In my mind’s eye, I can see young mom me, with big hair and a big T-shirt, in our living room with a mob of the neighborhood kids, all happily playing. Until the screeching began.
Inevitably, one little voice would pierce through the chaos, “Mine! It’s mine! Give it back!”
Sharing is hard.
My last post seemed to resonate with two sets of people. Parents with adult kids and young parents looking ahead to the day they would be in the adult parenting stage.
But the struggle is deeper than a parenting issue; let’s widen the lens. We ALL struggle with sharing in one form or another. With taking turns. With someone else getting something we want. With watching things we wanted slip out of our hands.
I’ve been known to throw my share of adult temper tantrums when I don’t get what I want. You know what I mean, don’t you? Full on feet stomping, arms flailing, emotions being splattered all over the room. Toddlers are way less discriminating than adults about when and where they throw tantrums, to the horror of their parents. They can throw a wall-eyed fit right there in the checkout line, in front of scores of onlookers, at the exact moment you are desperately digging for the debit card.
My fits are mostly done with only God and Chris as witnesses. If you think you’re off the hook for being more mature than that, maybe your tantrums aren’t as obvious. Could be your tantrums are more internal than external.
Instead of stomping your feet, you manipulate a situation to get your way.
Instead of flailing your arms, you exert deeper control.
Instead of making a scene, you secretly rehearse critical, judgmental thoughts about the person getting what YOU wanted,
Instead of splattering emotions, you shut them down with wine or shopping or eating or scrolling.
I’ve done it all, don’t get me wrong. My ability to be immature in my late 50’s can be astonishing to me. We throw fits when we feel what we have is threatened, clutch to what we think is ours for fear of losing it. We desperately try to possess our images, our stuff, our people, our dreams, our own lives.
It’s a tricky thing. We are made to love, to be settled, to be content, to live in peace, to have what we need for survival, to be deeply attached to others in meaningful ways, to have friends. To be human is to be a people crafted with deep longings. Scripture tells us we are made in His image, which makes us deeper than we imagine ourselves to be. The problem is as old as time. We are made with longings and we become afraid of losing what we have. We are made with deep desires and we are afraid they will never be met. It can be painful. Dreadfully painful.
The drama is set: fear enters life from stage left and grasping enters from stage right.
Let’s normalize something, though. It is absolutely okay to have emotions of sadness when loose someone or something. Tears of sadness are gifts from God, showing us the depth of what it means to be in relationship. It is healthy and good to grieve what we have lost and mourn what we have never held. God is present with the tears of the young mom gathering her sons around her, without their dad, who tragically died weeks before. God is near to the friend I know who desperately wants to be married, yet continues to feel like the third wheel with all her friends. God sees the young parents waiting to hold a baby they can’t conceive. He grieves with the aging man aching with dread as his memory begins to fade.
Grief and sadness are different than the unnecessary suffering we allow in our lives when we live in the dark abyss of clutching, grasping, fearing.
A couple of months ago I penned a paragraph summarizing a pattern I noticed in my life around this theme of sharing. I had noticed an unusual uprising in my heart in the areas of competition and comparison. Something sinful had been incubating in dark spaces in my soul, yet it had remained unnamed. My vision for penning the paragraph was to capture the pesky emotions I was feeling before they sent me into a behavioral spiral that was driven by a sense of lacking. I needed to better understand this dark monster with which I was wrestling. It’s crucial for us to call it what it is, so we can do the important work of resisting its lies and whispers. Jesus looked right at the demon in Mark 5:9 and said, “What is your name?” I needed a name.
The name: scarcity.
In order to love well, to relate well, we absolutely must name this pattern. We must look right at it and cling to the love God in which there is NEVER scarcity. Here is how I named the pattern:
“The Dark Pattern of Scarcity: I’m constantly aware of things I don’t have “enough” of: time, money, energy, experiences, people. Making mistakes brings a deep sense of “not enough-ness”. I can overcompensate and then feel like I’m too much. I can be threatened by others’ success and flourishing, their seemingly “perfect lives” proof of my incompleteness. I resist asking for help because it reveals I don’t have what it takes. Other people having what I don’t have brings a sense of jealousy.
I compare what others have to what I don’t have. ”
Brene Brown says this about scarcity in her book Daring Greatly: Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants. What makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-defeating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, our families, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we’re holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it.”
I love the phrase “hyper-aware of lack.” The lack we fear is a figment of our imagination. It is a whisper from a dark source.
Friends, we MUST face this dark monster. It will destroy our peace, our joy, our relationships. I told you in my last post I am vulnerable to the devilish tauntings, whispering to me there is a scarcity of love. Let me be honest with you in real life ways of what this has looked like for me. I hope you know these are absolutely NO FUN to type. I would rather hide these from a watching world. But darkness MUST be brought into the light. IT MUST BE. There is no other way.
Our granddaughter Nora would ask for Chris instead of me. I would feel slighted.
A friend would walk past me at church and not say hi. I would feel ignored.
A friend would have success in their career. I would feel stuck in mine.
Our kids would enjoy time with their in-laws. I would feel jealous.
Friend groups would gather. I would feel left out.
I want to erase each of those, afraid you will discover how petty I am. But I will leave them, to expose my humanity to you. And invite you to the bravest thing any of us can do.
Face it. Confess it. And turn to the lavish, deep love of God.
There is no other way.
Because those withering thoughts are not who I am really am. They are not who YOU really are. I have learned to trust the sturdier, deeper part of my soul that has been redeemed and set free from the bondage of scarcity. I speak those decaying words of scarcity and lack out loud, and then watch them be blown away by the warm breeze of the love of God, the same way storm clouds are chased away, leaving clear skies behind.
I’ll say it again. Sharing is hard. But there is NO scarcity. Let’s take away it’s power and move out of this hyper-awareness of lack, okay? There is enough love, enough time, enough of me, enough of my people, enough dreams, enough of life, to share. Let’s release our fearful fingers.
Let’s celebrate each other.
Let’s love deeper.
Let’s be gatherers, not competitors.
Let’s take risks together, not compare each other.
Let’s invite someone into our circle.
Let’s share the toys, instead of screaming, “Mine! Mine! Mine!”
So join me, will you? Let’s continue the revolution God showed us at the cross: the powerful act of surrender by opening up our palms, releasing our grip on life.
{I’ll lay out some practical strategies in my next post for facing those pesky, uncomfortable, and possibly destructive emotions.}
