Putting this in my blog is largely in response to listening to Brene Brown's talk on Ted-- "The Power of Vulnerability." My goal here is to "air out" what comes to mind and perhaps share insight with others working to live out their vulnerability in a healthy and self-empowering way. This mode of writing, for me anyway, tends to help me to expose the more significant points along my journey, but also to allow each thought to give birth to the next. I learned some time ago that while our life journeys take many turns and twists making it easy to talk about "the" journey in terms of my old life or my new life, I try not to think about my life in those terms anymore. It is one life, one journey-- all a cumulative picture of one moment somehow connected to the next. Though my cumulative journey consists of moments, days, and periods of time from short to long that often look very different, it is all one journey, one life. So, rather than writing a dissertation, I'll focus today on how vulnerability led me if not drove me to authenticity. Becoming authentic has resulted in finding happiness, peace and hope for the future, none of which existed to a large extent prior to becoming vulnerable enough to allow myself to experience authenticity.
First, I am compelled to explore the roots of my fear of vulnerability which ultimately led me to refuse to experience my own authenticity. Vulnerability, on first thought, speaks of exposure. Being "exposed" means that others can see me-- in this context, who I REALLY AM, rather than what I do, what I own, what I have accomplished, who I know, who I love and what I want others to believe that I philosophically and spiritually embrace. For my entire life, I refused to be exposed because from my earliest developmental years, I believed that so many things I needed or desired or even required were contingent on who I was known to be. Justified or not, I feared that I would not be loved or accepted if anyone knew who I was. From my earliest recollections, I was expressly taught at my church and at home in less overt ways that God would not love me if I did not fit a rather narrowly defined mold. Additionally, I observed the withdrawal of love and respect and maltreatment of people all around me that dared not fit this mold. Long before I recognized that the cost to me was enjoying my own authenticity, I came to literally hate myself. In my privacy, I came to look in the mirror and scream profanities and expressions of hate to the one looking back at me in the mirror. While the love and acceptance of my family was very, very important to me, I could not afford not to have God's love and acceptance because without it I would exprience eternal damnation, fire and brimstone, and infinite torture and suffering.
While I could escape being vulnerable to my family and church by simply hiding and lying, I knew that I was already vulnerable and exposed to God. He was all knowing-- omnipotent and omnipresent. He knew my every thought and every secret meaning that I was doomed to separation from God and eternal damnation. I remember being taught in Sunday School on one very specific occasion that my connection with God was the same as a chain of many links between me and heaven. As long as each link was entact, I was connected with God and I could go to heaven, but if even one link was broken, my connection with God was broken and I could not go to heaven. So, for many years to come I vacilated between screaming vile words at myself in the mirror to praying for "healing" because whom I had come to see myself as represented sickness-- a disease of the soul-- something dirty and filthy and unworthy.
When healing didn't come, I determined that I could not bare the guilt and shame I felt because of what I knew about myself. I also couldn't bare the fear of facing eternal damnation-- since it was apparently inevitable given that healing was nowhere in sight.
And so, I continued to hide and hate. My health suffered, and I was hugely stricken by depression and anxiety. Life went on. I added a wife, two incredible children, and six beautiful and brilliant grandchildren to my landscape. While these things added tremendous meaning to my life, my self-loathing became beyond tolerable, beyond surviving.
As a loving God would have it, on a starry cool night looking up into the night sky, I had the quintessential moment of my life. The reason I loathed myself so deeply was because there was no acceptance of who God had created me to be. A chain reaction of realizations occurred... if God created me out of his perfection, there was nothing wrong with me. No more need to pray for healing from my "sickness," no more need to "tolerate" who I was. In fact, if there was any sin in my life, it was not loving that which God had created. I WAS EXACTLY THE ONE HE INTENDED ME TO BE! There had never been a more liberating moment in my life nor has there been since.
Circling back to Brene Brown's talk, the something that allowed for that moment of vulnerability was liberating and opened the door for me to live an authentic life. Since that day, my authenticity has continued to unravel-- in a good way. Vulnerablity through many trials and tribulations over the past 10 years since those revelations have simply been opportunities to gain ground on knowing, experiencing, and expressing who I am.
Today, I am in love. I am happy. I am content. I am gaining growth almost daily, allowing vulnerability to open the next pathway to experiencing life as fully as I was intended to experience it. The collateral experience to self-discovery is that I've learned that my authentic self ALLOWS me to experience love and share goodness with those around me.
I can't close these thoughts today without saying that coming out as a proud gay man and allowing +Jimmy, my partner, into my life, has not only accelerated my "unravelling" but has brought me the greatest joy I have ever known. Thank you for finding me, love!
No comments:
Post a Comment