Loss after a lifetime of love

I wrote the following only three days ago and never got to finish it:

“I’ve been in this place so many times, as have my precious extended family, all those under my parents’ line.  We have watched Mum go downhill every couple of months where she is hospitalised and she’s back in there now.

“It’s times like this that I prepare myself for when Mum is gone.

“As I scrolled through my Messenger conversation with Mum over the years, there have been so many humdrum moments that I’d forgotten about so many of them, until I re-read them.  I’ve been saving my voicemail messages of Mum into sound files.”

But now Mum’s gone. . .  I realise that there is N O T H I N G that any of us family could have done to prepare for the moment.  No matter how much we HAVE prepared.

For me, it matters not one iota that I’ve written on grief and counselled so many over the years through loss.  For me, and for my family, life is just plain so unfair.  We don’t know how we’re going to live without her, but as was pointed out by one of my brothers yesterday, we need to live for each other more than ever now, particularly for Dad, as Mum’s legacy lives on.

Mum was such a powerhouse of service to her family and friends that her kindness and joy—despite her massive health challenges—spoke as if in unison with Dad’s gentleness and humility.  These two have been inseparable for 60 years, ever since Mum intentionally tripped Dad over at the Bullfinch (I think) swimming pool in July 1962.  Their marriage has been a beacon of light about what it means to serve the other with a love that knows no other way but to sacrifice for the other.

My Mum has loved her husband, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and her friends, so astonishingly well that loss after a lifetime of that love leaves us floored for a response to the grief we’ve been cast into.

I’m no stranger to grief, after losing my first marriage 19 years ago and taking so long to come to terms with it, and then losing Nathanael in 2014, which was heartbreak on an unprecedented scale in many ways, but today I’m at a loss to see how I could even move forward.  I know that somehow I will, and I know that that is Mum’s will—that we do—but this is next level grief.

To lose someone who has been there for each of us through so many personal and private battles, a person who defines the best in terms of motherhood, not just to three sons, but to four daughters in law, and to her grandchildren as well, is incomprehensible.

Some will think that it’s weird for me to write this on the same day as my dear mother left this earth, but what else can I do?  Like the rest of our family, I’ve poured out my tears dozens of times today, real ugly crying, and it brings little solace, but is also necessary.

The number of times my Mum and I spoke about death and her death on the phone over the past two years, the number of times I recited with her Psalm 23 (a favourite of hers), the number of times she said she knew where she was going—to reunite with daughter, Debbie, who Mum and Dad lost to stillbirth in 1973—is phenomenal.  What is more phenomenal is her absolute willingness to talk about these matters.

The journey of grief has only just begun, and the first stage is absolute shock and the terror of the thought that from now on our journey is without her.

But we can honour Mum’s request now that sincerely she wanted to go first, that it would have crushed her had any of us gone before her.

I don’t want to say goodbye

I find it’s an unconscionable thought, death, of that loved one.  I must have felt this before but somehow, I’d forgotten it, that unavoidable sense that death is beyond mine or anyone’s control, that I must learn somehow to say goodbye.

Saying goodbye involves so much pain, and it’s all because of love.

Nothing prepares us for this reality, even if we all know we’ll all die, and that we’ll have to say goodbye to those we’ve always known we’ll lose.  But when it comes time, it’s all too surreal.

There isn’t must that can be said or that needs to be said.  Words won’t make a difference.  I’ve found I’d rather people not make a fuss, let me breathe and grieve in my own time and in my own way, just like everyone must have the sanctity to face their own sorrow and the fact that time cannot be rewound.

That’s the thing about loss.  I want to go back in time to re-enjoy times when things were “normal,” where there were different perhaps more mundane concerns.

But loss is loss.  It’s loss.  It’s a very concrete concept.  Too concrete.  But somehow through loss, as we mediate our grief, as we face that which we cannot change, we’re somehow transformed into more empathic beings.

So many previously innocuous things change in loss, but those innocuous things leave large gaping holes that are noticed ten miles away.

