Not Letting Myself Be Defined By My Speech Or My Beard

Earlier today I went to a barbershop downtown and had my beard greatly trimmed and received a nice hair cut as well. Part of the reason I had to do this is that I am doing a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at a nearby hospital. This basically means I will be the hospital chaplain's intern for the summer. When I interviewed back in the fall, the chaplain informed me that for health reasons that I would have to cut most of my beard off.

Ever since I was young, I have wanted a beard. I do not know exactly why, but I do remember wanting one as early as middle school. Then when I was 18 I grew my first beard and for a good portion of the last ten years I have had a beard in some form. At times, I have kept it trimmed in a way but for almost the last two years I have just let it grow with very minor trims. I mainly did out of curiosity to see how long it grew. But I did it unconsciously for another reason too.

In therapy, as I have written aboutbefore on my blog, I have been dealing with my self image. For most of my life, I have felt that my speech impediment has been my most defining characteristic. I thought the way I speak is how people remember me the most and it was usually the only quality most people would notice. But some friends told me that this was not case. Once I wrote an email to someone who had met a couple years before at a conference. She had not remember me, so I said that I had red hair and a speech impediment. She emailed back to let me know that she did remember me but she remember me for other qualities than my speech impediment.

I think this was the first time I realized that I should not let myself be defined by my speech impediment. But it is hard not to let it be, especially after a couple decades of telling myself that I am defined by my speech. To be honest, I have to deal with people not being able to understand me everyday and I have to deal with some of those people automatically assuming that I am mentally handicapped in a way most days.

Yet, with a long red beard, I would get noticed before I even opened my mouth. People everywhere complimented me on the beard. I stood out in another way than just having a speech impediment and a

ll the baggage that comes with that. With a long beard I felt defined in another way. It was like my security blanket. I thought maybe people will remember me as the guy with the really rad red beard, instead of the guy with the speech impediment. But, also I did get a lot of snickers and laughs coming at me because I had a ridiculously long red beard. Sometimes, like my speech impediment, I felt embarrassed by having this long beard.

As I thought about this dilemma in therapy, I realized that neither my long red beard or having a speech impediment completely define who I am. I have a lot of other characteristics, much more important aspects of myself. If I let myself be define by either of these two qualities, I am holding back my gifts that I can offer the wider world. Even though I will always be defined negatively by an handful of people (it can be a cruel world out there), I have to remember that I am a child of God and I need to live into that role more fully. In Matthew, Jesus commands in the Sermon on the Mount that, instead of hiding it under a bushel, everyone should let their light shine (Matt 5:15-16).

Yes, I do need to let my light shine brightly and not hold my gifts from the world.  

Giving Up Anger for Lent

For Lent I am giving up my anger.

Not a lot of people know about my anger because I have tried to keep it hidden from most people, but my closest friends, family and housemates have seen my anger side. For years I thought my anger came out of my social justice work and seeing  the inequalities in the world.

After working with my therapist for more than a year, I finally realize that the anger comes out of a self-hate. This self-hate has developed over the years due to growing up with a speech impediment and feeling less than equal. I remember crying to my mom when I was young and asking, "Why did God do this to me? Why me?"

I have always known that my family and my faith community love me for who I am, but I spent most of my time out in the world where any slight differences were good enough reasons to be bullied, treated differently, or to be largely ignored. After years of this painful treatment and feeling less than whole, I internalized this hate and started to see myself as not being whole. I would wake up in the morning hating myself and thought that I had to do other things to make myself lovable. This has led me to undertake a lot of different kinds of work to prove that I am worthy of love and respect.

But in the last year, with the support of Jenn, my fiance, and my therapist, I have finally gotten to a point in my life when I recognize that I am a whole human being and that I am deserving of love and respect because of being a person and not because of what I do or do not do.

In this season of Lent, which I am doing in solidarity with my fellow Christians*, I will focus on writing more about my trauma and on loving myself more. I hope that my writing can lead to more personal healing. In the future I hope to produce materials to help youth living with disabilities and their families through the challenges of growing up in a world that is not always accepting of differences. Also, during this Lenten season, I hope to further internalize self-love to rid myself of the self-hate that has plagued my life.  

*Quakers historically do not celebrate holidays because we believe that every day is a holy day. In the last 100 years Quakers have started to celebrate holidays and more and more Quakers are observing Lent, but we do not have any special commeration for the Lenten season as a denomination.