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WasaiWarrior
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Name: David
Country: United States
State: New Jersey
Gender: Male
Interests: A little bit of everything.
Expertise: Not enough.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Medical
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
9/18/2002
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| I grew up with a mother who never took a gift... just half of an exchange. I remember watching, with horrified amusement, a lady try to give my mom a bag of mangoes. My mom chased her down and literally threw the bag into the open window of the car as it drove away. My dad is sometimes guilty of the same thing, fighting for the dinner check and the honor to be "gracious".
But is it really grace? Is the "politeness" of Chinese culture truly a reflection of divinity?
My high school years were dreadfully awkward. I rarely hung out with friends outside of school or church related activities which made college a bewildering world that clashed strongly with my sheltered and under-socialized life. I had a 9PM curfew most of my freshman year and spent weekends at home. I learned from friends that the spoon served with your spaghetti isn't for the sauce but is meant to hold the pasta in place as you wind it up with the fork. I learned that people from Malaysia don't eat bugs and swing from tree to tree. And I learned that I was terribly insecure. I bent over backwards to make people happy, taking extreme precautions to avoid offending others. I gave people gifts to show that I liked them, cleaned up messes that weren't mine, was overly-polite, and tried to overwhelm friends with signs of affection.
Then people started to treat me the same way. They started to give me stuff. I mean, they took me out to dinner and baked me cookies. They visited me when I was lonely and frustrated. They did kind things for me and other things to show me love. So I refused it all. I insisted on paying for dinner. I wouldn't take the cookies. I tried to compensate for their kindness with more kindness of my own. And I couldn't figure out why they seemed hurt or offended as a consequence. I couldn't figure out what was going on and why everything seemed so wrong, even though I was doing the "right" thing.
This was the time I began to understand grace.
I had grown up with the faulty impression that the correct way to honor a gift was through the exchange of one with equal or greater value. I thought that love was a two-way street, where affection grew out of mutual reciprocations over time. But what I learned is that this concept is a subtle but insidious expression of pride. It is oriented around the self. It makes an estimate of self-worth, matches that to the value of the gift, and then attempts to reconcile the difference with an equivalent exchange.
Love and grace are entirely different. Love is really the alignment of two one-way streets where people are compelled towards each other by an unknowable and unmitigable force. It doesn't earn its meaning by the value of what is sacrificed but by the satisfaction, happiness, and pleasure of its object. It gives gifts purely as an expression of selflessness with no anticipation of reciprocation and no calculations of social obligations. It gives simply to honor and pleasure the recipient.
And the reason I had such difficulty accepting this was because I didn't believe that I was worth it. I had deep issues of shame and self-doubt. I had this internal mismatch between the value I saw in myself and what others wanted to give me. I believed that I had to earn the affection and respect of others, that unless I had a right to what they offered, I had no right to receive anything from them. I couldn't come to terms with the attention and affection set before me that I craved but felt undeserving of.
But that is exactly what grace is: a cascade of undeserved blessing. I readily accepted the doctrine of sin and justice in my life. Growing up in a shame-based culture, it was easy for me to accept the teaching that I was less than worthless, that I was a vile sort of thing in the eyes of a holy God. But it made it nearly impossible to believe that the same God loved me with a furious and jealous and overwhelming desire to see me... happy. Satisfied. Pleased. Content. Brimming with joy.
What happened to me was very similar to what happened to Don Miller, as described in one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz:
"Things got worse with the girl. We would spend hours on the phone working through the math of our relationship, but nothing added up, which I received as only a sign of my incompetence, and this made me more sad than before.
Then she did it; she decided we didn't need to be in touch anymore. She broke it off. She sent me a letter saying that I didn't love myself and could not receive love from her. There was nothing she could do about it, and it was killing her. I wandered around the house for an hour just looking at the blank walls, making coffee or cleaning the bathroom, not sure when my body was going to explode in sobs and tears. I was scrubbing the toilet when the voices began. I'd listened to them so often before, but on this day they were shouting. They were telling me that I was as disgusting as the urine on the wall around the toilet.
And then the sentiment occurred. I am certain it was the voice of God because it was accompanied by such a strong epiphany like a movement in a symphony or something. The sentiment was simple: Love your neighbor as yourself.
