Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Two Great Gifts of God – 1. Time to Heal 2. Space to Grow

Two great imperatives of faith are the two golden interests and gifts of God to us. 
Far from being a cruel taskmaster, God is most a creator, and this creator Lord wishes to design and engineer only that which would flourish within us.
Nothing like being a tyrant of onerous proportions, nothing at least like some human leaders would make God out to be, our God is an expansive Lord, ever abundant in divine desire for what we could gain for life, for the purposes of goodness, so long as we want the right thing the right way.
Of all things that God offers in this life, it is time to heal and space to grow; the first is made for recovery, and the second is made for reconciliation. We must have recovery before we can have the reconciliation. We must find our basis before we can establish our bearing. We must acknowledge the truth before we can acquire all that God wills for us. And none of this acquisition is anything about the material. So far as the east is to the west is the idea that in the spiritual is the true wealth of the Kingdom, whereas in the material are the fanciful riches of the world. Only in the spiritual is the true commonwealth—the only real wealth is a wealth shared and enjoyed communally.
Take Your Time to Heal – Be Diligent But Do Not Rush It
Healing is tantamount to a reconciliation that is just absolutely fundamental to life.
We were born to be healed, just as we can know that without this healing we are forever held back. God ordains this process, and there is always copious time within which to do the healing in. In the healing time, there is no other objective. So loving is God that in his economy it’s all that matters for such a time as it is.
Of course, we always feel it takes too long. We are verily impatient, and we want this healing work done pronto. But God doesn’t work the miracle of healing in a way that we wouldn’t benefit. No, the benefit is in having been faithful to God, having bided our time and having obeyed his will, having shown much humility, and having learned our lessons over and over and over again, so they stay learned. The benefit gleaned is in the depths our healing has been taken to.
We should never be in a rush to be healed, just as we should never accept the lie that we are completely healed. There is always more healing to be done, but once we reach base level, we’re being readied to grow.
Enjoy the Opening Expanses of Space to Grow
Once we have healed or have embarked so sufficiently on that process as to know that it works, being confident that he who is faithful does finish the work in us, we embark on a purposeful pursuit we can never backslide from.
This is exactly why healing is so crucial as a platform to growth.
Having made significant ground in terms of healing we have borne full witness to the power of God in our own lives to resurrect us from spiritual death.
Having been healed, there is then no impediment to growth. And God does desire to grow us, particularly in pursuits that are worthy of the calling of our hearts to something magnanimous that only God can do through us. This love that God puts in our hearts is an irrepressible force for good, and having been healed, nothing can disturb or besmirch this newfound commitment to love God back.
At this, God opens space for us to grow, and as we grow more space is opened, such is the nature of blessedness within the multiplicity of God. Indeed, as we grow, we find the world expands, and our minds and hearts literally swell with love. We fall in love with this space that God gives and continues to open up.
~
Now, this is where the rubber of healing and growth hits the road.
Life is long and hard, and before long we’re tempted to rescind; to give up loving those we’ve loved where our love is unrequited. At this moment, our growth stops if we go back to our old ways.
But the moment we ponder stagnating is the moment we see that the blessings we’ve sown until now have been wisdom and it is only wise, despite receiving no reward from those with no love to offer, to continue to love those who revile us in some way.
There is always some point at which we must choose God over the ambivalence and indifference of others. The key test of our healing and growth, therefore, is how committedly and purposefully we continue to love others who bear no gifts of love in return.
The ultimate sign of healing and growth is being a blessing for the glory of God with no thought spared for what we’re not getting. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.

Sunday, July 28, 2019

What can I do for you, God?

