Deconstruction 2.0

The Journey Continues

It has been two years since I first set out to capture my thoughts about faith and life, about freedom and love, about holding close and letting go.  And I think I have done that.  At least I have begun to do that. I have had a ring side view of my own growth and change. I appreciate you, my faithful readers, you who have faithfully pulled up a chair alongside me.  Early on my goal for creating this space, was to allow myself the room to take an honest look at this part of my life that up until I hadn’t felt free to explore.   Annie’s Newsletter has afforded me the freedom to question, doubt and challenge the faith I inherited and dedicated my life to.  What I have discovered in this process of deconstructing my faith is the way it is so fully intertwined with my family of origin. Prompting the further work of making sense of the family system I grew up in.

 A counselor by profession, a counselee by necessity, I am familiar with both sides of the office.  In my office I am the counselor and in Bridget’s office I am the counselee. Over the years as a social worker and now as a counselor I have been privy to the ways in which humans can hurt, neglect, betray, abuse, manipulate and misuse other humans.  I gave up the fantasy of my family years ago, but the idea of my perfect family is more hard-wired into my brain than I realized.  In my field the way we define childhood trauma is being broadened. Thanks in part to Dr. Nicole LePera and her work as a Holistic Psychologist, we are beginning to see that smaller traumas that occur over and over for years and years also manifest themselves in our adult lives. 

Over the two years since I started this blog I have lightly touched on my childhood. A memory here and there, always fearful of sounding like a whiner, which is also part of my wiring.  I have not wanted to in any way minimalize the experience of others who had it so much worse than I did.  I was after all, raised in a middle-income home with two college educated parents with decent jobs. I was not physically abused or neglected.  To call my childhood traumatic just didn’t seem appropriate.  When I started this process of deconstructing the fantasy of my childhood, I was a reluctant participant.  One of the cardinal rules of my family was loyalty.  Loyalty to what my parents proclaimed as truth, while at the same time learning to deny and betray my own experience, my own feelings.  Any thought contrary to my parents was quickly discounted in my brain.  It was automatic. My programing thorough. Once the contrary thought was dismissed as wrong, even though every part of my body, my gut, my intuition was telling me somethings else, I internalized this dissonance as shame.  Something was deeply wrong with me. My parents were right, period, therefore I was wrong, period.  No discussion, no dialogue, no nothing. Just guilt and shame, insecurity, self-doubt, fear, anxiety, and a warped sense of who I was, of who I am.

Deconstructing my faith has led me to this point.  A point of no return.  I cannot see my childhood through those rose-colored glasses of old.  Those same glasses no doubt aided in my survival, but I now find them too tight and uncomfortable.  I have squeezed my head into them for so many years choosing to suffer.  Afterall suffering is a virtue not only in my family but in the church as well.  Taking them off has made me realize how much they were impeding my personal quest for freedom and authenticity.

In recalling my purpose for starting my blog, it was that I wanted to document my own destruction journey. When I started, I did not know what it would mean for me to explore my faith.  I started simply by recognizing my body’s reaction to beliefs I held close.  When my shoulders sank, and my insides clinched. I paid attention. And it happened a lot.  I started with a simple “I don’t know.”  I began to move away from the certain and the absolute and move toward a kind of unknowing that before would have been too unsettling.  As I continued to examine the faith of my youth and challenge myself to make room for doubt I fell into a fearful sadness. Letting go of those pithy statements of certainty and treading the rough waters of ambiguity left me feeling like a tiny boat on a restless sea.

 As I have pondered these past two years, putting words and ideas on paper I see that I have leveled my faith, the demolition nearing completion.  I am moving towards a more constructive phase of my journey.  It feels like one of those home design shows from the 90’s.  You know the ones where they go into the room they are renovating, and they clear it out.  Everything must go, until all that is left is an empty room, full of new possibilities.  The room completed the designer then looks at all that was removed and then carefully decides which things will now be part of this new room.  What is left is donated or thrown out.

