An unmarried couple, living together for five years are attending your church. They are unmarried because the woman’s ex-husband is threatening to reduce child support if they do marry. The couple plans to marry next year when the child support ends. They are now asking to join the church: What do you do?

The post generated  some great discussion. Sadly, however, some commenters began to accuse the hypothetical couple of “fraud” and even “criminal” behavior because they were living together to avoid losing child support.

A similar situation developed on Salon about two months ago: Rebecca Golden wrote about her part-time job cleaning houses. It received many compliments from Salon letter-writers. But then a few folks noted that Ms Golden is on disability and, you guessed it, began to accuse her of benefits fraud.

When confronted with information gaps, people are quick to fill them. Unfortunately, we often choose to fill them with negative, rather than positive, assumptions.

After all, based on the information that Michael gave us, the hypothetical couple might just as easily been hamstrung by a vengeful, controlling ex-husband who knew that his ex desperately needed money to care for their disabled child, but who also enjoyed putting her in a “difficult” position by preventing her from being legally married.

And Salon readers could have thought to question whether those on disability can have some earnings (they can).  But in both cases, folks went straight for the jugular, despite the fact that the readers on Internet Monk are supposed to be Christians, and Salon readers are supposed to be liberal, hip, and intelligent.

Right.

Now, of course, I point this out because I am well-familiar with this sort of behavior: It is one of my specialities. I assume the worst about people and situations, even when the information that I have doesn’t really point to such a conclusion.

I’ve considered the following reasons for my negative assumptions:

1. I don’t want to look/feel like a fool, so I preemptively try and be clever. (So I figure I will be wise as a serpent and all that.)

2. I don’t want to be disappointed. (So I will assume the worst and if I am wrong, well, then I have a pleasant surprise!)

3. I’ve watched too many crime shows on TV.  (Bad Lainie!)

But whatever my reasons, these negative assumptions about others are bad things. They take up my time and energy in negative thought and self-righteous indignation. They can lead to my bearing false witness, and, perhaps more importantly, this way of thinking is a real bar to relationships with people.

(And can you imagine anyone wanting to join a church where people assume you are a criminal fraudster just because of your living arrangements?)

I’m working on finding other ways of filling gaps. . .I’m going to start, or try to start, with a bit of grace.

]]> http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2009/10/16/filling-in-the-gaps-badly/feed/ 0 http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2009/09/14/suck-it-up-vs-that-really-sucks-a-testimony-of-presence/ http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2009/09/14/suck-it-up-vs-that-really-sucks-a-testimony-of-presence/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:53:35 +0000 LainieP http://www.lainiepetersen.com/?p=461 A post on Internet Monk (on how the church needs to be a place where we can find companionship in repentance) brought up some memories for me. I’d like to share one of them.

At the beginning of 2008, I found myself embroiled in some utterly horrific personal circumstances. Things were so bad, I still have difficulty making sense of it all.  I had been wronged, and I had wronged others. I was both offender and victim, betrayer and betrayed.

(Never in a million years would I have thought that I would have done what I did, or ended up where I was.)

At one point, things got so bad that I had to take down this blog for awhile. This was a necessary, but devastating decision: This blog had become my lifeline. The one thing that I could do “right” at a time when everything was going so wrong.

I remember that cold January morning, several days after removing my blog, when I realized that I could no longer feel the presence of God.

(I overreacted, certainly, but in my confusion, rage and misery, I felt as though my life had been stripped of all meaning and purpose, and that included God.)

On the train to work, I realized that I was going to  have to let people know that I was now an atheist.

(I was perplexed as to how such an announcement ought to be made.)

In spite of everything, I had the good sense to postpone broadcasting my infidel state: I was in the office for a few hours when an email showed up in my inbox. It was from fellow blogger Shula (aka Sensuous Wife).

(I didn’t know her well, but that didn’t matter. Shula knew that I was in big trouble.)

She wrote:

“If you’re in a valley, I hope you’re not in there by yourself. If you’re in a foxhole, I’ll crawl in there with you and sit a while.”

(She didn’t offer to heal me, cure me, or fix me. She didn’t offer rebuke or “the truth in love”. She didn’t try to motivate me into wholeness. She simply offered to be present with me in my pain.)

Sitting with someone who is in pain and suffering is a tough thing to do. It is a tiresome, painful, and upsetting process.

(And yet Shula was still willing to do it.)

Our instincts often tell us to “fix” the problem, or to encourage the other to “fix” the problem themselves.

(If only it was that easy!)

It’s hard to sit  with someone who is full of pain and who can’t get beyond that pain or to take appropriate action: Particularly when that person bears responsibility for his/her circumstances. The temptation is so strong to just tell a person to “suck it up”, learn their lesson, and move on.

(As if being responsible for one’s own pain makes it any less painful.)

After receiving Shula’s email and offer of presence, we became friends. My behavior, thinking, and circumstances didn’t change right away, and in many ways, my pain (and behavior) became far, far worse before it got better.