It simply has to be the question on every Christian’s lips, but how far has the apple been flung from the tree? And having been re-introduced to the Black Eyed Peas classic, “Where is the Love,” recently, surely upon reflection we must ask ourselves what can I do for you, God?
We might hear God answer us saying, “There isn’t anything you can do for me that I haven’t already done for you,” but I know that God knows what we mean when we say we truly want to help and serve our Lord while we live and breathe on this planet. This recognises God’s call on our lives; that we no longer wish to pillage the planet but wish to use all that we are and everything we have to honour God by making the most of the life we personally inhabit.
Could it just be that once we have accepted there is nothing we can do for God that God hasn’t already done for us in Christ, there is just one more opportunity: Love one another. “as I have loved you,” Jesus famously said, “so you must love one another.” So, where is the love?
It’s so easy in our age of outrage to stomp our feet, find our cause and protest about it, and to become an advocate for one thing or another, demanding what we want, how we want it; but if there is no love, our efforts are futile. We may well build ‘a kingdom’ (i.e. not God’s true Kingdom) in vain.
The only way we can establish whether our advocacy is building upon a firm foundation is if we’re humble enough to reflect on what we, ourselves, can do to improve.
The imperative of love compels us to want what God wants, but we must know that doing God’s bidding in the name of love is never about putting people offside through a spirit of condemnation. Sure, we can call them to reflect, but if we know that they won’t change, why do we keep knocking at their door? We kick the dust off our feet, and we depart respectfully. And yet we can win a friend in disagreement if only we get beyond the issue and down into the intent of the heart; seek to understand anyone and they may soon be our friend, because they recognise our actions as the communicable universal language of love.
When we ask God, “What can I do to you, Lord?” we ask it in any and every conscious situation we find ourselves in.
What can we do in this minute, this second, at the shopping centre, in my workplace, with these cars all around me on the roads, with these customers I serve, with people who are like me and with people who are not like me? And most of all in our homes. How can I be a bridge of unity in propagating the language of kindness, patience, gentleness, and self-control? 
How can I do my little bit and be satisfied that I’m in the lap of God’s will?
How can I break my faith down and simply live is a peacemaker, when all doctrinal arguments fade away into insignificance?
The key task of life is to love others. When we begin to get that right, as we sow in peace, through being a joyful presence, we find benefit all around us, and discover that God is intimately in it. Always was. Always will be.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Thursday, July 25, 2019

A Prayer of Intercession for Comfort for the Anguished

Gracious heavenly Father,
Parent of glories beyond all human conception, and gracious host of all conceivable comfort, all thanks is due your holy name for the comfort you gave to those who may comfort those with a comfort that can only, and does only, come from you.
I pray, indeed we join our hearts together, right now, in the presence of the holy courts, with invisible angels attending, for comfort, right now, Lord; for the one who reads these words who may find a gentle healing stream instead of hard, oppressing walls. Be with that one by a Presence they can hardly determine as real, but that which is felt as an interminable reality—that you show up, drawing alongside them, coming alongside, even by a person who wears your Divine Presence—God in skin.
That one who is beside themselves in grief, in an anguish incomprehensible, in the numb, in the anxious one, in the one who is affronted by a spiritual depression beyond all reconciliation—that one strewn on a raft on the sea of disappointment and betrayal. God, may your glory rest on that one. God, may they sense you holding their hand, your holy hug, your warmth inside them as their heart is met by the world with coldness.
To the one who is just barely holding on, with fingernails determined to hold on through gritted teeth. To the one overwhelmed by familial conflict. To the one driven downward and silenced. To the one who has been conditioned to be oppressed. Freedom for some, relief for others, and a breakthrough for others again, but mostly for a sustaining belief that you are there by your comfort; by a Presence that is the Holy Spirit.
To the one who has been maligned, who has experienced a maddening betrayal, who has borne the burden and cost for months or years—and heaven help them now if it is decades—who wears the identify of impairment for the grief struck into their heart; grant them, Lord, their hope for healing; for more of what they had never even hoped to receive. Make something meaningful out of the purpose of their testimony.
To the one who has by life a condition that resembles war, met them in the depths of their experience, Lord, and remind them by some pleasant human beings that in their stepping out their journey—in trepidation and toil—they are nothing short of inspiring for what and how they endure.
You, Holy Spirit, are by definition, The Comforter, the one who comes alongside; the paraclete. By holy deference, make the pain we feel the very resonating gateway that would take us all the way into the Holy of Holies—Jesus himself. Make our pain the very vehicle of our salvation. Bring us to your saving grace through the oddest grief; to show us it was at the end of our power, the end of ourselves, that you entered to scoop us up from these dregs of experience. That indeed there was the brightest hope in darkest despair.
Great and glorious are you, God, who comes to save us in our travailing; when all else we trusted in failed, that you came through by a comfort we received when we held out our hand to you.
Great and glorious are you, God.
AMEN.

