More Compassion Less Judgment

Trusting Myself with Kindness

My journey of examining my faith is so intricately woven into my family of origin that it is proving to be nearly impossible to separate my faith from the messages I ingested in my early years.  As I was growing and learning at home, I was hearing Bible stories at church and absorbing moral lessons at school.  The line between church and state was much more blurred in the 70’s.  We recited the Lord’s prayer right after the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in Mrs. Gregory’s second grade classroom.  Posters of the Golden Rule hung in prominence throughout the hallways of my elementary. Looking back now I see what a confusing influx of information this was for a young mind.  There were times when my parents were accepting of worldly thought and there were times when they were not.  As a little girl, yearning for her parents’ approval it was often difficult to navigate. 

Parents are the gatekeepers.  Everything I learned in church and Sunday school was filtered through my parents and their sometimes rigid, sometime malleable belief system.  I was taught lying was wrong while fudging the truth seemed to be acceptable.  Once old enough to answer the phone I was often instructed to say that my father was not home, especially to his boss.  One incident comes to mind of hearing my father speaking on the telephone in our kitchen to who I can only assume was his boss.  The kitchen phone was the main phone in our home located in the center of our house. I heard him say “that car pulls in the driveway on Friday and doesn’t move again until Monday morning” speaking of the company car he drove. Wait? What? We had just been to Cincinnati to visit my grandparents, a round trip of more than 100 miles in my father’s work car. My little 10-year-old mind was stunned. This way of bending the truth, to a point of breaking was the norm in my home.  There was a kind of tell the truth when convenient or advantageous unwritten rule in my family.  To be clear this rule did not hold true for my brother and me.  We were expected always to be truthful, especially when we were being disciplined.

When I was in high school, full of fervent teenage piety.  I decided that for lent I was going to fast one day a week to seek God and pray for my unsaved classmates. When asked why I wasn’t eating I boldly announced my fast and my desire to be closer with God.  I was teased mercilessly by some of the older kids who sat at my lunch table.  I was devastated that first day of fasting.  When mom got home from work, I cried and told her of my teenage persecution for my courageous faith.  Expecting comfort or some acknowledgment of the risk I had taken for my faith, I was instead crushed by her admonishment for my fasting and bringing attention to myself.  I was instructed to abandon this idea and stop trying to stand out.  This conversation left me confused and somewhat devastated. I did not continue my fast, and she never knew the hurt and confusion I felt that day.

These kinds of incidents occurred over and over in my childhood.  I was learning at church and later youth group to share my faith.  To be bold for Jesus, to step outside my comfort zone and to do what is right.  The message was clear to not “give in to peer pressure” and never “go along with the crowd.” I do believe my parents believed these messages to be good and sound, but when I tried to follow them, I received another message entirely.  As I moved through adolescence, the youngest of my friend group due to my August birthday, the first of our group got his driver’s license and we decided to go to the local movie theatre.  In the early 80’s the neighboring small town had a single theatre that showed one movie each week.  Friday was the first day of the new movie.  Calling and listening to a rather lengthy recording announcing the weeks feature was the only way to find out what was playing in a world before the internet.  I suppose none of us had called to check what was playing so when we arrived at the theatre the movie selection of the week was rated R.  I knew I wasn’t 18 and therefore the movie was not appropriate for me.  Still actively living out my faith and keeping myself from influences of the world, I told my friends that I wasn’t allowed to see R rated movies. I don’t remember this causing much of a fuss and we ended up going out to eat instead.  When I got home, my parents asked me about the movie, and I told them it was rated R and how I done the right thing and told my friends that I was not allowed to see movies rated R.  Again, I was scolded for making a big deal out of things.  They told me I should have gone along with the crowd.

And this became my dilemma.  When I stood up for what I believed to be right I was told not to stand out or inconvenience the group.  And when I did things that were wrong, I was punished and shamed for being bad and disobedient.  These mixed messages have hindered my ability to make decisions and trust myself.

It was this distrust of myself that became the lens for which I understood my faith.  When I had a thought or a want or a desire, I began to see these as “of the flesh.”  It was hard for me to trust my emotions because on the few occasions when I shared my feelings with my parents, I was told I was being selfish or “you shouldn’t feel that way.”  It was not until I left for college and started taking classes towards my social work degree that I heard my favorite professor, Ted Marshall declare “feelings aren’t right or wrong, feelings just are.”  Over my 4 years at Morehead State, I heard him share this nugget of wisdom often and each time I was shaken. Almost a visceral response.

 I have tried to believe this ever since, but the message of my feelings being wrong has lingered throughout my adult life.  I have become judge and arbiter of my emotions deciding which ones were appropriate (positive emotions) and which emotions were unacceptable (negative ones).  I discovered a few years ago that I am an Enneagram 1 with a strong 9 wing.  This has provided me a language and lens through which to understand myself on a deeper level. Ones tend to have loud inner critics and I am very hard on myself.  I know now that trying to anticipate what would please my parents and so often being wrong has caused much negative inner dialogue.  I am learning to listen to my feelings, validate them and then move on.  Taking on a more observational stance and less of a judgmental one.

This not trusting myself, this seeing myself negatively has impacted how I receive and understand God.  I have long seen God as a judge, waiting and watching, poised to catch me in my sin and pronounce judgement upon me. As if God has some huge supernatural notebook with tally marks beside each of my transgressions.  Neglecting daily Bible reading, tally mark. Making an unkind statement, tally mark. Feeling angry towards someone, tally mark.  Over and over all day long, hopeful each morning to do better and regretful each evening with the reality that I had once again failed. 

I became quite legalistic in my early faith years.  I had to read my Bible, not necessarily to gain any insight or know more of God but to ease my guilt and lessen my fear.  An almost OCD approach to religion.  When my husband and I got married I must have at some point shared this with him.  I remember him saying to me, “God is just happy with any time he gets with you, he is not angry with you when you miss a day of reading your Bible.”  This helped me begin to see God not as a parent I could never please but as loving, kind and interested in me and my life.

I will say, I still catch myself thinking of God in ways that most resemble my relationship with my parents.  And I am at this point, struggling to believe in God’s love for me.  I am living into this new understanding of God with intentionality.  My faith and my family of origin are so interwoven they remind me of a tangle of Christmas lights.  Inch by inch I am working to separate them into something usable.  It is a slow and arduous process.  I am assessing each new thought, idea, belief, and value as they arise. I want to be able to recognize the thoughts that are mine and let go of the leftover thoughts of my youth.  I am learning to be gentle and kind to myself as I seek God anew.