Stepping back 20, 30, 40, 50 years

In a little over a week, COVID-19 lockdown permitting, we get away on a holiday that will be our first substantial holiday since our honeymoon in May 2007.  We’re going to my hometown of Karratha.  I grew up in Dampier (1969 – 1974) and Karratha (1976 – 1988) before returning to Karratha (1991 – 1996) to start a family.

My early upbringing was simple.  Dad, Mum, and my two brothers.  We lost our sister, Debra Leanne, to stillbirth in 1973.

Dad worked for the mining company, Hamersley Iron, my brothers later did apprenticeships there, and I worked there as a mechanical tradesperson in my adult years.  The work was hot and dirty, but I loved it.  So many great memories and my only regret was we never took photos back in the 1990s like we do today, so all I have is my memories.

I reminisce now because there have been significant changes for my parents negotiating the ageing process—and it’s dawned on me afresh that they won’t be around forever.

The trip north will be an emotional homecoming.  It’s 18 years since I visited the region every few months for work to do safety audits of fuel and oil distribution operations.

My life and my entire person, who I am, is completely different to that day—18 years ago.  It’s like I had my childhood, my first adulthood (1986 – 2003), and now I’m on my second adulthood.  Think of it this way.  When my daughters to my first marriage had basically grown up (21, 18, 15) we had our son.

Philosophically there’s a lot of difference between who I was and how I lived life in 2001 compared to who I am and how I live in 2021; though in essence none of us change that much.

For our trip north, we’re driving and towing a trailer we’ve fitted out for camping.  It’s been a lot of fun.  My father-in-law has helped us with the electrics, and I’ve ensured that mechanically it’s sound for the 3,000 km round trip.  We’ll be camping at one of the caravan parks I often frequented when I was a young adult in 1987-1988.

Back in those days, life revolved around getting wasted, drinking on weekends, parties, laughter, muscle cars, great music.  In so many ways, I’m thankful for all these experiences, the friendships, the laughs, the stories—it was a completely different time back then.

I’ve found since turning 50 that I no longer worry about certain things.  I’m also a lot more reflective regarding the early years of my life—actually, I’m reflective about all aspects of my past, all time periods... even those of the relatively recent past.

Going north will be a three-day trek as we camp at Geraldton, then Carnarvon, before arriving in Karratha.  I can’t wait to reacquaint with dear friends, Steve and Bec, up there.  It’s been so long since we sat and chatted and laughed.  I’m so thankful for all the stories that makes up our history together.

One of the biggest highlights, being a person of place and country, like my Aboriginal brothers and sisters, will be visiting the houses I grew up in and lived in as an adult.  I wonder if I knock on those doors whether I might be able to get myself invited to have a look around?  I’m one of those people who is prepared to risk a ‘no!’  Don’t know if you don’t ask.

Those houses in Forrest Crescent, Dampier, and Clarkson Way, Hunt Way and Walcott Way in Karratha.  Even significant friends’ houses.

There are also the gullies and streets I used to roam.  The football and cricket ovals I played at.  The schools I went to (though one has been demolished and the other is completely remodelled).  There’s the Light Industrial Area (Industrial Estate) that doesn’t look like it’s changed—I spent four years (1984 – 1987) doing my apprenticeship there.  Then there’s places like the Harding River Dam and Millstream I’d be tempted to visit, but probably won’t have time.

I’d like to get some time to walk around town—including Dampier, Wickham, Roebourne, Point Samson—especially the places that were significant.  Pegs Creek Oval, Bulgarra Oval, Windy Ridge Oval, Dampier Primary School (looks almost unchanged structurally since 1973 when I started), Karratha’s Radio Hill.

The emotional part of all this is obvious.  So many memories.  So many periods of time and places I’d just love to go back to, even for five minutes.  So many opportunities to slow down and ponder walking those streets 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.

What about you?  Where did you grow up?  Do you have a hankering to go back and revisit early childhood, adolescence, young adult years, early career, etc?

