Recovering from Codependency

Over the past year, I have focused on self-improvement.  The way this has manifested itself is through spiritual direction as well as counseling.  I remember sitting in the Confessional about this time last year, hearing myself say to the priest that I'm not sure my recurring issues need a spiritual director or a counselor.  The Lord heard me and gave me the answer: I need both!

Through my spiritual direction, I have slowly begun to turn over more and more of my life to the Lord.  I am learning to trust Him and to include Him in all aspects of my life.  I remember when I first started meeting with my spiritual director, Jennifer, how I argued with every suggestion she made as far as making a dedicated daily time for prayer.  I was full of excuses.  I had a new baby and a preschooler at home.  I couldn't be expected to find any time to myself.  And what little time I did have, I wanted to use it to relax.  "Couldn't you look at prayer as this unwinding time for yourself?"  Jennifer asked.  Nope, my go-to response.  When I thought of alone time, I literally meant alone, not even with God.  I wanted to pursue my hobbies, which were reading, watching YouTube videos, or otherwise researching homeschooling, sometimes among other things. I couldn't share this precious time with my Maker.  But I dutifully went through the prepared questions Jennifer would give me at each of our meetings, trying to spend about an hour on them once or twice a week.  I still don't spend daily time in this sort of long, dedicated prayer.  But I have since reframed how I view prayer.  Turns out I can and I do pray throughout the day in a variety of ways, and being conscious of this slowly opened up a bit more time here and there.  My baby growing into a toddler also has helped, and I expect it to only get better!

Through my counseling sessions, I've discovered that my issues have a name: codependency.  Even though I am not an addict in the typical fashion, nor am I married to one, nor were my parents, I nonetheless exhibit classical codependency thought processes and behaviors.  My "drug" of choice?  As it turns out - my mother's approval.  Both she and my dad are adult children of alcoholics, which apparently means that they grew up with a dysfunctional view of the world and then passed it on to me.  They tried so hard to make up for the issues in their families of origin, yet they were unable to realize how overcompensating for one problem led to another.  I'm sure my personality has a lot to do with how I internalized my upbringing.  After all, my siblings have very different attitudes towards life than I do.  My counselor, Dr. Brian, noted right off the bat that since I mentioned my faith, we could incorporate my Christianity into our discussions, which has been a great blessing.  In the last month or so, I finally realized how being able to include God in my counseling has led me to see His hand in my life, all of it, not just the compartment I labeled as "spirituality". 

I have been able to shed some of the guilt I carried for wanting that alone time.  I no longer think of it as either-or between my "research for fun" and my "prayer time".  I have different types of prayer that I engage in throughout the day, and only one of them requires an extended period of silence and light.  I say light, because over the summer I started praying the Rosary every night right before bed.  It is quiet, but I can pray in the dark.  I don't need to reference anything anymore, since all I need to pray the Rosary I've committed to memory now.  Praying consistently every day for five months will do that.  I try at least once a week to spend time with my Ignatian Daily Retreat book and prayer journal, reading Scripture, pondering the questions and comments, and praying from the heart without the constraints of the clock ticking.  I wish I could do this more frequently, but I don't worry about it right now.  As my youngest gets older, I will have more time.  For now, I give the Lord what I have.

And what I have is a new understanding of what my issues are, where they originated, and how to proceed.  I have started attending Celebrate Recovery meetings that just so happened to have started at my church about a month before I joined.  I am bringing to the altar my history, my confusion, my pain, my trials and errors, my hopes and disappointments, my guilt, my efforts gone awry, and I'm turning them over the Lord.  I am looking to the future.  I am trying to reinvent myself for the first time.  Apparently, growing up with codependency has robbed me of the ability to be authentic with myself.  I assumed I knew who I was based on what I was told I was.  No one ever asked me who I was or who I wanted to be.  Now I am making these decisions and it is freeing.  Scary, but freeing.

One of my hangups is that I have an internal voice that is constantly asking me what my mom would think about any given decision I'm making.  It's like it's playing on auto-replay, whether I want it there or not.  I assume that a decision not in perfect agreement with my mother is automatically the wrong decision.  I have allowed myself to be handicapped in my decision-making abilities.  I freeze when pressed for time and having to make a decision, especially a big one, but even small ones like where we should go to eat give me trouble at times. 