Photo by Evie S. on Unsplash

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Attack within the Arena of Advocacy

Rewards: we all come to expect to receive them in this life, but so often we are rewarded for our good efforts with heartache and pain. We do our best, and the more we try, it can seem the worse our results are. It defies our rationale, and despondency is our temptation. We think, “What’s the use?! The harder I try the worse it gets.”
Advocates at heart see conflict and they want to help. Very often, however, it works out that the advocate, acting as a peacemaker, trying to reconcile the injustice in conflict, is the one who is burned in the process of trying to broker peace between warring individuals. This does not mean that their efforts are null and void. God sees all, and of course God commends the efforts of the advocate, for the advocate sees the injustice in conflict and endeavours to bring truth to bear.
But there are few if no rewards this side of death.
If we have ever tried to help anyone embattled in conflict, especially the weaker party, we have risked loss on a number of fronts, including reputational, physical, mental, emotional, even to our livelihood. It is amazing the level of spiritual attack that comes against the advocate as they do divine bidding; as they speak and act for the purposes of God.
There is a great deal of spiritual warfare involved in sticking our head above the parapet wall. The enemy sees our exposure, and he’s quick to fire poisonous darts. If anyone can be threatened for exposure, those darts of criticism and condemnation will come with an unexpected ferocity at the least anticipated moment.
If you have been in a role of trying to broker peace, of becoming the negotiator, particularly where there are great powers and positions and property involved, you may certainly have felt vulnerable to exposure. None of us is ever perfectly protected, just as none of us are perfectly pure. We all get some things wrong. And it is this, the least noticeable chink in our armour, that the enemy exploits.
If we have tried to do what is best, and something completely unexpected happened, then people turned against us, especially when we were trying to help, we know it’s the cauldron of advocacy that we’ve been in. The weaker party have been silenced, and it’s no longer they that are being attacked, it’s us! For standing up for them.
This is where our attitude needs to be that of a peacemaker in response. Peacemaking and advocacy are so closely aligned. Those who sow in peace, James says in 3:18, reap a harvest of righteousness, but they may not see it this side of eternity.
We must expect that we will be shafted. Even so we must prepare our minds for that eventuality, just as we must prepare our hearts for that pain if or when it should occur. But in all eventualities, we will never truly be prepared (none of us ever are) for the hellfire of the betrayal coming to us for doing the right thing, albeit at times in misguided, perhaps naïve, ways.
It never feels nice. It always feels brutally unjust. The advocate stands in the gap for others, but they should never expect others to stand in the gap for them; welcome to the world of a type of advocacy. It is what it is. Advocacy is a much costly calling.
Paying the price of advocacy is part of the territory. We do it for the glory of God, which makes absolutely no sense to people in the world, because there is no reward, but for the reward we look for in heaven, which is absolutely spiritual, and can never rightly be material.
Why on earth, then, would anyone sacrifice themselves for another to the ends of fighting the injustice that the other is overwhelmed by? It’s a good question! All I can say, is for some, it’s all they can do. Truth and justice compel them to act in a certain way in the world, and they sort of know beforehand that they will suffer much in bearing this mantle.
Paying the price of advocacy is doing the work of God and losing friends, even having family at times abandon us. In being scapegoated we can feel as if we have done the wrong thing. We know we haven’t. We have reflected long and hard. We’ve been through cycles of guilt and shame, as anybody with empathy does when they’ve been rejected by those they care for.
Advocacy as a craft is littered with conflict, but to whom such a calling belongs they cannot say no. God’s will is far too compelling.
Advocates, I believe, are the genuine peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they will be called children of God.” Why will they be called children of God? Simply for the fact that they love transcends selfishness, pride, greed and fear, and that truth matters most. It may be an extraordinary person who is willing to bear the cost of truth. That person is an advocate. It’s a tragic irony that it costs the advocate/peacemaker some if not many of their friendships.
Photo by Joël de Vriend on Unsplash

