Shadow Work

So I get an email from a group called Sojourners. It's a Christian social justice newsletter that arrives in my inbox about once a week. I'll admit, I usually never look at it anymore. With the other constant emails that flood my inbox, it is left unopened. But one day at work, I had some time and decided to read one of them. Here's my favorite part of the whole piece: 

"It takes a contemplative mind to see one’s own inner contradictions, the failures and inherent betrayals within our own lives and the institutions that we help to create. Those who take this journey of descent into their own sacred wound understand that what is flawed in them is somehow intimately connected to the unique gift that they have to offer to a broken world. 

Shadow work becomes a necessary spiritual discipline. Seeing in themselves what they dislike in the other, they learn to be gentle and kind.They delight in vulnerability and weakness, and believe that the wisdom that comes from their mistakes and failures is worth passing on to younger communities and movements."

-Bob Sabath is Director of Web and Digital Technology and one of the founders of Sojourners. He now lives with his wife Jackie at the Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community in West Virginia, where he offers spiritual direction and wilderness retreats. He delights in teaching his grandchildren to introduce him as: “my grandpa: he can do everything – except the one thing necessary.” Bob wants everyone to know that he is still a mess, but at least he knows it.

I was inspired by this. I know that I am very hard on myself. I am a perfectionist. I go over and over in my head on how I could have done things better. And when things go wrong, I am beating myself up, making sure I don't fail again.

The perfectionist in me has gotten worse as I have gotten older. To try and be someone who constantly cares about others, being a responsible adult and becoming a skilled worker can overload me and often does. And I think, as a Christian, I've begun to see more and more of my own faults and limitations. It's frustrating because I can see how I easily have hurt people and continue to do so. But I yearn not to do hurt anyone, and yet, I also yearn to hurt them.

As I grow older, I learn I must have to accept my faults. I can struggle with them yes, but to constantly beat myself up over it gets me no where. I will only be left a depressed mess. And it is here, that the words above by a man named Bob Sabath, I found comfort. To see that perhaps my faults are also connected to my gifts makes me stop and go, "Oh wait. Maybe this isn't so bad. In fact, I can help someone with this."

I've definitely made mistakes. But I saw that I was able to also take those mistakes and talk to others who were also in similar situations, and help them. My family definitely says I can be "sensitive" at times and get my feelings hurt easily. But because of that, I'm also sensitive to people's behaviors and changes and do my best to check up on their feelings. The list goes on.

So do I have faults? Yes. Most definitely. But do I have gifts? Of course. And some of this gifts were born out of my faults and mistakes. Again, it's God taken that broken and shattered glass and turning it into a beautiful piece of art.