She Views the Whole of Me Through the Lens of the Worst of Me
Have you ever had a confusing over-reaction to something someone says or does? I have.
Years ago, I was confronted by one of those women who just always seem to have it all together. (Do you know any women like that?) I had invited her confrontation in my life. I wanted to grow and change. I know that redemptive criticism is an important part of maturing. But man! When she started in on her LIST I felt like I was being shot with a big gun right through my heart. I couldn’t even understand what I was feeling more or less what I was thinking. The power of speech had left me entirely and in its gaping hole, all I felt was sadness. Deep sadness. Because something very intimate and inextricably foundational to who I am as a person was hurting deep inside of me.
Honestly? What this person said or didn’t say, how they said it … I don’t think it really mattered. I think they were simply the presenting issue, the “tip of the iceberg,” as it were—because the real work had to be done deep inside of my heart. And it had very little, almost nothing, to do with her. But in my shock and pain and confusion, I did not see that at first. No.
My initial response was to replay her words (over and over and over again). I told myself that I just “couldn’t” stop thinking about what she said. As I rehearsed her exact words time after time, I felt tired and irritable. I raised my voice with my children like I haven’t done in a long time (rightfully mortifying me). I longed to talk it out with Fred, but he was unreachable at work. Grrrrr. I re-read articles on receiving criticism and excerpts from the “The Third G” in The Peacemaker. (Fascinating! Really good stuff! But I was still struggling. A lot.)
And then. Finally. I “quieted and calmed my soul like a weaned child with its mother” (Psalm 131) and I began to pray (honestly about what I was thinking and feeling) and read Scripture (so that I would listen to God and not just listen to my own ramblings and feelings).
It didn’t take long before I saw clearly how this present hurt had actually tapped into an older and deeper hurt that really had nothing to do with my current situation. Complex pain is often like that. In our chapter on suffering in Peacemaking Women, we describe it like this:
Complex pain. Another reason our suffering can devastate us is that we often experience suffering on two different levels. The pain from the current situation may “tap into” our past experiences. [An example is given about a Christian woman who was hurt by her employer.] … She was now experiencing suffering on two levels, past and present, and both were in desperate need of the gospel.
When our experience of pain seems disproportional to the actual situation we are in, we need to look deep into our own hearts to see if a life-forming trauma might be surfacing in the current conflict. Sometimes we may even need help to do so because our pain may cloud our vision and make it difficult to see clearly. Grief and despair, while rooted in past hurts, can be reflected powerfully in current circumstances and present suffering. Of course, even as we seek to gain wisdom and insight about our complex pain, our suffering never gives us an excuse to sin. God calls us to honor him regardless of our past or present circumstances.
As David Powlison reminds us, “Knowledge of a person’s history may be important for many reasons (compassion, understanding, knowledge of characteristic temptations), but it never determines the heart’s inclinations.”
For me? This confrontation had touched deep pain in my life associated with a completely different person who had “redemptively confronted me” years earlier … except it wasn’t very redemptive. It was just extremely condemning. You see, rather than give me specific information about current things I had done or said that had caused offense, she just brought up some sort of vague allegations from the far distant past. “15+ years ago you did such-and-so” or “10+ years ago, I heard that you were difficult to work with on that certain committee.” Things she didn’t even have first-hand knowledge of, or any details at all … things from years and years ago, yet she talked about it as though I had just done it yesterday. And when I tried to engage with her and ask for details, there were none. When I tried to express appreciation for God’s grace helping me to repent and grow, she refused to acknowledge any hope for growth or change in me at all.
This confused me, and grieved me, because I knew that there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of examples of kind and lovely and patient things I had done in that 15+ year time period too. But to her? To people like her? None of that mattered at all.
I even asked her that if I were to not do any of those very bad things again for another five years, or ten years, or twenty years … then would I have any chance of growing or changing in her mind? Her response? No. I was and forever would be defined in her mind by this very bad thing I did in the past. When I was in my 20’s! (I am rapidly approaching 50.) No room for growth. No room for grace.
So now I knew why the current words hurt me so much.
My father died a few years ago. We were estranged. Oh. We had surface-level contact (cards, visits), but I knew he didn’t feel safe around me and loved by me. Some of that was his problem (his heart, sin, unbelief, immaturity), but some of it was directly tied to the fact that when I became a Christian as a fifteen year old, I was a total Christian jerk. Seriously I was the proudest, most self-righteous, judgmental, Pharisaical (saved by grace but really immature!) Christian you have ever met. And I poured a lot of my wicked judmentalism out on my immediate family.
Thankfully, God led me to repent of these terrible sins and also thankfully, my mother and sister (with whom I have very close, intimate friendships now) forgave me. But my father never did. He never gave me another chance. He never even considered the possibility that I could grow and change—and, by the way, that my apologies to him for my complete jerkdom-terrible-tara-ness were sincere! I was really, really sorry I was such a proud and graceless brat.
It didn’t matter. In his mind, even decades years later, I was still the same. Even my sister (who is not a Christian) would appeal to him:
“C’mon, Dad! Give Tara a break! She’s not fifteen anymore. Yes, yes, she was a jerk. But that was 30+ years ago! She’s changed. She’s grown. We all love her and enjoy her so much. You’re missing out! C’mon, Dad, forgive Tara! Let her have a fresh start!”
