Who Told You That You Were Naked?

“I look up into the mirror…I want to see my eyes. I want to look beneath the surface of the pale green and see what’s inside of me, what’s within me, what I’m hiding. I start to look but I turn away. I try to force myself but I can’t.” James Frey

“Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” Psalm 34:5

I actually had one of those dreams once - the “being naked in front of people” dreams. The setting was my old place of employment, the Christmas party no less. Everyone mingled about, in holiday attire, snug in their sweaters, sipping eggnog. And there I stood, in the midst of all my coworkers, in my birthday suit naked as the day I was born, desperately trying to find my way out of sight. Everything they say about these dreams is true – it feels absolutely horrible. Embarrassing doesn’t touch it. Sheer terror would be a more fitting description. Like a heart attack of fear. Or facing a firing squad of eyes. I remember thinking I could never, ever see my coworkers again. I woke to reality, thank God, but the feelings lingered long after my morning coffee.

That dream has a story to it: I got that job when I was very young and it was a leadership position, leading folks almost entirely older than me. More than just feeling under qualified, I felt totally inadequate for it. Any day it seemed the higher ups would discover I was actually getting paid, shriek in horror on their way to my office, throw open the door and cry, “Get out!” Let’s just say my door was shut a lot. Is my dream making more sense now? My greatest fear was being found out. It was being seen. And in my dream, being caught naked played out all that fear. It was the eyes of the others that made it so terrible. They saw my nakedness and saw my shame.

“Who told you that you were naked?” is the most fascinating question I think God asks in the Bible (Genesis 3:11). Nakedness was not a new thing. A chapter earlier at the end of Genesis 2, Adam and Eve stood in the buck “…and they felt no shame.” They were comfortable in their own skin, in only their skin. Watch any two year old who has the chance to disrobe and you’ll get a sense of what this must have been like. Squealing delightful, unencumbered freedom! But when Adam and Eve sinned, they did introduce an awareness of nakedness. That is to say, they introduced shame. And their instant impulse was to cover up and hide, with fig leaves and then literally to go hideout from God.

Nakedness can be such a symbol of shame. When we say we “feel naked”, what we mean is we feel ashamed and exposed. Caught with our pants down, as the saying goes. Dan Allender writes, “Shame is a phenomenon of the eyes. More than anything in the world, the shamed person wants to be invisible or small so the focus can be removed, the hemorrhage of the soul stopped. Somehow the eyes of the one who sees him must be deflected or destroyed.”

In other words, shame is a relational experience, something we feel in relationships. We carry it unnoticed until we are seen, until we are in the presence of another. And then it rears its ugly head. You pick your nose just fine in the car, until that other driver pulls up next to you. Take those times you are “people watching” (a.k.a. staring at) someone else. When they turn and catch your eyes, don’t you blush and smile or, even worse, try and look away?

The worst, most destructive, absolutely deadly part about shame is how it tempts us to withdraw, cover up, run and hide. We do exactly what Adam and Eve did. And this kills connection. It kills relationship -kills it dead in that moment. Oh, the agony of this reality! We can do it a thousand ways – avoiding people, changing the subject in a conversation, getting angry with someone, laughing at something difficult, even smiling. Do this long enough and your personality becomes an elaborate way to hide. We end up living out “…all the other selves we are constantly putting on like coats and hats against the world’s weather,” as Frederick Buechner says so poetically.

Here’s the wild thing about shame: it takes relationships to heal it! The very connection it seeks to destroy is the very connection that set us free. You can’t work on your shame in a closet. As Sue Johnson says, “We define ourselves in the context of our most intimate relationships.” And if that’s true, then you can only heal from your shame by working it out with those most intimate with you, those that love you.

At our church, we take communion every week. We all file forward in big long lines to receive the bread and wine directly from the hands of another. And in this way it is a very intimate experience. My heart beats fast every time I get near to the front of the line. Why? Because of the eyes of the person that’s about to hand me the bread and wine. They stare right at you. And what can they see inside me? What must I look like to them? And right about the time I am thinking all this, I am next in line. I step forward and I am looked straight in the eye. I am seen. I am absolutely seen. And I am told, “The body of Jesus broken for you…” And then again I am looked in the eye. Again I am seen. And I am told, “The blood of Jesus shed for you.” I am seen. And I am loved. It does not get much deeper than that. Like fog rolling back against the sunlight, my shame is chased away. I walk back to my seat warmed and with tears.

