Читать книгу Lovely - Amanda Martinez Beck - Страница 10

Chapter 2

Mercy

It takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember.

BESSEL A. VAN DER KOLK

“Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy.” These words opened Pope Francis’s declaration of the Year of Mercy, which began on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 2015. Every diocese in the world opened its Door of Mercy for pilgrims to come and encounter God-made-flesh. I was a relatively new Catholic, and this was my first Jubilee year. I was excited to be a pilgrim myself, journeying to the doors of my diocesan cathedral to receive the mercy promised to me.

During this Jubilee year, the Church urged us in a special way to receive mercy from God and his Church for ourselves so that we can extend it to others. The Holy Father wrote, “At times we are called to gaze even more attentively on mercy so that we may become a more effective sign of the Father’s action in our lives.” And when it came to offering mercy, I had room to grow. I could offer it more to my children and husband on a daily basis. But the person in my life who needed my mercy most, especially when it came to my body, was me.

In that Jubilee year, I found myself a pilgrim, praying before the Blessed Sacrament in a chapel far from home. I looked up at the cross above the tabernacle, with the image of a broken man in agony, suspended between heaven and earth. In front of me was the monstrance, the crafted metal display stand for the consecrated host, Christ in the flesh.

My body tells my story.

The words pressed themselves against my heart, and I considered them. The story in front of me — on the crucifix and in the monstrance — was told in nails and wood, blood and sweat, in a body broken for me, to eat and to remember. It is a story I love, this story that the body of Jesus tells.

I looked down at my own body. Could it really tell my story? I sighed, because this question scared me. I was not sure I wanted to know what story my body was telling. There was so much about my body that I wanted to change. So much that I wanted to cover up. So much that I hated. I wished I could hide it most of the time. My body made me feel so vulnerable, and that made me angry. But Pope Francis was calling me to mercy, not just to others but to myself, and that had to include my body. I knew I had to choose whether I would engage the story before me, and it was a hard — and scary — choice to make. It was scary, first of all, because it meant that I had to remember.

I remember becoming aware of my body and how it didn’t exactly fit anywhere. I remember me in my favorite red sweater, and the taunts from boys on the playground in their newly acquired Spanish vocabulary. They called me grande rojo — “big red.” Even more, I remember the mix of emotions their nickname gave me; yes, they were being cruel, but they were giving me attention that I craved.

I remember sitting at the piano as a preteen with messy hair and no fashion sense whatsoever, my piano teacher giving me advice on losing weight so that the dimple in my chin would go away. I fumbled with the keys while the sting of her words pushed me deeper into hating my body as it displayed my weakness and failings.

I reach further back to pull out one of the earliest memories I have of my body, in a closet with two neighbor boys my age. We are hiding from the light so they can touch me to satisfy their curiosity, and so I can earn the kiss I’ve wanted from them. My cheeks flush as I remember the closet door thrown open, one of their mothers finding us, seeing what was happening, and never speaking of it again.

More memories swirl around in my psyche, and I realize that every memory I have that is connected to my body is full of shame, regret, guilt, and hatred. Is that true for you, too?

The mercy of remembering

It’s hard work, diving in and remembering. So many memories we have are painful, and it’s normal to avoid things that hurt us or make us uncomfortable. If memories of our bodies bring up shame or hatred, more than likely we will avoid those memories. Here’s the problem, though: if you avoid the pain and shame, neglecting the work of going through tough memories, they don’t just disappear. I am who I am today because of all the experiences I have had. If I choose to ignore or avoid the hard ones, I don’t fully know or understand myself. If I just stuff them or hide them away? That will never lead to lasting peace. This is true for all of us.

If memories are not addressed intentionally, they will continue to interfere with our normal operating systems. In The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel A. van der Kolk writes:

We may think we can control our grief, our terror, or our shame by remaining silent, but naming offers the possibility of a different kind of control. When Adam was put in charge of the animal kingdom in the Book of Genesis, his first act was to give a name to every living creature. If you’ve been hurt, you need to acknowledge and name what happened to you…. Feeling listened to and understood changes our physiology; being able to articulate a complex feeling, and having our feelings recognized, lights up our limbic brain and creates an “aha” moment. (232)

Though Dr. van der Kolk is writing specifically for people who have post-traumatic stress disorder — where sufferers have endured violence, neglect, or abuse — we can draw from his wisdom. When we feel shame arise, we need to investigate why we feel that way. This is because when we can remember where that seed of shame was planted, we can go back to uproot it. That is an act of mercy toward ourselves.

For example, when I look in the mirror, I am tempted to be very critical of my knock knees. Not only do they prevent me from standing with my feet together, but as much as I scrub them, the skin covering my knees is darker than the rest of my (very white) legs. Feelings of shame arise, and I am tempted to hate my whole body.

Yet I believe that every body is a good body, without question, even bodies with knock knees. So why do I have shame about my knees? It’s not because they don’t work well — they do. It’s not because I judge other people for their knees — I don’t. But when I was a child, someone I loved made a comment. They told me how distinct my knees were, and that if I exercised a certain way, they might stop knocking together. I was ashamed because someone told me that I should be. It’s a painful memory, because I was so young, and I internalized the comment as a rejection of my body and therefore of me, too.

