Those who expect too much won’t understand explanations

It’s perhaps something we are destined to need to learn again and again and again.  The very people who expect too much of us will never understand our explanations.  The opposite irony is also apparent: those who never expect too much always seem to understand without needing to be told.

The problem we have is we feel that we need to justify ourselves when we cannot give what another person expects us to give; when they demand we give them something we’re not prepared to give.

Needing to justify ourselves can be a gnawing feeling.  Needing to be understood.  We can feel as if we need to convince the other person.  And if only the other person was capable of understanding they wouldn’t expect too much in the first instance.

Most people, and especially highly sensitive people (HSPs), loath being misunderstood.  Thankfully we live in an era where the term highly sensitive person doesn’t carry the stigma it once did.  The fact is sensitive people make this earth a kinder place to live.

Inevitably one of the parts of growing up is not so much getting over our hurt when we are misunderstood, it’s actually the opposite, and that is to learn that some explanations are never required.

The scenario we’re looking at here is relationships where we don’t have a contractual obligation to provide explanations, because in certain situations in life we are required to explain ourselves.  Where we’re not, it’s important that we manage people’s expectations well.

The person who has unfair expectations, who has demands on our time, space, energy, etc, will never bend one inch toward us in understanding or in seeking to understand.  Their prerogative is themselves.  And we can never change that about them.  The first step in amending these situations is accepting we cannot change the other person.  It is madness to think otherwise.

When we stop explaining ourselves, we wrest back control that we give away to the other who will not understand.  But when we seek to justify ourselves, we offer them a level of control that we ought not to give up to those who have proven they don’t hold that power well.

There are nuances in this of course, but ordinarily anyone who places demands on us that we consider to be extraneous or unfair, beyond whatever reasonable contract we have with them (if there is any such contract), where expectations are unreasonable, that person proves they’re untrustworthy of that level of intimacy we would like to give them.

When I talk about intimacy, I am obviously not talking about romanticism, I’m simply talking about a functional trusting relationship.  When I talk about intimacy, I’m also saying that those we’re intimate with we’ll offer explanations to.  Those who don’t or won’t understand prove by their lack of understanding that they’re unworthy of the intimacy we’d bestow on them.

The best thing about sensitive people is their care for others, all others.

Sensitive people find it distressing that they’re best withholding a portion of their love and care from certain others.  It can take them a long time and many errors of others’ unkindness to learn.  Sensitive people want to be free to love people unconditionally and without thought.

The sad thing about life is many relationships don’t offer this safety of loving people how we would like to love them.

It is best for the world — not always for the self, however — to be sensitive.  But not everyone else is sensitive, and even sensitive people can feel ‘missed’ by others, which can lead to demands and expectations that cannot be met.

The best position for any person to be in is a position of not needing anything from anyone.  That’s the healthiest position from which to offer what we have to our world, purely from a giving space.  But obviously there are limits to what we can give.

Where we give explanations to people who won’t be satisfied and which may even reinforce their perception of us, we stand to feel even more misunderstood.

The motive in trying to explain our situation is around endeavouring to be understood, or it can be because we’re fawning (in feeling coerced, trying to simply please someone), but our motive needs to be of not needing anything from anyone.

And certainly not feeling like we need to explain everything to everyone.  What a gift it is to ourselves and often times others we care about when we resist the anxious urge to justify how we think and feel, as if these realities are important to someone who may either not care or may wish to use it against us.

Being Christian, is Jesus living through you?

I’ve written on this a lot, but I have a feeling there will be something new to emerge out of the piece, purely because what I speak of is an incarnational phenomenon — as we LIVE this concept of material defeat in our own lives, welcoming loss as the apostle Paul did, we find but a glimpse of the eternal life that is eternally on offer to anyone experiencing such loss.

An important caveat: I’m not talking about the loss of a human being.  That loss is often different.  Unless the loss of that person has given us additional purpose and power.

The losses I discuss here are the material losses we experience, whether we caused them or not.  The idea is that if loss cannot crush our hope, nothing can.  And realistically, we don’t possess anything in the pure sense in this life anyway.  Like with Monopoly, all the pieces — the cards, the cash, the credit cards, the houses, the hotels — they all go back in the box at the end of the game.  Add to this, we, our lives I mean, are blades of grass.