Faith’s ultimate purpose, revealed in suffering

We’ve all heard it said, “Why would a ‘good’ God allow suffering?”  The simplest answer is love—when God gave humanity free will, as an object of love (i.e., love does not force or coerce anything), God had to accept that humanity might say, “Up yours, God, we’re going our own way.”  But, despite this, God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever should believe on him would be given eternal life (John 3:16).

Besides a plethora of red herrings that would send us off on a glut of tangents, if we acknowledge that there is suffering in the world without needing to explain why, we might discuss a tangible Christian response to it.

“Why do we need a Christian response to suffering,” you might ask.  When people suffer, they inevitably look to faith to ask why, and sometimes they look up long enough to wonder if God might actually help. 

We don’t need to go far in the Bible to discover that there’s a lot of suffering in it.  In fact, people SUFFERED for their faith.  Early Christians actually chose suffering, because faith in Jesus and following him meant persecution.  Millions of Christians have DIED rather than renounce their faith.

Many people who don’t know God will ask, “Why on earth do people CHOOSE to suffer for Christ?”  It’s either idiotic or there’s something more.  When people know the character of people who earnestly seek after God, they establish that many of these people cannot be discounted as idiotic.

This launches curiosity in them.  “How can it be that a Christian might have joy amid the sorrow that suffering produces?”

The person who has experienced the presence of God has not done so on some calm and serene beach with crystal clear waters without a worry in the world.  No, the person who has encountered God has done so BECAUSE of the kind of travail typical privileged humanity has no idea about—yes, suffering of genuine anguish.

It’s in this place—where we might be kept not just for a few fleeting hours; but weeks, months, or even years, where we reached the end of our tether that much that we came to the END of our own strength—then that we entered into such a weakness that was paradoxically blessed.

Coming to the end of ourselves, if there’s still the faintest desperation of hope to reach out and up, we called out to God, “Oh Lord, if you’re there, come and help me... do something... incline your ear to me.”

In other words, “God, you have my attention.”

It’s in this VERY moment that many anguished souls have encountered God—through a sign.  “Ah, that could ONLY be God; the way that happened.”  We Christians call that a ‘God-incidence’ which is no coincidence at all.

And this is the very place where—in MEETING God—that every prayer we never prayed is answered in an instant.  “Wow, you mean that if I hadn’t suffered this right now, I would not know God?”  True.

Somehow, it’s in the midst of suffering, in meeting God, in finding a way through hell by faith, that we come to understand we’ve received an eternal compensation for the personal and private sufferings we’ve been through.

Suffering often leads us to a pathway right to the door of God’s presence.

It’s from this place—having experienced something of a victory over pain, even while we’re still in pain—to have conquered the despair through a vibrant Gospel hope, though the despair may still flicker—that you see the power of God move through your life.

Then you see the purpose of suffering:

The ultimate purpose in suffering is to reveal the glory of God.

Here’s the best way to finish this, 2 Corinthians 4:8-12 from The Message:

“You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!”

Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash

One of the biggest, most memorable, and painful weeks of our life

Do you ever think about the most pivotal, life-changing week of your life?  I’ve had more than one of these like I’m sure is true for you also.  There are so many entire weeks that prove to be turning points in our lives.  None of these types of weeks do we see coming.

One of my most pivotal weeks started seven years ago today, a Thursday.

I’d had a meeting with someone influential in my life and I’d been blindsided.  In retrospect, I’d been naïve.  I just didn’t expect information that had been gathered about me to be used against me.  I felt betrayed and devastated.  It was a moment when my life plan was immediately called into question, and I quickly regaled in crisis.  I’m sure the other person felt they were justified, but I’d acted in good faith with integrity, and I felt it had been used against me.  Such, however, is life.

But this was only the first day—a bookend with another event five days later, that between them would be prophetic in the story of the following six months of our lives.

The second day was, from memory, pretty non-descript, and as is the case with a lot of traumas, there are holes in the memory for what this day contained.  The following day (Saturday) contained a meeting with a person connected to the meeting I’d had on the Thursday; I needed to check that what I was sensing and feeling was true, because it seemed beyond the pale—it was true.

