My time in therapy was good and challenging this past week. I shared the news of my breakthrough and celebrated it a little. As I expected, Paul was slim with his praise but managed to get a little in via a "Now why would you ask me what I think, Di, when you obviously know how big this is." That was enough. It was as big as I thought. My response to him was that he was the shrink - not me. When he asks me "Now why would you want to focus on me," I have started responding with the reason and the reason is often not so stupid as he makes me feel it sounds. I figure if I actually answer his question, maybe he will quit asking it. It is really irritating.
We pushed on to some more recent woundings within the walls of the church. Woundings I am not free to share the details of right now. Suffice it to say that I find myself seeing difficult situations as having two options - all in or all out, right or left, yes or no, truth or lies, black or white, etc.
During a recent encounter with a couple of folks, I felt I had two choices, to take the full blame for a situation I was only partly to blame for, or to defend myself revealing confidences I had promised to keep. I chose to keep my promise of silence and take the blame. Paul seemed to think I had sold myself out. I felt like I had quieted the flow of anger and opened the door to allow myself to speak. The words of anger had been torrential. They stopped and I was listened to once I took the blame.
As I discussed the painful situation, Paul challenged me to come up with some other options. I couldn't. He pushed. I still couldn't, so he gave me homework to come up with 10 other options. TEN! I exclaimed! You have got to be kidding!
I guess I have always seen things black and white from the time the second pastor pressed me for a kiss. Only recently had I shared with he and his wife my previous encounter with my youth pastor. Instead of ministry I opened the door to more abuse. When it came, I felt I had two choices, after all I had lost everything with his advance. One, I could walk away from his influence in my life and find another spiritual home; or I could go along with his advances. Even now I have a hard time imagining other options. Were there really more than two?
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1 comment:
Funny, but years later the idea of coming up with 10 options seems ridiculously easy. I could have gotten up and walked out. I could have yelled back. I could have told the real truth and defended myself. I could have said that they didn't know everything but I wasn't free to give the details. I could have remained completely silent and not said anything. I could have stopped, gotten on my knees and begun to pray. I could have challenged the one who knew the truth to stop playing games and tell the other one the truth. I could have jumped up and down and screamed. I could have wailed out my pain. Should I continue? Wow, it is nice to have grown.
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