Paul’s boast wasn’t in anything this world values.  His boast was in something the world can never impact.  It was beyond “messengers of Satan,” and every temptation to pride and foolish self-sufficiency, to all manner of spiritual attack, knowing we wage war beyond physical realms.

Everything the world and our pride entices us with are all puffs of smoke.

The Christian life is the victorious life precisely because it isn’t.
Not the worldly kind of victory, that is.  Worldly victory is self-defeating.

When we lay no claim on anything that can be taken from us, life is ALL upside.  Suddenly from this position we’re owned by nothing and nobody and WE become an enticing proposition.

Think about possessing a spirituality that covets nothing, that lives for the simplest ideals, that endures hardship just the same as experiencing triumph — Rudyard Kipling was right in his poem, If.  Triumph and disaster are both imposters.

Is this life an easy life to claim?  Not for one moment would I ever say that, but what I can say is that’s the life that we’re invited by God into.  It’s the Jesus life.  It’s the way he lived.  He could be bought with no price — he was sold out to God alone in a humility of praise and gratitude.  HE is our ideal to follow.

Suffering anything is a blessing to the degree that we experience loss that opens the door to spiritual possessions available only as material possessions are foregone.

The Bible talks about suffering incessantly, yet it’s not a ‘popular gospel’ in our privileged age.  We henceforth have foregone acquisition of the hidden spiritual blessings that could be ours if only we embraced life humbly, accepting loss as opportunity.

Imagine the audacity of Paul saying he “delighted in weaknesses,” speaking to a clueless church at Corinth who undermined him.  The value of such theology was lost on the majority of them, just like the majority in our day are more interested in the trinkets of current affairs and issues to be lobbied for.

The Christian life is nothing when it’s operationalised in worldly ways, as if we can argue a sensible logos.  What compels the world to sit up and pay attention is when they see the Incarnation working in and through us.  That is, to live like Paul stated he did.

Our motive?  “... for Christ’s sake” Paul delighted in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, difficulties.  That’s a challenge to each of us in 2022, isn’t it?

What is it that our lives are saying to us in living more of this truth?  How much more joy is accessible to us when we demand nothing of our lives be changed right now?  What premium for peace that can come no other way?  A peace that always accepts everything as good.  What about hope?  In these environs, hope thrives, and despair is history.

This ‘gospel’ is superior to any other ‘gospel’ because it’s the true gospel of him who “made himself nothing.”  It’s a gospel that’s a safe gospel wherever there is power, and just think of how prevalent power in the church is in this world and throughout history.

Power has corrupted the church because the church hasn’t lived its own gospel.

But the prize of faith is simple if only we can reject everything that presents itself as a counterfeit joy, peace, and hope.

We must come down to the power of the gospel to transform our OWN lives or we simply carry a false gospel into the world.  Too many winsome speakers swoon people with words and hype and glitz but none of it is transferrable for anything other than a feeling that promises much yet delivers little.

The beauty of the real and true gospel is embodied in the disciple, living incarnationally, which is Christ through them, who can live as Paul lived, “content in any and every situation.”  That’s a state of living that is not cajoled with or by power, a state of life that demands nothing, a personhood that is threatened by nobody, and no threat to anyone.

God does not “hate” divorce, but allows for it when a partner is unfaithful

First, before I go any further, let’s get the topic of “unfaithfulness” out of the way.  It’s not just about sexual infidelity, but that is a clear example of unfaithfulness.  What about abuse?  Can you see how that’s unfaithfulness to the covenant of marriage?  Abuse is a prime example of unfaithfulness.

God allows for divorce.  That’s biblical.  It goes way back to Moses.  And the context Jesus speaks about when it comes to divorce is he’s speaking to the MEN.  He’s talking to a culture where men frivolously disposed of their wives, and Jesus warns these men that the only way they have grounds to divorce their wives is through her “sexual immorality.”  (Matthew 19:9)

Unfortunately, the church especially has made a lot of women (and men) feel inferior for divorcing for the right reasons — where Jesus would have released them long ago.