The Sunday was a blur.

So was the Monday.

And when I describe Tuesday, you’ll know why.

Tuesday July 1, 2014, changed our entire life in an instant.  It’s the kind of event that represents one of those sliding door moments in life where loss immediately shakes you away from one life and you’re shimmied into another life, completely without your consent.

I’ve written about July First a few times—mostly to make sense of an experience that still feels surreal. Moments before the maelstrom broke was one attempt, and so was When a Routine Ultrasound Makes Ultrasounds Routine No More.  And the first attempt was Remembering How Nathanael Changed Our Lives 1 Year On.  I know there are several others.

This article is not another attempt to redo that.  I’m beyond it.

But what brings me enormous comfort is the validation of a community I’ve been part of now for over a year called Safe Harbour.  It’s a global community of less than 100 people who are advocates against abuse in Christian settings—some are still very much healing, while others are very much supporting others’ healing.  Some are world leaders and world beaters.  Others are poor innocents that find themselves triggered still so very often.

Safe Harbour have honoured Sarah and I with an annual Forget Me Not event that calls awareness to loss and July 1st is the allocated day to come together as a community to remember our loved ones lost.

Back to that time, that week.  Leaving the ultrasound rooms that day with our toddler with us sent us into a spin that continued quite honestly into a four-month journey of such incredible proportions it really didn’t feel like we were living our normal lives at all.

And that four-month journey preceded our actual loss, so there were months of grieving and adjusting after, at the same time I was starting a brand-new role in a brand new community.

The main point is that the bookends of June 26 and July 1 revealed massive seismic movement in the tectonic structures of our lives—a blindsiding that started a process that ran in parallel with an entirely different devastation, the loss of our son.

Yes, not one devastation in this tortuous period but two.

BUT...

As I look back on that week, I’m thankful that I experienced it.  I’m thankful that I responded the best way I could.  I’m thankful for what I still did not know was about to occur.  I’m thankful for the support we received from those who genuinely loved us.  I’m even thankful to have experienced a complete lack of support from persons who should have supported us—because we got to see humanity in action; we’re all capable of deciding not to care.

The days and weeks of our lives are our experience.

Beyond the trauma of events that push us to and beyond the brink, there is a grace available to heal it all.  We’ve experienced that healing in terms of both devastations that we suffered at the time.  Both in some ways have been recent epiphanies.

For this, we’re thankful.

Image: poster and video of the private Forget Me Not event being run on July 1, 2021.

What you’ve got when you’ve got no idea what’s around the corner

This time 7 years ago, we had no idea what was about to hit us.  So many we talk to have had similar experiences.  It’s like the person we know who has only just gone public with his inoperable brain tumour.  The shock may wear off, but the incomprehensibility doesn’t.

Then the above question occurred to me: what did we have in those moments before Bad News Became Brokenness?

We had hope.

And yet, as it turned out, it was a false hope.  We believed for a reality that wouldn’t turn out to be ours.  In so many ways June 21, 2014, was the epitome of life, just days before life went all wrong—July 1st was the marker between one life and another; the day we learned our unborn son had a perilous condition and would ultimately die of it, full term by stillbirth.

And yet, in life going all wrong, was it really the case that life only went all wrong?

No.

In that season, we 

§     learned we had strength we didn’t previously know we had

§     saw in people a care and a concern we wouldn’t have otherwise seen

§     saw others we depended on who didn’t show up—and worse

§     met people who were previously strangers to us who’ve become lifelong friends

§     were tested beyond what we thought our limits were, and kept going (because we had to)

§     faced moments we never thought we’d have the courage for (because there was no other way)

§     saw God moving and prayers were answered as we felt carried by our faith

§     saw so many God-incidences in fact that they couldn’t have been coincidences

§     encountered God in more ways than we previously had or indeed would

§     saw doors open to us in many ways since because of the heart wrenching experiences we were only then adjusting to.

