As moms, we take our children regularly to the pediatrician. The doctor checks height, weight, head circumference and all the developmental milestones. At some point, those visits become less and less frequent and eventually stop. Our children grow up and leave all that behind because they’re “finished growing” as far as pediatrics is concerned. But there’s more to growth than head circumference and learning to talk. The same is true for all of us.
**[In this episode, we’re doing a sort of “book review” of just the tip of the iceberg of Brene Brown’s Gift of Imperfection. The book is having its 10th anniversary, and Brown is walking us through it on her own podcast, Unlocking Us. We’re mirroring the first bit–from just the introduction–on this episode.]
Jared Wilson, author of The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for Those Who Can’t Get Their Act Together, says this, “What is discipleship, then, but following Jesus not on some religious quest to become bigger, better, or faster, but to become more trusting of his mercy toward our total inability to become those things?” I may have the same problems when I wake up tomorrow, but His mercies are new every morning.
The following is from an interview with Susan Howatch, a British writer whose books Renee’s been binge-reading lately. Howatch articulates this same sort of thing:
…in my early forties I did go through a time of great change. A sort of life crisis, really, where I sort of questioned everything and asked the classic questions: What does it all mean? What’s my life supposed to be about? What the hell’s going on? All that sort of thing. People call that a midlife crisis, but actually it was different than that. It’s what spiritual guides call the second journey.
A midlife crisis is all about when you reach a certain age, usually about forty or forty-plus, and you want to cling to your lost youth, so you run around like someone of twenty-five. Whereas in the second journey, which also can hit around forty-ish, you’re not interested in reliving the past at all. You’re much more interested in what’s going to happen in the future, and where your journey’s taking you.
In fact, the first part of your life finishes, and you think, “Gosh, yes. Now what’s going to come? What’s it really all about?” Then you begin a second journey out. The first journey is going out into the world and seeing what it’s like, and establishing yourself, maybe. And suddenly, it’s like changing gears—that phase is finished and a new journey begins. It can be a very confusing and difficult time; I certainly found it so.
…and of course the thing is that [the second journey is] also a very isolating experience—at least I found it so—because I didn’t really have the words to describe it. I thought I was going a bit crazy! Very fortunately, I got hold of this dictionary of Christian spirituality, and I found this entry of the second journey, which exactly described what I was going through. So that was a great relief.
TWENTIES
Taking life by decades, in your TWENTIES you’re at your peak everything (mental, physical, energy). You’re discovering who you ARE and busy building/learning a life/career/relationships. You’re looking around soaking everything in like Christmas display in NYC. You tend to judge yourself as a reflection or in comparison. How am I measuring up? How do I appear to this other person/group? Am I doing it right? Does anyone else feel this way?
THIRTIES
In your THIRTIES, most of us are IN relationships, we’ve BEEN in a career or tried out a few jobs, we may be in the trenches of parenting. It’s ON. Somewhere in your late THIRTIES/early FORTIES, we get into this space we’ve named MIDLIFE.
MIDLIFE
In this space, we may start to feel a kind of anxiety or low grade depression, and worry a lot about what we can’t control or fix. Think about it: you’re in charge of the LIVES of little people, a household and job. This is where you’re wearing multiple hats and there are LOTS of expectations on your shoulders. (who put them there??) We may just feel TIRED b/c we’ve spent so much energy on managing/controlling/stuffing down FEAR of daring to try something different.
Brene Brown in her book The Gift of Imperfection, describes MIDLIFE not as the cliché “crisis,” that gets talked about, but as an UNRAVELING. We are starting to realize we can’t control or manage life like we imagined we could. At some point, we weigh the FEAR we’ve been comfortable with against our growing push to find joy/learn/try/dare. She says it like this:
“The universe gently places its hands on your shoulders, pulls you in close and whispers in your ear: I’m not kidding around. All of this pretending, performing and coping you’ve been doing to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt….this has to go. Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts.”
She goes further, allowing that maybe we needed our protective coping mechanisms before, but now we’re finding that we’re still searching and time is ticking. We can’t live the rest of life worried about what others think. We were BORN worthy of love and belonging. Made to live and love whole-heartedly. IT’S TIME TO SHOW UP AND BE SEEN.
Kevin DeYoung says it this way, “The admission of imperfection does not have to be the enemy of endeavor. We can keep trying even if we know we will never fully succeed.”
It’s the already and not-yet of perfection that we, as Christians, get to live in. Hebrews 10:14 has been my mantra for a few years now. “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”
BONNIE: It took a lot longer than late 30’s! I waited & made excuses nearly until my children had flown the nest before I really cultivated what I’d been afraid to try, before giving myself permission to live & let go of expectations/pressures/demands and others’ perceptions.
RENEE: I didn’t have the space to try many new things when we were homeschooling. As the kids entered high school, I took a new job that was big and scary and daunting. I had trouble cultivating a work-life balance during those five years, but it was also exhilarating! I have spent the past year or two pondering what’s next, how I want to spend my time, what growth still needs to happen, etc.
It helps to remember: we have children in our care, watching & learning from our every move. What do they learn from our worry, stress, need for control?
What would they learn if we asked for help when we needed it? What would they learn from our bravery? From us loving ourselves and laughing at ourselves?
So Midlife hits and we’re realizing some of this stuff….and we basically have two options. When I say them you’ll think immediately of people you know and who has made which choice.
- You start to admit your coping isn’t really working & you’re tired and you do the work (therapy, working on your “stuff”, reading/learning/spiritual awakening)…and you figure that out and LIVE life abundantly
- You double down, get really clenchy, and walk forward rigidly committed to never changing. (also, by the way, you’ll shove all your stuff onto your spouse & kids.)
Which one do you want to be friends with? Which one can you be yourself with?