Staying in abusive marriages is a travesty, it’s not God’s design.  Staying in an abusive marriage is putting up with unfaithfulness because partners promised to treat each other better than that.  The abusive partner is unfaithful, just a different variety of unfaithfulness than sexual infidelity.

God does not “hate” divorce (God “divorced” unfaithful Israel in Jeremiah 3:8), and it’s one of the best things to happen to Bible interpretation in the past 10 years that Malachi 2:16 has been corrected.  I won’t go into it here because it’s so well covered, you’d find good articles in a simple internet search.

God gives the remedy of divorce for the person — let’s say, in 30 percent of cases — that’s being abused.  That’s right.  God made a way for those who are suffering in their marriages to live in freedom where their own sense of faithfulness might be honoured in a different arrangement, either as singles or in another marriage where they might be respected and loved.

That’s the heart of God.  The heart of God is behind the heart of divorce.

The person who brings their devotion to others in humility — who is entirely prepared for the covenant of marriage — who gives their gift in the fullness of unconditional love — yet is trampled, has the right of being coupled with someone they’d be equally yoked with.

Gentle, safe, gracious, patient, kind people are to be with people who are gentle, safe, gracious, patient, and kind.  Marriage is meant to be an institution whereby partners give and receive in reciprocal fashion, so they are equally yoked.  Those who take responsibility for their own behaviours, for instance, ought to be blessed to be partnered with a partner of equal capacity for taking responsibility for their behaviours.

God does not hate divorce but allows for it in situations where a person finds they married someone who is nothing like they promised to be.  That’s the heart of Jesus’ teaching.  It’s biblical.

It’s about time we, as Christians, turned our judging minds back in and upon ourselves when we judge a divorced person for what might be prejudged as moral weakness when their capacity to “walk” is actually more of a strength in honouring God to the extent that their partner needed to experience the consequences of their unfaithfulness.

Is divorce the best outcome for a marriage?  Clearly no.  But justice is important to God.  For those who would flout their promises, especially those curating an image as a “good” marriage partner and aren’t, there’s no justice in their partner suffering continual injustice.

It’s better for a faithful one to be freed of the burden of unfaithfulness than to endure what is a continual injustice.

Learn from marriage failure, or repeat the pain and trauma

One of the key things I’ve had the privilege of reflecting on in the past 19 years, and particularly in the three years before I met Sarah, was, what had I learnt and what was I learning in order to not repeat the same mistakes I made in my first marriage.

It’s true, the failure of that marriage wasn’t all down to me, but I can only do what I can do, and like all of us we have the responsibility to manage what we can, to heal the hurts we have, to develop more empathy, to amend harmful patterns of behaviour, to prepare for the next relationship, so there will be less dysfunction.

Across the board, 50 percent of marriages fail, and that’s a pretty depressing statistic.  It beckons to us the reality that we must take with all seriousness in preparing for marriage and managing our marriage relationship, so we don’t end up harming our spouse or being harmed.

The key learning areas, the way I see it, 
surround the key character traits of humility and courage.

Humility in the first regard, to understand our own contributions toward conflict and communication and other areas where marriages can fail.  This is the capacity for self-reflection, and the capacity for facing uncomfortable truths.  Humility to change.

But it’s also courage that’s needed in the second regard.  Courage to be able to challenge dysfunctional dynamics in past and present relationships, to learn from the red flags, to ensure those wrongs are not repeated, especially when it’s others who exact these wrongs against us.  In some cases, it’s learning to say no, it’s standing up more often, it’s speaking the truth in love.

Our present and future relationships can fail one of two ways.  First, it’s our lack of humility, but secondly it maybe a lack of courage in challenging dynamics early enough, to give our partner a chance they need to face any unsavoury or even abusive dynamics.  Just like we must face these too.  Or the propensity for either them or us to absorb too much of the pain.

Let’s assume for the present argument that we have humility stowed, that we can self-reflect, that it’s typical that you see your own contributions to the dysfunctions within marriage.  That’s all you can bring, and it’s necessary to bring it, but our partner also needs to bring this to the marriage.

Perhaps we’re in situations where we tried to get through to our marriage partners, and so far, we feel like we have failed, or their lack of attention is their refusal to face the truth we have been brought to them.  Either they have refused to listen, or they do not care.  They have refused to reflect and take account of what is within their control to change.

