Accountability

I am currently stalking the news articles coming out of Chicago and the Bill Hybels disaster.  Hybels, Senior Pastor for decades at Willow Creek Church - a wildly popular mega-church that was begun by Hybels in the suburbs of Chicago - ultimately ended his career under the cloud of sexual misconduct.

But first, everyone went to great pains to dodge accountability for these accusations.  The women were ignored, intimidated and eventually publicly maligned in an attempt to hold onto the image of this man who many had revered.

Eventually, the house of cards came tumbling down and now the entire board and the two newly appointed Senior Pastors have resigned as a first step in trying to make amends for their own blindness.  Much is left to be done before anyone can say what will come of this tragic fall of one man and the system that was so invested in his reputation that they failed to require him to be reputable.  

Taking responsibility is just plain hard.  But it is part of respectability.

This is not the first powerful Christian leader ultimately wrecked by his own hand nor will be be the last.  But it is a cautionary tale and we should listen.  Power, whether it is power in business, church, or at home, is a very potent and potentially toxic poison.

It is not good for any of us to feel like we are above the standards of decent human behavior.  

Don’t know what human decent behavior looks like?  That’s ok, many of us have to learn these practices as adults.  But learn we must lest we continue to perpetuate relationships where power rules and the peace that passes all understanding is nowhere to be found

Reliability

I am most vulnerable to resentment and a host of other self-defeating attitudes when I disappoint myself in some way.  I do care about what others think of me and often rely on a team of trusted friends and loved ones to help me decide how to think, feel and behave.  Whether I follow advice or strike out on my own independent decision making, I have learned that being reliable is a thing that I need to practice.

Reliability is not has hard as it sounds.  When paired with decent self-care, I have figured out that I can be reasonably reliable.  At its core, reliable means that when I say “YES!” I follow through and do it.  When I say “NO!” I do the appropriate actions that fit with my no.

I am currently reading and rereading an excellent book called Dopesick by Beth Macy.  In it, Macy unpacks the current opioid crisis from both a historic and personal perspective.  The stories are heartbreaking and achingly familiar.  Toward the end of the book, yet another of the young women who she had followed through her opioid addiction succumbs to the lifestyle and is found dead in a dumpster.  She wrote of the extended family’s tragic response - continuing to bicker, judge and blame one another for either “enabling” or following “tough love” principles.

She implied, I think, that this was just more missing the point.  

It make me think about being reliable.  I find in my own recovery work that it is a skill that is desperately needed.  This is a tough affliction, and more than anything, I suspect families need to learn everything they can, get clear about their core values in loving their afflicted one, and reliably apply these principles.

Recently I participated in a funeral service for a woman who I did not know but loved.  I had come to love her by knowing her parents as they faithfully attended our Family Education Program (that educates family about the disease of substance use disorder and offers support and encouragement for families as they make difficult decisions).  These folks were RELIABLE in their measured, healthy, loving response to their daughter, even though she herself resisted treatment.  At her death, this mom and dad grieved and were sorrowful but they exhibited little to no regret, recrimination or blame.  I find this remarkable and extremely unusual.

I suspect their own reliability gave them the gift of  no regret, recrimination or feelings of blame to work through.  Their compassion for both self and others was beautiful.  They had done their best; they had been reliable; they had lived with boundaries.

Tomorrow, we will talk about the third of 7 skills that strengthen us and reduce the likelihood that we will wallow in resentment.

Respectable Living

In yesterday’s blog, I told a story about a time when I set, held and respected the boundary of self-respect.  I didn’t know that’s what I was doing at the time.  I thought I was  mad and not going to take the belittling and insulting behavior of another anymore.

Resentment is the feeling we get when we think life is unfair; shame is the feeling we have when we believe that we are broken, wrong and of no worth.  People do not MAKE us feel resentment or shame.  

Which means, I believe, that the number of times we wrestle with both might just be related to how we treat ourselves than how others treat us.  Feel resentful, envious, jealous and maybe a pinch unworthy?

What better way to take a different path than to behave respectably.  Do good.  Be kind.  Work hard.  Learn from mistakes.  Live our life not constantly looking around and asking how others are evaluating our life.

This is the best boundary work we can ever do.  Boundary work, it turns out, is one of 7 skills Brene’ Brown says we need to strengthen our capacity for courage.

It isn’t about asking others to treat us as we hope to be treated.  We decide to live in such a way as to be satisfied and unashamed of the life we are making.  How others evaluate that?  That’s their problem.

As an adult looking back on that dinner table debacle, my family’s socio-economic status was barely different than the frat boy’s situation.  At that point in time I had an intact family and he had a family dealing with grief and loss and a new move to a new city and who knows what else.

His accusations were unfounded, but if I had been insecure, freaked out, emotional and neurotic, I might have believed every stinking word he said.  Not because it was true, but because I lacked boundaries.