Saturday, July 20, 2019

You don’t know me (or I you) and that’s GOOD news

I’m truly sorry to say this, and I know you’ll understand once I explain it, but you cannot possibly know me. Not in the way you think you know me.
We are limited via our own finite frame of thinking, being that we only have one line of experience, one set of eyes and ears, and truly one way to perceive the world. We cannot undo our filters. We are forever constrained by our biases, and they rock others most when we are unaware that they are even impinging, just as others’ biases rock us most when they, too, are ignorant.
Do you know why there is no absolute truth in relationships? Because the concept of absolute truth makes fools of us all. Discuss anything long enough, and no matter how like-minded we are, we all eventually end up in disagreement. (You may disagree with anything I say here and the point I’m making is proven; either we don’t understand each other or our communication is misshapen.)
We like people because they’re like us, and they like us because we think like they do. Birds of a feather flock together, as they say.
It is rare for anyone to enjoy the company of those who consistently disagree with them. Those who say they are exceptions to this we ought to be really guarded about. Sure, they could be exceptional, but it’s more likely that pride compels them to project a persona that’s not truly theirs. They want to appear ‘special’, stronger, more impervious to criticism.
One of the threats to deep relationships, and certainly marriages and other long partnerships like businesses are good examples, is they are forever vulnerable to a pattern of conflict that separates close friends. Don’t believe me? People are separating all the time, and usually because they believed they knew each other. But what they were really in love with was a persona that worked with their way of seeing the world. As soon as we begin to disagree, there is a test:
“Do I love this person enough to bear this incredible discomfort, fear and rage welling up from within, that they vehemently disagree?”
It is a very mature relationship that can bear disagreement—and it certainly needs two parties both accepting that the relationship is only as strong as the last conflict managed well. All that matters is how the present conflict is being handled, let alone the skeletons of past that lie dormant in the closet of resentment, ready to gunnysack the other into relational oblivion; those conflicts that were never handled.
The trouble with conflict, of course,
is it opens up the matter of choice
as far as response is concerned.
Woah, if conflict is bad,
a poor response is infinitely worse!
Again, it is a rare person who responds willingly, first time, as a peacemaker; who resists shutting down and refusing to engage, and also resists attacking the other with criticism and threats.
The conflict is one thing,
but the response afterwards
usually redoubles the offence,
but it can bring the relief of peace.
People are far more likely to be offended by the way we responded to the conflict than they are offended by the conflict itself. The response to conflict truly is the opportunity to exhibit grace, patience, kindness and gentleness.
But we all feel threatened in conflict, which is why it is so important to remind ourselves that we don’t know how another person, no matter who they are, perceives the present issues, within the context of the world they are perceiving them from.
Don’t we wish we knew each other little bit better? Don’t we wish truth was a little less abstract? Don’t we wish we could get inside their head and heart and stomach and in their inner experience to understand what they’re really feeling and thinking? If we did, we wouldn’t want to fly away or fight with them as much. Truth is relative because we are dealing with human beings, and there are myriad filters within perception that must be catered for.
You cannot know me, and I cannot know you. This means we must unequivocally respect one another. There is so much I would miss in arguing ‘my truth’ with you, because I cannot possibly see all of the truth, because your truth is hidden from my sight. We cannot even communicate that effectively, though we are seriously blessed in the trying.
Because we’re handicapped in this realm of relationships, we must offer the benefit of the doubt to each other, as we offer forth a generous portion of grace, even when I feel you are being flat out offensive, or you think that of me. We can only hope to learn more about others and what they are really thinking and feeling when we open our hearts to the possibility that we might be wrong. Ah, that’s humility, can you see?
When we accept that we cannot know each other, a strange phenomenon takes place. We begin to desire a freshened understanding of the other person we cannot understand. It’s only when we know we cannot know someone that our interest is piqued, and we can become intently curious from a pure motive, because all of us hate being unaware as much as we hate feeling foolish. We want to know. But first we must admit we don’t know, and we must suffer the indignity of that to be of true service to others.
It is a good thing to approach relational life from the context of unknowing.
When I know I don’t know you, I make fewer assumptions, I attempt more clarifications, and I may appear more respectful, and I may actually be more trustworthy. And this is good news!
If only we could imagine what it feels like for the one who is hurt, disappointed, feels betrayed. If only we sought to understand before seeking to be understood. If only we valued the interests of others, acknowledging they’re as important to them as ours are to us.

Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

testimony of epiphanies, evidence of transformation

Since my world broke beyond my own repairing it, in September 2003, I have experienced four significant epiphanies. One within days of the calamity visited on me when my first marriage fell apart. The second one, four years later (2007) as I climbed out of clinical depression. The third one was five years after that (2012) when I came face to face with a truth God had for me to stare down. The fourth one came in 2016, when, at the bottom of my being, my worst year ever, I had to face how I am when I’m weak and reliant on my own strength, without God’s power.
Each of these epiphanies was a crossroad. Each was a crisis. Grief in the first. Depression in the second. Identity in the third. Entitlement in the fourth.
The first epiphany I call ‘the material versus the spiritual’ epiphany.
I had it at a school sports carnival of all places. I had already attended my first two AA meetings the two previous days. The day prior to that my world had fallen apart; marriage collapse with, for me, no warning. Suddenly, it hit me as an interminable gift; the more I gave up what I had materially, the more God gave to me spiritually. It was a powerful moment, possibly one of the most fundamentally spiritual moments of my whole life, which was an eternal gift of God’s provision, given I was about to endure the fiery pit of marital death that would utterly consume me (over the weeks and months ahead). I was filled with a purpose that I truly wanted to give everything away to receive something that would be given and never could be taken away—spiritual grace the harvest given for generosity and kindness sown. I had the answer. I had the gifts of the Spirit. The whole bag. And the marker of this epiphany has run with me to this very day. This truth remains and pushes me onward. The transforming outcome of this epiphany is I’m committed to giving away what I cannot keep to gain what I cannot lose; to give away the material is to gain the spiritual. To accept loss is to gain our soul.
The second epiphany involved discovering the value of an 18-month self-directed daily focused study—of the biblical book of Proverbs.
The least likely time to become clinically depressed, immediately after I had married again, I slid into an unprecedented darkness I simply had no answer for. I was approaching 40, newly married and trying to work that out (a horrid season for my new wife and I), wondering what I had ever achieved in my life—a midlife crisis if you like—and suddenly my confidence dipped to an all-time low. I had no idea how to extract myself. I got onto antidepressants, for they’d worked for me four years previously, and slowly I righted the spiral and headed it north. The thing that was central to that process was the new found vigour I was given for studying the biblical Proverbs. The more I nourished my mind with these pithy sayings, the more my heart was healed. I was ultimately given material for an eBook that was published in 2011. Once I had this epiphany, days after my 40th birthday, the dread of my depression was cleansed with God’s purpose. My confidence returned. I had the answer. The transforming outcome of this epiphany is the practice that started—writing devotionally for publishing—continues to this day… 12 years and 8,000 online articles later.
The third epiphany I call ‘learning the value of men in my life’ epiphany
This epiphany arrived on an evening in July 2012. I had been referred to a secular sociological book, Iron John: A Book about Men by Robert Bly (1990), and having read it, I heard God’s Spirit usher something uncomfortable into my soul! But the trepidation I experienced when I came to admit I was scared of getting close to other men was cleansed with purpose within thirty minutes, for now I had the answer. God had been pursuing me gently for years. I was one of these men who ‘didn’t need men in my life,’ and what I learned convinced me I could never be a good pastor until I overcame my disinterest in what I thought was the superficiality of men. I’ve since learned there are so many men ready to go deep in a spiritual way! And the irony of this epiphany is that it was a secular university post-graduate course, a secular lecturer, a secular psychoanalyst, and a secular book that God used to get me back onto God’s agenda. I am so glad of the fears I had that were exposed through my counselling training; also, through a brave female faculty member who had no qualms in telling me straight what I needed to do to be any good; to her suggestion that I embark on a course of psychoanalysis therapy sessions. Eight sessions later and I was prescribed a medicine; the epiphany lay within its pages—I was a fearful man and the key to me overcoming my fear lay in investing myself in other men’s lives. The transforming outcome of this epiphany is I’ve continued to involve myself deeply in many men’s lives, and practice never saying no when opportunities come.
The fourth epiphany I had was ‘the entitlement cure’ epiphany. (Credit to Dr John Townsend’s book, The Entitlement Cure.) 
I’m not narcissistic by nature, but I definitely had a grief-and-abuse-laden season that left me at my absolute weakest spiritually, susceptible to responses of pride, because I was in environments that for me became caustic. Within a week of our world falling apart again in late February 2016, I had the epiphany—March 2, at about 7.30pm, in a sleepy south-west town on the beachfront. I was reading a book about ‘pocket entitlement’ (those areas in all our lives we feel entitled about) and it hit me like a ton of bricks. What were the things I could finish the sentence “I deserve…” with? God put his finger on three of them. I deserved respect. I deserved understanding. I deserved recognition. Oh, what a humbling moment! I sought my wife’s feedback. All she said was, “I think there’s something in that for you.” Ouch! But my dread was cleansed with purpose within thirty minutes, for at least I had the answer. I learned to despise the phrase “I deserve,” preferring instead to acknowledge that whilst I had needs (like all of us do), I could never demand my needs be met exactly how I demanded them to be met. The rest of that year I spent repenting of this. Indeed, the outcome of this epiphany was there were many important conversations with the appropriate people as I owned what threatened to hold me at distance from spiritual freedom. I also made a lifetime commitment to keep the knowledge of my pocket entitlement at the forefront of my mind.
The fifth epiphany, what and when will it be? It’s due in the next year or two. All this reminds me that I’m not there yet. And that’s okay. None of us arrive… until we do… when we pass from this life into the next.

