Our responses to pain can teach us something about our character defects

My dreams started out bigger than hitting 80 pounds on a scale. My whole life I wanted to grow up to be the kind of woman who made a difference. I feared that my own mother, born in a different time and place, had wasted her potential by denying and ignoring her dreams. My mother was like one of those houseplants that can thrive anywhere but would probably do best if you didn’t uproot her every 18 months. In a moment of rare vulnerability, she once confided how hard it was to stay with my dad and roam from city-to-city in search of his perfect job. But it was harder to leave; she loved him; she didn’t know how she would support four kids.

I observed how she coped with each move, ordering her life around her soap operas - The Young and the Restless, As The World Turns, and The Guiding Light. Whatever state she lived in she could always count on tuning in to see what nefarious deed Victor was up to while she waited with baited breath to see if Nicky would take the scoundrel back. I wanted more than tv buddies.

When I went to the University of Virginia in 1974 I was part of the second class of female admissions in what had traditionally been an all male school. It was brutal. The men were not happy. Fraternities assigned pledges to sit on the hill overlooking the Emmet Street Bridge - a crossing point for anyone headed to the cafeteria. Armed with cardboard signs, these recruits would rate each of us on a scale of 1 - 10 every single night when we headed to dinner. It did something to me. Already self-conscious about my appearance this public shaming paired with the ability to stop eating without anyone noticing was a killer combination. My eating disorder took off.

Notice the following:

* Not all women subjected to this abuse developed an eating disorder.

* I have a genetic predisposition for addiction. Some in my family use drugs, others alcohol. I developed what is called a “process addiction,” which pretty much means a compulsive behavior that is not related to alcohol or drugs.

* I needed opportunity. At home I would have been fussed at for wasting food. I would have been called out for weird eating behavior. At college, no one noticed.

* My body responded to the experience with delight. It felt good to starve. I felt powerful. For whatever reason, my body fed me positive cues for restrictive eating. Each of us respond in distinctive ways to self-destructive behavior. This was mine.

Underneath these issues were my enduring vulnerabilities: fear and dishonesty. There are basically four defects of character: selfishness, self-seeking, dishonesty and fear. These are the issues the Sixth Step is asking us to acknowledge and prepare to let go and let God remove.

Lack of self-honesty comes at a cost

There is a pernicious myth that continues to circulate among families in need of recovery that says that a person suffering from a substance use disorder must “hit bottom” before they are ready to recover. Often referred to as a moment of clarity, this magical bottom is supposed to be the eureka moment when, finally, the person with the SUD agrees that they have a problem and decide they want help.

“That’s why it may be tempting to take a hands-off approach to the problem, hoping that your relative or friend’s drug or alcohol problem will just go away - that he or she is just going through a phase and will get better with time. Or you may decide that treatment won’t help because your addicted friend or relative doesn’t want to make a change. But both of these beliefs are myths that can lead to more severe addiction and to greater family disruption. Addiction is a progressive disorder - it gets worse over time.”[2]

Resistance to seeing ourselves accurately is a stubborn bugger and we battle it at every stage of recovery and spiritual transformation. When we rigidly cling to our obsessions and compulsions, it is usually necessary to “let in” more reality before we are willing to surrender to the process of transformation.

I wonder, what was that pastor thinking when he railed about someone else’s stench? How did he sleep that night? How do I sleep at night when I do other, equally knuckle-headed things that are in no way an accurate reflection of the person I INTEND to become? As usual, there are “steps” we can take to not only increase our accuracy of self-assessment, but heal our wounds. And surely, much of what we say and do and think and feel is more a reflection of our need for healing than it is a reason to judge ourselves and others as failures in the faith department.

Sometimes we do things that embarrass ourselves. We can distract ourselves and pretty much guarantee that we will continue to feel bad about our behaving, or we can open ourselves up to change. But first, we have to be ready to change. According to step 6, we have to be ENTIRELY ready to change.

What is your reluctance to see yourself accurately costing you and those you love?

 2 Addiction Why Can’t They Just Stop?  David Sheff, Larkin Warren, Katherine Ketcham and Katherine Eban, Rodale Inc., copyright 2007, p.157.

How do you see yourself? Is it accurate?