Humility is the solitary empowerment for change

Anyone might think I’m against people who act entitled in relationships, especially in marriage relationships.  But it’s not so much that than a desire to see a person change and grow.

The only person who cannot or obstinately will not grow is, by definition, a narcissist.

They can never own that they were wrong for anything, hence they cannot transcend their present malevolent behaviour.  There modus operandi is to exploit people and situations for their own gain out of a warped penchant of entitlement (i.e. more acute entitlement than most) because they lack or have an absence of empathy—they do not and cannot empathise.  Importantly, narcissists feature all three E’s, because there are plenty of people who may lack or have an absence of empathy who are not narcissistic.  Equally, those who are entitled may have empathy and in that case they would not be narcissistic.  And there are those who do exploit people and situations, but if they have little entitlement and they do have empathy, the exploitation will be more like influence.

The focus on humility as the one key ingredient in the quest for change is obvious.

With humility, shame is nullified, and nothing in terms of growth stands in the way of a person who cannot be shamed.  Humble people are more gripped with godly grief for their part when they do something wrong, and godly grief always instigates prompt repentance.  Narcissistic people are paralysed by shame so they cannot face the fact they could be wrong or could have done wrong.  The humble are grateful to be learning.

With humility, actually moving through change presents less barriers because each day is taken a day at a time.  With humility, a person neither thinks of themselves as better than they are or worse than they are, they have a grounded view of themselves and their challenges.  With humility, a person is less daunted by what lay ahead.

With humility, a person views themselves more objectively as a person capable of both success and failure, and if it’s failure, a humble person can and will apologise sincerely.  They will be “cut to the heart” for their wrong and will actively seek to reconcile with those they’ve transgressed.  The humble person isn’t motivated out of guilt or self-preservation to do this.  They do it because it’s the right thing to do.

Humility is the solitary empowerment for change because it’s all you need.  Everything else anyone would need to embark on and follow through with a change campaign is nested within humility.

Within the character trait of humility is every other virtue, and it’s truly the virtues that take us everywhere in life.

~

Humility is elusive.  The main reason for this is there are so many activators of entitlement, there are so many opportunities to exploit, and empathy needs to be continually nurtured.

Once a human being is given power, and quite a lot of power or ultimate power in a setting, and they keep that power for a long length of time, AND there is very little accountability, i.e., they really do not have to account for their decisions, that situation is toxic for that human, and they will almost certainly become corrupted by that power.  This is called Hubris Syndrome.

Inability to confess, apologise, repent – the biggest red flag

We who see injustice see a person do certain things that shouldn’t be done, things that could be forgiven if only they were owned, if only they were lessons to be learned.

For the person who has neither interest nor willingness in being held to account, cannot and/or will not see their wrong, and will not apologise with any genuineness of heart, they wave the biggest red flag.

Any apology will be a minimisation of the situation, a veiled justification for the context, and a platform for their own self-righteousness.  They will use the moment to promote themselves, mostly to distract and deflect, but also to look good, because nothing else is in the frame of their self-concept.  The pitiful thing is it is often believed!

They will not own the original act, because it’s an admission of fault, and apart from not being able to enter their shame because they are scared of it, an admission of fault is an admission of fallibility.  With no concept of humility, a person like this cannot apologise.

So with people like this we must have low expectations.  We can’t expect an apology that will satisfy the needs of the situation; that is a sincere enough apology that we can tell their heart is in it.

With low expectations around apology, our intent must be on another goal.

The goal certainly isn’t reconciliation, even if that is the biblical best.  With people who can’t or won’t apologise, reconciliation is a bridge too far.  One person, or one party, cannot broker reconciliation.

The goal can, however, be centred around the truth, and if we can’t broker a peace through reconciliation, surely we can broker peace through the freedom that comes from truth.  It’s a peace those who are healing opt into, just as it’s a peace the perpetrator opts out of.  Those who heal, heal because of their alignment with truth.  Perpetrators despise truth, so anyone who despises the truth, who are they?

