Behind the Song: Renegade Angel

            Perfectionism has various forms, I suppose. For me, however, it was a guilt-motivated compulsion to compensate for my perceived deficits (some true and some misconceived). My attempt to be very good and very effective came from my being ashamed of myself and additionally of my being ashamed of the Church and of humanity. Our social entropy was exasperating, and I had no ability to truly believe that God could sustain grace toward us without our somehow being better. I wouldn’t have said it at the time, but I was placing performance before grace. In other words, I didn’t believe in grace, at least not at heart level.

            I tried to be excellent in many things, including social responsibility and generosity. I could not know that much of my goodness and kindness was a compensation for my woundedness. As such, it was the production of a false-self incongruous with my true self. I didn’t actually know myself because I had produced a version of me with which to mask and beat down the true self, which I was ashamed of.

             One symptom of my false self was a hyper-active sense of responsibility which was not able to rightly discern what I could commit to and sustain or discern what was actually life-giving to me. I simply had to perform. Now, I can easily call it compulsive. At the time, I experienced it as necessary. The result was burnout. Another symptom was a broken social boundary system. I was impulsively acquiescent even to demands that most people told me were unreasonable. I was instantly guilty for saying “no”. This resulted in emotional exhaustion, an inability to protect myself, and a growing suspicion that much of my service and kindness were somehow fake. Indeed, for quite a while I felt gross for presenting generosity while at the same time resenting the weight people laid on me.  

            One additional symptom of my desperate perfectionism was an inability to value my own work. As emphatically and passionately I attempted anything, I would so quickly discredit any of its worth, it being insufficient to rescue me from shame. I would hold out my performance for to have it affirmed and at moments I felt the applause lift me above my depression, but it would take no time at all for me to find a deficit in what I had done and be unable to celebrate it anymore. This is behind the lyrics,

            “All I did with all my heart/ was ignorant and undercut/ and incomplete and overdone/ and not enough/ and not enough.”

            An extreme sensitivity followed this inability to have confidence in my work: I was very vulnerable to criticism. Very small comments or negative reactions to my performance (academically, professionally, socially, relationally), often sent me reeling. I knew I was overreacting, but that knowledge itself did not stop the reaction or prevent the wound. I remained hyper-sensitive and protected myself by being as excellence as possible in every way that I could.

            There was no real rest-space in that reality – no permission to fail and no grace for the necessity of gradual development. I was to myself a cruel parent.

            I carried on this way like a renegade angel, a prodigal rocket, so elegantly desperate. Indeed, right up until I was absolutely undone, I was doing things people praised me for, often. I was praiseworthy and dying inside. A great deal of life this way embrittled my resilience. I was quite ready to fall apart when a number of crises would deal a finishing blow. Mental illness, heartbreak, and burnout constituted an unglamorous Icarus dive into a pretty darn dark place. Thank goodness I had my family.  

            Problematically, as completely as my mental and physical health had broken, the momentum of my desperate perfectionism raged on. It was the fever I had depended on for so long, how could I let it go? For a while, I was like an Olympian racer who’d just had his legs shot off but who was still crawling toward the finish with his arms.

Then God told me to stop. Indeed, wouldn’t you? No one wants to see that. I received from the Spirit in prayer and through others, “My boy, have I not forgiven and accepted you? Why then do you not acceptance yourself? Speak as kindly to yourself as you do to others. Receive what I have always held out to you. Let me love you.”

            In the following season, I was struck and embarrassed by realizing that a great deal of my performance (things which otherwise may be good things) were for me unhealthy because they were guilt-motivated and untrusting because they demonstrated my inability to receive God’s grace (or anyone’s grace). I slowly received, not without significant pain, the insight that much of my service and work in various spheres demonstrated that I did not really know the Christ I had professed to love.

              So now my mandate from God was to stop and speak as kindly to myself as he did of me. Acceptance was the endeavor – an endeavor which carries on to the present but was perhaps most intense in those first ten months of healing. It would please and honour God for me to accept myself as he accepts me, I could see. By this deeper acceptance of – well – the gospel, I would actually come to better represent God to the world. All my anxious striving may have had impact and value, but ultimately I would more fully embody the truth of Christ not by zealous performance but by the acceptance of grace.

             My prior mode of operations was problematic in a thousand ways and came from un-faith, though certainly I had presented it as Christian. I hadn’t in my heart come to trust that I was loved and valued prior to my having performed. I was conditioned to believe that something I was doing or needed to do would secure my value and significance. Grace, though, is unearned. Furthermore, grace is not truly received by one who thinks they earned it or that they have to earn it. Grace by merit is an illusion. My God-given mandate was to truly accept grace – which entailed the acceptance of self on various levels.

              The first level acceptance for me was a confounding experience. I had been rendered unable to perform, like, at all. I couldn’t offer anyone anything and had to ask for a lot. I had to accept that even in that condition, I was loved. That was very difficult, but it was bedrock of further healing. I would never really be whole and free until I had received grace. I had the opportunity then to accept love without being in any way able to conceive that I had earned it. I had to allow my self to be taken care of and valued without my having offered anything. It was a return to infancy, to dependence. Doesn’t Jesus say something about that (Matt. 18:3)?  