Still, it was taxing, and it was a period of our lives when our life path changed, and we didn’t get a say in it.  It happened to us.  Just like it’s happened to many of you!

What you’ve got before you receive news of loss is the blessing of a momentary reprieve you don’t even know that you’re having—so it’s due cause for gratitude and celebration when life is unstimulating or, hazard to say, even a little boring.

As I look back to that time 7 years ago, I sense an innocence of naivety, and I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to tap me on the shoulder and warn me about what was about to take place.

The mystery of life is such that none of us knows quite what’s about to come in and intrude to redefine in us what peace, hope and joy are.

Yet, we don’t want to live with that anxious uncertainly hanging over our heads.  Only when it’s real does it occur to us how different grief is compared to the ‘normal’ experience of life.

The person who reads this and says ‘Ah, yes!’ knows full well the dialogical character of life.  Life experience teaches us that there’s life, and then there’s life deeper than ever you could previously have contemplated.

One of the good things about that latter kind of life is WHO it connects you with.  There’s a knowing look in the eye, an instant empathy, a connection that comes with hardly a word spoken.

Yes, out of experiences of utter brokenness good does come.

What you’ve got when you’ve got no idea what’s around the corner is no insight of what I’ve just described.  That’s okay.

It’s a gift to gain insight of the deeper life that many are blind to, but it’s not a gift that we instantly treasure.  You only treasure it as you look back, noticing that you’re being carried, that you’re drawing on strength you do not have.

It’s surprising what we’re all capable of when we’re humble and weak.

Image: treasured family photograph taken on June 21, 2014.

Whatever you do, don’t self-sabotage

Some lessons in life you pay too much for, like they literally cost you much more than your flippant first thoughts ever anticipated.  These are at times simply a rash decision on the spur of the moment.  I’ve had at least two of those occur in the past 10 years—two too many.

But then there are the moments when you feel like giving up.  Your attitude is one of throwing in the towel, and it’s always premature, for the faith that wins out eventually is vindicated at the proper time.

But it’s understandable that we arrive at those points where we say, “It’s no use!”

We just cannot afford to act on those feelings.  We need to hold back rash action that will cast the fragments of our dreams into an oblivion beyond our worst despair.

Whatever you do, even if it feels a complete and utter waste of time, don’t self-sabotage.  Don’t throw your cards.  Keep your hand, and keep trying as long as you’ve got wind in your lungs and blood surging through your veins.

It’s often years later when we look back at the wisdom of our inaction at a time when action would have ruined what was going to take place.

Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash

Month after month on the Infertility Journey

I love speaking into the silence, and one of those silences is the crushing reality of infertility for very many people and couples who embark on having a baby and are shattered by their experiences.

It’s best to give a trigger warning at this point; what follows may distress some people.  But it’s our story.

After trying for three years without success, we embarked on our IVF journey in 2011.  At that year’s beginning we braced ourselves.  The specialists helped us each step of the way, but it’s a month by month, trial by error process, and we had so many ups and downs that year.

Hopes would rise like you’re in the lottery and then dreams would be dashed in a moment.

Early on we discovered that we needed a particular special intervention, and as I look back it was 10 years ago last week.  It took us four months of trial and error before we became eligible for it.

Once this procedure was done, we had a set number of blastocysts.  Six opportunities to have the precious baby we sought.

The very first transfer was a pregnancy, and our hopes soared immensely.  We had three weeks of experiencing that nervous expectation that having a baby could just be less than a year away.

It’s such a nervous time waiting for the ‘safer’ time after 13 weeks, and so those weeks between finding out and then seem to move so slowly.  We went for a scan at 7 weeks and discovered to our horror that our little girl had no heartbeat.  We were devastated.

A week later, Sarah had a curette and though the procedure went well, we both grieved.  We had good friends marry that weekend and Sarah was the official photographer.

This wouldn’t be the only time she’d shoot a wedding in deep grief—one friend’s wedding Sarah did we’d only received the diagnosis for Nathanael two days before.  My wife’s got a lot of guts.