The book’s title—the Gift of Imperfection—implies that perfection may NOT be a gift. PERFECTION is NOT excellence. It’s not a good healthy striving to better yourself or be the best you can be.
Brown defines it as thinking that: if we live perfect, look perfect, and do all the right things we can avoid or minimize shame, blame, criticism or judgement. It’s a defense mechanism…but one that is very burdensome and ends up hiding your real (amazing, brave!) self.
So Brown created this “inventory” you can do to measure where you are on becoming more authentically you. We all love a good quiz!! You can find this in her book or on brenebrown.com if you want to dive deeper into definitions and nuance.
Let’s just say that you don’t just read the book or go to therapy for a month or turn 45 and voila! You’re done and made whole. Personal growth, just like at the pediatrician, is measured over years—and hopefully never stops. If you’re more entrenched in certain behaviors, it’ll take you longer to let go of them.
Here, we’ll just list the ends of the measuring scale & you can gauge where you are:
Galatians 6:4-5 “Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load.” (load vs burdens). On Brown’s inventory, we’re assessing how we are “letting go of” the action on the left of the scale and “cultivating more of” the action on the right. For growth, our goal is to move more towards the right.
Perfectionism —————————————————cultivating self compassion (self talk!!)**
Numbing/powerlessness (addiction)———————-cultivating resilient spirit
Scarcity————————————————————cultivating gratitude/joy
Comparison——————————————————-cultivating creativity
Exhaustion as status symbol/productivity as self worth———–cultivating rest/play
Anxiety as a lifestyle————————————————-cultivating calm/stillness
Self doubt/supposed to———————————————-cultivating meaningful work
Being cool & always in control ————————————-cultivating laughter, song, dance
Unclear/uncommitted values—————————————cultivating value, clarity, commitment
IMPERFECT DISCIPLE
Whatever your scores, it’s okay… “It’s interesting how often the areas of our inner selves we strive the most to hide from Jesus are the ones he’s most interested in. And it’s amazing that these things about ourselves we hope he doesn’t see are the very things he means to cover with his grace.”
…In the end, as in the beginning, it is not our good intentions or even our good deeds that will get us out of the muck of ourselves. It is God’s rescuing hand. It is his enduring announcement over us messed-up creatures, ‘I love you,’ that changes everything.”
SELF-TALK
We talk to ourselves like we’d never speak to another person. We need to think of ourselves as someone we LOVE and RESPECT and not allow speech that doesn’t reflect that. If we have words with a friend, spouse, or sibling, we probably will cool off and go back and apologize and retract, but do we ever do that with ourselves??? We never go back and “clean up” after totally tearing into ourselves, so we just keep CARRYING that.
TRY THIS FOR POSITIVE SELF-TALK
I am not what I ought to be —ah, how imperfect and deficient!
I am not what I wish to be —I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good!
I am not what I hope to be —soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection.
Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was;
a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” – John Newton, as quoted in The Christian Pioneer
Areas where you have strengths and others where you have lots of OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH.
You may be cruising along great in some of these and then you have a big fight or a pandemic happens and you revert back to your old habits/coping. Trick is to work on these long enough and consistently enough that the reverting back happens less and you recognize it and bounce back quicker.
PUNY CAPACITY FOR CHANGE? NO PROBLEM. Calvin’s Institutes: Let each one of us, then, proceed according to the measure of his puny capacity and set out upon the journey we have begun. No one shall set out so inauspiciously as not daily to make some headway, though it be slight. Therefore, let us not cease so to act that we may make some unceasing progress in the way of the Lord. And let us not despair at the slightness of our success; for even though attainment may not correspond to desire, when today outstrips yesterday the effort is not lost. Only let us look toward our mark with sincere simplicity and aspire to our goal; not fondly flattering ourselves, nor excusing our own evil deeds, but with continuous effort striving toward this end: that we may surpass ourselves in goodness until we attain to goodness itself.
DO NOT DESPAIR OF THE WORK AND WHERE YOU ARE
The Imperfect Disciple: “Jesus’ major contribution to the world was not a set of aphorisms (general truths). He was born in a turdy barn, grew up in a dirty world, got baptized in a muddy river. He put his hands on the oozing wounds of lepers, he let whores brush his hair and soldiers pull it out. He went to dinner with dirtbags, both religious and irreligious. His closest friends were a collection of crude fishermen and cultural traitors. He felt the spit of Pharisees on his face and the metal hooks of the jailer’s whip in the flesh of his back. He got sweaty and dirty and bloody – and he took all of the sin and mess of the world onto himself, onto the cross to which he was nailed naked.
In his work and in his words, Jesus is making promises to the beaten, the torn, the broken, the depressed, the desperate, the poor, the orphan, the abandonded, the cheated, the betrayed, the accused, the left-behind. He is, believe it or not, promising to fix it all.”
We just don’t get the Sermon on the Mount, or Jesus’s ministry in general, like his immediate hearers did. Jesus wasn’t turning things upside down. He was turning them right side up.
This is why the good news is good news for those at the bottom. Think of every category of person spoken to in the Beatitudes:
- The spiritually impoverished.
- The emotionally devastated.
- The psychologically weak.
- The culturally oppressed.
- The inwardly pure.
- The relationally calm.
- The physically abused.
- The personally accused.
Culturally speaking, do we cherish these people? Are these the kinds of people we typically feature on magazine covers or in awards shows? And we don’t typically have a word for them. And yet these people are exactly the ones Jesus is speaking to. His words are especially designed for and specifically targeted at . . . well, losers.
And this cannot be good news for those who are, spiritually speaking, sitting at the head of the conference table. It cannot be good news for those who are, you know, feeling their own way through life by following the positive energy, man.
…But isn’t it good news for those of us in the caves?