(But I had someone with me. And she never went away.)

We can certainly make the argument that some people need to hear some “hard truths” to if they are ever going to change. I agree with this, and I am grateful for those friends who, during this bad time, confronted me with some of those hard truths.

But the fact that I needed to change didn’t nullify my pain, nor did it nullify my need for the presence of someone who could be my companion through this experience. Like most people in emotional pain, what I mostly needed was time to process, change, heal, and regroup.

(It took a bit more time than I thought I would.)

(But Shula gave it to me anyway.)

Thank you, Sister.

To both my relief, and dismay, I have discovered that there is indeed a pattern. My relief is the result of having detected a pattern, but my dismay is the result of discovering that this pattern is pretty complex.

To demonstrate, I am going to use the following (fictional) scenario as an example:

1. Someone calls me a “dummy”.

2. I react by feeling hurt, sad, angry, and confused.

3. My hurt feelings give rise to one or more of the following responses: I snap back with an insult of my own, I wander off feeling sorry for myself and trying to figure out why that person doesn’t like me, I begin to wonder if that person is going to try and turn others against me. . .and so on.

Notice that my responses (which take up the bulk of my time and energy) are not directly the result of being called dumb, but are instead in response to my hurt feelings. My responses are only secondarily connected to the situation: The time and energy that I invest in my responsive actions is primarily connected to my emotional reaction, not the incident itself.

This is a hard pattern to challenge and change, so lately I have been just trying to pay attention to this process.  I’m trying to catch myself between my emotional reactions and my continued response. I’d like to think that eventually I can get enough distance between the emotion and my response so as to figure out whether I am making an appropriate investment.

I’ll keep trying, anyway.

The total delay for the second car? Probably about three seconds.

Apparently this waste of three seconds was enough to make the second car’s driver very irate. He began to lean on his horn and curse the driver of the first car. Then the driver of the first car stopped his car, further delaying the driver of the second car, and responded with cursing and horn-blowing of his own. After a bit of start and stop, both drivers drove off the lot, gunning their engines as they did so.

The time taken up by the angry exchange? Probably about fifteen seconds, and I’d bet anything that both drivers were fairly steamed for at least a minute or two after they drove off.

Total time of delay: 3 seconds.

Total time of angry exchange: 15 seconds (at least).

So for wait of 3 seconds, the second driver (roping the first driver along with him) invested 5 times the length of the delay in unproductive honking, cursing, and, yes, being delayed even longer.

Christians might call this poor stewardship of time and emotional energy. The rest of the world would probably just say that this was a boneheaded thing to do. No matter what you call it, though,  the neither driver will ever get his squandered time or energy back.

After watching this little drama unfold, I came to the realization that I am often (ok, usually, even)  just as wasteful of my energy and resources as these drivers. A slight inconvenience, a careless word, or, in some cases, even a positive exchange can result in behavior that is totally out of proportion to the actual stimulus. Thus a good stimulus is minimized by wasted time and energy, while a bad stimulus has the distinction of being made, by myself, even more damaging because of energy and time I invest in it.

I have some thoughts on why I (and perhaps others) do this, and I will write about them in my next post. But for now, it is enough to remember those squabbling drivers, investing fivefold in their own misery over a measly three seconds.

My dad died thirteen years ago. I was privileged to be with him at the time of his death, although the circumstances were not what either of us would have chosen.  We met for lunch in downtown Chicago (not an unusual event) and after our meal he asked me if I wanted some dessert.

Then he died.

My memory of the event is disorganized, dissociative. I remember facing my father directly across the table as he died.  But this isn’t how it happened.  I know I was sitting off to his side. I know this because I remember turning to one of our dining companions and told her to call 911, even as another friend tended to my dad.

(A psychiatrist once told me that my psyche has deliberately scrambled this memory in order to protect me from further trauma. This makes sense. )

He died because his heart stopped.  He sat there, breathing, but his open eyes didn’t see me. The sudden, incomprehending fury of a toddler welled up in me: I needed my daddy, and he was there, but he wasn’t paying me any attention.

Then, as the reality of the situation began to take hold, as the baby-rage passed, denial took its place. I fell to my knees beside my chair, and hit my head, repeatedly, against it, in an attempt to wake up from what was surely a nightmare. Each time my head knocked into the arm of the chair, I experienced some relief, feeling myself “waking up” from this horror.

(Waking up from the horror, to the horror. No matter how hard I tried, I could not undream it.)

My mind left my body. I actually saw it go, irregular blotches of red and green and purple and yellow tethered  to my head by only a thin silver cord. I had the choice of going insane at that moment. I could have anesthetized myself against the pain by simply losing my mind. Or I could keep my sanity and suffer mightily.

(I chose the latter.)

I grabbed the silver cord. I yanked it hard, and the pieces of my mind returned to my head, though I grimly noted that they didn’t settle back in quite the same arrangement as before.