All we’re asking is that together, as an entity unified as a family, as individuals to the covenant of marriage, that we might individually look at any areas of marriage failure and simply take personal responsibility enough to offer the marriage hope.

All marriages that hope to survive the perils of ambivalence and destruction need to be able to negotiate the obvious hazards that come against any family unit.  It takes two strong hearts, both committed to doing their own work, to own their own deficiencies, to do whatever recovery work they personally need to do.

Learning from marriage failure needs to be the objective of every person who seeks to wed again.  If these lessons aren’t learned, the cycle of pain continues once the honeymoon period ebbs quickly away.  When consciousness for the red flags suddenly becomes apparent.

As we prepare for courtship, we need to ask ourselves the tougher question, “Have I corrected what I need to correct to ensure I’m a safe and enjoyable partner?” and just as much we need to ask the question of our prospective partner — before we commit to them — “have you corrected what you needed to correct to ensure you’re a safe and enjoyable partner for me?”

The pain of not entering where angels would fear to tread is a better pain than committing to a relationship that will only inflict destruction upon more lives than the two involved.

Most important for any of us who have been to marriage failure, is work hard at being honest, because there’s a lot to work on before we’re ready for the next relationship.

Nobody warns you; nothing can warn you, but it’s a short life

“In the blink of an eye,” sounds like a cliché, doesn’t it?  Having been on the other side of critical incidents for a lot of my career, it was a bizarre thing to be involved in one yesterday.  In safety terms, we often say, “In slightly different circumstances, it could have been catastrophic.”

Here’s the context, my Facebook status yesterday early evening:

“Feeling very fortunate to be safe, healthy, and alive tonight, after being hit on my left by a rogue vehicle travelling at over 100kph on Roe Highway at Midday. In a split second, I saw him in my left-hand mirror and next thing I was rubbing along the wire rope barrier off the road which helped me stop on four wheels. He hit me because he tried to fit between me and the truck next to me. Absolute craziness. Later the driver said he was escaping a road rage incident where the other driver pointed a gun at him. The driver who hit me is unlicensed. He had hit a truck before me. And a number of drivers stopped and stated he’d been erratic for several kms. Witnesses later said they feared I would roll, and for a moment I was on two wheels. Neither I nor the guy driving the missile sustained any injuries. Both cars are write-offs.”

One moment I’m driving along the same highway I drive most days, back and forth 40 kilometres to work, 40 kilometres home, and the next moment, “Wallop!”  And all I saw was a car fly up behind me in the left-hand lane, and my only error, an almost fatal one, was to simply assume he would slow down and simply see there was no way through.  But even though I made this assumption, there was no time to do anything.  I was in the line of the fire of a 2-tonne missile rolling at 120kph, with an impact force of between 217–436kN.

Not for a moment did I expect that he would attempt to push a truck to his left and me to his right and make a way through a gap of just a few metres.  He hit us both hard.  At the time of impact my only thought was to minimise the damage, never imagining the amount of damage the impact made.

When people are reckless on the roads, they are not usually suicidal, and those who are don’t implicate others typically.  This guy drove like he had a death wish.  The fact is there are dangerous people on our roads more often than we even realise.  Those of us who are simply happy to live our lives and contribute to our loved ones’ lives, notwithstanding the stresses and anxieties we may carry, drive as sensibly as we can.  Yet there are plenty of drivers high on drugs and smashed on alcoholic beverages, or unlicenced, who have little or no regard for the lives of those who drive on the roads as if tomorrow will always come.

The crazy thing about the whole experience for me, is that I’m only now picking up the fragments of my memory of what occurred, and there are still some pieces I’m yet to find.  But as I recounted the event with a younger friend who called to found out what happened, bits and pieces are coming back, and the fuller magnitude of the forces involved and the potential is beginning to hit home.

The sheer shock of the impact is only now able to be recounted; it was far too quick at the time.  As my tyres bit into the road after impact, I got a little swerve up, but my trajectory was still pretty much forward.  I was hit midships.  Had that driver hit me more in the rear end, my car would have spun and rolled.  The fact that all four tyres were still pressurised, and that the car still rolled on its wheels.  It could have been far, far worse, for both myself, the other driver, and for those behind us both.