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Prayer for the safety and the saving of the Broken-hearted

Father,
There comes a time in all our lives when we seek for others to have what we have tasted, and that time has come for me. I sure know that hurt people hurt people, so too do healed people heal people. I am so thankful for the healed persons that worked on me, so today I can be a healed person who works on others. And all this work is done through your Spirit, whether we give you credit and thanks or not. YOU are the Great Healer!
My prayer is for the safety of those who are hurting just now; the one who is reading this who is broken-hearted and overwhelmed by betrayal and grief. This person’s dilemma starts at confusion and has no obvious end. They exist and yet they don’t know why. Father, you know that I have been there, so my prayer is that that person will hold on and won’t give up even though there are dozens of times when they will be tempted to. I pray by your Holy Spirit that you impel such a person forward by a hope they cannot explain but just must believe in. So, my prayer is the safety, that this person will be kept alive and saved from physical death. Provide a powerful word into the forefront of their minds when they are tempted to end their life. Give them another alternative when they are tempted to self-harm. And I also pray that they won’t become prey to spiritual abuse at any time. Make it so that they would never be judged for behaving inappropriately when they are so vulnerable that inappropriate behaviour would be expected. Stop the words from the mouths of hurtful ministers. And give empathy into the mind and heart of would-be helpers.
For the one who is calling to you, answer them, Lord, by a powerful sign that they know can only be YOU. Make it that they cannot help knowing you are the true and living God. Give them a salvation experience whether they’re ‘saved’ already or not. Take them deeper into the journey of the grace and of the provision and of the knowledge of you. Indwell them with a hope beyond any semblance of despair, to know that if they cannot be conquered in this heart-break, they cannot be conquered, period. Make it so that this thing that is supposed to completely demoralise them actually becomes the impetus for their purpose now and forevermore. Give them a taste of the phoenix that always rises from the ashes; better still, the risen Lord Jesus having suffered on that nailed cross. Most of all, give them a human voice that speaks to them as God speaks. Give them such an indelible hope as if to say, “I will live to fight another day!”
Blessed be YOUR name, God, for all power and all glory and all blessing are YOURS.
In Jesus’ name, AMEN.