Before I could “let go and let God”, I had to let in reality. Back in the days when I suffered from an eating disorder, I had become attached to my identity as a “thin” person. This obsession tied my identity to numbers - the scale, the size of my jeans, the diameter of my waist. Early in recovery I was giving my complete and entire readiness to figuring out how to eat without losing my svelte figure. The problem, as defined by others, was my eating disorder - which was a solution from my perspective. What became a problem for me was to keep my attachment to my compulsive measuring of myself by numbers while getting my cardiologist off my back. One day I confessed this to a friend, who replied, “Calling yourself thin is like describing concentration camp survivors as ‘all muscle’ instead of telling the truth. When they got released from those death camps they were a bag of bones, one breath away from death.” Well, that was rude. But it also let in a bit more reality. I was not thin, I was emaciated. I did not look good, I looked like what I was - dying.

If you have a couple of minutes, sit down and write a list of words to describe yourself. How do you SEE you?

Sometimes we need to let go in order to survive

“Clifford was leaning against the fence, enjoying a beautiful view from the top of the Grand Canyon, when the wooden posts suddenly ripped from their cement moorings. Seconds later, Clifford was plunging down into the abyss.

Halfway to the bottom his desperate arm-waving helped Clifford catch and clutch the branch of a scrubby tree that grew from the canyon wall. Grasping, gasping, he looked both up and down. No way could he climb that sheer cliff, even if he could swing his body toward the wall. But below yawned the chasm, unbroken by any other tree or holding place. To fall would be to die, horribly crushed on the rocks below. No one had seen him fall, and he hung there out of sight, knowing that the wind would scatter his weak voice no matter how loudly he shouted.

Desperate, Clifford cried out to the heavens: “God help me!” Hearing his own trembling voice, he wailed again, “Please, God, help me.”

To Clifford’s amazement, he heard an immediate answer. “All right,” came the voice. The initial warmth Clifford felt turned to a chill wind gripping his body as the voice continued: “Let go.”

Looking down, Clifford saw the huge boulders waiting below, and he knew again that if he let go he would surely die. Let go? He thought. “But God, you don’t understand!” he yelled up. “I’m too far up, I’ll …”

“Let go,” the voice repeated.

Silence filled the canyon. Then, in a weak, terrified voice Clifford called out, “Is there anyone else up there?”

The story is corny and it is true; true of every one of us in the sense that it conveys a powerful spiritual truth: So long as we cling, we are bound.”[1]

Is there anything you are clinging to that you need to release? Anyone? Any expectations of yourself or others?

1 The Spirituality of Imperfection, by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, A Bantam Book, copyright 1992, pp. 163-164.

Working on character defects means going against the grain

If you ever visited our church, you would not be overly impressed. We struggle to define ourselves in large part because we don’t try to unless someone presses us. Various attempts have been made: are we a recovery church, a church in recovery, a treatment facility, a ministry - who are we? Our favorite tagline is, “We are not much of a church.” We have no strategic goals or mission statement. We do not keep a membership roll and we are hopeless at the administrative tasks that enable more traditional churches to grow and thrive. Most churches focus on what they can give; often we are surprised by what we receive.

Our cheap chairs were getting old and starting to collapse on people and we needed to buy new ones. As a pure gift, the business owner discounted the new cushy chairs AND offered us some free modular pieces that made for comfy sitting in our common area. Inspired by this new look, I went to the local Home Goods store and purchased some soft white plush accent pillows, a chunky afghan to throw over the back of one of the sofas, candles, fake plants and a couple end tables. As I was checking out, the clerk commented, “You must be redecorating your den.”

“No, my church! I’m super excited!” I gushed.

Her head popped up and she stared in shock. “This does not look appropriate for a church.” She scowled to emphasize my poor choosing.

“Well,” I said, “we’re not much of a church.”

“Why do you go there then?” She asked, clearly confused.

“I’m the pastor.” I responded. Silence. She couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. Readiness for God to remove our defects of character involves not just talking, reading, considering or expressing our spirituality in the ways that others (and ourselves) recognize. It is about experiencing life in a new way. It’s not about conforming to expectations. Just because churches usually have stuffy and rigid furniture does not mean they have to.

Spirituality makes us capable of specific kinds of experiences, ones that might be unexpected, or go against the grain. Not many people truly examine their character defects- it isn’t normal. If we are available to, however, we can see and understand God, ourselves, and others differently. This new way of being frees us from the grip of our shortcomings in ways that are mysterious and attributable only to God! This new way of seeing and being goes great with big chunky afghans and cozy seating arrangements.