What followed was a waiting time before we were cleared to do another transfer.  This is when it became really heartbreaking.  Four strikes in a row.  Four failed attempts where the blastocysts didn’t attach to the uterus wall or didn’t hatch.

We were on our final round—last chance—when we visited Sarah’s old home church (which happens to be our present church).  The associate pastor there—a person with prophetic gifting—took us aside and boldly told us that we would soon have our baby.  We believed by faith.  (Only later did we recognise the burden that our friend had borne in sharing what God gave her to share—what if she were wrong?  Fortunately, she was faithful and delivered God’s message for us to us.)

With our last blastocyst at implantation, we noticed something different about it.  The blastocyst was already hatching.  We called him “the Hatcher.”  We waited patiently yet again.  This was about mid-2012.

I was doing my postgraduate year of counselling at the time when some in my cohort who knew our journey curiously enquired.  On my 45^th birthday, I was able to confirm (quietly) that Sarah was pregnant.

Amazingly, these next few months were the best months of our married lives to that point.  I was thriving in counselling training, Sarah was pregnant, we were in a strong church, and finally on October 30, 2012 (exactly two years before Nathanael’s stillbirth) I met with our senior pastor to begin the process of me becoming associate pastor of our home church.

Those months of July 2012 to March 2013 were surreal as we watch our baby grow and thrive in the womb.  It had been an 18-month journey for us, and we know others who have done double that time.  But I suppose the whole journey of infertility was about 5 years.

Month after month on the infertility journey is tough—as I read that I recognise it’s a massive understatement.  As we look back, our journey was worth it.  Our journey has connected us with many others who have travelled the same worn road of grief and tragedy, many of whom like us experienced the exhilaration of successful childbirth.

PS. I would hasten to add that we’ve been blessed to have had only ONE natural conception (Nathanael), facing infertility on the other side of him for another five years of trying.  We’re well acquainted with the rock and roll of fertility loss.

Image of Sarah and I at the time we announced our successful pregnancy on September 30, 2012.

Church at the end of Christendom

Can I tell you one thing that truly excites me?  It’s the end.  The end of patriarchy.  The end of triumphalism.  The end of ‘turn or burn’.  The end of systems of discipline in the ‘name’ of Jesus.  And certainly, the end of the predictable.

The end heralds a beginning... hope.

There’s so much to be said of the church in our present and bygone era.  So many fors and so many againsts.  The church is made up with humans, and wherever there are four humans, there will be at least five opinions.  Throw in a heap of theology, ethics, hermeneutics, eschatology, and many more long worded complex paradigms and there you have it—a recipe for division.

Satan loves division.

Satan loves dividing those who are for God against those who are for God, especially when those who are for God think their ‘for God’ is really ‘for God’ and the divergent viewpoint isn’t.   Read it again.  Yes, it’s a folly.

How can I be right all the time and you be wrong?  Flip the script!  Who’s right and who’s wrong?

Jesus doesn’t believe in what we believe as much as we believe he does.

Perhaps true faith is appreciating the ethics that both the Left and the Right embrace—but if you’re on the Left, you see one set of ethics as primary, and if you’re on the Right, you see a different set of ethics being primary.  All the world sees is a church that fights over semantics—important semantics, but semantics all the same.

What if we went beyond diverting into the petty discussion, and getting sucked into a fight, and actually did something meaningful and positive with our time.

Have you noticed, too, how Facebook elevates the fight!

Maybe Jesus doesn’t want conservative or progressive, just those who will follow him.

Have you noticed how hard it is not to be dragged into the arena?  I see an issue and immediately my dualistic mind takes a side.  Are we really serving God by always letting our reptilian brain decide for us like that?

Maybe there’s a more important agenda.

Maybe the Christian life is more about finding a way to love the other Christian person we would otherwise be in combat with.

Perhaps we need to demonstrate to ourselves how equally worthy of God’s love and our love they are before we go on the offensive and prove our point.  Not saying this is easy.

