Christianity, motherhood and Brene Brown

for the moms group 5.2.14

When someone asks me to come and speak to a group like this the temptation is always to put on my professional hat and come in as if I know something about life. Candace said on the phone yesterday something about staying calm and collected as a mother, which just made me question whether I am at all the right person to be talking about anything at all.

As many of you know I have four children – the oldest will be officially an adult in a little over a month and the youngest is twelve. My sixteen year old is a boy, the others are all girls – although recently we have compensated for the gender inbalance in our house by acquiring a male dog and male cat – so we are, nominally at least, gender balanced.

If you want the mantra of perfect juggling, how to make it work all the time, how to look good and keep going in all weathers then I am not the person to ask. My philosophy has always been that life is not perfect, I am not perfect and my children will, no doubt, mess something up spectacularly before they are through – because I did.

I know my children will do some things much better than I ever have and there will be other things which they struggle with. But we live in a house where you do not have to be perfect and where everyone apologizes when they make mistakes (even the adults).  I know that you have been reading Brene Brown and I like her ideas about vulnerability because I feel as a parent that although it is part of my job to give my children plenty of opportunities for success – it is much more vital that they learn what to do when they fail, when things go wrong, when they are at the end of their tether.

I would never manufacture such moments, but I do not always rush into rescue them from everything which hurts them. They are not always right, they are not always the best at things, they make mistakes and I think that allowing them to know what that feels like and to accept that sometimes life makes them vulnerable and reliant on others is a vital lesson for them to learn.

It is vital for them to learn, and it is vital for us to learn. Brene Brown’s research stemmed from those she discovered were what she called whole hearted, those who could weather lifes ups and downs and deal with their own flaws because they knew that had a place of love and belonging. As Christians this place of love and belonging is something which is very real to us. We know that no matter what our shortfalls are God still finds each and every one of us wonderfully beautiful and delights in each breath that we take. We have an ultimate place of love and belonging from which we came and to which we are returning.

So when we say to our children “God loves you” what are we saying. Well first of all that they are fundamentally OK on a very deep level. But we have to be careful not to muddy the waters – I remember biting my lip at times when my children had done something really annoying and they would say something like “God loves me” and I would have to work really hard not to snap back – “Well I am glad He does because right now……” you can fill in the blank.

Of course, it is easy not to say words, but it is much harder to live as if we really believe that we are people of ultimate value, to live wholehearted lives and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable.  One of the biggest turn offs for younger people who look in on the church is that we often simply do not look as if we believe what we are saying. God loves you, God loves me.

Brown herself is a member of Christ Church Houston – you may have seen the video of her talking about faith on Youtube. She describes her return to Church and says she went back because she thought it would be like an epidural for everything which was hurting her – in fact she discovered that church was a midwife. That the church does not insulate us from the painful and difficult moments of our lives but helps new life to be born from them.

If that is true of the Church then how are we to behave as those who follow Christ, as those who make up the Church, as parents. Are we called to insulate, to inoculate, to swaddle our children against the harsh reality of the world or are we, as they grow, called to sit alongside them when they are hurting and to help them to learn to move through difficulty and find new life born out of those moments.

And if we are to help birth new life in our children as part of our nurturing how do we allow new life in ourselves, how do we ourselves allow vulnerability. How do we look in the mirror and say “God really loves me”  - can we see through the hair that wouldn’t dry right, or the top that is a bit tight today, or the lines that just were not there last year – can we honestly look at ourselves and know that we are loved from head to foot, inside and out?

There are two lines in that song, “Will you come and follow me?” which I love so much, but which always make me take notice;

Will you love the "you" you hide if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

As parents, as mothers we always walk a tight rope between joy and sheer exhaustion. If I have learned one thing it is that my insides and my outsides need to match up as well as they can because if they don’t it shows. My children know I am not perfect, but they also know, I hope, that that is how people are – that that is how they are allowed to be – not perfect.

Brene Brown said that you cannot know things like love and belonging and creativity and joy without vulnerability. I would add to that that you cannot know yourself or know that you are truly loved without vulnerability. Children need to learn that vulnerability is not a mark of weakness but it is a place from which we can grow, from which new life can be nurtured, from which we, as mothers, can birth new learning and maturity in our families.

It is not an easy path, not always. But we know that in the Christian tradition, where the point of greatest vulnerability is God who dies on a cross – a story which should both repel us and draw us in –a story which reassures us that new life and forgiveness and growth come from a point of ultimate vulnerability, a story which tells each of us again and again that we are deeply connected, deeply loved. We are those who understand that never enough is transformed to already enough time and time again with the simple words – “I love you.”