My mom used to introduce me to people as ‘the perfect child.’  My identity was based in what I did.  I never disobeyed, never got into trouble.  I did a lot of housework and got decent grades.  I worked hard, paid my own way, as well as ‘loaning’ my babysitting money to my parents.

My mom had structured our family so that it was me and her against my dad and brother. Two teams.  Boys vs. girls.  When fights between my parents would arise, we had to take sides.  She talked bad about both of them to me.  I was the mature and responsible child.  She was on my team.  For 18 years.

Until I ended up pregnant.

Remember that episode of Friends?  The One With A List?  Where Ross is an idiot?

“Imagine the worst things about yourself.  Now how would you feel if the one person you trusted the most in the world not only thinks them too, but actually uses them as reasons not to be with you?”

All of a sudden, I was on the other team.  She was against me.  During one of her rages, I was defending myself.  I reminded her of how mature and responsible I was.

“Apparently, you’re not.”

3 angry words destroyed my identity.  One mistake and a lifetime of good behavior, the crux of who I was, just wiped away.

I wasn’t mature.  I wasn’t responsible.  I wasn’t good anymore.

Amazing love, how can it be……

*****

“You know my struggles.  Why don’t you ever share yours?  You’re so secretive.”

Hurt, angry words spoken in the dark.  Two bodies on a mattress, trying to untangle the thread that began knotting at birth.  A marriage at work.

Secretive.  I was accused of that all growing up, my silence and privacy a coping mechanism against an extroverted, controlling mother.  An extroverted parent who wouldn’t even let me be alone in my room, because we had to be together allthetime.  My extroverted mother, who just told me a few weeks ago that introversion is something I’ll grow out of.

Secretive.  Have I somehow turned my introversion, which I have finally learned to understand and be proud of, into something I hide behind?  Do I use my introversion as a shield to mask my failures?

*****

We lie in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling.  “Why is it so easy for you to see the good in Katy Perry, but not in me?”

*****

I go to church alone.  The kids are sick, and I have to clean up coffee and doughnuts.  The sermon is on the doers and hearers of James.  It’s about the tension between hearing and doing, and why don’t we do?  It offers no answers, leaving us to wrestle.  Afterwards, we sing a song of love.

I’m forgiven because you were forsaken…

*****

I can give grace to Katy Perry, I can look for the good in situations in the distance, because they’re not close enough to hurt me.

It’s harder to give grace to the people who hurt me, are still hurting.  I look back on that moment with my mom, and wonder, was it just that moment that destroyed me?  Have I done that to people?  What if I have a moment like that with my kids?

And I realize, no.  It wasn’t just hurtful words spoken in the heat of the moment.  It was all the little words, small actions done with great pain, that confirmed the wounds.  A lifetime of pain slowly poured out until boundaries were learned and put in place.  And other people, other events, all taught me not to get too close.

If you aren’t close to people, they can’t hurt you. They can’t destroy you.  They can’t use your strengths or weaknesses against you.

“What the hell’s a Rachem?”

I analyze and critique situations and people that have hurt me.  Institutions and theologies that have destroyed who I am.  The things that hurt are the things that get examined, so I can stop the pain, maybe stop it from happening to someone else.  I can find the good in a situation removed from me, because I can see where the bad wants to take over.

I’m accepted, you were condemned….

I know my struggles and failures.  I know where I’m terrible.  Why would I want to willingly give someone the chance to see that, to give them ammo to think less of me?  I was taught, am still told from lots of people, that what you do and what you believe determines who you are.  Determines if you are worth respect.  Determines if you are ok, or if there is something wrong with you.  Determines if you are to be avoided.

So why wouldn’t I want to keep my struggles to myself?  Why wouldn’t I want to avoid sharing my pain, failure, weakness with the one person I am closest to, the one person I love the most?

It’s because I love so deeply that I hide so fiercely.

*****

When we first joined a church together 9 years ago, they had a talent show right away, and we memorized the Who’s On First skit and performed it.  It was relatively easy, because they were all strangers.  I never got up front again, because as I got to know them, I cared what they thought of me.  If I don’t know you, I don’t care what you think of me.  But if I know you, I care, because now you matter to me, and now you can hurt me.  So I’ll try not to let you.  I don’t want to give you the opportunity to show me that you can invalidate me.

I don’t want to give you the power to show me you are human.

I see what an obvious paradox I am defining here.  I don’t want to see the humanity of people closest to me, because it brings pain.  I don’t want you to see the truth of me because you might distance yourself from it.  And yet I want to affirm the humanity everywhere.

Maybe this is why I try to have understanding for the oppressors.  I know the evil that is in you, and I know the evil in me.  I can logically know we have to navigate the shades of gray in the world.  But practicing it, doing it day by day, is where it gets hard.

Isn’t this the struggle that is in all of humanity?  That this great mass of people, who balance on a rock in the universe, have to learn love and grace?  We have to figure out how to acknowledge all of us, to see the good and bad and everything in-between.

Isn’t our objective to somehow live in this tension?  To bring honesty to the good, grace to the bad?  To cover ourselves and each other in amazing love?

Our goal is to remind each other that our identity is not in what we believe or do, but that our identity began the moment we were formed.

*****

We are still there, on our back, in the dark, the clock ticking towards 2 am.  Frustration lingers in the air as we try to practice a greater honesty.  His voice comes from beside me, tired, yet with a touch of hope.

“Instead of saying we have to be all bad or all good, can’t we just love each other imperfectly?”

Amazing love, I know it’s true…..