Want to deal with your shame? Look people in the eyes. Let them look at you. Let people love you.

Your Communication Skills Do Not Suck

“At our deepest levels… we have moved beyond the reach of pressure. We have become more passionate than reasonable.” Larry Crabb

“Your love is better than wine.” Song of Solomon 1:2

I must confess… (swallow)… that a few weeks ago I called my wife a bitch. Seriously. And right to her face. We were fighting in the car and I wanted to be heard. And so I found the worst word to call her and, well, it worked. She heard me alright and promptly stopped talking. And I promptly inserted my foot, shoe and all, in my mouth and swallowed it whole. Yeah, that’s right; I’m a Christian marriage counselor. I choked that one down too. While I’m at this confessional thing, let me get this off my chest, too. When I told her this week I was writing about the time I called her a bitch, she asked, “which time?”

Recently, I heard some other fight stories from a few friends. One friend confessed that she had called her husband a mother $%&#er in the heat of a fight over money. And this is a pastor’s wife. You better believe he had his own choice words. Worse yet, the windows were open to their house, with the neighbors right next door. I don’t remember the Good Samaritan having a dirty mouth. But, well enough, this couple did. Another friend with us, grinned a big smile, and recalled a similar story of when he dropped the F-bomb on his wife as she slammed the bathroom door in his face. She was out of the bathroom fast as lightning. “Did you just say ‘&%#$ you’?” He nodded in shame and they both burst out laughing at his obvious childish move.

What is with these people? What is with me? I mean seriously, did I think calling my wife a bitch was going to help anything? I did go to preschool. And I did learn that name calling is neither a loving, nor productive means of communication. My goodness, I’ve had graduate level coursework in marriage counseling! I know that love requires the vulnerable communication of needs and feelings. And yet, in the midst of love's battles, something else kicks in for me, something beyond my education.

I've learned I'm not alone in this struggle. When couples call me for marriage counseling, the number one issue they complain about is their communication. “We need to learn some communication skills!” they cry. And almost none of these couples have ever needed to be taught actual communication skills. Business owners, pastors, nurses, lawyers, psychologists, mothers of children – these are successful people! There is no way they’ve accomplished any of this without basic relational aptitude. Communication skills are not the problem. I know now that they just do not know how else to descirbe to me the outrageous, out of control behaviors they’ve engaged in when they fight.

So what is it about our most intimate relationships that drive us to do the most immature, down right harmful things ever to each other?

Author and marriage therapist Sue Johnson has this take on it. “I see distressed couples who are amazingly articulate and show exquisite insight into their own behaviors, but cannot talk to their partners in a coherent way when the emotional tsunami hits. The standard remedies do not address yearnings for or threats to emotional connection.” Yes, that’s it! Our need for love and our fear of losing it is so primal as to drive us mad when its threatened. In an inherently vulnerable relationship, we are compelled beyond reason itself to protect our deepest selves. We will do whatever it takes to survive. All is fair in love and war, as the saying goes.

The writer of Song of Solomon may have said it best when he compared love to wine. I hear him saying something like: Love is an experience like being drunk. It renders you more out of control, more out of your mind than an intoxicating binge. And when love is good, no problem - the more out of control, the better! Take sex as an example. Lovers expose themselves in utter nakedness. And then give themselves to the other person for total exploration, total free commentary, total enjoyment. The more abandon involved in their intercourse, the greater the orgasm. Whoa, yeah, that is better than any amount of wine!

Ah, if only our vulnerability were met with safe, trustable love every time. We would risk it all. We would never fear. We would never fight. We could always drink love to the dregs. We would be emotional nudists! But love this side of Eden is fraught with uncertainty, with fear, with hurt, with disappointment. We can and will get hurt at some point in every relationship. And as such, we reach for whatever defenses will minimize our disappointment, assuage our pain, hedge our bets. The best defense is a good offense. As Larry Crabb says, “We feel irrationally driven to keep away from the people who (we think) could destroy us even though we thereby create the very isolation we fear. But we see no other choice.”