A strong back is the result of knowing who we are, deciding to live congruently with the values we profess to believe, and sometimes be willing to stand alone when our boundaries are under attack.  It took decades before I developed a more consistently practiced strong back, but it is kind of neat to look back and realize that way back then I had one small spark of dignity within me.  To that young girl I say, “Way to go!"

Self-assurance

One of my most shaming moments, in my whole entire library of shaming interactions, happened over a Thanksgiving meal during my Senior year of high school.  I had this boyfriend, and he had a family that was extremely different than mine.  His mother had passed away, his father traveled a ton for work, his older brother was off at UVA, and he had a younger sister who was a junior at our high school.  I was often outraged by the lack of adult supervision he and his sister had when his dad traveled.  I felt sorry for the whole lot of them, even the oldest brother who seemed like such a frat boy and pain in the neck.  I in no way felt inferior to these suffering people, so it came as quite a shock to find out that they viewed me as beneath them.  

Here’s what happened.  The older brother was rip roaring drunk by the time dinner started.  We were barely through the gourmet appetizers when he began teasing me.  The teasing quickly devolved into taunting.  He called me names.  He disparaged the neighborhood I lived in.  He suggested I was a social climber.  And just let me tell you, when I was in high school, I owned “social” and this guy I was dating?  He was new to the school and did NOT.  Just to be clear.

The father in this family of sufferers said not one word.  My boyfriend said not one word.  I realized I had no one to defend me and from somewhere deep inside me I realized that I may literally live on the other side of the railroad tracks, but I was better than this.

I stood up.

I walked to the kitchen and called my mom and said, “Come get me.”

I returned to the dining room and said something along these lines, “Let me tell you guys something.  In my house, this guy here,” I pointed to my boyfriend, “is treated with respect.  And just so you understand this point, no one really likes him that much.  And guests in our house?  They are treated with respect.  You do not deserve to have a guest at your table.”  And I walked out with what I hope was regal and righteous indignation.

Hold the clapping.  I ended up dating that boy with the bad family for three more years.  I should have called it quits that very day.  

But I had a moment when I belonged to myself and it was good.  I felt no resentment for my treatment afterwards, just continued sadness and not too much admiration for the family that would behave like that.  When you do the next right thing, there is less room for resentment or other hard feelings to fester.  Unfortunately, I did not use my good sense to break up with the boy or the family.  You win some; you lose some.  But here is something I am trying to remember every day:  if I do not belong to myself, respect myself by being respectable, and stand up for myself when others treat me with disdain - I need to first and foremost give myself a kick in the pants.  It is awful when people treat us as unworthy or less than but it is worse when we treat ourselves that way.  We, above all others, can choose to live in a way that confirms for us that we deserve to be treated well and require that as a condition of relationship.

Shame and Belonging

Sure, when the discussion at work devolved into a discussion of personality, my kid could have gotten distracted with feelings of inadequacy, shame or most likely resentment when told by the vendor that “I have never connected with you interpersonally.”  But this is counter to radical sacred belonging.  My kid had to dig deep and decide what was at stake.  Was their value at stake?  No.  Was this vendor’s livelihood at stake?  Yes.  Far better, one could even make a case that it is far more sacred, to not get distracted with petty insecurities to the detriment of helping another person keep their job.  In this way, whether or not these two ever “connect interpersonally”, my child has lived out of BEING by valuing compassion for another and considering the vendor’s need (she needed to know that her job was at risk due to poor performance AND learn what she could do to save her position) over any light and momentary freak out about interpersonal connection.  

In my case, I had to accept that my belonging in my family from my father’s perspective was contingent upon me denying my own conclusions about where I was most needed during a family crisis in deference of his preference.  This violates the core meaning of belonging.  What would happen if I chased after the approval of my dad at the expense of my own conscience?  I would then violate my own value of being a woman with a strong back and a soft heart.  This I cannot do.  And if I had - then that would have been on me.  

Listen up, this is very important:  I have on many, many, many occasions violated my own sense of right in a vain attempt to chase after the acceptance of others.  Oh the stories I could tell about my abandonment of core values in order to win over another person.  Hot shame courses through me as I think of times when I abdicated my own sense of goodness, rightness or fair play in order to feel the approval of another. I acknowledge the constant pull in both small and large ways to chase this high of perceived acceptance.  There are no guarantees that I can remain self-aware enough to consistently maintain a strong back and tender front approach to life.  

But here’s the thing.  It does not deliver.  It’s a sham.  Better that we lose belonging in some situations shooting for authentic expressions of who we BE then falling into the pit of shame when we realize that even our best efforts to chameleon ourselves into the good graces of others doesn’t produce true belonging.  In my opinion. ( But you should listen because I have a ton of experience with losing for all the wrong reasons!)

Maybe tomorrow we will talk about what I learned during one of my most shaming interactions EVER