Chapter 11
This chapter starts off with a personal example from Dr. P about a friend and herself getting ready to compete in a marathon and in the end the friend damages her ankle so badly she can’t run and Dr. P does not want to run alone, but finely does. She then notes that the reason she didn’t want to run after months and months of practice and training, was because the race was more about a relationship with her friend (cooperation) than running (competition). This, Dr. P states is another way in which women are vastly different from men and are God designed to make unique differences in the world.
She then goes into how little girls grow up and play together in cooperation type activities where as little boys grow up playing competition type games. Then she tells how those childhood tendencies stay with us into adulthood. Men continue to like to “keep score” when in arguments where women will many times sacrifice being right to keep the peace (not always of course, but a general reality). She states that women will even downplay their confidence while men downplay their doubts, which I found interesting to think about in the friendships I have had over the years with boys and men. I have to say her assumptions ring very true to me.
She talks about how girls hate to be said that they “think they are something” and from an early age try to play down any contributions. I think that is even more profoundly pronounced in the South, where on top of gender genetics is an extra layer of social expectations of women to be meek and quite and genteel ladies. If you dare to show your opinion or refuse to back down on a principal then you are NOT a lady therefore you are someone to be looked down on.
She finishes the chapter by showing her example by the simple note of the fact that most men will not ask for directions when they are lost and most women have no problem pulling over and getting help. This, she says is a serious advantage in a world where making a significant difference usually requires a cooperative work from many people rather than one person taking on the world. Men see asking for directions as making themselves vulnerable, where as women know that most people like being helpful, it is in the nature of human beings to want to help others and asking for help is allowing others to fulfill an act of grace or mercy.
I find that I lean more towards the male perspective on this because I on the majority of time and issues refuse to ask for help. Now again, part of that is my Southern upbringing from people that demanded you NEVER lower your self to show need because then you are to be pitied and that was to be avoided at all costs. Pride should have been the motto of the South because it is something that is still holding on to some of us today. You don’t EVER ask for help because that makes you a no-account or worthless person who doesn’t “pay” his or her own way. A really bad side effect of this attitude is that women in the South have also cultivated a powerful method of manipulation. Since we cannot ask for help outright but inside know we need it, we have learned to manipulate others around us to get them to “volunteer” what we need. Doesn’t always work, but as a general rule it is how women of the South have always survived. Prime example – Gone with the Wind. Scarlet tries to manipulate all the men in her life without ever just going to them and saying … I need help. We want them to want to help us. How many times I cannot count that I have simply wanted to have someone show or tell me that they really were thinking of me (not just saying the words) and it never happened so I was never able to believe that they actually cared.
In the book the 5 love languages of God, it talks about how different people perceive love best and the clearest way that I perceive affection and love is through physical touch and gifts (not presents, although I like presents, but gifts of time and non tangible things as well). Words mean very little to me, I recognize that for some words are everything and without them a “touch on the shoulder” means nothing, but for me it is the other way around. But because I was rejected so much as a young child I built walls around my heart so that people would keep their distance. I literally would crave a hug, but because I never got them, I made myself get hard inside so it would stop hurting. Totally understandable, but a major barrier to building relationships later in life. Perhaps that is ultimately why I am so alone in this world, I build walls to keep out the hurt and in the process also keep me from reaching out as well. Physical touch is such a powerful thing for me that I sometimes can’t handle the overload and panic inside because I don’t know what to do. I have learned to tolerate hugs from friends and I do love to hug my family, but it is still a difficult process for me to allow someone not of my family that close to me. Not because of them, but because I do not really believe that they actually want to touch me and because I am a woman I try to make it easier on others by closing off myself so they don’t have to touch me. I do not perceive myself as a monster anymore, but I also do not yet perceive myself as worthy of love or affection yet either. Still on a path of discovery, and in truth, this is no longer my driving force, simply an interesting review of the person I was before I died.
Chapter 12
Any strength taken too far becomes a weakness!!! Isn’t it the truth!! If intimacy and cooperation become over vamped in a woman instead of an asset a woman’s strengths become her downfall. Intimacy becomes a desperate need to find fulfillment outside of herself and cooperation becomes the inability to put herself first and always put others in front of her even when she needs something worse because we believe that other people are more important that we are.
Sometimes, Dr. P says, we sacrifice ourselves because we have the misplaced idea that that is what love is. Really, she says, we should be acting without selfishness but never loosing sight of our own needs either. It is a very difficult balancing act to love like Jesus and at the same time not burn out our love for others because we never think we are important enough to come first.
I know that I myself once was an over scraficer. It ended in what Dr. P calls compassion fatigue. As a child I was overly concerned with everyone else. I NEVER forgot a birthday or special event, I was always extremely early for any event and I would give my very last thing away because I was consumed by compassion. Compassion is a good thing, but ANYTHING taken to extremes can be a weakness and compassion is no different. I gave and gave and gave until I completely burned out of giving. I began to regress into a hard shell and have not really come out since I went in.
Dr. P notes that it is that we become more concerned with doing loving acts rather than being a loving person. Wow, that might cause a few neck hairs to rise on some people I know. But the truth is that doing loving acts is an expression of what we think others need or want while being a loving person, we listen and hear the real needs of others. Again a balance, there must be actions to back up words or the words mean nothing, even the Bible says words without actions are a sounding gong and mean nothing. And we must not act just because we think that is the right thing to do, but because we have thought and considered and listened and back up our actions with real love. A good example I have of that is picking out a birthday present for a coworker. Being a person who acts lovingly without the reality of loving is someone who will quickly run into the store and find a nice, suitable generic gift for a coworker. Really loving would be taking the time necessary to find out a little about that person and tailoring the gift to the personality of the coworker. Not always the way it is, but a good example I think of the difference in how the process works.
She also talks about how we can confuse selflessness with love. How we can get to a place where we think of going without for ourselves as the whole point of the act rather than the act of lovingly giving to someone. Like Gino was talking about in Sunday School how easy it is to understand when Paul says that he gave all the bad stuff away for the sake of God, but it is not so easy to understand when Paul also gave away all of the good that he did for God. Paul gave none of what he did credit, he gave everything he did and was to God both the bad and the good. We often like to hold on to the good things as our little pats on the back for what a good person we are which to me seems to make the point of giving anything to someone an exercise in how good “I” am instead of giving out of a true love for another and desire only for their better welfare.
She ends the chapter with asking the question, “What would we do for ourselves if we were not caught up taking care of others?” She says that if we can’t answer that question then we are most likely living a lie that says everyone else is more important that we are. How can you love someone else if you cannot love yourself, in fact does the Bible not say “Love your neighbor AS YOURSELF”? If you do not love yourself, then you can’t love your neighbor either. Something that I have always been told but NEVER understood until now. (and even now it is kinda hazy, but I am working on it LOL). She ends on “How do you provide for the needs of another, if you cannot provide for your own needs?” I don’t have answers to those questions yet, (actually I am still working on the question of what do I want to do with my life – that whole 10 year plan LOL) but this is part of what has to happen to become complete and whole. I am not even sure that this chapter is of critical importance, important, yes, but overall, for me, knowing a name for some of the things that I have done in the past helps me to put them in perspective and knowing why I probably did them, gives me the map to began to “undo” a lifetime of hurt and reaction.
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