Shame is a Parasite (and other suprises)

May 23, 2012May 23, 2012 Jana Greene9 Comments

By: Jana Greene

I once watched a television show about a woman who had traveled to **insert the name of sub-tropical paradise here** and returned home with some strange symptoms. She felt crawling under her skin, and she couldn’t figure out what it was. In one episode (a year later) after many trips made in vain to doctors, she glanced down at her forearm and saw a worm wiggling around just under the surface of her skin. During her trip to paradise, something had bitten her and deposited its eggs into her body, where they had been growing unchecked for all that time. She ended up getting treatment that killed the parasites, but she still had the sensations on occasion. The feelings she can’t forget, and she is paranoid that they will resurrect.

Ew.

Yesterday, I blogged about the process of preparing to write a memoir, which I have been threatening to do for years. I wrote about getting honest with the world, “coming out” as a recovering alcoholic and my hopes that someone somewhere might find hope in a similar circumstance.

As repugnant as the worm story is, it’s a pretty good analogy for my issues with shame. Years ago, I considered alcoholic drinks paradise, going hand-in-hand with the sun, sand and surf at the beach where I live – socially acceptable and readily available. And nobody judges a soccer mom who enjoys a nightly glass of wine (except that it was NEVER one nightly glass….I will address the amazing enabling phenomenon of Wine by the Box in a later column….) but I started having strange symptoms, including – but not limited to – nausea, vomiting, shaking, yellowing of the eyes and skin, blackouts and the worst of all: a shameful sensation of self loathing had gotten under my skin.

Yet I couldn’t stop drinking. I could hide the magnitude of the issue with some measure of confidence, but I COULD NOT STOP. Self-diagnosis? Crazy, weak and powerless.

Now, many sober years later, the shame I thought was gone seems to have only been lying dormant. Reliving the experiences of those dark days through the journal pages has made me feel shameful again:

Sample entry: Try not to drink, stop for two whole days, and relapse. Stop again for one day, feeling triumphant. Take one drink to stop the shaking….full-blown relapse. Over and over and over again.

I cry while I’m reading the pages, but slowly my shame dissipates, as I realize I don’t hate the woman I used to be at all. She is weak, yes – but not bad.

She is just only sick.

She doesn’t know the ironic thing yet; that admitting to that powerlessness is the thing that will get and keep her sober. That just feeling powerless says, “Its useless…I am weak,” but admitting powerlessness to God and others says, “Ok, I am weak. What now?”

In the Bible, 2 Corinthians 12:9 assures me that those phantom sensations of self-loathing have no place under the surface of my life. The feelings that I can’t forget keep my active disease from resurrecting, but shame has no place.

“Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.” (NLT)

So, in writing about my experience with alcohol, I am boasting about my weakness for sure, but Jesus considers our weaknesses to be His greatest stronghold. He is also a big proponent of forgiveness. Even when we must apply it to ourselves.

I think I’m starting to forgive myself. Someone, somewhere might find hope to employ some self-forgiveness, too, in a similar circumstance.

It’s a start.

Rigorous Honesty and Other Risks

May 22, 2012May 22, 2012 Jana Greene9 Comments

By: Jana Greene

This morning, I was at a loss at what to write about. I’ve had a headache pretty steadily for nearly a week solid, and have a busy schedule today, and these two conspired against my wanting to write at all. But still….

Under my desk is a big cardboard box full of writings; articles, poetry and general musings about life, some of it going back to high school. This is my sad attempt at organization…throwing things into a box, so that the oldest pieces end up on the bottom, and the most recent on top, like layers of sedimentary rock.

So, I consult The Box this morning for writing ideas, digging down a few layers. Somewhere in between the top (which is from yesterday) and the bottom (the Jurassic period when the dinosaurs roamed the earth – known to my children as “the 80’s”) I found a single manila folder. Everything else in the box, at least seven inches deep, is thrown in willy-nilly. The folder is named simply: “The Bad Years”

Immediately, I knew which era was chronicled in this layer: The later stages of my disease, and most likely, the very early stages of recovery.

