Living in balance

You can't give what you don't have.

It's a simple concept... but over and over again I have tried to offer help, whether emotional or practical, out of a place of want, of deficit, when I was just scraping the bottom to meet my own needs.  I ended up feeling used, put-upon, taken for granted, and yes, resentful. 

It's like the teeter-totter at the playground when the big kid gets on the other end. No matter how the smaller kid jumps up and down on his or her end, he or she is suspended, legs dangling, unable to get down and not having any fun at all.  When life is out of balance - when we pay more attention to the needs and demands of others (when they carry more weight) than our own needs, then there is the potential for a lot of resentment.

The lifestyle I've been practicing for the last three years or so is based on taking care of three central things in a specific order: 

(1) relationship with God, 

(2) relationship with the self, and 

(3) relationship with others, 

and then maintaining and strengthening those three relationships in that same order. The principle is that one must first have a full cup before one has the capacity to fill another's.  Sounds simple enough.  But the old lifestyle I had -  which still lures me back into its clutches occasionally - was just the opposite.  Give til it hurts, and then give some more. My motivation was that I wanted people to be grateful enough to do what I wanted them to do. Change, be more attentive, stop drinking, whatever.  And the result of that was that people first of all didn't change, but they expected me to keep giving, keep putting myself out, and then they wondered why I was so cranky.  Hmmm.  

When I learned that I was powerless over other people, that I was actually trying to be God in their lives - and without His permission! - things started to change.  I started focusing on what mattered most: my relationship with Him and then with myself.  Once I felt more at ease in my own skin, and was able to let go of my need to control the outcome of others' lives, I was able to have more healthy and fulfilling relationships with other people. 

I still have times when I go down that dark path and end up at the top of the teeter-totter, bouncing up and down and wasting my energies trying to look after someone who isn't budging and who might even use my people-pleasing nature against me.  At times like that I need to remind myself that I am responsible for my own actions, and that the other person is responsible for his or her actions. Then I can more easily let go, and let God do His stuff.  

That's a bit more "in balance". 

Purging

I like to watch the show "Hoarders." (A&E)  It makes me feel better about my own clutter... and folks, yes, I am a slob.  There, I have said it in a public forum.  Slobby and proud of it - well - sort of.  

Sometimes my place is even too much for me to take.  Usually it is too much for my hubby to take long before it gets on my radar, but odd times I get the purging bug and go on a rampage.  

Most times it's the prospect of someone coming to visit that does it for me.  So - I begin.  And seeing the difference that my efforts make really does something for me inside. Unfortunately it only occurs occasionally.  Like today - and I allowed myself this break to write about it.... ;)  

But be that as it may ... 

I was thinking (while cleaning - no, my hubby wasn't there to take a picture for posterity, although if he had been, he might have been tempted) about how the process of inner healing is a lot like purging clutter.  

First, there has to be the realization that there is a definite problem, and that it is too much for one person to handle. (I've tried handling my own personal life-experience purging and that just led to me sitting in front of the TV with a bag of chips in one hand and a tub of chip dip in the other.  And oh yes, the bag of chocolate bars on the end-table.)  So the first action step is to ask for help. The only one who could help me (believe me, I've spent my life asking others to fix me - they couldn't either!) was God.  So I asked Him, invited Him in to the mess.  

Then comes the actual process of purging.  Separating things out together - categorizing this and that, like piles of garbage to throw away, good things to put away, nice things I've outgrown to give away.   Being an emotional hoarder (that is, I hang onto past hurts much longer than is necessary to deal with the emotions and let them go) I had to go through every piece of inner garbage of course.  But that's part of the healing process.  And God is so patient.  He allowed me time to rest, to catch my breath - and gently reminded me to keep at it.  

It took a long time.  But eventually I started to see order emerge from the chaos that was my life.  (Gratitude? OH yeah!!)  Once the inner garbage was taken care of, and the good memories put away inside, and the nice things passed along, it was time to clear the path to my outside door (figuratively speaking) - some refer to this as sweeping my side of the street:  the wreckage I had left in my relationships because of my own stuff on the inside, things that spilled out onto others.  Those things I had to put right - and it took some time.  In some cases it's still ongoing.  

Only then, once my own spiritual house was clean and inviting, could I help someone else by sharing my experience.  I could not go to them and clean their house for them.  I just told people how awful my own was - and how I had come to the end of my rope and asked for help, then busied myself going through all that emotional clutter and getting it out, and sweeping my own relational sidewalk.  The process works: it's beautiful to experience and just as beautiful to witness.  I've seen it work in my life and I've been privileged to see it work in the lives of so many other people.

Now ... I know I left that mop and pail somewhere...

Facing fears

I've hated confrontation for as long as I can remember.  I guess it comes from growing up in a home where the cardinal rule was not to make a certain family member mad - or worse, to make that person cry.  (ughh.)  I remember spending my childhood either walking on eggshells or trying to hide from someone's unpredictable wrath because that was dangerous to my health: physical AND emotional.  

So when I started to recover from a lifestyle of doormat-itis and of controlling others through guilt trips and manipulation... avoiding direct confrontation whenever possible ... it was a really difficult step for me to learn how to speak up for myself and inform someone when he or she was doing something that was bothering me - either physically or just that "arrrgh!" that comes from someone's annoying habits that might only bother me personally (anything from tapping a pencil on a desk, to entering into my personal space - extremely closely - to talk to me).  

As I was recovering, it was difficult to know what was a valid complaint and what wasn't.  I had some definite problems with certain behaviors of other people which were causing me physical pain.  Yet I felt as though I couldn't approach them - partly because I hated confrontation so much (okay mostly that) but also because being in their presence was physically painful to me.  I didn't handle those situations well before I started to recover.  I made some pretty awful mistakes, as a matter of fact; I hurt quite a few people.  And when I was first recovering, I didn't know what to do about these situations.  My previous behavior really bothered me... yet I didn't know how to right the wrongs I had done and still communicate my needs to people.  It stumped me for a long time.  

Having had no boundaries for such a long time, it was hard to set them without offending people; I had no practice at all.  And so ... I did the only things I could think of to do.  First, I prayed about it.  Then... I asked for help.

I approached someone at my workplace whose job it is to resolve conflicts.  She and I developed a rapport and we still touch base every 6 months or so.  She listened to me, gave honest feedback, and suggested practical ways to approach people whom I had harmed, to start conversations with them and set my own expectations realistically.  I was grateful for her suggestions.  Today, with the exception of perhaps three of those people, I've been able to make amends to them, and I even enjoy good working relationships (including playful banter) with some of them.  

With some of them, I had to go directly to them and have a fairly difficult and honest conversation - approaching it with an open mind and listening more than speaking.  With others, the direct approach didn't work; I just began (as simplistic as it sounds) to smile at these people when I saw them in the corridor.  One of them has only barely started to smile back.  I still haven't given up on those three remaining people - it might take a while but I am determined to approach each one in a way that fits with his or her particular style of reconciliation. 

It's coming.