So here’s a little word of comfort for you: Studies show that having fights has nothing to do with the success or failure of your marriage (John Gottman). The goal of your marriage should not be trying to never, ever fight. It matters only that eventually you do the exact opposite of your instincts to defend and confess the truth of your soul, that we are all desperate for love and scared to death of its vulnerability. Every single one of us. As Rob Bell says, we are all naked underneath our clothes. This ain’t rocket science, folks! But our cognitive abilites have never been the problem anyway.

Blog Vacation

As you can tell, I have not been blogging for several months. The reasons for this are the same as my reasons last summer and fall - I took on some more house renovation projects with our old home. It is amazing to me how much creative energy this takes from me. And how little is left for my truer passions, like writing.

I plan to resume blogging this fall. The house renovation insanity stops September 1.

Thanks for checking in here. Come back this fall.

Resolution

A new year always marks a new beginning, a rare moment of looking forward, looking back, looking within. For a couple days - until we go back to work at least - the human community at large takes a collective introspective moment to reflect on life. We get to think about our last year, about our dreams for the future, about how life is going up to this point. We tune in to the deeper stuff of life. It’s like we all take… inhale… one deep breath together… ahh…

And what do we do with this reflection? Culturally we really have one option: form resolutions for the New Year ahead. The resolution frenzy is well under way. You may have some yourself. All this introspective soul searching about our dreams and desires gets parceled up into bite sized changeable chunks that we then resolve to throw our best efforts at for a year.

And in this way resolutions are an odd thing. They’re actually pretty limiting. You can only resolve to change something in your power. I’m not dogging this. But the danger is that we reflect on our lives exclusively in terms of what we can control. And what if what you want changed in your life is actually beyond your control? Maybe you want to get married. Maybe you want your chronic pain to go away. Maybe you want your spouse to love you more. Or you want a more fulfilling job. Maybe you want world hunger to end. Okay, so you can play a part in some of this change. But not all of life is in your hands. And that’s the hardest stuff of life. What do we do with this?

I know we understand a resolution as being a function of our will, a personal commitment we make. Resolution, you may remember, is also “…the point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out,” according to Merriam Webster’s dictionary. All great stories are built on this dramatic tension. And its this tension we as the reader yearn to have resolved for the main character.

Take movies as an example. We as the audience get to watch the life of another as it plunges deep into some unnerving plot. A love story is underfoot. Or a war. Maybe a tragedy engulfs the main character. Or against all odds he pursues a personal dream. And we with him or her or them get further and further into the anxiety of the story. Hope competes with fear in the final moment of climax. And then… and then… resolution comes. She gets the man. The hero spills his blood to defeat evil. His life endeavor is met with fulfillment. We cry, we laugh, we sigh. That’s what we love most about movies, about stories. We get the resolution at the end.

Your life is a story too. You live in dramatic tension. You know this already, I’m sure. As Bishop N.T. Wright has said, we are all caught up “…in a story in search of an ending.” I love that. The struggles, the dreams, the desires, the longings we all carry within us are searching for an ending. This is includes all that stuff that may be out of our control. We all long for resolution as much as we commit to it. We all want to change as much as we work to change. In fact, the desire precedes the discipline. It must. That’s not rocket science folks. But most of us blow passed the longing behind our discipline in 0.8 seconds flat. And so our hearts get minimized into personally changeable goals.

So I’ve got a suggestion for you, for this year, a resolution to put on the list. How about spending this year getting more in tune with your hearts desires, your dreams, your hopes as much as you discipline yourself to try and change your life. Do something with the stuff out of your control. Pause longer in the longing. Give your heart a voice. Maybe you make this your prayer life.

I’ll leave you with a resolution I found written by the great Puritan Theologian, Jonathan Edwards. This one's big enough to live in.

Resolved, very much to exercise myself in this all my life long, that is, with the greatest openness I am capable of, to declare my ways to God, and lay open my soul to him: all my sins, temptations, difficulties, sorrows, fears, hopes, desires, and everything and every circumstance.

