Are you a blamer? You might be a blamer if one of these lovely phrases has slipped past your lips:
"You are ruining my life."
"My boss makes my life miserable. I wish I could work somewhere else."
"The church is not meeting my needs."
"I am exhausted because my spouse won't take a vacation."
"It is because my job doesn't pay enough that I have so much debt."
"I'm not growing spiritually because the church is so immature."
"Credit card companies are ruining my life."
"My relationship with my fiancé is so bad because he won't go to counseling."
"It's too late for me to change jobs."
"I'm a single mom. I'll be poor the rest of my life."
"Whenever I visit my parents for the holidays, they stress me out."
"I've never be able to do science or math. I had terrible teachers."
In the very earliest parts of the Bible (Genesis 3), we read a story about ourselves. The story recounts Adam and Eve's temptation in the Garden of Eden. You've heard the story - don't eat the shiny red apple, or you'll find yourself in a coma until your true love comes and kisses your corpse. Or something like that. Anyhoo, the serpent comes along, gets Eve confused, and she takes a bite. Then she offers a bite to Adam who was with her. He bites. They both realize they are naked and run away from each other to hide (weird - if I were Adam, that would not be my first thought - can I get an Amen, my brothers!). Run after Eve - that makes more sense. But I digress...
So, God comes walking along through the garden, and finds Adam. He holds him accountable - what have you done? That woman you gave me made me do it... God asks Eve her side of the story. The serpent made me do it...
Ever wondered what Adam and Eve's last name was? Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Adam and Eve Blamer...
This story served to remind our earliest Jewish ancestors that we are very capable of not just choosing poorly, but blaming someone or something else for our blunder.
When blamers play the victim, they often retain a sense of moral superiority over others. In doing so, they disown responsibility. - Gerri Scazzero, I Quit!
Geri Scazzero found herself living a life she did not want. She had been unhappy for years, and it caught up with her. She had allowed others to dictate her life. She allowed wrong beliefs to dictate her life, too.
As I look back on the many ways I lost myself in Pete's life, I do not blame him. Of course, I did at the time. Although he had blind spots about what was driving his behavior, he was not responsible for my choices. I was fully responsible for allowing Pete to cross so many of my personal boundaries and to ignore my desire for a different kind of life. I mistakenly believed I was powerless to change my many frustrating life situations. The best I could do was to blame Pete and others as life happened to me. - Geri Scazzero, I Quit!
One of the most important and painful and liberating processes we go through as human beings is owning our own junk. For lots of reasons we avoid this, sometimes for years, even a lifetime. Hopefully at some point, however, we will have a moment of clarity and courage where we see the Adam and Eve tendency residing in our being. We no longer blame someone else, or our circumstances, or the government, or our pedigree for the full share of the responsibility of our problems. We see our role in the broken relationship. We name our prejudice. We recognize our self-centeredness. This requires courage, because we are hardwired to protect our ego, ourselves, at all costs. To own our appropriate share is to admit that we are, indeed, imperfect. Broken. Capable of great foolishness. And we can be quite comfortable avoiding responsibility.
Toward the end of the first century, Tacitus wrote something like this: Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
Nobody likes to own their own junk. Everybody likes to succeed. You are a loser. Not me...
If you find yourself surrounded by struggles on every side - sometimes it feels like everyone is out to get you, right? - then the wisest thing you might do is to spend some time owning your share of the junk in your life. When we own our own stuff, we are much more likely to see improvement in our struggles. Owning our own junk increases our humility, which serves to open up communication with God, ourselves, and others, which can then lead to redemption. But if I keep blaming my spouse, my boss, by government, my parents, my kids, etc., I will only remain hostile, grumpy, perpetuating and probably increasing strife in my life (and the lives of others).
To help her readers, Geri Scazzero developed a Personal Freedom Toolkit based on Virginia Satir's work. Here are the components:
The Fence of Separateness: Practice Boundaries
In addition to establishing and enforcing our own boundaries, we must respect the boundaries of others. We do this by valuing differences. When our opinions or ideas are different, we must respect the choices others make, even if they are vastly different than ours. We do not belittle or demonize them. We violate the fence of separateness when we tell people what they should think and feel. - Geri Scazzero, I Quit!
The Voice of Declaration: Speak Up. Sometimes we find ourselves feeling pushed around because we simply don't say what we want. We let things go because we don't want to make the other person feel uncomfortable. So we eat the burger with extra onions that we don't want and drink the double shot latte even though we wanted decaf. We end up really chatty and with awful breath... You can speak up using entirely polite, graceful, yet clear language. Do it!
The Yes/No Medallion: Say Yes or No. You have the right to say yes and no. Exercise your right. If you don't, blame yourself for not making your preference known.
The Heart of Feelings: Pay Attention To Emotions. Jesus got angry. It's okay to get angry. In fact, anger serves us well as an indicator that something is not right. So is sadness, fear, and anxiety. When you feel some of these things welling up within, take a moment to check yourself out - you may be headed down a path you'll regret. Take stock and choose wisely, using emotions as indicators there for your protection.
The Oxygen Mask of Self-Care: Take Care of You. Sometimes we get depleted because we don't take care of ourselves. Do you know what recharges your batteries? Are you protecting your ability to recharge? Don't blame someone else for your poor calendar keeping - you can't be a very good spouse, parent, friend, employee, or Giants fan if you're running on empty. You need to be fully charged when the Dodgers come to town. - Geri Scazzero, I Quit! (maybe).
The Mirror of Self-Confrontation: Confront Yourself. I've talked a bunch about this, but it needs to become a habit. When do we reflect on our behavior, our attitude, our choices? If you can't think of when you do this, you're probably not doing it. You will save yourself future pain and heal up old pain faster if you integrate this self examination into your world.
The Key of Hope: Remain Hopeful. Here is some good news: God is a redeemer. God is amazing when it comes to taking awful, ugly, horrible chapters of our lives (or even paragraphs) and bringing something beautiful from it. It's not that God erases it (even though we are forgiven ), it's that God takes us through the painful messes of life and uses it to do beautiful things in us and through us. This gives meaning to meaningless pain. That gives us hope to push forward.
The Hat of Wisdom: Think Carefully. Because we're hardwired to protect ourselves, I think we naturally tend to react to things instead of respond. The difference between the two is thoughtfulness. Reacting gets us into fights. Responding redirects toward reconciliation and peace. Responding requires wisdom born of reflection and dialogue with friends, God, the scriptures, and wise people and resources.
The Badge of Courage: Be Courageous. It is not easy to own our own junk. It much easier to keep our egos intact by casting blame away from ourselves. But there is great strength in honesty. And great freedom.
Choosing an authentic life does not mean choosing an easy life; these decisions are difficult and involve pain. The question is whether the pain you choose will be redemptive or destructive. - Geri Scazzero, I Quit!
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