              A second acceptance was enabled by this first. I had to accept my brokenness. I could only do this because I experienced that God accepted me wholly – even with my brokenness. For a season it was very clear to me that though God accepted me, I was unable to accept myself. The incongruence with my professed faith was obvious. Still, it took Olympian effort to admit, confess, and accept my brokenness an sin. There were patterns and behaviors compelled by desperation rather than by freedom and confidence. I admit this. I did wrong and much that I did with the best of intentions had within them pride, or fear. I admit this. Even some of my greatest endeavors involved a selfish motivation. I admit this.

              Again, these confessions were enabled by the acceptance of my having been loved. Without that security I would not have been able to make any of these confessions and would have lived in some measure of denial. The acceptance would have been too devastating to my un-protected self. Now with the security of unconditional love, however, I could admit, confess, accept. It was still painful, but it was possible.

           Perhaps my third acceptance was again to accept grace. This time, I needed to accept grace as the engine of my restoration. It would be that unmerited love which would in its power and pace realize my restoration. It would not be my effort. I needed to trust God and not myself with the responsibility to make myself better. I think this is another one of Christianity’s absurdities, and a foolishness to the otherwise humanistic world. Still I believe it. In my power, I would only ever be able to create sophisticated masks for the sick pieces of my soul. It’s the grace of God which would enact real restoration. Only my creator can re-create me.

           I’ll present my fourth acceptance as again, of grace. This time grace for limitations. I realized that I had injured myself by not accepting the limitations of my humanness and of my singular uniqueness. I had hated the ends of my strength and tried to live beyond them often. I had to learn to be compassionate with myself and honour legitimate needs. A season of healing, for example, was a need. I hated that I had to spend time healing and not accomplish very much. God, however, did not hate that I needed to heal and accepted me wholly with that need. Shall I not accept what God has accepted?

             Being human means having vulnerabilities as well as limitations. Perhaps this is a fifth acceptance. I had to accept that humanness involves vulnerability. I had to accept, with even more difficulty, that I have vulnerabilities unique to me, or at least to my condition and temperament. I had to accept the emotional vulnerability accrued in my break-down. This vulnerability was situational, but others were of my being. I think even without the wounds of mental illness and burnout, I’m just built inveterately sensitive. This too is a vulnerability as well as a gift. It’ s not wrong or evil, it just is. I have to accept that. By accepting this, I honour that God has made me a unique instrument. Accepting my individuality is faith in his creativity. Accepting my being unique and accepting woundedness of my present condition were difficult but liberating endeavors.

               The results of the unconditional love empowered acceptance are multitudinous and expansive, but let me list three:

I can at last be honest. In my prior mode of life, though I had tried to be authentic, denial and perfectionism were ensconced in the council of my mind. Now, I am being made able to accept myself. With that, I can “show up” to life as myself. I can present without the various layers of inauthentic image-management by which I had attempted to secure affirmation and significance. Now, with affirmation and significance secured for me, I’m released to find who I actually am.

            Another fruit of acceptance is the ability to value myself. Acceptance, as I mentioned, certainly involved recognizing sickness of soul, but also it enabled me to recognize what of me was a genuine quality or gift. I could discern, for example, that I have been made an artist and that my sensitivity attunes me to people’s hearts in a way that privileges me with the ability to access deeper layers of their story. I have these gifts and others. Also, I was permitted by acceptance to value my work in a new way. While none of it made God love me or secured my significance, still much of it was beautiful. Imperfect as my service and performance was, even so it was real, and I did serve and care for people in real ways. Accepting myself in grace allows me to value what God has enabled me to be and do.

              A third fruit of acceptance is the ability to see the beauty of progress. I’m not “there yet” but I’m getting there and that’s OK. I can recognize the limitedness and incompleteness of what I can presently offer – I can recognize this without self-loathing but with self-compassion. I know some areas to work on and can be patient with myself, because, evidently, God is patient with me. He doesn’t depend on me in any way, so he can afford to be gracious.  

               So, I forgive and accept myself because Jesus accepts and forgives me. I am released by complete grace to understand that I am broken and that I am absolutely loved at the same time. I accept that I am in progress, that I have been wrong and done wrong, and that all of this is contained in grace. I accept that I never earned God’s affection that but that it is given nonetheless. In what seems like irony to me, it’s through this acceptance, and not through anxious perfectionism, that I have more of value to offer the world. Trying desperately to be effective and valuable actually withered me and diminished my capacity to do anything. Alternatively, accepting who I actually am – even with my wounds and weariness and wickedness – this was the avenue by which I could start to do life with real joy and perhaps effectiveness. Accepting grace makes me an instrument of grace and that is a life-giving song to play, one played out of freedom and not out of fear. 

                My attempt at perfection was renegade. The letting go was sacred.