I am an alcoholic. The Bad years, I have had.

I flip through the pages, and catch words like: drunken, AA, lying, puking, embarrassment, shame and rejection…..words I don’t necessarily associate my “now” life with, but words that have been my life at other times. And no matter how hard I try, I cannot shake the feeling that I am supposed to write about the experience. Trust me, I’ve tried to shake the feeling.

More than a feeling, it is (dare I use the term?) calling. At the end of the day, I just cannot imagine that we must endure the really difficult things in life alone. What is the point of coming out on the ‘other side’ of something horrible if you keep it to yourself?

But writing about it is going to require what 12-step programs refer to as “rigorous honesty”. In my interpretation, rigorous honesty is different from regular honesty in that it is subject to the sin of omission tenfold. Writing about my journey is going to require including the words: drunken, AA, lying, puking, embarrassment, shame and rejection – and that’s just for starters.

I pray about it often, asking God about what to include in a book, if I were to write one. I tell Him that I don’t want to embarrass myself, but I know it’s a little late for that consideration. I try to tell Him that I don’t have the time/money/confidence/smarts to write a book. I think He is telling me that I don’t need those things to write my story. What I need is faith in Him. Period.

He reminds me that I still have tons of issues, in my “now” life, and that I get through them One Day at a Time the same way He got me through The Bad Years….with grace.

He is enough to save my life. He is more than enough to handle the seven inches of literary sediment in a cardboard box. I cannot undo my past, but I can write about my redemption so that maybe someone somewhere will know that they can survive The Bad Years.

Grace really is amazing.

Spiritual

To be Big-Souled (and Beachfront)

May 21, 2012May 21, 2012 Jana Greene3 Comments

By: Jana Greene

There is a scene in the Movie, “The Bucket List” in which Jack Nicholson‘s character, Edward, and Morgan Freeman’s character, Carter, are flying in a private plane over the polar ice cap. Both terminally ill, they engage in a conversation in which Carter waxes about the beauty of the night sky and the ice and ocean below, giving God credit for its splendor.

“It’s indescribably beautiful,” he says. “Really one of God’s good ones.”

And Edward, dry and skeptical, barely glances out of the window from above his bifocals. He describes the same starry landscape as “desolation”.

“I envy people who have faith,” he says. “I just can’t get my head around it.”

Carter’s reply: “Maybe because your heads’ in the way.”

I love this scene, because it is relatable. I can certainly relate to Carter’s appreciation for what is Creation. But I’ve also felt like Edward –although he was a very wealthy and intelligent businessman – in that faith seems the single luxury he cannot afford. He wants to believe, but he has absorbed too much of what the world has to offer, and what the world says makes sense.

There are things so beautiful in this world that they make no sense at all.

My “polar ice cap” is the beach. Having lived within 15 minutes of the shore for a dozen years now, setting my eyes on the sea is still exhilarating for me, and searching the sand for treasures is still a Zen-like experience to my spirit. Scanning the edge where the water meets the land, I watch carefully as the waves deliver shells with every flow and suck them back out with every ebb. It is an endlessly different place every time I visit, and I like suprises.

Years ago, I was fascinated with the process of the tides. Why does the moon pull and push at the seas? How did the ancients know enough to produce charts in advance of tides and navigate dangerous waters?

The science was fascinating to learn, but it didn’t help me to enjoy the beach. The more I researched, the less I reveled in the mystic marriage of water and earth. Believing that if I could understand something, I would appreciate it even more is exactly opposite tenant of faith. I appreciate the One who made it in order to understand His nature, not nature in general. It was missing the point entirely.

He is my Father. I know Him personally. The world tells us not to be “small minded”. I try to remind myself not to be “small-souled”. It isn’t that what can be proven is unimportant; it’s just that He is so much BIGGER than that.

Look at a single sea shell… Is the intricate design a happy evolutionary accident, or one of the millions of ways God pays attention to detail?

A pearl may have started as an errant grain of sand, but who decided that it would not remain a grain of sand? (As an errant child of God’s, I especially appreciate that His penchant for making beauty out of randomness and mistakes.)