Another hangup of mine is that I engage in wishful thinking.  If only my mom could see things from my point of view, then she'd be able to relate better to me and we'd have a better relationship.  If only she would love me unconditionally rather than imply that I am only worthy to be her daughter if I do as she would do.  If only my mom didn't get offended at my attempts to assert myself, then I could assert myself more and live a life of freedom.  Bullocks.  Dr. Brian has helped me to understand that my mother's happiness is not my responsibility.  I actually still get an uneasy feeling typing this.  It feels as though I'm saying that I don't care if she's happy or not.  But that isn't the point at all.  The point is that every one of us chooses to be happy or not, regardless of the circumstances.  Codependents like me and my mom often choose to be happy only as a reaction to something in our environment.  This is not healthy.  I can be happy even if my mom doesn't approve of my choices.  I can be happy even if she gets upset that I disregarded her advice.  I am not obligated to take her advice.  I wish (there's that wishful thinking again), I wish I could ask for her advice, hear her out, and then make my own decision and have her be happy either way.  Instead, what ends up happening if I don't take her advice is that she stops giving it.  As in, she refuses to give further advice in the future because she thinks the point of giving advice is that it ought to be followed. 

Finally, a hangup of mine that was probably the crux of the situation that allowed me to seek out both spiritual direction and counseling is this: I struggle with the first commandment.  I don't make golden calves to worship, but I do worry much more about what my mom thinks than what God thinks.  In this way, I have long idolized my mother, thinking that I was honoring her per the fourth commandment.  I am currently trying to iron out the details of what it means for an adult daughter to honor her parents.  As it turns out, it does not mean obedience anymore.  It does not mean taking all of my parents' advice.  It does not mean doing whatever they want, whether I want to do it or not.  It does not mean trying to make them happy.  This last one is going to be difficult to overcome.  I can't make my mother happy, and yet I still need/want to try.  I think that's called loving her. 

It's sad that I don't really know what it means to love my parents.  Or siblings.  I don't struggle with loving my husband or children.  I don't have any anxiety in those relationships.  I am able to be authentic and vulnerable there.  But when it comes to my family of origin, I get all confused.  Dr. Brian introduced me to a fantastic phrase that pretty much sums up the story of my upbringing:  the undifferentiated family ego-mass.  He got the phrase from a wonderful book I recently read per his recommendation. Another term comes to mind that I've long known but never applied to my family before: groupthink. 

One of the reasons I struggled with my identity as an adult is because the identity I was spoon-fed growing up didn't match what I felt on the inside.  I was told that I was a Scorpio, Polish, "smart, pretty, and polite".  These were treated as givens.  Now that my faith tells me astrology is not where my trust must lie, I'm having to rethink "my astrological sign's characteristics" and just think about what makes me unique.  Being smart, pretty, and polite were handed to me without explaining what I did or could do to maintain or lose them.  When times and cultures shifted, the old paradigms didn't fit and I couldn't understand what happened.  How come I wasn't considered these things by everyone, if they were a given?

Being Polish gave me the most trouble because I cannot deny being born in Poland to two Polish parents.  I even speak Polish, for crying out loud, so of course I'm Polish, right?  Except that I now live in the United States.  I married a non-Pole.  And while I speak Polish, it's certainly not at an educated adult level, so I am uncomfortable in Polish settings.  I lack a lot of cultural knowledge because I wasn't exposed to Polish culture outside the home, and I didn't have Polish peers growing up.  I'm Polish mostly in name.  My experience is not the same as my mom's, who didn't migrate to the US until she was 30.  And it's certainly not the same as my relatives who still live in Poland.  I'm "Polish, but..."  In other words, I'm Polish-American.  But I grew up looking down on this phrase because my family associated it with Americans of Polish heritage, people who didn't know the language and probably never set foot on Polish soil.  They weren't "Polish enough" to be called Polish.  How could I associate myself with them?  I clung to my Polishness so hard, that I changed my last name to my mom's because it was more Polish-sounding than my dad's.  I refused to check "White" on forms and would write in "Polish".  (White, to me, meant Protestant Anglo-Saxon.) With great pride I announced that we were raising our children multilingual, fully expecting to pass on our native languages (my husband's is Spanish) to our kids without much effort.  I panicked when this last bit started to become a challenge.  At three years old, our daughter already prefers English, and after some reflection, we had to admit that it's because... so do we!  We also prefer English!  I think in English.  I do math in English.  I speak to God in English usually.  I prefer to read in English.  I prefer to watch videos in English. I only find the Bible meaningful in English.