Everybody's Got a Hungry Heart

Lunch time on a normal day of counseling had me heading home for a bite to eat. This was a couple months ago. The menu was going to be whatever leftovers I could zap back to life in the microwave. I wheeled up to my house and was about to get out when the song on the radio froze me in my seat.

Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a hungry heart

Bruce Springsteen wailed his poetry over and over through those well used vocal cords. His words sat on my chest like one of those lead x-ray aprons at the dentist office. My heart would not let me get up. When was the last time I'd thought about my heart and its hunger? And how did something that important slip out of conciousness? But just that quickly, the song ended and my stomach reminded me to take care of my other hunger. And after lunch, the treadmill of life carried me into all those next things I seem to always have waiting.

A week passed. On a Saturday morning, I was now sitting with a warm cup of coffee, a Starbucks table, and my journal. It was one of those rare moments to push back on life’s busy current. And it was right in the middle of some pretty scary events in my life. I was afraid. My circumstances had left me vulnerable to personal and financial hardship. Sound familiar? This is what I was journaling about.

When I left Starbucks, I got in my car and turned it on to find ole Bruce belting out his thousand pound words yet again. And with my heart raw from journaling, I was even more vulnerable to the gravity of their reality. This time, under the internal weight, my heart sighed a prayer to God something about how it would be nice to have my heart noticed, to be seen by Him, to know he cared about my heart. Again I zipped off to the rest of my day. But the heaviness of all this lingered longer this time. Springsteen’s words gave God a foot in the door of my heart.

Not but a few hours later, I fumbled back into my car. And I kid you not; there was Bruce on the radio lamenting our human condition all over again. Everbody’s got a hungry heart. Everybody’s got a hungry heart. I rarely ever here this song. This was getting spooky. Clearly now I was not alone in my car. Knowing this was not coincidence, I finally asked God what he was trying to say to me. Apparently, He needed to tell me something.

“I love you and I see what you need.”

To have a hungry heart and believe that no one cares about it might be the most miserable thing in the world. To have a hungry heart and know someone is really listening might be the best thing in the world. There’s not much grey area here, folks.

So at this point in telling this story, I am afraid you may be growing cynical. I just told you that I believe God really did see me and even that he orchestrated the timing of those songs. And even more that he spoke to my heart that he loves me. And I know. Times are tough. Life is tough. But God did not take away the circumstances that made me afraid. He only let me know he cares. Loneliness trumps hardship, my friends. That's why it made all the difference in the world to know God saw my hungry heart. I was not alone.

Everybody needs a place to rest
Everybody wants to have a home
Don't make no difference what nobody says
Ain't nobody like to be alone
Everybody's got a hungry heart...

Book Review: The Last American Man

You will notice right away this book is not psychological self help. I read self help too, but find it often leaves me feeling just plain confused. Its sort of like watching a movie from the front row of a theater. Things appear large and more detailed but my eyes usually hurt from trying to focus so much. There is such a thing as analyzing your life too much. To that end, I commend to you The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert - a biography, a human study, a real life story of one man. Sometimes hearing someone else’s story can bring clarity to our own lives that insight alone cannot deliver. And this story will certainly not disappoint you.

Meet Eustace Conway through the eyes of author Elizabeth Gilbert (yes, the Eat Pray Love writer). Eustace is a brilliant charismatic naturalist still alive somewhere in the woods of North Carolina. It seems odd to have a biography of someone still living, unless they’ve been a president or overcome some amazing obstacle to accomplish some grand feat. I guess in that regard, Eustace Conway is the later.

You don’t have to read too long to learn that Eustace has accomplished much with his young life. He survived in the woods for a week at age 12 without bringing food or shelter with him. At age 17 he hiked the Appalachian Trail doing 30 miles a day in sneakers and a loin cloth. Almost without catching his breath, he was on to kayak Alaska and then to living with the most primitive tribe he could find in Guatemala. And just for adventure sake, he galloped across America on horseback and set a new record for the fastest trip from coast to coast by horse. And that’s not to mention his daily life of living in a teepee, running a full nature camp, making his own clothes, and eating road kill. Eustace Conway has indeed done a lot of amazing things.