I mean, I like to think that it was my skill that got me out of the scrape, but ego aside, I was so very fortunate I was hit where I was.

As I recount being in an out-of-control vehicle at 100kph, being on two wheels, leaving the road surface for dirt, I cannot believe that there were seemingly no forces on me.  I felt like I was in a bubble.  Divine intervention?  That theory only really runs if we are prepared to accept that it’s divine intervention when someone perishes.  And of course, that’s unconscionable.  But I do praise God for having survived what could easily have been my demise.

It's funny the thoughts that occupy your mind the moment after when you’re involved in the near fatal crash.  “What did I do wrong,” “could it have been my fault,” “Oh no, look at the damage,” “I’m in trouble now!” and of course all of this is the mind confused for context in search of perspective.

Seconds before the incident occurred there was no thought in my mind of my possible imminent demise.  None of us think like this.  Only occasionally does it dawn on us how fleeting life is because nobody warns you and nothing warns you, but life is short.

From the context of a sudden death that is eminently possible, life is desperately short.  And it’s not just us, but it’s those of us who have lost someone tragically who we feel for.  Nobody and nothing prepares us for that moment when our lives change in the blink of an eye.

As someone said, “Hug your loved ones a little tighter tonight,” and it’s so true.  Make the most of every precious though seemingly banal moment.  We never know when they’ll be all gone!

We never regret a thing until it’s too late to do what can no longer be done.

Those jarring moments, Mum’s really gone

There’s something about the lawn that must bring on these thoughts.  Thoughts of how Mum was here, and now for so long she’s been gone.  She was here so long, like all my life, and yet it feels so new still that she’s no longer here — it’s been seven weeks tomorrow.

It seems so weird that we, that is Mum and I, talked so often about when she would be gone.  We must’ve talked about it almost weekly for the last few years.  She was so comfortable talking about it.  And those conversations only feel like they were yesterday.

And yet, Mum’s been gone for nearly 50 days now!  And in some ways, it seems like a lot longer than that.  Time amid the grief cycle confuses things.  Time is so mathematical and yet perception shifts inordinately.

I think for many of us in the family, our grief seems to have taken on different dimensions even in the last week or two.  In some ways we may be getting more used to not having Mum around.  Yet in polar opposite terms, we may also miss her more than ever, because we know she isn’t coming back.

For someone like Mum, anyone who knew her really knew her.  She was such an accessible person.  This is why it doesn’t seem quite real that she’s no longer alive.  It seems more unfair when certain people perish.  Mum was one of those people, and forgive any bias, because she just was.

Mum giving her eldest grandchild, Amy, a ride c. 1993.

Mum was so full of life for others, she always seemed like a heavenly presence of peace in everyone’s life she shared.  Her and Dad were like a pigeon-pair.  Kindness and joy in Mum, gentleness and humility in Dad.

So there are those moments where it hardly seems real that Mum is gone, but she’s been gone for long enough that these moments of disconcerting perception really jar, but not in a painful way, far from it.  I have such peace that Mum fought the good fight, she ran a great race, she kept the faith.

I suppose all this is to be expected when you have a person in your life for 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 years (as is the case for Dad).  Such a loss leaves you wondering about the wisdom in the saying, “The days are long, but the years are short.”

I think I’m thankful for these little wake up calls.  They remind me of Mum’s memory and that’s all that matters.  Such a wonderful person, mother, wife, and friend deserves to be remembered.

I think the other thing that needs to be said is that even though we talked about her death, I don’t think I really fully realised Mum would die, strange as that even sounds.  Life cannot prepare us for loss.  That’s what seems most unfair about it — it’s the grief that’s a non-negotiable part of it.

It’s little wonder that people sink into depression when they suffer loss.  There’s an inextricable non-optional component to it that makes it the harshest reality.  And yet, grief and loss are the ways that life grows us up.  It expands our perspective.  Three other people I know well, all around my age, lost a parent immediately before I did, and it really didn’t register with me in the way it does now.  Now, only now, do I really “get” each of these people.

