Taking care of vs. caring about another.

I've been thinking this last week about the difference between caring for or about, and taking care of someone else. I have been deeply, deeply blessed by people who care for or about me and my family. These are people I love sharing my thoughts, my feelings, my life with. They listen well, they share their own stories as well, they treat me with respect, they don't try to "fix" the difficult things in my life, they are people who sometimes do really nice things for us, not because they think we can't take care of ourselves but because they love us and want to express that care.

I have also had relationships, most short-lived, with people who, in contrast to care givers are care takers. I don't mean people who by profession help those who have specific needs that must be filled by others. I am talking here about people who by their nature take care of others. On the enneagram these are the twos - those who get their sense of self-worth and self-identity by taking care of others. These are the people who do things for you because they believe you need to have them done and won't do them yourself or can't do them yourself. They are people who try to "fix" things either by taking over or by telling you what you need to do. Today as I reflected on this difference I realized that the word care-taker really makes sense because usually the care they offer is not invited but still they take the position of care-taker, taking care over others. As I said before, the times I have ended up in a relationship with a care taker are usually very short. While it may feel good for a short time to rest in the care of someone else, the positioning of myself as an incapable inferior who needs the care of a superior and interfering person gets old very quickly. It feels diminishing, it makes one feel like a child again, it does the opposite of helping as it breaks down esteem rather than building it.

I am reading the book "Positive Discipline" by Dr. Jane Nelsen. One of the things she says is that while children may feel that they enjoy being pampered for a short time, doing for a child what they can do for themselves is ultimately disempowering (even for a short time) and leads them to a place of feeling helpless, dependent, and incapable instead of strong, independent (interdependent?) and capable. We know adults who've been infantilized this way as children. If they don't have the opportunity to work through or challenge their upbringing, they stay incapable, dependent adults in one area or another: unable to have adult relationships, unable to raise children, unable to hold down a long term job or care for their families: they stay children at some level.

As I reflected on those who "take care" of others, I realized this is the same thing. When someone tries to take care of me I feel like I am being treated as an incapable, helpless child once again. If I allow that behavior to affect me, I can become disempowered by their lack of respect for my ability to care for myself and my family. While it may serve the care-taker to see me needing their care, it leaves me worse off, not better.

I have yet to figure out how to respond well when others take on this role with me. It has been suggested to me that the best way is to respond as you would to an equal, even when the other is trying to position themselves as a superior and necessary care taker: to refuse to allow the other to put you in a position of being taken care of. Usually I find it easier to walk away from the relationship altogether, though that is not always possible.

I do feel that this has helped inform, and I hope will continue to inform how I treat those who come to me asking for help. Just as it does not empower my children to "do it for them" when they ask for help, but instead to find ways to help them help themselves; just as it does not empower oppressed people to simply provide services for them but instead to empower them into ways of caring for themselves; so, too, I have not found it really helps people to just take care of them when they come for help but is more helpful to support them in their journey to care for themselves. Mostly, this has to do with an attitude of respect, trusting that the other is a capable person who can care for themselves. On those rare occassions when they really can't care for themselves, it helps to find places in which they can help themselves and to uplift and name those, reminding them of ways in which they are strong and capable even in the face of those areas in which they are needy.

Care for one another. Try not to take care. It doesn't really care for the other. And so, ultimately, it doesn't really take care of you either.

Changes a-comin.

It's been a long time since I've blogged - too much going on in my head and heart. I imagine that as this next month goes by it is possible that it will be even harder to blog. I promise to begin again with more earnestness in the new year. For now let me tell you, for those of you who don't already know, that Mark and I have made the decision to accept the call and move to Cleveland. It is hard for me to write about this because my feelings are so strong, but let me say to my community here in the Bay Area that I love you all. You are my home. I am grieving you more than you can imagine. If you want to talk, I am here to listen. If you want to yell, I am hear to listen. If you cry, I will cry with you. If you laugh, I will laugh with you and probably cry as well. If you want to ask questions, I will do my best to answer them. I will also do my best, across the span of this country to keep our distances short. While I am hopeful for your future, I am not letting go of my love for you. And while I know you need to make space in your hearts and lives for the new, please keep a little space still for me and my family because you will continue to hold a very big space in our hearts and lives. While our move is a small change in each of your lives, everything in our lives is changing now. Still, we hold you. We love you. We will continue to love you.

Our own agenda's interfering with justice?

The election today has prompted thoughts in me about the last big debate we had on the floor of Presbytery a half year ago now. The debate was about the ordination of a lesbian woman as pastor and one of the arguments against it was that other countries would not be able to understand our decision if we did ordain a lesbian woman. This comment has rankled and irritated me for the last six months and I have to finally speak out and say that the fear that others will not understand is one of the worst excuses I have ever heard to deny people rights, to keep some oppressed, to insist on injustice for a group of people. Do we keep slavery because people in other countries won't understand if we say it is immoral? Do we keep fascist or authoritarian governments because people in other countries won't understand if we run off of some kind of attempt at democracy? D0 we deny women all rights because people in countries where the Taliban sets the rule of the day won't understand if women can vote and go to school and be leaders and wear whatever they want to wear? Do we insist on government determined religion because people in some countries won't understand the separation of church and state?

It must be wonderful to live in a place of such privilege (as did the white, heterosexual man who made this comment) that you can be in a place of deciding what other people can have what rights based on things like what someone in a country far away might think of it.

I lost a great deal of respect for this man that day, especially since I happen to know his ordained lesbian ex-wife left him because of her realization of her own identity and that he wears this personal "injustice" on his sleeve when he stands up and says we should perpetrate injustices on others because some people in other countries do it as well.

We need to be more self-reflective. And we need to let nothing stand in the way of "doing justice" as God has commanded us to do....especially not the fear of what other people might think!!