Photo by Amaury Gutierrez on Unsplash

Thursday, July 4, 2019

We never speak louder than when we remain silent on abuse

A revolution is coming. A resistance is being mounted. A reformation is on its way. And it will fly in on the wings of empathy, as the world—sick of accepting abuse from authoritarian institutions—schools the church. Many of us in the church eagerly await the arrival of this day! And yet, still too many cannot see the need for it. Sigh.
As the old saying goes, “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.” And it is ironic that it’s usually women’s voices that must finally speak up, when all the men, often very good men, have remained silent for too long. I concede that I too have been a ‘good man’ who has too often stayed silent. Lord, give me courage.
~
Let me tell you a story. I can remember sitting in a meeting with another man, a Christian leader, a good man at that, but the only trouble was he was following a narrative. He was going with the institutional flow. Everybody was at that time. Not that any of his challenges did me any harm; God worked for my good and for his purposes. But it was an uncomfortable and an unjust 90 minutes. There is no question that spiritual abuse occurred in this meeting. I came away under no false apprehension, knowing and accepting where I stood, but the confusion, guilt and shame were telling—and these feelings lingered for days and into the weeks.
This is why spiritual abuse is so subtle. Here I was telling myself that my confusion, my guilt, and my shame were caused by my sin. That’s been the narrative against survivors of abuse—they are the ones who have sinned, or they have an ‘identity’ problem, i.e. it is their weakness! No; they’re just feeling the burden of a sin done to them, with no way out of the lonely condemnation they feel. I did the best I could in this season, but it wasn’t good enough that everyone remained silent and stuck with the groupthink.
It’s only years afterwards that we even recognise how much harm is done in one meeting where a person who’s been on the receiving end of abuse is further abused by a pastor believing a narrative who then admonishes the one who was abused. Spiritual abuse without even knowing it. Spiritual abuse for my own good. Sorry, I’m not buying it. There is a big difference between correction that motivates better performance and correction that shames.
I am so thankful that, even though these were the worst days of my life, I had already survived about the worst grief the common human experience could provide, twelve years previously. Grief has been a most valuable training ground in preparation for spiritual abuse.
I’m so thankful that I had the support of an excellent psychologist at the time. This therapist framed reality for me. Yes, reality. This person heard my excusing of others, saw my heart, took me at my word, and told me how it was. Profoundly simple, but tellingly necessary.
The way I am geared, and the way many survivors of abuse are also geared, is we think it’s our fault. And we stay in that lane. “It must have been me; that’s what I’m being told.” Somehow in this, the community around us believes what we are believing, and little support is given, and we suffer alone. And there is no care in that. Only more confusion, guilt and shame. And so perpetuates the cycle.
The confusion, and the guilt, and the shame should be an important cue.
The narcissist never truly allows themselves to feel these things; they project these things onto others. And it is significantly worse when good people, people who are not narcissistic, begin to believe a narrative that is just wrong; a narrative that is spun by the narcissist. It is easier to go with the flow, there are less feathers ruffled that way, because good people want to be good people.
But such good people are not often good defenders of those in weak situations.
Here are some hints on what to look for when we encounter someone who is suffering. We must remember that the narcissist never suffers, though they may feign suffering. Being master manipulators, they will hoodwink just about everybody.
But if someone is genuinely suffering constantly, we can believe that person. They’re probably not putting it on. There is a way we can tell whether a person is putting on suffering for a show. You cannot give someone who is suffering what they want, because their problems can’t be fixed that way
In other words, there is a certainty to the suffering. Genuine suffering, like grief and trauma, cannot easily be alleviated. If ever you are the source of alleviating someone’s suffering, i.e. that alleviation depends on you alone, it may be manipulation and not suffering in that person that you’re dealing with. (You have to be careful though, because if someone receives genuine care, it can alleviate suffering in that moment.) The polarising exception to this is in the reverse—someone who is surviving abuse cannot change the one crucial factor, the behaviour of their abuser, and this is both tantalising and agonising. But for one factor—the stopping of the abuse—life could be significantly better, even sustainable. But the pattern narcissistic abuser never changes.
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My dilemma has so often been, do I protect the people who have done abusive things to me or do I expose these experiences? It’s taken me a long while to realise that it’s not about protecting people who do the abuse. It’s about doing all I can to stop the abuse now! (Even if I don’t have a lot of impact.) That’s what God wants. God’s not after protecting egos. God’s after the protection of the vulnerable, and of people who find themselves in vulnerable situations. The effect of vulnerability is humility, and God’s heart is close to the humble. That’s God’s prerogative.
If we do the wrong thing, we do the wrong thing. We repent. It’s simple. But abusers don’t play by those rules. They defy God.