(This discombobulation was proven when I stood up and asked a busboy if he was a doctor.)

The restaurant managers had got my father onto the floor and administered CPR. My knowledge of human biology was scanty, but I concluded that if they were getting some blood to his brain, he might still hear me. I called out to him, again and again, telling him that I loved him. The restaurant hostess quickly hustled me away. I was causing a scene.

I sat in a large chair in the lobby and sipped from a glass of ice water. When the paramedics arrived, I calmly rose to meet them, informing them of my father’s medical history. From then on I was calm, cool, collected, and sane. Everyone was frantically trying to save my father’s life, but I had seen it leave his eyes. I was resigned. (Though, at the hospital, when the ER doctor gave me the “we did all we could” speech, I still almost fainted.)

Later that day, as family and friends gathered, my godfather embraced me and said the strangest thing: “Now’s the time for growing up.”.  I didn’t get it. I was living and working independently . I was twenty-six years old. What more “growing up” did I have to do?

(A lot, as it turned out, and I sure as hell didn’t do a very good job of it.)

As time passed,  I began to heal and to be able to function. But it was a struggle. Despite my putting the worst of the grief behind me, I still desperately needed to find a reason for what had happened. My compartmentalized, orderly world had crashed around me. I had long believed that purpose and order could only be explained by the existence of God. But what purpose and order was there in what had happened to my father and myself? Where was God? What was God?

Since my own, personal, world had fallen into chaos and meaninglessness, I began groping blindly to regain order and purpose (never mind God).  I spent over a decade in this quest, looking for “signs” and systems and people that might bestow my life and soul with  meaning and purpose. I had a more than a few triumphs and joys, but mostly I failed miserably.

This quote, attributed to James Hillman, perhaps best describes my condition:

“He who has lost his soul will be finding God anywhere, up above and down below, in here and out there, he will cling to every straw of love blown past his doorway as he stands waiting for a sign.”

This went on for years.

To an extent, it continues.

I know now that the mark of an adult is graciously accepting (you don’t have to like it) the fact that things are not the way we think they ought to be.  It is the understanding (again, you don’t have to like it) that one’s own agenda has no real significance in the greater scheme of things.  It is no longer demanding that reality (you still don’t have to like it) serve one’s personal desires.

When my father died, I first raged against him for not being where I needed him to be. Then I turned my rage both outward (onto God and just about everything else) as well as inward (onto myself for not being able to offer myself the kind of control necessary to make sense of my existence). None of this served any good purpose. None of it made any difference in what was real. None of it made my life easier or happier. Instead of giving my life purpose and order, my childish groping kept me in chaos: I didn’t like it, but (I thought) it was easier to be there than to be an adult.

Then was the time for growing up.

Now is the time for growing up.

Its been time for growing up for quite some time now.

Maybe I’m finally ready.

This post is part of the September Syncroblog on maturity. Check out the posts listed below for other takes on this month’s topic!

Phil Wyman at Square No More with “Is Maturity Really What I Want?”
Lainie Petersen at Headspace with “Watching Daddy Die”
Kathy Escobar at The Carnival in My Head with “what’s inside the bunny?”
John Smulo at JohnSmulo.com
Erin Word at Decompressing Faith with “Long-Wearing Nail Polish and Other Stories”
Beth Patterson at The Virtual Teahouse with “the future is ours to see: crumbling like a mountain”
Bryan Riley at Charis Shalom with “Still Complaining?”
Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church with “Maturity and Education”
KW Leslie at The Evening of Kent with “Putting spiritual infants in charge”
Bethany Stedman at Coffee Klatch with “Moving Towards True Being: The Long Process of Maturity”
Adam Gonnerman at Igneous Quill with “Old Enough to Follow Christ?”
Joe Miller at More Than Cake with “Intentional Relationships for Maturity”
Jonathan Brink at JonathanBrink.com with “I Won’t Sin”
Susan Barnes at A Booklook with “Growing Up”
Tracy Simmons at The Best Parts with “Knowing Him Who is From the Beginning”
Joseph Speranzella at A Tic in the Mind’s Eye with “Spiritual Maturity And The Examination of Conscience”
Sally Coleman at Eternal Echoes with “vulnerable maturity”
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules with “What I Wish The Church Knew About Spiritual Maturity”
Cobus van Wyngaard at My Contemplations with “post-enlightenment Christians in an unenlightened South Africa”
Steve Hayes at Khanya with “Adult Content”
Ryan Peter at Ryan Peter Blogs and Stuff with “The Foundation For Ministry and Leading”
Kai Schraml at Kaiblogy with “Mature Virtue”
Nic Paton at Sound and Silence with “Inclusion and maturity”
Lew Ayotte at The Pursuit with “Maturity and Preaching“

“There is practically no negative emotion which you cannot enjoy, and that is the most difficult thing to realize.”

– PD Ouspensky, The Fourth Way