David McElroy

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about emotional vulnerability. I wrote about this subject about 15 months ago after I discovered social work researcher Brené Brown. I found her TED talk on the subject terribly compelling.

As I’ve continued to think and read about this, I keep uncovering new things to understand about myself — sometimes things I’m not so happy to discover. I knew that the dysfunctional home in which I grew up left all of us feeling shame and fear, but I seem to keep uncovering new layers of the effects it’s had on the ways I’ve lived my life so far.

Over the weekend, I had an epiphany of sorts when I realized the role that shame and lack of vulnerability played when I lost someone important to me about four years ago. I think I’d sort of already known, but it somehow came together in a very clear way that dropped a load of bricks on my head. Or heart. I’m not sure which.

I didn’t realize this for a long time, but I don’t like to take emotional risks, because I’m afraid of being hurt. If you happened to see the piece I wrote for Mother’s Day last week, you might understand why I have a long-term fear of losing women I love. I’ve understand that piece of the puzzle for years, but I don’t think I’d been clear on the fact that I set myself up to lose someone I wanted badly by not being vulnerable — by pulling back when trusting more was the healthy and loving thing to do.

So here’s what I realized.

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A screaming banner headline on the Drudge Report caught my eye Friday night: “IRS asked group about ‘content of their prayers.'”

What? The IRS was asking people what they talked to God about? That’s what the headline seemed to say, especially given the fact that there were quotes around those last four words. (Here’s a screenshot.) This sounds even further out of bounds than what we already knew about the IRS targeting conservative groups, I thought.

And then I quickly started questioning the source of this allegation. The headline stated it as a fact, not as a mere allegation. Then I followed the story to its source and realized that it was a lie to make a really bad story sound even worse.

According to the Washington Examiner, during the Friday congressional hearing, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., said this in an exchange with an IRS witness: “Their question, specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers.'”

So what was the source of this allegation? According to the Examiner, it was a press release issued by the conservative Thomas More Society. The group produced a report — at the request of Schock, the Republican congressman — and the press release contains this charge: “Further questioning by the IRS requested detailed information about the content of the group’s prayer meetings, educational seminars, and signs their members hold outside Planned Parenthood.” [Emphasis mine]

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When I was a teen-ager, I used to write my own stories. It actually started when I was young child, but I didn’t write them down until I was a teen. As I went to sleep each night when I was small, I would lie in bed and make up stories. I was always the hero. As I got a little bit older, the hero would have a different name, but he was really still me.

In one of my stories — when I was about 14 years old — I was one of a group of teen-agers who went to Cape Canaveral and toured a real space shuttle on the launch pad. For some reason, the shuttle was ready for launch and they let a group of teens — about five or six of us — alone to tour the ship. Something terrible happened in the country at exactly that moment and we had to take off in the shuttle. It turned out to be armed with weapons. I was the captain, of course. I brilliantly guided my little band of kids to go blow up some bad guys and save the country.

What I didn’t know at the time is that my immature teen fantasy would one day be roughly the concept behind a reboot of the Star Trek franchise.

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