Photo by Jessica F on Unsplash

Monday, July 1, 2019

The practicalities of love after divorce

It’s an enduring image to me: my wife sitting with my ex-wife, both of them wearing the same colour blue dress, both smiling and chatting, swapping notes about me. It was about ten years ago. If there are two people who know me well, it is these two people. (They weren’t swapping stories about how brilliant a husband I am, and that was fine with me.)
I have been married again now about the same amount of time as the first marriage lasted. I have been divorced from my first wife longer than we were married, and that was a significant 13-year period. So much water has passed under the bridge—a 30-year journey.
When my first marriage dissolved overnight, though it was not an overnight process for my ex-wife (because it had taken her much longer to decide), I was in unforeseen territory. I didn’t see it coming, and I never imagined myself divorced. It was just never happening to me, until it did!
The initial few months were terrible for us all, as I struggled to make the adjustments. It was the worst pit of grief I have ever experienced. But somehow, in renewing my faith in God, and through many AA meetings and the guidance of sponsors and my parents and others, I quickly came to terms with the fact I needed to forgive my ex-wife. That was easy, in fact, as I considered my contribution to the marriage failure. There was much that I had to change. And change I did.
The mediator helping us separate must’ve thought it was the easiest mediation she had ever done. We used just two sessions to decide everything, and the spirit within the mediation process was one of cooperation, and it kind of symbolises our working operation as we have sought to parent our three daughters as friends, trusting each other and giving grace to one another. Our daughters were 11, 8 and 5 at the time we separated.
It hasn’t always been easy. There have been times when we have disagreed. When we were at loggerheads, I would tend to just give some space and try not to say anything to make it worse—to get out of the way. (I definitely have the capacity to make things worse with what I say.) But there has been a constant thread of mutual respect between us. For our daughters
We are so different, but we still share a laugh, and can even poke fun at ourselves for features in our marriage together from 1990-2003 and beyond. When we were married, my ex-wife probably didn’t feel she had the voice she has with me now, and I’m both sorry for that (that she didn’t have it then) and happy for it too (that she has it now). Somehow, I always felt compelled by God to really want the very best for my ex-wife—even that she would receive a love that I was never able to give her.
I say with genuine gratitude, that at the hardest time of my life, when work was seriously hard to come by in 2016, my ex-wife reached out and gave me a job delivering chilled meals for the catering business run by her and her husband, a skilled chef. To be honest, it wasn’t my first-choice work; it was hard, and it stretched me in ways I truly disliked, and it was stressful. But never was there a time in 10 months working for them where we even came close to conflict. It always felt as if they were reaching toward me and I was reaching toward them. There were numerous times I made mistakes, yet my ex-wife and her husband always dealt with me compassionately. And God taught me a lot in that job!
We have had all of our daughters’ 18th and 21st birthdays, and other significant events, at their place and at other places, and always the whole family is invited and welcome, and being caterers we’re all so very well fed! These are big gatherings, with step parents and step grandparents and stepsiblings everywhere. Not everyone has gotten on all the time, but at these events there is always a genuine mood of appreciation and celebration, where we call to mind positive memories and funny anecdotes.
Along the way, my ex-wife and I found our niches in providing for our girls. We both were able to provide different things and were never threatened that the other was giving something we wanted to give. I think we were just grateful that we had different ways of giving, and that we gave different things; that we gave what we could when we could.
To My Wife
My wife helps me live as the husband I desire to be; the husband I need to be. She and I are both keenly aware of who I am, including my faults. We both know what we cannot allow me to get away with. Let’s just say that the spirit and skill of prompt and sincere apology is truly respected in our household. I would not be as capable a husband, and of course I’m still not perfect, without my wife. My wife deserves the full accompaniment of credit for her half and more in our marriage. She does not goad me nor will she be goaded. Besides, my wife was always prepared to not only be my wife, but to be a step-mother to my three daughters. And to succeed in that endeavour demands humility.
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This is an article I’ve wanted to write for years. Now, as we’ve all eventually become grandparents, all four of us truly appreciate each other in this bigger than normal functional family with its normal dysfunctions.
There are practicalities for love after divorce, not least for the children, but for all concerned. What we didn’t get right in marriage, we have a second opportunity at in divorce.
I am so grateful for the relationship I have with my ex-wife and her husband. The spirit of cooperation between us over the years is inspiring to me. Our relationship is proof that good outcomes are possible when people who have disagreed in the past start to work together.