There is a very limited segment of the world that I like in Polish.  Namely, those things that I associate with my childhood in Poland.  I love Polish Christmas carols and other religious (and patriotic) songs.  But there are also plenty of English songs that move me.  I am moved to tears by a select few Polish poems, but again, English poetry also has that affect on me.  There are a handful of Polish prayers that I learned as a child that I easily recite (I pray my Rosary bilingually), but I don't have anything against the English versions.  I clung to these few things and finally realized they weren't enough to build a life around.  I felt like I was betraying my family by admitting - even to myself - that I was actually American, not Polish.  Ok, Polish-American, but that's the best I could do.  Even though I was born in Poland and started school there and even though I speak and read Polish, I am still more appropriately grouped in the category of "Polish-American" than "Polish" (or Polonia na emigracji).  I'm not merely living abroad.  I have made my home here.  For better or for worse, this is who I am.  I felt like I couldn't be both, American and a member of my family, but with my siblings, who were born here and don't have these same qualms about who they are, I was able to realize that 1) I am still in the family, and 2) their approval is not what makes or breaks me.

So yes, I have been addicted - to approval by my mom.  It has been paralyzing at times.  And you know what?  It's not her fault!  I have blamed her in the past - in classically codependent fashion - but it is not her fault.  She raised me based on what she knew.  And she instilled a lot of good in me.  The rest is now up to me.  I can choose to keep letting her micromanage me, because it's what she knows and is comfortable with, or I can choose to set boundaries and assert myself and forge a new beginning in our relationship.  No more conditionals.  No more, if only.  No more.  I am who I am, and she is who she is, and that's all I can ask from God, who created both of us.

Why be Catholic if even atheists can go to heaven?

As eye-opening as my spiritual journey has been over the years, spending time immersed in other traditions, either merely intellectually or even religiously, one drawback has been that it's been difficult to shed some non-Catholic notions that have become ingrained in me over the years.  One of the influences that I'm having to regularly put aside is that of evangelical Protestant Christianity.

As a Catholic Christian, I do not share evangelical Christians' understanding of salvation.  I'm not just talking about the fact that Catholics often get scolded for including works along with faith as necessary for salvation.  (James 2:14-17: "What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?  If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.") 

Both our current Pope Francis, and his predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict, have gone on record as stating that not only do we as Catholics believe that one does not need to be a Catholic to be saved, but that even theists of other religious traditions and atheists can be saved... if they do good works.  So it seems that works even without faith can save?!  This doesn't seem to be found in the Bible, but luckily I am Catholic, so I don't need to be my own Pope and interpret Scriptures for myself.  Instead, I have the magisterium of the Church, with highly learned Scripture scholars who enlighten me. What this means that the authority for my faith comes from both the Bible and the Tradition (note the capital "t") of the Church. 

At any rate, the questions that is begging to be asked if we accept that 1) Catholic Christianity does hold the fullness of truth as much as that is possible this side of heaven, yet 2) one does not need to be Catholic or even Christian or even a theist in order to be saved and go to heaven after death, then.... what is the point of adhering to Catholicism/Christianity/faith of any kind?

This question is already found in the New Testament, where it is worded like this: "Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope." (1 Peter 3:15).  What's different about me as a Christian than when I was not a believer? Why am I choosing to follow Jesus, if I believe that I could still get into heaven without following Him?

Well, for starters, following Jesus doesn't mean belonging to a specific organized religion.  I agree with what Mahatma Ghandi once said, "I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."  Ouch.  I had read that he considered converting to Christianity but ultimately decided against it because of what he says in the above quote.  Following Christ is about a lifestyle, virtues, morals, ethics, standards of holiness, not about a label or membership in a place of worship.  Therefore, there are lots of people who truly follow the example of Jesus - knowingly or not - and therefore fulfill the works part of salvation.  As for the faith... we believe God Almighty is beyond the limits of time and space, right?  So in the moment of death, something we think of as a split-second event, God actually has plenty of "time" to confront the dying soul and offer - for the first time or yet again - the grace of faith.  

That's another reason that the recent popes' statements resonate with me.  After my daughter was born, extended postpartum anxiety and depression lead to my loss of faith.  For over two years I actively tried to regain my faith.  I continued to attend church, read, and pray.  I finally attended a spiritual retreat as a last ditch effort to get my faith back.  This slowly started me back towards God again, but I could not yet say that I believed.  And then, one day, right before I found out I was pregnant with my son, I suddenly believed again.  I felt it.  I felt at home at church again.  I could again sense God's presence.  It was not through anything that I did.  The return of my faith was God's gift to me - grace.  So if I couldn't force myself to believe, how can God who made me, hold it against me?  Faith is a gift from God, not something you can just decide to have.  Therefore, it does not make sense to say that faith in Jesus Christ is our ticket to heaven, because this presumes that we can simply make up our minds to believe something, when in fact we cannot.

