I Look at Life From Both Sides Now

I haven't been able to sleep for a couple nights, so I wrote this instead. 

I went to the legendary Joni Mitchell's concert a couple weekends ago. 

She sang her iconic "Both Sides Now" …very fitting for my life. 

I've been on both sides now. 

I've been patient, I've been clinician. 

I've been sick, I've been recovered. 

I've been accepted Christian, I've been the one that people kick out and pray for. 

I've been arrogant Christian who put labels on people. 

Maybe I'm not fully recovered from all that has happened. Enough recovered to write this blog post.

I used to think my brain was not designed for this world. 

If the "best" doctors couldn't help me, no one could. If the church could no longer take my sin, then God couldn't. (I never really believed that God couldn't, I know Her better than that). I surely believed that people couldn't. 

Then I started working with people who were like me. Patients, I mean. 

And it turns out, it wasn't my brain's fault. It's cathartic to process past griefs in a situation where I now carry power. 

Have you ever been alone? I mean THAT alone? Powerless to those around you having total and complete power over your circumstances? And what happens to your life. While also making it sound like you made your bed so you should lay in it, it wasn't them making the decision, you MADE them do it. 

People who will go to sleep at night in their warm beds. You might be a thought in their minds, you might even keep them up a little bit at night. But they can shake it off. You are living the dark lonely, desperate road, of having no autonomy over your circumstances, hung on the fate of if or not you can or will be understood. 

Likely not, when you're in that low of a position. 

People listen to professionals. People listen to advocates. People listen to male ministers. 

People listen to men in power. Sometimes people listen to some women in power, sometimes. Usually if backed by a man, who ultimately has final say. 

I wish everyone who worked in a role with authority had to experience a day in the shoes of someone who has their autonomy stripped from them, and their life decisions made by somebody who has never walked in their shoes, unable to conceptualize the circumstances of your life, the shackles of your mind, the nature of your relationships. 

To be in a position that with the flick of someone else's wrist, your world can come crumbling down, and never be the same again, losing all that mattered to you. With the flick of a wrist, from someone who cannot and will not understand you, what you need, or where you're coming from. And when you are in such a compromised and reliant position you are not your best at expressing your needs so you come off as too emotional and erratic for anyone to take what you're actually saying seriously, writing off your own thoughts on the matter of your life. 

At last I see from both sides now.

I find that both sides make it very clear that the one in the most compromised and vulnerable position always receives the short end of the stick. 

I've been thinking more often, with space from my past, about how highly comfortability is valued in this world. 

Valued over the actual lives of other people. 

We think, "This is hard, this is different than what I'm used to, so I'm going to try and squish it into whatever boxes I feel comfortable with, and if it bursts out, then I cut it out. I don't know what to do with it, so I send it away." 

Why do we do that to people? Why do we do that to the people we're trying to help? 

The people we're trying to help, that we knew came to us for help, for the very thing we are sending them away for? 

A church says all sin is redeemable, we are unconditionally lovable with an inherent deserve for grace… then turns away and rebukes the desperate sinners. The people struggling and seeking unconditional love the most. 

"Jesus said come to the water, stand by my side, I know you are thirsty, you won't be denied. I felt every teardrop, when in darkness you cried, and I came to remind you, that for those tears I died."

Wow, I remember crying when I understood that song for the first time. The dehydration from being seen, loved, acceptable…and hearing there is someone who will not deny you. Then the curiosity that you were exiled from a place that claimed those things would be true of them.

It's easy to be hard on people for doing the same things we can't forgive ourselves for, or when we are also dehydrated of self compassion and grace for any reason. I would argue that a lack of self compassion is reckless, we don't just prevent our own healing and growth, we judge more harshly because we see how hurtful that part of ourselves is, or we are angry that we were not "let off" so easy ourselves.

Mental health facilities, speaking for those I've been admitted to -- 

You go for help and your behavior's manifestation confuses them. They want to send you away. 

Do they understand how trauma works? 

They go home at night, and you are the one who suffers in the brain and life you live. They chose this line of work, and you did not choose this mind, your life experiences. 

The question isn't why doesn't the person want to change, the question is why do the ones in power care so much about changing them? Have they looked at themselves? There are many things we all ought to care about changing, including that perception. 

We isolate these people who we have come to help, and then we cry for them. We call them the lost sheep, hopefully they will be a prodigal son. 

But when the prodigal son returns, he's embraced.

Not in this world. When the prodigal son returns and tries, and then falters, he's turned away. Shamed.

The person trying to help gets pitied, gets gratitude, slaps on the back. They get the "it's okay, you can't change them. You are doing great work. It's a shame they won't let you help them." 

And the prodigal kid gets the prayers. That's all. You get the prayers.

No one wants to advocate for you. They want to PRAY for you. 

They want to talk behind your back about how much they love and care for you and what a shame it is. 

No one wants to do the hard work of understanding, and TRULY helping. 

We don't want to look at ourselves. Look at where we truly COULD have gone wrong and hurt someone. We are afraid of what that means about ourselves as people.

No one is clean in this.

This world is a war, and we're all filthy from it. 

It's the thought process of "I'm a nice person, I could never" and the resounding response of "you mean well, you're a good person, don't worry about that" that are a danger to society. 

Impact matters. When we have power, ESPECIALLY, impact matters. 

So when do we decide we ACTUALLY care about that? 

Not in the crying about it because we feel bad about ourselves, but the crying about it because we HURT someone, and had an impact that misaligned with our values, and do something about it? 

As Christians, we are called to love one another as ourselves. 

Would we abandon ourselves the way we are abandoning our brothers and sisters who we exile because they make us uncomfortable?

In ways, we already do that. We abandon our values when we do that. 

A staple of the medical field is "Do no harm," so what do we do when we unintentionally cause harm?

We need to align with our values and look at how we identify ourselves in them. 

Or we need to change what we identify ourselves as.

Jesus was with the mentally ill, he was with the women, he was with the outcasted sinners. 

With all of the times I've read through the Bible, I only ever have seen Jesus rebuking the Pharisees. 

No one wants to think they're a Pharisee, we look down on that. 

But on the outside, everyone actually DOES want to be a Pharisee, because that's what looks good. That's what FEELS comfortable. 

Jesus lived an uncomfortable life. We all act like we want to live like him, but do we? 

I look inside myself in these times, where I have more power than I ever have, over both my own life and those who are in my care, and I see both sides. 

I SEE how stinking easy and comfortable it would be to let it be too hard and take the easy road, just squishing people into the boxes of "struggle" that are acceptable.

And then I feel. I feel myself where I was before. 

"There's a road left behind me I'd rather not think of, and a hard one ahead of me too." -Brandi Carlile

I see two roads. And it's brainless. Because I can't abandon my heart anymore. 

The way I used to abandon myself. 

And I find that it actually isn't that difficult to see how people become who they become. 

Why they use behaviors that are destructive, off putting, that hurt relationships, that go against what most would value.

You just think about how and why you do the things that make you wonder why anyone loves you. 

And you think, thank God I'm still loved.

Not everyone has the privilege of that knowing. 

And that's what we're here for. 

"I've looked at love from both sides now

From give and take and still somehow

It's love's illusions that I recall

I really don't know love

I really don't know love at all"

~Joni Mitchell