Nope. I blew it and he was done with me and that was that.
That’s a terrible thing to face from a non-Christian. But isn’t it even more awful when we experience the same sort of arms-across-the-chest / fake-friendly-smile-“We don’t have any conflict!”, but it’s clear to anyone observing the situation that something is terrifically wrong in this situation. There is guardedness and fear. Absolutely NO possibility of love, even if the person uses words like, “I love you.” When everything in their attitude and actions conveys, “I just don’t want to ever have anything to do with you. EVER,” how could that possibly be love?
With this person, this family, this workplace, this church … I blew it and that’s that. They are done with me. FOREVER.
(Well. Not really forever, right? Since we will be spending eternity together, you’d think we might want to obey Matthew 5, 1 John 4, Romans 12, John 17, etc. and work this thing out, right? Well. Sadly. Nope.)
I even once had an ordained church leader say those very words to me:
“That’s just the way you are, Tara, and you’re never going to change.“
Whaaaaaaaat?!?! I’m never going to change??!?!!! There is NO hope for me? The power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is not the same work in my heart right now??!? God’s promise to conform me to the image of his firstborn Son was a lie?!? Whaaaaaaat?!?
Thankfully, years later, this ordained leader realized that those words were not Christianly and he repented of having ever said them to me. Still. Yowza! At the time they were said, they were crazy hurtful to me. So of course, years later, when this woman said something pretty darn close, my lil’ brain made all sorts of fast neural connections—faster than my theology could catch up at first:
Never change?
Never grow?
No chance for grace?
Yeah, those words hurt. They hurt on their own level and they hurt because they tapped into previous hurts. But once I identified what hurt me so terribly and then I identified why it was ripping through my heart on such a deep level, then it was nothin’ but a hop-skip-and-a-jump to run to our Lord and Savior, pour out my suffering to the One Who knows my pain (and knows pain far deeper than I will ever know).
I could pray to Him Who was rejected by people He trusted—people who vowed their friendship and devotion and then rejected him. I could cry out to Jesus because Jesus knew what it was like for our Father’s face to turn away from him—-and that, my friends, is a pain I will never know. But Jesus knows. And he cares. And He is with me. And Jesus will never throw my failures in my face and then push me away and stay as far away as possible from me (while still fake-looking like we have, you know, “fellowship”.). No.
Our “high priest” is able to sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). And he will never view the whole of me through the lens of the worst of me.
When I get to Heaven, I will see this with my very own eyes! I will see the scars that formed after the blood and water flowed—blood and water so that I could be born again and washed new. I will see my name forever engraved on his hand—not “Tara Ashamed” or “Tara So Bad, So Annoying,” but Tara, my beautiful, wanted, cherished, accepted, safe, never-again-rejected, never-again-kicked out, Just Tara. My Tara. The Apple of My Eye, Tara.
Just like you! Just like every single child of God.
Do you have someone in your life (your ex-spouse? step-father or mother? someone in your church, your family, your school?) — does someone keep you at a distance and yell, “UNCLEAN! BAD! STAY AWAY!”?
If so, then please listen to the words of your Savior, Jesus. He wraps all of us lepers in his arms; the ones with the “difficult” personalities and the “disgusting” problems like bleeding He touches us all with the hem of his robe, looks us right in the eye, and says:
This one? She was born in Zion (Psalm 87:6).
This woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years? Shouldn’t she be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? (Luke 13:16)
Look to Jesus. Remember the words of Jesus. Play Jesus’ words over and over again in your mind!
Don’t worry about the list-makers and the people who never allow you to grow in grace in their eyes. If a person can only see you through the WORST of you? That’s really more about their problems than yours. Don’t let condemnation define you. Be defined solely by your union with Christ:
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31-39 ESV
Amen & Love you & Hang in there!
You are not alone.
You are not rejected by the One who matters most.
but on him his crown will shine.” Psalm 132:18
Your friend,
Tara B.
PS
If you or someone you know struggles with similar feelings of rejection and abandonment, I urge you to read and study Ed Welch’s wonderful book: Shame Interrupted—How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection. We also have a chapter on shame in our book, but Ed’s is better. 🙂
PPS
I once heard a seminary professor at a women’s leadership conference talk about just how often women in ministry are treated terribly. I remember his righteous anger at sins done to Christian women leaders. I remember his kindness and compassion as the women in attendance grieved. But even more so, I remember the sentence that he told us all to memorize and repeat often to ourselves:
“I pity you for your graceless criticism of me because it reveals the appalling condition of your heart.”
2+ decades ago when I first heard that sentence, I had no idea how often I would need to use it in life. But as I ’round the corner towards age 50, now I know.
Some people will criticize us gracelessly. That’s OK. We can listen to what helps us to grow in conformity to Christ; in faith and godliness. Striving to be teachable and humble, we don’t have to be defensive in any way. Listen? Sure. Grow? You bet. But when their “feedback” is based on nameless, faceless, vague and unsubstantiated criticisms? When their “love” is joined with outright attacks or complete abandonment (or both)? Please! Listen to that seminary professor from the 1990’s (which wasn’t all that long ago) and get far, far away as you pity them for the appalling condition of their hearts.
[A re-post from July 21, 2012]