The other point is that following Jesus is not merely about "getting into heaven" but about preparing ourselves - and by extension others who may see our lives and be inspired by them - to be acceptable to stand in God's presence.  Heaven is not some exclusive country club that only the select few can "get into".  Heaven is God's abode, it's the merging of our selves with Godself, it's standing face to face with our Creator.  Indeed, none of us are holy enough to merit such an encounter, much less an eternity in the afterlife with God.  For this reason I believe that Jesus's sacrifice on the cross was "the key" to our salvation.  

Figuratively, I explain to my preschooler that Jesus came into the world to find the key to unlock heaven, so that after His resurrection, He was able to do just that, and now, precisely thanks to Him, we are eligible to even dream of going to heaven after we die.  Before Jesus, heaven was simply off-limits.

I mentioned that faith is a grace from God.  Faith is a virtue, so all of the virtues are gifts from God.  Therefore, none of our works are our own, and therefore we have no reason to boast.  Indeed, any good deed we do is made possibly by God first putting that ability, opportunity, and inspiration into us in the first place.  So we do not "earn" our way to heaven because we do nothing outside of God's grace.  This is why doing good works is not at all contrary to the fact that Jesus died for my sins.  My good works are further graces from God that help me lead a happy life and prepare me for eternity with God.

One final note on good works.  I recently read an excellent book, "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" by Nabeel Quereshi. In it, I learned that the Muslim understanding of what leads souls to heaven is a balancing scale of sorts that compares one's good deeds with one's bad deeds, and that so long as the good deeds outweigh the bad, the person is granted access to heaven.  I disagree wholeheartedly with this, because this would mean heaven is simply a place where mediocre people mingle.  I do not see how Almighty God would allow into His holy presence people who just barely did more good than bad.  So that is not the view of good works that I am talking about here.  Again, our good works are merely us putting ourselves at the disposal of the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us.  They are not evidence of our own intrinsic goodness.

Now, to finally answer the question posed at the start of this reflection.  What is the reason for my hope?  Why am I a practicing Catholic/believing Christian?  Because I have experienced life without faith, and it was dreary.  I have lived without hope and it was literally depressing.  There was no meaning in my life when I couldn't get a firm grasp on God's love for me.  With faith - and by that I mean, with the belief that God loves me unconditionally, to the point of incarnating and dying on the cross so that my sins could be removed from my soul and my seat at the "supper of the lamb" could be secured - my life has meaning.  

So I believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ because it gives my life meaning.  Furthermore, Catholic understanding and practice of Christianity gives me great joy.  It is difficult at times, to be sure.  But to know that I am living for something greater than myself is incredibly fulfilling.  There is no greater peace than to know I am working towards the best version of myself thanks to the instructions available to me through Christ's holy church.  

In other words, I am Catholic not because I believe it will guarantee me entry into heaven.  I am Catholic because it makes this life better, and because it is preparing me for that eventuality of spending eternity with my Lord.

Perhaps this is why Jesus said, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand" (Matthew 3:2).  God's kingdom isn't in some far-off land in the distant future!  God is ever-present, and I can begin to partake in it here and now!  My Catholic faith is what helps me to learn how to do that.  How to love God, how to follow Jesus, how to do God's will.  Getting into heaven is only a small fraction of what it means to be saved.  To be saved from our sins is to start living for God right away.  To die to self, to detach from superficial trappings of the material world, and to see beyond the mundane.  

Being a Catholic Christian gives me great joy and peace!  I'm thrilled that God smiled upon me and brought me back to His fold - not once but twice!  Now, what I do with this grace is indeed not to keep it bottled up for myself, but it also doesn't mean trying to make others follow the path that's been paved for me.  God is present everywhere, including in religions that don't have the gospel.  There is that of God in all of His creation - it's His world and universe, after all!  To think that a person cannot come to know and love God because she belongs to the wrong religion is small-minded and not what Jesus taught.  We read in 2 Corinthians 5:15 that Jesus "indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised."  

And it is possible to live for Jesus without even realizing that's what you're doing.  If we believe Jesus is God, and God is the source of everything, then living for Jesus means dying to self and constantly seeking God's face.  That ongoing search and struggle, whether it is rewarded with the grace of Christian faith or not, is what I believe it is all about.  

But I'm no Scripture scholar ;)  That's why I'm thrilled to know that those who are, those who have been tasked by God to lead His flock here on Earth (Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict) agree.  

My hope for others, for those who do not have a personal relationship with Jesus, is that they also find peace and joy in this life, meaning and means of preparing for the next life, and may their good works be evidence of their desire to know and love God.  God will reward each one of us uniquely. I think if more Christians spent more time on themselves, working out their own holiness, they'd be better prepared to enter heaven than focusing on trying to get others to "catch up" with them.  There's plenty to do with my own life.  

Thank you Jesus for this peace.  Amen.