the first time i heard this line i wept. it's from u2's YAHWEH. i feel like the shirt bono wrote about sometimes. i'm really dealing with a lot of this shame right now. i don't know exactly where it's roots lie, i was never called white trash or given that kind of direct treatment by others. i think a lot of it was self inflicted. maybe it came from watching the 'haves' play all my life while i waited on them and resented their luxuries.
i have a friend here who grew up on a farm in west virginia, she is an extraordinary woman, working on her doctorate in education and she's always dressed to the nines and so capable of EVERYTHING (i hate her!) :) i began to recognize this kind of underlying shame in her life just about the time i recognized it in my own. i'm sure it helped me on my way to uncovering and untangling much of my own. she tries for all her life to get the stink of that farm and the cruel jokes about WV out of her system for all she's worth. trying to prove she's better than that.
it's easier to observe her issues than deal with my own. but i know this is the layer of the onion i'm chewing on in my recovery right now. so much of my 'don't fit in issues' scream judgement on me that it kicks my shame reflex into overdrive. the smallest look or the perceived judgement lately spirals me into this shame so very quickly.
we're on the 'service' part of the 40 days right now in our small group and the hardest thing for me to stomach is the illusion that doors will fling open for you to serve in your church because you know your gifts and have a desire. i think this is the weakest part of this mentality. rick warren never once addresses the fact that doors may slam in your face over and over and over. i see new families coming into our church (an explosion of growth is happening right now) and i can spot those broken and wounded ones, they look so much like my family members. i think to myself 'run for your lives - you'll never be able to serve here, you're just not shiny enough for them'...
i'm not shiny enough either.
a year and a 1/2 ago i jumped through their 301 hoop and had my interview with the pastor working with service placement. i told him my passion was to hook people up into service - listen to their hearts and help them find a place to serve, desperately needed in our church. he told me he wouldn't have anything for me until november (it was march...) november has passed and still nothing. yes, i could have followed it up, maybe i should have, but really, should i have had to? yes, i'm teaching jr. high and working with recovery, but this, this is where my passion lies.
now they've got 100's of little green cards with people's wish list for service on them and they are scrambling to put people in place to help those people serve. in tears this morning i told liam that i hoped they choked on them all. i'm bitter, yes i know. but i truly despise being made to feel like white trash in the body of christ too. like i'm not good enough to serve. the most ironic thing of all is that we had to interview to get here - how did i get past the interview process and fail the test later, and what may i ask was the test?
if i'm incompetent then they should be mentoring me, or at least telling me why. please don't leave comments telling me i should talk to them - yes i know that, but understand these are my husband's bosses, would you really go to your husband's boss and complain?
i talked to a friend who i had built (i thought) community with for the past year and aired my soul out. i hoped she would hear me and understand i didn't want her to fix things, i just wanted to be heard. well, she went into panic mode and 'should-ed me' into silence again... (she even had the gaul to read me the serenity prayer - she who hasn't had 1 day of recovery...) sigh. i have been sucked into the politics again and it poisons my soul every time. pretty raw and bitter, eh?
this is the stuff that has kept me silent here on my blog. this is the stuff that is poisoning my soul right now. i feel unfit and unwanted and the thought of having to sit in the small group liam and i lead tonight and play 'oh there will be a place for you to serve here' is just about killing me. that's why i had to write, to get it out of my system. i know tonight isn't the arena to address any of this, and i so don't want to poison any of those wonderful couples in our group. i just need the strength to bite my tongue and smile. something that goes against every grain in my body.
i've called my therapist to get an appointment to help me untangle some of this raw emotion and find the source of this shame. we're going away this weekend, so i'm sure the change will do my heart good. this isn't a cry for help, or fixing. i just needed to process things out for myself. thanks.
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