What I'm Learning...in "Operation Differentiation"

 Rarely do I sit down to chronicle the overwhelm of my life anymore in this private blog-space…but today seems to be the day (to wear my favorite underwear! ~ Olivia the Pig). I am amidst the uncertainties and invitations to deeper trust in what I will impishly call Operation Differentiation, or Operation Grow the F**k Up, Rachel.

I have been living in the overwhelming emotional-spiritual flows of Brian’s ministry life for the last several weeks, months even…the staged-crafted departure of one young woman staff person (Loralei), the ordination of a previous staff person become Word&Sacrament minister (Rachel). Brian came home “in the weeds” a week ago about something Kelley had shared with him: Rachel’s intentions for the Associate at Fairmont’s job, upon Kelley’s retirement. Rightly, he knew this could break us, him and me. So, we set the intention to “have a conversation,” agreeing it made most sense to do so well-held by a therapist or a church consultant or both. 

Which never works with Brian’s anxiety, nor my own, for that matter. Once “the conversation” is named as intention, it begins. We live it, almost non-stop, until he and I can live into a better emotional space of understanding or connection or both. Sometimes it’s not both. It’s only intertwined connection, with neither of us understanding. But sometimes it IS both. For him, that’s when “the conversation” can rest. I tend to do better with ambiguity or “letting it breathe” even if I am not pleased with where we are. He wakes up with nightmares that then need airing, assurance. Which I’m glad to hold, offer. My nightmares tend to come when I am moving, walking, active; when my body can speak to me in its own voice, not my mind’s chatter. 

This morning, I’m appreciative of how deeply we are connected, regardless of whether I can feel him, whether it feels good. Wow do we live our emotional life bouncing back and forth from one another, most often in church-dynamics these days. (I’ve, of course, instigated this dynamic in my own awakening, in some of my own journey points. But recently, it’s been all church, all the time for us).

[Context notes, for future recall. Sunday was the Celebration of Ordination of Rachel Christina Boden to the Word and Sacrament Ministry by our Presbytery of the Miami Valley, Dayton Ohio. A culmination of nearly ten years of collegiality, then mentoring, tending, heartbreak and challenges still remaining. A week ago, I realized it may be necessary for my 8-10 years of “quiet collaborations” in “tending the gifts/challenges of Rachel Boden” to become potentially available to the whole community, for the sake of informed discernment when Rachel decides to press for a “working relationship with Brian” again. 

Brian and I have stewarded together a most demanding question, with various phases of response: "How to nourish a daughter of the church who has fallen in love with a married man who happens to be the supervising pastor with whom she works daily?" This question began in 2016 and has unfolded in quite difficult ways ever since. I invited her into my writing circles, in hopes of her facing her irresponsible choices and increasing threat to Brian’s public ministry. Her decision to leave for Princeton Seminary seemed a reprieve, but it only intensified her dangerous emotional pattern of pursuing her own emotional needs through the covenantal commitments of others. She intruded into another marriage, this time enmeshing with an older woman, in disregard of that woman’s husband as well. We now have a datapoint set of two, and gender doesn’t matter. 

I therefore spent a couple days writing and refining my own documentation of “the quiet understory,” in (only) my own perspective. An eleven-page document to be sent to all relevant ecclesial bodies should informed discernment be necessary for any future Associate-hiring alongside Brian at Fairmont. For the first time in nearly ten years, I realized I could no longer “hold protective space” or “provide context” for what is an unhealthy attachment pattern in her, and an unhealthy attachment with her in my own life-soul-partner, Brian. I lived into the framework of “we disagree about this, but it is his emotional life to discern” up until now. Now, I am unwilling to see this disagreement as something I can hold. I release him to his own devices, and stand with the resources that are at my disposal, which are public-attestation and potential greater-ecclesial/presbytery involvement.]

Not surprisingly, especially for an Enneagram Six personality style, it is this threat to his institutional security that has actually begun to bring about resolution and awakening, which will hopefully be better for us both, us all.

This learning both makes me sad, and brings a weary smile too. I have deeply embedded habits of “family accommodation,” “indirect use of power/anger,” “refusal to name my own needs for fear of being abandoned or emotionally shunned.” These played out for years. On this side of naming my experience, naming what I need to do for me, breaking the habit of accommodation and indirect power while moving into my own agency, my own gentle use of power, the dynamics are changing. 

Be the change you want in the world, right? Be willing to name what you need, without attachment to outcome? Whew...so very hard for me in the intimacies of my life.

Now, on this side of all this, I wonder now how I could have accommodated for as long as I did!! Hence, sadness. Owning I allowed so much that I could not articulate nor name I needed.

But the weary smile? I’ve learned more deeply how my partner thinks/feels, in a fashion so foreign to me but so clearly communicative beyond anything I’ve tried before. I’ve learned what the levers are that I may need to be savvy to in the years to come. I hate to say it honestly, but when I need him to hear me, to respond to me about matter of his church? The use of public perception and ecclesial politics appears to be the only thing he can hear and respond to. I wish it were not so. I wish he thought-felt “primarily relationally” as I do (as an Enneagram Two). But he does not. And he never will. He thinks/feels as Godde made him, which is within a love-devotion-duty to the Church. Part of me really does love this about him, as it has also kept me stretched open in significant ways. Part of me wishes this was not so.