But if only we stop ourselves at the keyboard for a few seconds, and say, “God, show me what this person can teach me—about you, about other viewpoints, about being open-hearted and open-handed.”

Maybe out of a position of disagreement we can both learn.  Maybe as we turn to one another instead of turning away from one another, we will stop trying to relate only for rhetorical purposes.

Can we just be FOR one another?  Can we start from there?  We’re brothers and sisters after all.

But instead, we come with our position and all our focus and attention is on holding firm.  The other person reciprocates.  Never the twain shall meet.  It’s futility in motion.

All Christians working together to love people without agenda—that’s what I want to be part of.  Alas, maybe that’s only possible in eternity.  But wouldn’t it be fabulous in our lifetime?

Let’s convince others less and love people more.

Church at the end of Christendom has its divisions.  It’s time to make a new day.  A day where Jesus’ final command has unequivocal prominence.

“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing.”
—Isaiah 43:18-19a (NIV)

What cannot be faced, cannot be healed

It was a tragic irony in 2002 and 2003 that I managed an alcohol and other drug program.  Ironic because I was the one with an issue.  I would breathalyse teetotaller fuel tanker drivers who I was sure has sussed me out.  No, I was just guilty for hypocrisy.

I remember one of our truck drivers who arrived at work clearly inebriated.  I breathalysed him and he was 0.07 blood alcohol concentration.

My next job was to raise an incident report that would be circulated to management Oceania wide (beyond Australia), because of the high-profile nature of a DUI fuel tank driver, and have the tough conversation with the driver and with his manager—was he interested in remediation?  He was.

We engaged our corporate psychology firm to manage his case.  Each week I met with him on his program of recovery.  He ceased drinking.  In getting to know him, he had mental health problems, loneliness, and other issues that contributed to his drinking.

Part of me was blind back then to my own personal problems with alcohol, because I had a job to do, coordinating health, safety, security, and environment over a large state, it was such a busy role with a lot of travel involved.  But part of me was also at least vaguely aware that I had a real issue—especially on more Monday mornings than I care to remember when I’d pushed the boat out too far from port the previous Sunday night.  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, in the dark of night, were my own private, secluded parties, where I enjoyed a drink or six (to put it mildly).

On those morning 40km drives to work in the company-supplied four-wheel drive, I was often very self-conscious and anxious, seriously wondering if those at my workplace could smell the alcohol through the pores in my skin or notice my dulled hungover senses that went with me until at least late morning.

Little did I know it, but my life was building to a climax, and that crescendo peaked on September 22, 2003, when the façade began to break open right in the heart of home.

From a place of climbing the corporate ladder and just missing out on the national health, safety, security, and environment manager’s job, within 24 hours, the bottom completely fell out of my world (More on that here if you’re unaware).

My only hope was to face what I’d denied for years.  And though my life had imploded on me, the fact that I’d been brought to my knees was actually the hugest blessing.

I learned in those days that what cannot be faced can never be healed.

The hypocrisy of lies—of not facing—had kept me in a dungeon of secrecy that few people knew about.  And that prison of my own making was like a private little hell, because I lived to work and then to destress from the pressures of work.  It was all one vicious cycle that felt impossible to stop.

In retrospect, I hated being a hypocrite, and I was especially ashamed that in every way I was the consummate professional, but for this character flaw of needing alcohol to unwind.

The irony was, the more I tried to hide it, the more it rose to a place of prominence in my life.  The more I looked away, the more alcohol insisted I face it.

There will be some who will read this and wonder if they or someone they know has a problem.  It might not be alcohol, but some other malady that insists it be faced.

Things only get worse when they’re denied.  We can only heal that which we can face.

September 23, 2003, was my first AA meeting.  There were many worse drunks there than I was, but I needed it, the fellowship, the mechanism of recovery, and most of all to admit that I had an unmanageable life and needed help.  Soon, I was engaged in the steps with a sponsor, and soon after that I was back in church with a heart to serve, which incidentally I’d learned in AA.

The more I faced my demons, the less power they had over me.

Image: the month prior to September 22, 2003, a bygone era.