A healthy mid-life crisis?

I think I’m having a Mid-life crisis… in a good way.

Brene Brown tells me that “Mid-life is the first point in your life when you can play the movie to the end. She is right.

My little crisis has been precipitated by the Christmas holidays that we had been looking forward to throughout 2020.

We watched borders close and open, and close and open, hoping that our daughter Maddi, and son Daniel, would be able to make it home.

They did.

For the very first time the family dinner table was surrounded by adults after our youngest, Sophie, turned 18 in the middle of the year.

It was encouraging to see our four kids relating to one another with a new level of maturity. It was tempting to think we must have done a good job as parents.

Any self-congratulatory notions were quickly dispelled however, as the kids started trading notes about their experiences of our parenting. They lovingly but honestly gave Leeanne and I feedback on our strengths and our weaknesses.

One thing in particular they agreed on has had me reflecting deeply. They all said that I had been too emotionally distant. They felt as though I unwittingly gave the message that it is wrong to show emotion, and the result was that they didn’t always feel seen by me.

Hearing them speak so candidly about the pain I had unwittingly inflicted over the last two decades was a real challenge. I had always done my best as a father and mostly thought I was doing the right thing, but that in itself, I am discovering, was the problem.

Following their feedback, Leeanne and I listened together to to the Power of Vulnerability audio book by Brene Brown. Unsurprisingly, given the title of the book, Brene talks a lot about vulnerability. She defines it as “being ready to let go of who you think you should be, in order to be who you are.” That resonated.

I have spent a lot of my life trying to do the “right thing.” What I heard from my kids is that they would rather I had worried a bit less about doing right things and a bit more about simply being with them.

I’m glad to be having this mid-life crisis. It feels like its an opportunity to reflect and make changes before the movie really does end. I don’t feel guilty. I feel hopeful because I think I am glimpsing some things for the first time.

I know that part of the change I need to make is to face the forces that led me to suppressing feelings and distancing myself from people.

I already know the major part of it. Shame.

Brene Brown defines shame as:

“the painful belief that we are unloveable and unworthy of connection.”

I won’t go into all the details now, but shame has been a big deal for me since I was a little kid. The reason I feel ok to tell you this is that I know that it probably also true for you.

I tend to manage shame by moving away from people. Others do it by moving towards them and spending their lives trying to please others, or by moving against them and trying to avoid their own shame by shaming others. The truth is that most of us major on one of these coping mechanisms, but can also employ the other two.

Every healthy person has to contend with shame at some level, and it is our shame that keeps us from the kind of relationships we long for.

Too many of us are stuck in a vicious cycle that means our shame holds us back from people, resulting in more shame.

As I have started to see the need for change I have put some personal strategies in place.

Brene Brown tells me that one of the most important ways to deal with shame is through authentic relationships.

Our church declares aspirationally that:

We share as an Authentic Community where nobody stands alone on the journey of life.

What we are basically saying is that we want to be a bunch of people who are not determined by our shame, but by who God created us to be.

We have done our best to name what that looks like in the Acronym S.H.A.R.E.:

Speaking Truth in Love
Having Space
Actively Listening
Reflecting Grace
Encouraging

I am sure that this is the kind of community that Jesus had in mind when he prayed for us in John 17:20-23

John 17:20-23

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

In the past I have read Jesus’s words as a challenge to try harder. I have felt guilty that I haven’t been experiencing the kind of community he seems to be wanting for his church. I missed the point.

My own stuff would continually hold me back from even being able to see what was necessary to have healthy relationships. You can’t try harder if you can’t see what you are doing.

Simply re-reading Jesus’s own words makes it clear that the kind of community he wanted for us would only happen through his work in us.

The point of church is not to be a bunch of people who keep trying harder, but a bunch of people who encourage each other to look to Jesus.

As I let Jesus actually be free in me I find that my shame is no longer controlling me in quite the same way. Speaking the Truth in Love, Having Space, Actively Listening, Reflecting Grace and Encouraging people, all become a bit easier and a bit more natural.

As I hang around people who are doing likewise, shame dissipates even further and authentic community becomes the norm. No community will ever be perfect, but it can be increasingly healthy.

I also know I will never reach a point where I am completely shame-free this side of eternity, but it doesn’t have to make my choices for me in the same way it has in the past.

I’m glad my mini mid-life crisis has given me a path forward to being a freer person. How is the whole vulnerability and shame thing working for you?