The freedom that comes from truth is a freedom that sees us in a healed state without any hope or actuality of reconciliation.  This is because the truth shines forth.  And like the noonday sun is a beacon of light that cannot be darkened and that showers the earth with beams that show nature off, truth bears witness to a reality that speaks of the lies within the lack of apology and repentance.

Truth is its own vindicator.  The goal is to stand in the truth, and that often requires us to wait for the truth, because as we all know, the truth comes last.  But don’t be discouraged because the truth always vindicates those who are in the truth.  The truth is a perfect and an irrepressible vindication.

The inability to confess, apologise, and repent, is the biggest red flag of all.  All relationships are wise to test the bounds of apology, to assess the heart of the other to see if it is capable of the humility required to simply apologise and bear sufficient responsibility to repent.

The commonness of the fawn response in everyday life

I’m hoping this will be a massive encouragement to anyone who suffers the fawn response trigger in the face of danger.  I’m hoping to show that it is a very common response, more common than most of us would care to imagine.

We don’t think in these ways typically, but these days we acknowledge trauma responses more than ever before, which I’m personally very thankful for.  As a society, we are gaining a better awareness and grasp over these issues that are common within the fabric of our humanity.

Trauma and its responses are prevalent in all societies.

The fawn response is so common that we hardly even bat an eye when we see it.  I saw it today when I tuned in to an online church service, and saw someone on stage introduced, and the way they moved and responded to the other person was an example of the fawn response.  They were simply told to move forward a step, but because the person felt awkward being on stage, plus with another person telling them to move forward, their implicit skip of a step forward showed their fawn response – to please and appease the one they were doing it for.

Hardly anyone would have noticed it, but it looked awkward.

To be honest, we see the fawn response in so many people so often we hardly notice that it’s a trauma response.  I think it’s the most common trauma response, and it’s especially present in Christians.  Those of us who want to be kind, who want to be patient, who want to be gentle, find ourselves entrenched in a world that is anything other than these three qualities, and we find ourselves fawning.  Without a choice.  It’s instinctive.

How very sad it is that a trauma response is initiated simply through wanting to be kind and patient and gentle with people, and that it comes out most of all when people are unkind, impatient, and harsh with us.

The fawn response is the automatic reaction we give when we sense there is a threat to our safety.  And imagine that this response seeks to protect the person and serve that person who is a threat!  Imagine extending such grace to someone who would not give you the time of day.  That’s how it is with the fawn response.

You give someone the blessing of your gentle and kind and considerate nature, and they either spurn it, manipulate you, or take advantage of the situation some other way.  This is how the world works.  The vulnerable are taken advantage of.  Those who are inherently safe to be around, those who find their life purpose is to love other people sacrificially, are unsafe around unsafe people.  Because love is always manipulated and kindness is always abused by narcissistic people.

The commonness of the fawn response in everyday life is striking.

If we said that a third of the population were capable of manipulating people, and generally entered into that behaviour, you could say that another third would be fawners, and that these are the manipulated.  Those who are the godliest in society are probably most prone to being fawners, especially when we acknowledge the prevalence of trauma in all our societies.

There ought to be no shame in a person who finds themselves triggered by a manipulator that causes them to respond in submission, which does no harm to the manipulator.

But that gentleness, patience, and kindness is costly for the fawner.  They must bear the cost of knowing what it feels like to submit under aggression.  It’s demeaning.  And the manipulator not only doesn’t care about what it costs the fawner, they get some sick pleasure out of having such aggressive power and control over them.

I want to say to the fawner that you know you wish nobody any harm.

You would rather be harmed than harm.  To harm is unconscionable for you.

The opportunity ahead is simply to notice the initiation of fawning, to not judge it, to accept it as preferable over abusing a person (better to be abused than to abuse), and even to imagine that you’re being a blessing in your loving the other person despite how they may treat you.

