about Walker we did, to say the least. It took several hours for him to calm down once we got him home.
Walker was wild, skittish and sometimes angry. We never really knew what his first 6 months were like, but we could read between the lines. Loud noises must have confused and terrified and traumatized him. He was in a continual tussle for primacy of position: on top of everything else, he was an alpha male–and he was always trying to climb up the pecking order (usually at our youngest daughter Kirstie’s expense). The wildness mellowed and love began to fill the hole, but he was truly an affection pit for whom there was never enough petting or belly scratching or hugging. He needed 5 mile walks every day to burn off his immense energy.
If Walker had jumped muddy into your car, or jumped all over you, or nearly killed your cat, no one would think badly of your for disliking him, and maybe even calling him a “bad dog,” or “no good,” or perhaps “what a permissive owner.” We do the same thing to people. We see them acting badly and take a mental picture of them as bad or wild or to be avoided, when in reality the trail goes a long way back behind them. Behavior really makes sense, once you walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins. Don’t be so quick to judge by what your eyes see. It is a long movie with a lot of sequels this life, not a snapshot frozen in time. Behavior makes sense. If we take the time and patience to understand.
Besides, the trail goes a long way in front of us, too. We don’t have to be where we are. Walker became a champion walking and jogging companion. I trained him to “come” and he would have been a class A hunting dog, if I hadn’t given up hunting. Smart, fun, loving, affectionate, and well-behaved mostly. Things could and did still trigger him, but that didn’t make him bad, just traumatized and triggered.
A copper etching of Walker lives on my wall (snapshot of it above), and he holds a special place in my heart. We always thought Walker was a mutt, maybe half lab because he was black and half Irish setter because of his shape and long hair. A few years after he died I was walking along the Riverwalk by my house, and I had to blink hard and shake my head. It looked like someone was walking my deceased Walker on a leash right toward me. I told her, “We used to have a mutt that looked just like yours.” She was offended. Hers was a pure bred dog of high standing: a flat coat retriever. I had no idea, and went home and began learning about all the nobility of this magnificent breed we never really fully recognized because we labeled him a mutt and a street dog.
There are pure bred, high quality, deeply faithful friends all around who are sometimes skittish, angry, wild or worse. They are judged to be street dogs and mongrels, who should be avoided. I have sometimes felt I was treated that way. Have you? Walker taught me more than “you really can’t judge a book by its cover.” His life’s message is much stronger: you really can’t even judge a book by its first several chapters. The trail goes a long way ahead, and there is kindness, mercy and tender care ahead. The famous musical’s line is not a cliché: love changes everything.