Google and Wikipedia can tell you what makes a sunset over the river red, pink and orange…but there is no textbook answer for why the colors just happen to be so pleasing to us.

Human beings can break down the chemical make-up of the oceans, but the depths of it are still more mysterious than known. Do we even make the correlation between the vastness of the seas and diversity of the life living in it to a Supreme Creator, or do our heads get in the way?

Sometimes, my head gets in the way, too.

It’s easy for me to remember that God is present in the creation when stroll by the seaside admiring His handiwork. I know that without Him, the greatest majesty on this planet is only desolation. Sometimes, that I go to the seaside to remind myself that God is present in the creation that is my life, too. That He is still in charge…that He is, indeed, ‘in the details.’

I forget that I am “indescribably beautiful” to Him. And you are, too.

Really one of God’s good ones; you can afford to have faith in that.

Inspirational · Spiritual

YOURS

May 12, 2012May 12, 2012 Jana Greene3 Comments

By: Jana Greene

I didn’t mean to keep them all to myself, honest.

There were two of them, and then later, three….and they brought so much joy into my life. Well, you see…I sometimes I forget that they are ultimately yours.

You trusted me enough to care for them, and I have taken good (but not perfect) care of them. Being one-of-a-kind, each of them were fussed over and coddled, adored and applauded. I made a lot of mistakes. You knew I would make mistakes with them, but you trusted me anyway.

Remember how I asked you for them before they arrived? I wanted my own long before you lent them to me. I guess I lost sight of whose they really are when I started making long-term plans for them. It’s easy to do, when you love them so much.

Sometimes, even now, I can’t believe you just handed them to me like that; priceless treasures, but you did. They are really beautiful, by the way. Thanks for sharing them.

Small and defenseless at first, strong and defiant as they grow. Oh, how I love them all.

Now, all these years later, it feels like you are wrestling them away from me, one clenched finger at a time, stealing them back.

Except that you are not stealing. They are rightfully yours, God.

These daughters.

Thank you for letting me be their Mom.

Spiritual

Right in the Jugular

May 9, 2012May 9, 2012 Jana GreeneLeave a comment

oldschool.davidwesterfield.net

By: Jana Greene

“God went for the jugular when He sent His own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In His Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.” – Romans 8:3-4 (The Message)

The jugular. I’ve never heard the gospel explained like that before. It sounds pretty graphic. It is decidedly untidy, and really extreme. Maybe even a little offensive.

What I know about human anatomy is very limited. But I know that if you are ever in Africa on safari and attacked by a lioness, she will “go for your jugular”. She is going for your lifeblood, and she means business. It would be a direct hit.

Society tends to think of the Bible as a book of stories of ancient peoples. But it isn’t just a bestseller. It is an account of the disordered mess of struggling humanity being set right with a true and omnipotent Creator. In the beginning there was God, yes. But the end? We know where eternity lies, but “the end” is not dusty pages of prophecy in Revelation. The end is still being recorded in the lives we live today. In my life, in your life.

God’s relationship with us individually was not remote and unimportant then….it is of the utmost importance now, and He means business. To reconcile His people –full of sin and selfishness and corruption – back to him, sacrificial blood had to be spilled. He had to have contact with this fractured human condition directly, swiftly. I forget this sometimes, when I try to tidy up the gospel to suit me.

In “going for the jugular” of humanity, He poured Himself over bone and under skin, walked around in flesh with all of the discomfort that entails, and was brutally tortured and nailed to the cross to die. His lifeblood was spilled while we were still sinners, the ultimate and fatal blow to death.

Webster’s Dictionary defines “jugular” simply: “The most vital part”. Thats where God hit sin and death. Right in the jugular.

In Him, we are set right, once and for all.

Inspirational

A World Away – Picture of an African Mother

May 2, 2012January 29, 2015 Jana Greene4 Comments

I have always had a desire to travel to Uganda for a mission trip.