This learning is not for abusive use or potential manipulation in the times to come. There will always be things in his life, which is his work, that I simply disagree with but can hold, stomach, imagine Spirit’s work within. The threat that Rachel Boden has always been to us, which he and I navigated together in my/our unhealthy but faithful attempts, is simply no longer a disagreement or divergence. It is an unpalatable dynamic that could break us, if we’re not both attentive to it, if he’s unwilling to differentiate and let her go.

The weird thing is that I haven’t felt as light or as hopeful in a very long while. I realize that I have choice in every situation and that my boundaries deserve care by me if not by him. If he is unable or unwilling to deal with this in a responsible way, then it could be the thing that forces him, us, to leave Fairmont entirely. He does not want that, so again…Spirit seems to be putting new strictures in place that are requiring him to deal with all of this in new, healthier ways. Ways he and I seem to be better at determining together, attentive to what I need not just because I challenge the church and can be disregarded in his love for institutions. Sometimes my own emotional wisdom (need?) actually protects the church.

I will always hold him in love for that journey. I hope to hold it alongside him for the rest of our lives. I anticipate that we will work through this as we have done for 23 years. I feel closer to him than I have in a very long time. 

Still I recognize that I am sad and smiling, both. He and I have learned things about one another this week that have so deeply challenged us both. We live in the world so very differently. Yet it does seem to be Spirit’s intentions for us to be right here.

Trusting in the divine order of things, that Spirit has him in his conversation with Rachel tomorrow. That way will be made clear, in Spirit's timing, for him to face his anxiety and for me to grow stronger in knowing that my needs--even in his church work--can be for the good of the Church.

WHAT gets touched, every time?

 “Maybe a little on the late side? I’m going to have coffee or beer with Rachel today, about 4 p.m.”

That’s all he said, and a rage flashed through me. I know this is my work, so I swallowed it as best I could.

What IS it that makes this exchange so utterly predictable? Why does this keep coming up for me, and what gifts does it bring for me, ultimately for my freedom? (His part in this is his own...)

I think one part of it is that Brian dreads telling me so he holds off until the last possible moment, which then feels like a “gotcha” to me. I also want her to be gone. Gone. Nothing injurious to her, of course. Not that kind of gone. But out of our lives. He will never allow that to happen, so this will continue to arise. I hate being surprised like this, and it clearly touches a tenderness in me when it comes before something he and I are negotiating a time for.

For the last several years, she has brought little to me but heart-ache, betrayal, and disregard of my impotence oft-spoken of in “church things.” She was privy to a lot of that storying in me amidst women’s circling we’ve done, and she doesn’t give a fuck about it for me. Only what she needs. Only her own unwillingness to grow the fuck up. The anger here is the easy part.

What I know of the tenderness in me, under the anger/rage? What I grieve?

I grieve that I will never be able to bring Brian the unadulterated commitment to his church that she lived for years, under his tutelage, continues to live in as much leeway as he'll grant her. I am committed to Godde’s Church, and my expression of that rarely feeds him, supports his institutional-self, strokes his ego.

I grieve the loss of the young woman I used to be, who could live into that space with him and who did all that for him but no longer can without a sense of self-silencing, self-abandonment. I feel alone in my own work when he chooses to spend time with her, especially if it’s right before time with me. He supports me in my work, but he doesn’t feel it nor share in it, in the end. His sacred devotion to an institution that has persistently betrayed women is both blessing for me, and curse. Rachel represents so much of what I have had to give up to be faithful to my own calling(s) which he will never share for himself.

I grieve that Brian will never know the joys of fatherhood, though I do not grieve that choice for us. I wish it had been different some days, true, mostly in how it “plays him.” It saddens me that this unresolved grief in him often gets projected onto me, gets “played” in him by her, “the daughter he never had.” She has access to a part of him that he cannot share with me, old-terrain between us that goes nowhere, a grief that he has little skill in how to grieve for himself. She remains a wedge for us here, as long as he finds no other way to grieve that in himself.

I grieve the difficulties Brian and I had to experience to know the contentedness we know now. The unhealthy connections for Brian with Rachel were seeded then, so they are always at the root. Will never be eradicated, in other words, only managed. Her neediness touches the neediness, fear, and betrayal I felt then, which he never could admit or nourish, understand, touch. She mirrors his limitations to me, for me, for us.

She is a relationship of obligation for me, one in which I have little to no say in saying yes or saying no. This touches my own tenderness around control and simple surrender. If I set a boundary healthy for me, he won’t or can’t keep it. It’s not his boundary or need. So I regularly say “okay” to things I don’t really want to do. To appease him? My version of trying to honor the differentiation here between us? I know the specter of him having coffee/beer with her while we do not engage her as a couple feels like a really bad idea. He becomes vulnerable in his congregational work (evidence example #1, Ashley's departure accusation) and then I have to pick up those pieces later anyway. Better to stave all that off in prevention?

His woundedness around “having no friends” means he holds onto her with a desperation of having a friend. So he can provide her what she needs in his competence, which isn’t friendship of course, but it is a pattern he is beginning to struggle with…

I love him. I want him to find the places and persons that can nourish his own growth, his sense of fun, his own spirit. It is always better when his focus is not solely with me, for me. For him, that will always be with church people, where he has the perceived upper hand he hopes will protect his gentle heart.

She’ll be our perpetual “secret” I guess. His need for her. My tolerance of it. Social times with her together that I make possible. Because I do love him and trust him to sort it all out for himself.

Clearly, Rachel and I share that, however conscious or unconscious it all is for them, us.

Peace be with all of us, each in our own need.

Today, I let him go into his own work, what he needs that Spirit directs. It is a blessing to be finite, to not be in charge, to simply let go…