“Hey baby”
“Heyyy sweetie”
“How was your day?" (He kisses her on the cheek)
“Babe, it was sooooo hard. Before you say anything, I saw on my phone that you were callin me; but I was in meeting after meeting.”
“I was worried though. When you didn’t pick up, I didn’t know if you had been in an accident or something.”
“Somethin? I just told you that I was in meeting after meeting. What are you insinuating?”
“I’m not insinuating. Don’t get defensive. I was just concerned. When a man can’t reach his woman, he gets a little crazy.”
“See. I knew that you would jump to conclusions. You know I have a demanding job. Why can’t you trust me? Look, I ain’t got time for this. I’m going to bed.” (She walks to the bedroom and closes the door. He stands there with his mouth opened in disbelief)
Sound familiar? For some of us, this has been the play by play of what just happened last night. Might not be that your partner, boyfriend or spouse had to work late; but it is still reminiscent of that feeling of what in the world just happened. For me, it’s the excruciating not-returned phone call. Arggggggghhhhhhh! Sure, it’s true that a person can’t always respond to you immediately. But you do wonder if there is a bigger truth when it's the rule. Hence, today’s blog: don’t let some truth blind you to The Truth.
I’m not trying to turn you into Sherlock Holmes. That’s not my intent. For some of you, what you don’t know won’t hurt you is the way you live your life. If that works for you, I say, fabulous. For me, it hasn’t worked. Trading the truth of my intuition for some other truth has not worked for me. I'd dare say it hasn't worked for some men out there either. They know that something isn’t right or something doesn’t add up. I’m not certain what makes them dismiss it though. For me and maybe women in general, we don’t like to be lied to. Words have meaning to us. If you tell us you love us but your actions say you don’t, we’ll hold on or obsess about it because of what you said.
Now, ladies, before you challenge me on this, I ask you, what is the first thing you say when you are complaining about a man to your girlfriends? You will tell them what he did that bothered you, true; but your sticking point 9 times out of 10 is “but he said.” Your confidante can say to you over and over and over (did I say over?) again that he’s playing with you or that he isn’t a good man. Yet, to all their examples, their wisdom, their feedback, what makes you take his phone call yet again is what he says.
Lest I should sound preachy or over generalizing, I will talk about myself. After all, that’s what blogs are for right? My litmus test is when I begin to complain about something. For those who know me, I’m not a complainer. I’m Suzy Sunshine. Suzy Optimistic. Suzy Social. Okay, you get me. So when I start complaining incessantly that is a blaring indicator that something's off.
I use to be a minister at a local church. It was years ago. I wasn’t the traditional minister – the one who stands in the pulpit and preaches when the pastor is taking a break – but more an altar worker. When the pastor would give the altar call and folks would come up for prayer, I was one of the people who greeted them, listened to what they wished to pray about, and prayed with them. I learned a lot during that time in my life. Though people told me they were encouraged and they were helped by me being a minister, it never rang true for me.
So what were the some truths that allowed me to do it? It seemed important to my then-husband. That was a biggy. People told me they were about to give up, commit suicide, at wits end but my prayer was the difference. All that appealed to my ego but it was sooo draining! So why not just walk away? I needed to feel that I mattered. Being a minister made me important. At some deep level, I needed to feel accepted by the church as it were. In my previous blogs about losing my voice, I go into more detail about my upbringing and my growing up in a very rigid church culture. It’s funny to me, or should I say peculiar to me, that I wanted to fit in. Maybe that’s the deeper truth that allowed me to give consent to being a minister.
Every step from some truth to The Truth was necessary. As time progressed, the need for validation was challenged by discontent. I remember when my aha moment came. I was listening to my then-husband talking to others over the phone about what wasn’t right. This was the umpteenth time. You know, the umpteenth time is when you’ve had or just about had enough of whatever it is that’s going on in your life. It was during this umpteenth time of hearing yet again his complaints about the church, the leadership and what he believed about it all that I heard The Truth. “You don’t belong in this.” That was the truth. It wasn’t just the truth of the moment; it was the truth from the beginning. It's not that I didn’t hear it. I did. The message got lost in my need for validation. The Truth got buried under my need to have my husband's approval and to be regarded as spiritual by the church's standards.
Codependence will make you do that. Resist what your gut is telling you and make you second-guess. From the beginning, I told my then-husband that the only reason I wanted to join that particular church was for us to worship together as a family. I felt it was a good place. I told him that I had no desire to serve in any capacity there. I didn’t want to become involved in leadership. I had no agenda. Welllllll, time revealed that my then-husband had other ideas. Soooo, I went along to get along as they say. I saw it as his chance to be acknowledged for the valuable man he was. I saw it as my chance to gain his favor. Had I been standing in my truth, I would have encouraged him to go on and do what was in his heart while I remained true to myself.
Ohhhh the insidiousness of codependency. It parades around as love for someone else. Putting someone else’s needs above your own. Sacrificing from a God-fearing place. But if you peel that banana back, codependency is grounded in fear and insecurity. It was my need to belong that took center stage. Bottom line: My husband needed to be acknowledged and I needed approval.
When you realize that codependency is behind your tolerance of the intolerable, you stop blaming other people. Insecurity is the mother of codependency. I just came up with that. Sweeeet. Seriously though, that's the culprit, not the other person. Two insecure people propping themselves up using each other is my definition of codependency. Why did I sit by the phone until I couldn’t take it anymore and came up with a reason to call him? Insecurity. Why did I consent to being a minister when I didn’t feel a calling to do it? Insecurity. The truth had nothing to do with anybody else but me.
Over the years, I’ve learned that time passes and getting older doesn’t necessarily mean you are getting wiser. What makes us wiser isn’t just life experiences, it’s what those experiences teach us about ourselves. It is The Truth that is uncovered. Every single experience in my life has taught me to stop dismissing The Truth just because there is some truth in what people are saying. An abusive man tells his wife that he knocked her head into the wall because she burned the corn bread. In tears, she admits, “He’s right. I did burn the corn bread.” Certainly, there is some truth to what he said, but the deeper truth is he is abusive. Whether it’s corn bread or simply you breathed today, he’s abusive and that has absolutely nothing to do with you. Even more importantly, your consent has nothing to do with him; something inside of you needs to be healed.
Some truth will keep your eyes shut. I call that denial. The deeper truth will open your eyes to what is going on. I call that illumination. But it takes The Truth to heal those eyes. I call that transformation. As the Good Book says, "and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Amen!!
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