And I thought about that for a second and wondered why God would put that phrase so strongly in my mind. I thought about our neighbor Mark, who is tall and skinny and gay, and I wondered whether God was telling me I was gay, which was odd because I had never felt gay, but then it hit me that God was not telling me I was gay. He was saying I would never talk to my neighbor the way I talked to myself, and that somehow I had come to believe it was wrong to kick other people around but it was okay to do it to myself. It was as if God had put me in a plane and flown me over myself so I could see how I was connected, all the neighborhoods that were falling apart because I would not let myself receive love from myself, from others, or from God. And I wouldn't receive love because it felt so wrong. It didn't feel humble, and I knew I was supposed to be humble. But that was all crap, and it didn't make any sense. If it is wrong for me to receive love, then it is also wrong for me to give it because by giving it I am causing somebody else to receive it, which I had pre-supposed was the wrong thing to do. So I stopped. And I mean that. I stopped hating myself. It no longer felt right."
So things changed. I started accepting things from other people. In fact, it became an unspoken but beautiful habit to do that sort of stuff all the time: a whimsical treat to a meal here or there, a small gift or present for no particular reason at all. It became a true exchange of gifts and not merely a tabulation of collective debts. Instead of arguing and bickering over my self-worth, I actually thanked people and let myself be happy... because I knew that that's what they wanted all along.
I mean, that's all I want for you.
So when I offer to pay for your dinner or give you a bag of mangoes, I'm not trying to repay you for some debt I owe. I'm not asking for some future favor in kind. I just want you to enjoy the moment. I want to share with you an inkling of how much God loves you and longs to lavish you with mercy and blessing. Forgive me if I'm still awkward at doing it, if the timing seems weird and I send all the wrong messages and stutter and look embarrassed and try to make excuses for it. I'm a little rusty these days and am still as under-socialized as ever. So help me out. Take it. Enjoy it. Release the temptation to feel guilty, just this once, and simply let yourself be saturated with grace.
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| One class I had to take as a medical student was called “Sex Week” and consisted of three days of intensive exposure to human sexuality. While there were many, many things that we discussed and debated, one experience that stood out was a panel given by rape survivors. One of the panelists described her experience growing up as the victim of sexual abuse. She described how she was forced to have sex not only with her father, but with strangers brought into the home. She described how her mother never said a word about it and, when the issue was finally brought to the authorities, even implied that it was her fault for splitting the family apart. She talked about how her father was never convicted and even enjoyed a prominent place in his church until the end of his life. She spoke of how she bounced between various abusive relationships and how, after spending time with one Christian psychologist, she was seduced and abused by him as well. At the end of her sharing, she read this poem to us, which was written by Kee McFarlane on behalf of a different girl, 12-year-old Cindy. It serves as a disturbing and frustrating depiction of the failure of the system to defend and protect the very ones that have been victimized.
Promises, Promises—A Child’s View of Incest
I asked you for help and you told me you would if I told you the things my dad did o me. It was really hard for me to say all those things, but you told me to trust you—then you made me repeat them to 14 different strangers.
I asked you for privacy and you sent two policemen to my school in front of everyone, to “go downtown” for a talk in their black and white car—like I was the one being busted.
I asked for you to believe me, and you said that you did, then you connected me to a lie detector, and took me to court where lawyers put me on trial like I was a liar. I can’t help it I can’t remember times or dates or explain why I couldn’t tell my mom. Your questions got me confused—my confusion got you suspicious.
I asked you for help and you gave me a doctor with cold metal gadgets and cold hands… just like my father, who said it wouldn’t hurt, just like my father, who said not to cry. He said I look fine—good news for you. You said, bad news for my “case.”
I asked you for confidentiality and you let the newspaper get my story. What does it matter that they left out my name when they put in my father’s and our home address? Even my best friend’s mother won’t let her talk to me anymore.
I asked for protection and you gave me a social worker who patted my head and called me “Honey” (mostly because she could never remember my name). She sent me to live with strangers in another place, with a different school.
Do you know what it’s like to live where there’s a lock on the refrigerator, where you have to ask permission to use the shampoo, and where you can’t use the phone to call your friends? You get used to hearing, “Hi, I’m your new social worker, this is your new foster sister, dorm mother, group home.” You tiptoe around like a perpetual guest and don’t even get to see your own puppy grow up.
Do you know what it’s like to have more social workers than friends?
Do you know what it feels like to be the one that everyone blames for all the trouble? Even when they were speaking to me, all they talked about was lawyers, shrinks, fees and whether or not they’ll lose the mortgage. Do you know what it’s like when your sisters hate you, and your brother calls you a liar? It’s my word against my own father’s. I’m 12 years old and he’s the manager of a bank. You say you believe me—who cares, if nobody else does?
I asked you for help and you forced my mom to choose between us—she chose him, of course. She was scared and had a lot to lose. I had a lot to lose too—the difference was you never told me how much. I asked you to put an end to the abuse—you put an end to my whole family. You took away my nights of hell and gave me days of hell instead. You exchanged my private nightmare for a very public one.