Lament is the highest yet humblest form of spirituality

Of the two forms of response to life situations that seem impossible to grasp, lament is far superior to complaint, even if complaint is allowable.

But what is lament? What does it mean to lament? How does one lament?

Lament, for me, means to sit in the sadness, to feel the resignation, to refuse any attempt to change the situation or our response.  Lament, in short, means to simply accept.  And in the acceptance is the key to life itself.  We may go through our whole entire lives and never really have any sense of grasp on this holy and sacred state of being human.

A person only needs to experience this raw lament once and they will be convinced that is the only way to connect to the higher heaven with our feet firmly planted on this earth.

Imagine sitting in the truth of the very undesirable situation, and not only being able to sit in it and accept that it cannot be changed, but to embrace that truth that tends to kill our hope.

It seems so fanciful from our vantage point, perhaps having never been there.  But not only is there a place, the one of lament reconciling us to a miracle, but it is a miracle, and the key to life itself.

Complaint, on the other hand, is the normal human response, and it’s so very understandable, but it doesn’t take us anywhere good.  Complaint takes us around the mountain once more, and when we arrive back where we started, we’re offered another turn around the mountain, and then another, and so on until we have enough.

Lament is in another realm compared to complaint, the former is heavenly and spiritual, while the latter is worldly and secular.  Just as God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts higher than our thoughts, so lament is heavens higher than complaint.

Allow me to illustrate.

When finally I arrive at the place and situation of stillness in that situation I can hardly bear, I have transcended my need, my desire, even my insistence, that I can control what I can’t.  This is a crucial first step in accepting something so basic yet so thoroughly elusive to almost everyone.

Of a real sense, this lament is quintessentially characterised as humility.

It’s what the mystics teach us if ever we depart from the world long enough to read what they wrote.  Go back a few centuries, go back to the dark ages, read, and you will find the same questions are asked that are asked today, and the same answers abide.

In the core of lament is the solution to anxiety, to depression, to all manifestation of not being able to reconcile this world.  The utter paradox is, in giving up all sense of control, we gain about all the control we’ll ever need.

Lament is the highest yet humblest form of spirituality.

In life we do not need to change a thing – especially the painful thing.  Those things that would have frightened or saddened us beyond compare are there to be held in order to take us deeper than we’ve ever been.

Truly, nothing can break us if only we can be still and know we will be alright if we simply abide in calm serenity.  Not only that, but in simply sitting there in it, we’re taken fathoms deeper in our spiritual growth than we’ve ever been.

Truthfully, it’s the true holy grail.  And it’s the absolute simplest, powerfullest thing.

The wisdom of the next thing

As I anxiously watched for my son to come around the corner of the cross-country race recently, I was struck by the idea that what I was presently concerned about would soon (within seconds) fade completely from my consciousness.

Yet we place so much stock in the moments we become anxious about.  So many of these moments are innocuous.  Yet we are easily frantic about them.  My son wasn’t going to be defined by either a poor or great performance.  This is because life is always about the next thing.

Indeed, life goes best when we don’t languish in the moment of either triumph or disaster, in Rudyard Kipling’s words, “those two imposters.”

When we languish in our triumph, we’re left behind.  When we languish in our disaster, we lose hope.  When life is only about triumph, we’re often disappointed and frustrated.  When life is lost in disaster, we’re quickly stuck in a rut.

But there is wisdom in the next thing.  There is a purpose as we receive the present yet continue to look forward to the next thing.  Preparations are made for what is anticipated, and planning is prioritised, so we can be responsible and relational human beings.

The next thing is about recognising we’re rated on our performances.  If we expect to be characterised around past performance, we will be severely let down in realising that life judges present performance, but always from the aspect of it being past.

It’s no good calling back to what we did in a yesterday season.  People have forgotten that.  What is front and centre is the good we do today.  And the good we’ll do tomorrow is right on the horizon in the now.