Over the last two years I have picked up the pace of sorting.  Deciding what few things I will carry with me back into my room, my space for faith.  As I look around the bareness echoing, I am finding it hard to imagine what is next.  Just like on those design shows, when the designer casts the vision of the room, I struggle to see it until it is all there for the viewing.  I am grieving the loss of my full room of outdated and uncomfortable belongings where my faith once flourished. I long to see the “what’s next.”  I miss what I had even though it was no longer serving me.  I keep looking through what has been taken from the room, I keep sorting.  Making hard decisions about what to keep, what to store until later and what will ultimately end up on the curb.

The deconstruction of my faith has been happening simultaneously with my deeper understanding of my family in general, my mother in particular.  That same sinking of my shoulders and clinching of my insides have been a part of my experience for as long as I can remember when it comes to interactions with my family.

Growing up in the 70’s, the glory days of the tele-evangelist, my faith was influenced more than I knew by what Kate Bowler would call the prosperity gospel. Although we attended mainline denominations, Nazarene and then United Methodist, my parents had a prosperity gospel leaning.  I did not recognize how this had influenced me until I read Kate Bowler’s book entitled, “Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel.”  This book is the culmination of her dissertation for her PhD.  It reads more like a textbook than the light and fun summer beach read. Many of the beliefs and theological ideas that I have sorted through and decided not to keep are directly from my mother.  In emptying my room of her untrue, unhealthy, judgmental, harsh, and unkind faith I am struggling with finding and holding onto healthier, truer replacements. 

I have long called my mother the 4^th member of the Holy Quartet, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and Doris. She believes herself to have a special connection to God which legitimizes her criticism and judgment of all things me.  Over the years when I have tried to form my own opinions, worked out my own faith with fear and trembling she has been quick to tell me how I am wrong.  Usually, if I stood my ground, or pushed back in any way she would say in her belittling voice, “you don’t know Jesus, like I know Jesus.”  I have heard that more times than I can count.  She used to coerce me into allowing her to pray for me.  Just a thinly veiled attempt to criticize me in Jesus’ name.  I, trying to be a good daughter, trying to be a good Christian, succumbed to her condescending prayers for many years.  They never left me feeling closer to God or cared for by my mother.  They left me feeling gut punched. Last fall, for the first time I said no to her praying for me.  I told her if I wanted to pray, I would pray with Kurt.

It has been eight months since I have spoken to my mother.  It has been a long time coming.  I have made two other substantial attempts to distance myself from my mother in the last 35 years.  One when we eloped in 1988, another in 2002 when I was only able to pull away for 6 weeks and then this time just after Christmas of 2022.

I just celebrated my 56^th birthday.  The first birthday I didn’t have to plan a time when I could see my mother and take care of her so she would be happy on my birthday.  I just enjoyed the day.  In recent years I had begun to dread my birthday.  Not for fear of growing older, because it meant having to be with my mother.  It meant another card inscribed in her curly, bubbly, flowing font, “I am so proud of the way you take care of me.”  In recent years it also came to mean taking my mom out to dinner, a dinner that generally cost about what she gave me as a gift.  Last year she even said as I paid the dinner bill, “I guess that took all your birthday money.”  Yes, yes it did.

No card this year, no money with the expectation of spending it on her.  No belittling, no criticism, no clinching of my insides and sinking of my shoulders just a fun day with my husband.  Just doing the things I enjoy.  Just 4 phone calls with my kids.  Just sitting in the special booth at the Cherry Street Pub.  Just a day for me.  It felt good and a bit uncomfortable.  I am used to having my birthday be about my mother.

In 2023 I stepped away from contact with my mother.  In 2021 I stepped away from church.  What is next for me?  I don’t know.  One thing is for sure I will pay attention to my body and if my insides clinch and my shoulders sink, I will listen and walk away.