My emotional response in the days following that session were mixed. In our discussion groups, we talked about the conflict between caring for the child and the abuser. I used to think that I could be rational and objective in treating members of the prison system competently, but at that moment I found it hard to imagine treating a child abuser without giving in to the urge to rip his testicles off in as painful a manner possible. My visceral reactions surprised me with the nature of their forceful and violent sentiments. I felt conflicted as my own Christian principles dictated that I should respond more kindly and with hope for change, but at the same time I felt that reacting gracefully to child and sexual abuse diminished the violence that had already been done and mocked the God who stood by and permitted it to take place.
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| Far too often, power - not fairness and certainly not generosity - is the name of the game. We assert ourselves and our own interests through raw physical strength, political connections, or loads of cash; through sexual prowess, sarcastic comments, lies and half-truths; through anything that can serve as a weapon in this low-grade war called life. We fight, and we often take spoils or go away defeated. Whether considering business, politics, family, or education, the big fish eat the little ones. Laws and regulations do limit excessive abuse; however, they only mark the space in which the war is waged. They don't eliminate the war.
-Miroslav Volf, "Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace"
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| I know I've been saying this over and over again throughout the years (ever since college, actually), but I'm finally going to buckle down and write a book. A few years ago, I even signed up for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, whose goal is to help aspiring authors pump out a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I only got through 10,000 words of a strange little piece of fiction (which will never see the light of day... ever), but this year, I'm going for broke.
It's going to be a memoir about medical school, and I'm writing this because I'm looking for editors and peer reviewers: people I can bounce ideas and horrid drafts off of. I need people who aren't afraid to pepper me with criticism and snide remarks. If you're interested in the job, I'd really really appreciate it; just drop a comment, facebook message, e-mail, text, what-have-you and I'll add you to the list of recipients. And make you sign a non-disclosure agreement. In blood.
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| [This was recently published in Revisions, a publication from my college Christian fellowship, Manna.]
When I was in middle school, I thought it was funny to pretend to talk to myself and walk around as if I was hearing voices. Schizophrenics were easy people to poke fun at since I didn’t know any; in my tidy suburban community, they were the subjects of tasteless jokes in the same way that dead babies or Nazis or Martha Stewart were. There were other jokes too, about bipolar kids and narcissists and anorexics and ADD and OCD and PTSD and other acronymed psychopathologies, about drug abusers and sex addicts, about Freud and the sikowanalists, about neurotic housewives popping anxiolytics like M&Ms and the shrinks that tended to them. They were jokes about people I couldn’t understand beyond the wild caricatures on television. It was the same phenomenon that goaded my peers to laugh at tuneless sax players at the train station or the antics of children with special needs; the only difference was that schizophrenics only deserved half of the impropriety and guilt. Like death and poverty, mental illness was a harsh element of reality that was more easily identified and understood in the context of awkward and black humor. But, as much as I tried to ignore it, psychologic disorders found their unwelcome way into my life. One person literally burst into my life. My friends and I were chatting late at night in our common room, trying to ignore the loud party next door, when a girl suddenly crashed into the room and collapsed on the floor. Before we could recover from our shock, she got up and bolted outside in a delirious state. We ran out and managed to bring her to the health center; in a later e-mail, she told me about her struggles with bipolar disorder and how alcohol had come to complicate her condition. I met a hospital patient some years later with a similar history. This patient was a college student at a different school. In preparing herself for a new semester, she had difficulty taking her medications for bipolar disorder regularly and was suddenly found unconscious by EMTs in a faraway hotel room. After surviving a rocky course in the ICU, she could only tell me vague details about what had happened, which was traumatic and involved scattered memories of a heavy drug trip and possible sexual abuse. I once met a patient at a homeless clinic whose financial plight was the unfortunate consequence of her husband’s sudden death from a ruptured brain aneurysm. Newly homeless and trying to survive in a small city, she was robbed at gunpoint and threatened with rape. She continued to have flashbacks and nightmares for nearly a year following all these events before coming to the clinic for help. The physician team at the clinic brought in a psychiatrist to evaluate her for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but after trying anti-depressants and sleep medications for several weeks, the patient reported little improvement. When the psychiatrist wanted to be more aggressive with the pharmacotherapy, the patient withdrew and simply stopped coming to see the team. I saw her twice at a local soup kitchen and overheard her introducing herself by a different name. A college friend had a psychotic episode where she said her mind simply “exploded.” A schizophrenic told me he had found the cure for cancer. Several youth at my church described cutting themselves regularly. Many of my friends struggle with varying degrees of depression, some regularly entertain suicidal thoughts, and one took his own life. These friends span a wide spectrum of backgrounds and are very caring and deeply compassionate people, but I used to think of my experiences as unusual. I believed that such psychological disasters