These are just a mishmash of thoughts.  I like thinking about Mum.  Like with Nathanael, I find it doesn’t hurt, and isn’t painful, to talk about them.  I think it’s healing to remember.

19 years today, a mother’s private moment of overwhelming grief

In this article I’m not talking about periods of grief, I’m more talking about moments of overwhelming grief within the grief process, and part of this is triggered by the 19th anniversary of one of the most terrible days suffered by my parents and I.

Being that it is October 9, it had been a hellish week for me since October 4 (2003), I was two weeks into separation from my now ex-wife, had only just learned that she was in another relationship, and this particular day Dad was undergoing major knee surgery that would end up keeping him immobile for six months, completely dependent on others, especially Mum.  Looking back it was the just about the worst time imaginable.

Mum and Dad were worried sick my welfare, and I was suicidal for at least part of this timeframe.  Dad crumbled in Mum’s arms after he had the pre-med injection prior to the surgery, and he wept bitterly because he was so sorrowful for the end of the marriage and morbidly fearful for my wellbeing.  Mum held it together for Dad, just as she’d held it together for me when we spoke briefly on the balcony while the nurses attended Dad.

Once Dad was off to surgery, Mum went to the motel unit the hospital had provided and grieved the sorry situation of our lives for several hours alone.

She wept bitterly there for that three-hour period because it was all too much.

As a mother and grandmother in a situation where part of her family was disintegrating, she had borne too much stress and strain, and yet, like a lot of parents and grandparents, she held it together until she was alone and could grieve privately, without anyone worrying about her.

I know that for Mum this wasn’t the only moment of intense agonising grief she had, she had many of them, but it never affected her resilience for her husband, her children, and grandchildren, etc.

I know there are many occasions where fathers and others will face the same moments, but I thought it was poignant in this situation what that day was like for my mother 19 years ago today.

The fact that she absorbed so much over the years — and the fact that perhaps you do in your role, too — is testament to the role of carers within families, where there is only one role for such a person, and that is to be there for their family, and do what must be done.

Mum is quoted as saying, “No one, and certainly not #####, sees the impact this all has on us as parents and grandparents.  We tend to hide our emotions to enable us to be supportive.”  Dad only crumbled in her arms as he did because there was nobody else around.  Parents and grandparents often suffer in silence.

I know this horrible period of life for my parents (September 2003 to mid-2006) brought so much pressure, stress, anguish, and change.  And that’s what comes into a lot of our lives with the least warning.

I just find it sad in a way that Mum had to grieve alone, but it also makes me proud that she had the strength to hold it together for me and others in my family at this time and at other times.

Better to fawn than to fracture

Fawning gets a lot of bad press, but have you ever thought of its redemptive qualities?  Essentially fawning generally depends on two things.  It’s a trauma response out of relationships that we depend on for provision BUT that are ALSO a threat.

In essence,
THE PERSON WE DEPEND ON FOR SAFETY
IS UNSAFE

These relationships leave a person in a position of ONLY being able to please or appease the person they’re dependent on, because if these people aren’t pleased and appeased, they remove their love by removing what they’re providing.  It’s a controlling dynamic of what’s often termed “conditional love,” which is not really love at all.  The opposite dynamic is the setting of boundaries which is an intentional conditional love resembling tough love.  There are conditions for good reasons; to ensure that the transgressions that have come to be expected in the dynamic have set and natural consequences.  Control is necessary in toxic, unsafe dynamics to protect the vulnerable — those who don’t abuse power, and especially those who don’t have such power.  But in an otherwise free situation, conditions serve only as control, and those conditions set up a situation where a person feels threatened unless or until they give over what’s demanded of them.

Many people don’t like the connotation of fawning as a “trauma response,” but the fact is these responses are conditioned in people over the years as they continue to be exposed in these dynamics.

Now to the content of the article:

It’s often better to fawn — to please and appease the one exerting power unjustly, via intention and by prior agreement with oneself — than to fracture the situation by trusting a precious truth to someone who can’t handle that truth.

Fawning by intention is a strategy where a person has agreed beforehand in a particular relational dynamic that it’s the only thing that can be safely done.

Rather than it being a trauma response, a person chooses this response knowing it’s the only option if they’re to wrest some control back from a person who insists on coercion, even if that control is self-protection.