And all of this is killing him because none of this is getting him the thing he wants most - his father's validation and love. Eustace Conway has a massive father wound. This is his greatest obstacle. It almost bleeds off the page. Some parts of the book are absolutely heart breaking. Here is just a taste of the words his father uses to obliterate his son. “You are so stupid. I’ve never met a child more dimwitted. I don’t know how I could have sired so idiotic a son. What are we to surmise? I believe you are simply incompetent and will never learn anything.” (p.30) Daily, methodically, deliberately his father bludgeoned his son with similar tirades.

Like everything else in his life, Eustace has put herculean efforts into pleading with his father for some relief, some validation, some love. From age 12 to the present, he has written letters to his father as penance and petition for mercy. Well into adulthood, he wrote: “I have an overwhelming need to be accepted by you, to be appreciated, acknowledged, recognized for something better than trash… I have a great void where I look for love. All I have ever wanted is your love. Perhaps I should accept defeat and stay away from you. But denial and distance do not satisfy the need for your acceptance” (p.105). His father has never responded to any of his letters.

If you’ve ever wondered at the impact of a father’s love on a man, read this book and have your heart torn in two for Eustace Conway. You may find new eyes, new curiosity, new compassion for your own story and the stories of the men in your life.

Check out the Resources page of my website to purchase this book from my Amazon.com bookstore.

Restoring Broken Things

You may have noticed my unofficial sabbatical from doing any writing whatsoever for the last few months. I know. I’ve committed the chief of all blogging sins. So here’s the story.

At the beginning of the summer, we purchased a historic home with the hopes of renovating it and restoring it to its original Victorian Lady charm. Its old, 116 years old to be exact. Old. Like back when horsepower meant the actual horse hitched up in your back yard. And the first owners of our home probably did have horses in the backyard. But all these years have taken their toll on this antique homestead. Sagging wooden floors, plaster falling from ceilings, out of date wiring. Add to this all the unkempt years of neglectful renters. Our Victorian Beauty needed some lovin’!

We started this whole venture awash in romanticized sentiments that restoring an old home is like a really fun hobby. Or some symbolic spiritual pilgrimage. I grew up pumped full of This Old House episodes with Bob Villa and still love that show. But they make the process seem so laden with excitement and effortless progress. And not a single worker on that show ever breaks a sweat or dirties their clothing. Somehow I imagined our weekends being full of similar restful energizing work.

At some point several weeks into our project, amid so much dust and detritus and 16 hour work days, I finally let myself admit I had lost all romantic ideals about our renovation project. I was now just plain afraid. I was standing in an expensive pile of rubble. In the name of change and restoration, we had produced one grand mortgage backed mess. Here we had gone and dismantled a perfectly good home. And without any prior experience at this, I really feared that we might never emerge like we hoped and planned.

That fear is surprisingly familiar to other areas of my life. Change seems to carry a romantic sense to it. But eventually the idea of change melds into the harder, sometimes downright discouraging work of changing. Yes, I want to love my wife more courageously. Yes, I want to be more in shape. Yes, I want to listen to God more. And then its 30 degrees out when I get up to run. Or a time of pursuing my wife crumbles into an all out fight. Or I spend a whole hour with God daydreaming about something we have to do on our house. I start to wonder if I’ll ever change. Fear shouts its resounding, “No!”

Take something like counseling. I hear so often in my office the sighs of relief from folks who have finally taken the step of getting counseling. The hope of change wafts in with them like fresh spring air after winter. And then we get to work… for a couple months. And that’s expensive. And will it actually work? Will it pay off? And I’m reminded so often of that Garth Brook’s line, “This is how it seems to me. Life is only therapy. Real expensive and no guarantee.” And I have to tell my clients change does not come in pill form. Change is a process you just have to trust sometimes. Trust.

Well, we’ve emerged from our house project. And it looks really good. Those wood floors have a beautiful sheen to them. The stained glass chandelier hangs magnificently in the dining room. My wife can often be heard sighing with relief and exclaiming, “I can’t believe this is our house!” Indeed. How did we make it? We had to learn to trust the process.

We did get our spiritual pilgrimage.