were rarities in the general populace, and then a series of personal crises during my second year in medical school – a broken romance, the sicknesses and suicides and deaths of friends - left me in a brooding, bitter, and depressed state of my own. One night, I had such a disturbing dream that I wrote it down: It was a dream in which I found myself still bound to the paralyzing sentiments of despair and bitterness. It was a dream in which I realized the weakness of my own emotional strength and came face to face with the daunting conclusion that I had crossed the line from sanity to “psychologically disturbed”, now being in need of professional help. It was a dream in which I had lost autonomy over my own soul and its motions. In my dream I reached out in desperation to the medical profession I thought I could trust, hesitant yet willing to describe myself as a classic case of “depression”. In my dream that trust was betrayed and I found myself led where I did not want to go and regarded with a cold emotional distance and condescension I had never seen before. In my dream I was categorized and filed away, I was bridled and stereotyped, I was fawned over and benignly ignored. In my dream, I became an object of pity – a diagnosis – and I began to believe that that was all I would ever be. I woke up from that dream, but it continues to haunt me even today. Even today, less than a year after the facts that initiated such emotional volatility, I find myself unable to properly cope with either love or death. For each of us there is but a thin line between these pithy meanderings called life and Nietzsche’s void, and it does not take much doing to cross from the former to the latter… I write this not because I possess suicidal or homicidal ideation, but because I have been told repeatedly that it is abnormal to think in this way. I write this because when I look at myself I find it becoming something different and darker, and I have come to a gradual awareness as to how powerless I am in stopping this transformation. I am becoming bitter. I am becoming cynical. I am losing hope. I am becoming a person I would not like to shake hands with, and I fear above all else that others would agree if they truly and deeply knew me. I have found that it is far easier to pretend to be happy and put together than to explain myself repeatedly to many well-intentioned friends, burdening them with the same slow process of frustrated restoration that I have been dealing with. And I have found that, for the most part, they seem rather content to leave me to my own devices of self-repair (the same mechanisms that have already been grotesquely broken). I do not want to inconvenience others with my struggle because I do not want to be burdened with advice I already know or the injunction to be stronger than I am. In the end what I mean to say is havail havalim hakol hovel: vanity, vanity, everything is vanity! I am disgusted with the person I am becoming but feel that, should people truly know the person I am already, they wouldn’t like him very much. And now, in this moment, I think I understand a little more about my companions who have struggled with depression, especially the one friend who decided it wasn’t worth it. I am sorry that you have had to go through so much, and that you were alone even though you were not. In that dream, I had a taste of how terrifying and paralyzing the loss of mental function could be. It was a small sense of what it felt like to be powerless, uncontrollable, and emotionally volatile. To someone who prided himself in intellectual prowess and discipline, whose main forms of identity and security were cognitive, the fear of such a loss was shattering and I woke up from that nightmare trembling. As a medical student, the frightening array of diseases, pathologies, and traumatic injuries I see often enervate me with a similar fear. The paralyzed motor vehicle accident victim, the gaunt cancer patient, the suicidal teenager, the violent schizophrenic smearing feces on the wall… they are daily reminders of my own mortality and how illusory my control over physical and mental stability truly is. What is it that keeps me from being on the other side of the hospital bed, the other edge of the surgeon’s knife, at the chair & desk besides the therapist’s couch? What will happen when our coping mechanisms for illnesses – physical, mental, and spiritual – are overwhelmed? What protection will our feeble strength and will and good intentions be able to provide in the face of all the terrifying tragedies that this world can conjure? In reflecting on mental illnesses and the miracles of Jesus, I can’t help but remember the scores of those who suffered from demon possession and were released from the confines of insanity and self-mutilation. I remember one puzzling line from the account of Legion, who was driven by his many demons to live in isolation among the tombs: When [the people of the town and countryside] came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people how the demon-possessed man had been cured. Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and left. Curiously enough, the passage directly preceding this account describes Jesus calming an angry storm, and there we find a similar response of fear from his disciples: He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. "Where is your faith?" he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him." Perhaps what we fear the most about death, disease, and mental illness is the way they illuminate the lack of control we have over our lives. We are but vapors in the wind, and such reminders about our relative powerlessness over the most important things in life – love and death - are galling, provocative, and humbling conclusions. In the case of the villagers and the disciples, the loss of that control to the hands of Christ, even when wielded with healing and peace, still struck them with terror. Small wonder that, despite our lip service to the contrary, we are content to fend off the horrors of our bodies and minds with vain and ineffective means. Even if we were offered the cures to all our diseases and the restoration of our mental faculties, would we be willing to yield our own autonomy and authority to such an unknown and unbreakable deity? Would we ever want admit that we rejected such promise? Small wonder that we crucified him.
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