FAWNING IS NATURALLY PROTECTIVE

Flying under the radar, fawning can resemble the grey rock method, which alerts none of an unsafe person’s instincts to threat — those who are so easily threatened and who threaten upon feeling threatened.  Fawning says to would-be aggressors, “there’s nothing to worry about here, I’m not a threat to you.”

It’s better to fawn than to fracture because it’s naturally protective to fawn.

FAWNING BUYS YOU TIME

In many social situations, we don’t know how to cope, how to respond, and this just reinforces our feelings of inadequacy and disempowerment.  So if there’s a way to deal with an impossible situation of “I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t” then we use it.  Fawning is that way.

It’s better to fawn than to fracture because it saves any potential stress for another day, and who knows, the threatening person may be dealt with in the natural course of life.  When forced with a course of action, anxiety rises, and there’s a preoccupation with the threat.  But to buy time brings back equilibrium.

FAWNING SAVES NOT JUST US BUT OTHERS TOO

Many people who fawn, doing so intentionally, do it not only for the protection of themselves, but for others too.  This is what one parent does to control a volatile situation their children are exposed to.  This is what one team member does for other team members when they’re all present with a toxic team member.  It is both a motherly and a fatherly instinct to protect one’s young.

It’s better to fawn than to fracture because along the way you see that others too are threatened and forced to adjust, and that gives you the opportunity to reach a hand of support that you would want if the situation were reversed.

Be on guard for the one who prefers to gaslight than reconcile

Isn’t it amazing what can be learned simply in connecting with people?  For a long time I’ve been fascinated by people who would prefer to gaslight individuals than reconcile with them.  Avoiding reconciling requires a heart that is happier leaving damage as it is than being an instrument of peace.

There’s a particular nuance of gaslighting that goes like this: “I didn’t attempt to reach out because they were ‘offended’ and only they can deal with that.”

Interesting when this is set in the specific context of a wrong done, where ‘the offence’ is precisely located as something done by the person in question.  This person would rather cast the person away from a healing they could help with — if only they acknowledged the wrong with contribution.  But they retain control over the relationship and prefer to keep them cast off and gaslit.

So much damage is done not in the initial wrongdoing, but in the refusal to attempt to reconcile through the simple and plain acknowledgement of one’s contribution.  In the direct refusal to “first go and be reconciled” a person shows themselves as an unsafe person; a person incapable of genuine relationship.

Such a person will inevitably have relationships of two kinds: 1) those that only last a few years before something fractures the bond two share, and 2) those where others are prepared to accommodate their lack of humility and go without their being contrite.

Where a person consistently views those they hurt as ‘the offended’, as if the other person has the weakness and can’t be reasoned with, they cast all wrong onto others, as if they never personally do anything wrong.  By character, they do not apologise.

Now, what complicates this is there are people who are too easily offended and who don’t bear the capacity for safe relationship themselves.  They are difficult and can even prove impossible to reconcile with.

Same with those we reconcile with and apply boundaries.  Reconciliation doesn’t always mean going back to how things were.

But this article is positioned in the context of a person seeing everyone hurt by them as the difficult, impossible one.  It’s too easy to cast everyone aside and refuse to go and attempt to reconcile.

The heart of what Jesus is saying in “first go and be reconciled” is relational justice and peace matter more to God than anything, more even than our sacrifices, of service, of our gifting, of our leadership, of everything else we do.

Character matters.  The biblical ‘qualifications’ of leaders don’t speak much in terms of skills.  They’re almost always a positioning of a person’s character — not what they do or can do, but WHO they are.

It’s not good enough that a person with power gaslights others by suggesting they’re too hard to reason with.  It’s a cop out, and their refusal to enter into dialogue casts the other person into a place where forgiveness is harder than it needs to be or should be.

It’s not good enough that a person says, “I’m sorry IF you feel hurt by what I did,” because the word “but” underpins their heart.  They minimise any wrongdoing they may have done, they do not learn what they could learn, and they leave the other person locked in a place where they continue being unacknowledged and misunderstood.

Those who care for their relationships will “as far as it is possible, as much as it depends on them, live at peace with others.”