Maybe one day I will. It was from that desire that the idea for this article grew.

photo credits below — PHOTO: The then eight month-old Martha Akwango, who was suffering from malaria, with her mother Janet Awor in September 2007. Martha and her mother live in Katine, a Ugandan village where the Guardian is participating in a project to improve medical facilities and infrastructure. Photograph: Dan Chung.

In my mind’s eye, I see an African mother. She is an amalgam, really….her face a compilation for every young sub-Saharan woman whose picture I have ever seen on the glossy pages of National Geographic magazine.

Her haunting eyes implore the camera to, “Come. Capture my reality so that the world can see.” And, at the same time, “Stop! Don’t record my shame!”

We, in our comfort, like to banter about who we consider our “Most Inspirational Person”.

She is mine, but I don’t know her name.

Her figure, baby strapped to her back, is a montage from every television commercial that has implored me to “feed the hungry” and every picture brought back from mission trips to Africa by white, middle-class Americans.

A powerful beauty, her hair is shorn close to her head (no time for vanity here) and her sandaled feet are dusty. Always, there is at least one child tethered to her body. Her hands are never empty because they are always at task. She doesn’t get coffee breaks or vacations, or time to unwind. Her work is never done.

Unlike her First World counterparts, she does not have issues with self-esteem. Survival is the esteemed goal here. Is she a woman who “loves too much”? What about her “inner child”? Does she take healthy time for herself, and is she setting aside time in her busy day for God? No time for that – she hums prayers as she works, and that is her worship.

She is a fallible person who makes mistakes, just as we all do. But doubting her Creator is not a luxury she can afford.

Her children, barefoot….do they have enough to eat today?

Yes? She hums her praise louder.

No? Pray and hope, and work all the harder.

She doesn’t despair in losing the keys to her car, or fuss about the value of her 401k plan. Her grief, when it comes….is wracking, life-altering. Her loss… it’s behind her eyes if you care to look.

In the Western world, we like to say that our lives are our gift from God, and what we do with it is our gift to Him. How presumptuous we human beings are. My Sister in Africa has little opportunity to bring gifts that we in the First World consider valuable. I think God smiles on her offerings especially; they are her very life and the lives of her children.

I think that is what God intended us to bring. She inspires me so.

I, as a white, middle class mother in America, sometimes wonder why I was not born as she. If life were fair, I mean. If life were fair, I would have been.

Sometimes, when my kids are getting on my very last nerve, I think about this woman. Because I often say to myself and others, “If this mothering thing were any harder, I couldn’t do it.” I mean it, too, when I say it.

When my children were small, I felt like I knew what I was doing as a mother. Like my Sister in Africa, I wore my babies in a sling on my hip or my back. I nursed them into toddler-hood. It felt natural, like they would be tethered to me forever.

Nowadays, as they are approaching young adulthood, I’m not quite as confident. Writing about their growing up and my mistakes as a mother now is my attempt to capture the reality and share it. And yet I know that during the process I will record my own shame.

If this mothering thing were any harder…..God would equip me to do it, I suppose.

But meanwhile, in a third-world, poverty-stricken, war-torn country in Africa….

My Sister on the other side of the world. Her life, just as precious to God, lived in the same units of time as mine – minutes, hours and days. Her love for her children just as fierce as mine. When – if – her babies have survived to young adulthood, unclaimed by famine, drought or disease, she is not fixated about the proper way to “let them go.”

She is grateful.

Triumphant.

I want to meet her one day, to touch her. And to tell her that she is the Inspiration to another mother, all this world away.

Spiritual

About Jana Greene

April 18, 2012July 12, 2022 Jana Greene19 Comments

Happily married wife, mother to three adult daughters, and JiJi to one granddaughter. Chronic illness and pain survivor – one day at time. Ex-evangelical who loves Jesus more than ever. Alcohol-free 22 years. Unlikely feminist. Animal-lover. Poet. Mid-life is when your mind wakes up. Believer in the Universal Christ. My friends are family. Music is life. I believe in plant medicine. One Love.

(Oh….And I love to write. Always have. Thanks for coming along on this journey.)

Chronic illness and pain survivor – one day at a time. I just love