The mercy of God, though, enables me to go back to these memories and see the truth about my experience. In his mercy, I can see myself as the little girl I was then. I can see the person looking at my body critically, and I can see the self-hatred of their own body that they unconsciously expressed in the words they said to me. I can recognize that while I internalized their comment as a rejection of my body and of myself, it was not really that. Bringing that memory into the light of God’s mercy, as hard and as painful as that can be, allows me to see the truth that sets me free. My knees are not bad just because someone else thought they were, and I am under no obligation to hate them. There is no shame in having discolored knock knees. They are my knees, and they do amazing things!

Just because I have remembered that moment of shame regarding my knees, however, doesn’t mean that I don’t still struggle with judging my body. The difference is, now that I have named that experience and called out the lie that says knock knees are shameful, I can counter the tape player in my head that gets on to me about my knees. Over time, the volume of that tape player gets turned down and down and down, until I can’t even hear it anymore.

Wearing shorts — something I used to approach with apprehension — is now an act of defiance I perform against the commentary that my knees are somehow not good. Naming the shame has given me power over it, and I can press on in loving God and loving my neighbor as myself, even with knock knees. If we fail to embrace the stories that our bodies are telling, if we don’t name our painful memories and thereby release ourselves from their power, we can’t fully engage in the world around us. Dr. van der Kolk writes, “As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. Hiding your core feelings takes an enormous amount of energy, it saps your motivation to pursue worthwhile goals, and it leaves you feeling bored and shut down” (232).

Practically, what does it look like to do the hard work of remembering? First, you have to pay attention to your feelings. When feelings of shame or regret come up, follow them back through your life — where have you felt like this before? Is there an experience connected with this shame? As you begin to map out the memories, ask God to help you see yourself through his eyes of mercy. Recognize any lies you believed about yourself because of what happened and uproot the seeds of shame that were sown. By removing the seeds of shame and instead sowing seeds of mercy in those memories of the past, you are preparing yourself to reap a harvest of mercy for your body today. And when you start to live out the story your body is telling with mercy and joy, others will be drawn into it. As my friend Nicole Morgan writes in her book Fat and Faithful, “Courage begets courage.”

Remember with Mary

Fortunately, we are not alone on this journey. One of my favorite things to do is to spend time before the Blessed Sacrament when I need help getting my heart and mind on the same track.

Before the monstrance that contains the consecrated host, we can start the hard work of remembering, trusting Jesus to carry us. We can let ourselves be drawn into Christ’s story. I place myself there, at the foot of Jesus’ cross during the crucifixion. Jesus hangs above me, looking at me with love mixed with pain, and he speaks to me: “Amanda, behold your mother.” I look to the side, to where his eyes are pointing me, and suddenly I am a child, weeping and longing for comfort. Mary takes me up into her lap, and as we sit at the foot of the cross together, she starts to teach me.

Like a child does, I grab at a string of beads around her neck. She reaches up and pulls the strand over her head and puts the beads in my hand. “This is how I’ve learned to treasure these things in my heart,” she whispers in my ear, and she begins to tell me about the mysteries that she has experienced — joyful ones, luminous ones, and right now, sorrowful ones. “The glorious ones are yet to come,” she tells me. The sadness in her voice is tinged with the smallest bit of hope, as we sit together beneath the crucified Jesus.

The Rosary can serve each of us as a guide as we sift through out own memories of our bodes. Yes, the reason that we pray the Rosary is to gain understanding of the life of Jesus through Mary’s eyes, to journey with her from the Annunciation all the way to her crowning. And as I journey through these memories with Mary and learn to meet God in these mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary, I also learn that I can meet him in my own set of memories, too.

What memories would be on your set of beads? If our bodies tell our stories, then that means we have to confront our memories so we can learn that story and learn to see that it is good and beautiful. For myself, this means I have to pull up many memories that are painful — excruciating, even. I don’t know if I am brave enough to do the hard work of remembering.

That’s where Mary comes to help me. And I am confident that she will come to help you, too. She urges each of us to take up our beads and map out our stories — all the mysteries that we have seen and experienced in our bodies. The joyful ones, the luminous ones, and even the sorrowful ones. “The glorious ones are coming,” she promises. Her promise gives us courage to remember. The sorrow and pain point us toward glory on this journey with God, and that knowledge can give us strength to do the hard work of remembering.

Look at the crucifix. See the broken and bleeding form of the Son of God. His body was broken for you and for me. Even in his brokenness and pain, the body of Jesus is good. This broken God-man lets his body tell us his story, and with tenderness and gentleness he invites us to embrace our own body’s weakness. He invites each of us to see the story that our body is telling, leading us to the place where we can truly say: “My body is good, and I love the story that it tells.”

Let Jesus come with you as you begin the work of remembering. Let him lay his hands on your memories. This is the mercy of Jesus — he may not erase the pain, but at his touch your sadness can comingle with joy. Your memories are like the mysteries of Mary’s Rosary, distinct points in your life that lead you to the cross, to the resurrection, and to the glory of a deep and abiding relationship with God.

It is my hope that you will feel brave enough to look at your own story-telling body with joy instead of loathing. Maybe you just can’t believe that your body is good, right now, right where you find yourself. I hope that changes as you read this book. Thank you for joining me on this journey, and believe me when I say that it is a journey worth taking.

For reflection

Who in my life needs my mercy?

What story do I think my body has to tell?

What memories of my body can I bring before the Lord, with Mary’s help?

What are the sorrowful, painful mysteries I need to allow Jesus to touch so he can heal them?