Estrangement

For decades I was afraid of anger. I didn't mind a little righteous indignation on behalf of another person now and again, but I would go to great lengths to not get angry with the people I loved. I excused, ignored, justified and rationalized bad behavior so long as the naughty person was someone I loved. It was exhausting.

I did not know that love and anger are companions; I had rarely witnessed anger as a normal response to loving one another. When we were first married Pete would sometimes express normal and appropriate anger. It would totally freak me out. He learned over the years to deal with his anger in ways that did not scare me, which basically meant trying to figure out how to handle conflict in ways I could tolerate - which was really unfair to him. We're lucky, I suppose, that we survived my anger-phobia. Getting angry is part and parcel of intimacy and love. Paul certainly knew that when he wrote in the book of Ephesians, "Be angry but do not sin...Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ as forgiven you." (Ephesians 4 and 5 is a good read.)

Anger is an emotion that is beneficial so long as we learn how to use it for good and not evil. It serves as a signal that we need to pay attention to something. Maybe there is a threat - or perhaps, a perceived threat that is actually no threat at all. Maybe anger is trying to teach us something we need to learn about ourselves - like, hypothetically speaking, we need a good therapist to help us sort through why anger freaks us out. Anger gets our body ready for a response. Often anger is just a good cover for fear. Whatever. They are both trying to get our attention.

Denying anger is the way I tried to cope; I can tell you, it is a short term solution if you're uncertain how to proceed but a lousy long term strategy for caring about yourself and others. Virtuous living is a beautiful thing - but no where is it considered a virtue to numb yourself from feeling your feelings.

As I said yesterday, Jesus is not trying to break people up but he does offer us ways to see and be in the world that allows for authentic human expressions of all kinds. Are there any emotional barriers between you ad your own authentic living?

Lovingkindness Embodied

“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”

Brene Brown

After my Uncle’s storm blew over, he looked spent and took his leave. Everyone offered a farewell in muted shock. There are plenty of people we might expect to blow their top in my family - this guy wasn’t one of them.

For whatever reason, and I suppose to no one’s surprise, I couldn’t let this go. I trailed behind him and leaned into the driver’s side door, my elbows and forearms screaming as they touched the hot metal of his Buick. He rolled down his window. I leaned in close.

“Uncle James, you do not seem to know this, but my mother loves you to pieces and you just devastated her. She admires you. She thinks you are the best Christian man she has ever known in her entire life and I have no reason to doubt her assessment. I don’t have any idea what happened in the past, but I am sure you have suffered more than she has over the years as a result of the decisions previous generations have made. My mom doesn’t have men in her life that she can call ‘good’. You’re it. Please fix this.”

I never saw him again. But I did learn that he fixed it with my mom. It didn’t take much because my mom was a primed pump ready to pour out her love on this older brother who was treated at best like a welcomed guest in her childhood home. My mother, a little acorn who, in my opinion, was not particularly well nourished herself and often lived in inhospitable conditions for growing lovingkindness, was a mighty oak tree of hesed.

Me? Not so much. I harbored resentment toward him. I am still cautious around folks claiming the label “good Christian.” But I have to give James credit; he made a wrong right. So although it was hurtful and messy, it turns out that my Uncle James was indeed a man capable of lovingkindness.

“Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together.”

Brene Brown

A Tale of Lovingkindness..

“What we know matters but who we are matters more.”

Brene Brown

My mother grew up as an only child, but she wasn’t one. Here’s what happened. My grandfather married a woman and had a little boy they named James. When James was a baby, his mother died of food poisoning. My grandfather went hunting and found a lovely young woman and married her with some haste. But not hastily enough. Since my grandfather had to work and knew nothing about raising no babies, James went to live with his paternal grandparents. When my grandfather remarried, he went to fetch James but his mother would not give him back. I judged my grandfather for his lack of rigorous pursuit in retrieving James. I suspect my mom did too.

My mother loved her brother with endless abandon. I was never quite sure where he stood in regards to his feelings about her until my grandfather died. The work of caring for my grandmother, closing up her home and resettling her with my mom, fell to my mom. She didn’t mind. My grandmother only had one specific request: make sure James gets his mother’s sewing machine. It was one of those antique wooden cabinets with the large pedal? I loved that thing.

It was a hot and humid August day when we drove down to clear out the house. James came by to pick up the machine late in the afternoon of the final day of moving. My mother was thrilled to see him. He, in turn, unleashed upon her decades of anger and resentment. No one in that house stood up for mother; they just listened as he ranted and raved. Now mind you, my poor mom had done everything in her power to love her brother. When his wife left him with a young child to run off with another man? My mother took that little boy into our home until James had found him another bride. And unlike her grandmother, she gave him back when asked. She had asked him to take ANYTHING from the house he wanted - frankly, there wasn’t much. He hadn’t even wanted the sewing machine, but my mom insisted on that point.

I was appalled. My entire life I had heard what a great Christian man my uncle was - is this what that meant? Was this hesed? No. But the story continues…