To keep doing the good we can do today, we need to be ever forward focused.  It’s impossible to be present in an effective way if we haven’t planned that present in the past.

Another reason why there is wisdom in the next thing is we are never daunted by that which may easily overawe us.  We only need to think of the dreams we hold in our hearts, and if these were to take place in our lives, how two not-so-good things might happen, if we didn’t set our eyes even a little on the next thing:

1.             we could quickly become overwhelmed in the moment and hence lose focus

2.             we could be satisfied and therefore our focus for the next thing would fade and diminish

The wisdom of the next thing is a drive that will keep us going through our entire lives.

The wisdom of the next thing keeps us humble, approachable, locked into interdependent relationships where we’re no better and no worse than others.

The wisdom of the next thing keeps us hungry, helps us to focus on others, and ensures that we are ready for the inevitable future.  The only time the future stops becoming relevant is when we’re dead.  The future needs to be our friend, yet anxiety and sloth steal the potential from the clutches of the future, when we fear it or are ambivalent about it.

The wisdom of the next thing is our impetus for equipping.  Whenever we consider that more will be required of us in coming days, we ready ourselves for whatever battle we may need to fight.  There is nothing better for soldiers and servants alike than to be ready.

The wisdom of the next thing is our assurance we will have done all we can with what we had.  From hindsight, we can see how such an approach ensures we don’t sit on our laurels.

The wisdom of the next thing is also about planning to rest so the next things aren’t compromised by fatigue.

The wisdom of the next thing is about hope and aspiration.  There’s no life in plateauing.

Pastoral care raises up real leaders via the care they received

One of the signs of a true leader is those who follow, but this so often has been a success marker for narcissistic leaders: those who might get all the gushing praise yet lead people to a place where they serve the leader’s selfish purpose and nothing else.

There’s one way to raise up real leaders that works 100% of the time.  The real leader, one who is reliable in their pursuit of excellent outcomes for people and not just the process, is a wounded healer.  They’ve learned through harsh life experience how to care for people, and they learned this through being cared for through their struggles.

Think about how you were raised up to be a leader if you are one.  Or think about someone you admire as a leader.  Chances are they were mentored through a very difficult period, they were cared for, they received pastoral care, and the kindness of a human soul or souls who behaved like Jesus would have behaved.

They learned firsthand how to be supported, and in being supported they learned how it feels to be loved.  They saw the incredible value in it though noticing how valuable they were personally through the care they received.  They received a priceless gift, and in receiving something they couldn’t possibly give back, they decided to give back through paying the care they received forward.

I think that the church has gotten the whole formula for leadership development wrong over the years.  The church has not valued enough true pastoral care of those who are suffering.  In this, the church has not valued the true leaders in the church, and they are the pastoral carers.

One example of this failure is how little value has been placed in the function of pastoral care that it’s outsourced to lay people when it often needs a pastor or counsellor.  Another example is how abysmally pastoral care pastors have been treated so often.  This is because narcissistic ‘leader’ pastors have felt threatened by a pastoral care pastor’s ability to create rapport in their relationships, which is the trust they’ve been given.

All this reflects how the church has neglected the critical function of pastoral care for decades.  Far too much emphasis for far too long has been placed in church growth, CEO model ‘leadership’ and evangelism.

Imagine a vision of the church caring for people who are at a transformational point in their life such that they receive the care they’re so needy of that paying that care forward is a springboard into leadership.  How many people receive a calling through having experienced what Paul calls a care that “comforts those in any trouble with the comfort they have received themselves from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

There is no better leader in the church than the one who has received the comfort of God through the care of another.  That person will have received what can only be termed as a miracle, in that they felt God’s care in and through a human being—a leader in the vein of Jesus.  A person like this has been hand-picked by God to be a leader.

We need more of these leaders in our churches and in our world who have been schooled in empathy through the empathy of others so that they are compelled to grant their own empathy to others.

There is humility in the leader who has been helped by others and they help others because of the help that they have received.  The world needs more humble leaders who have experienced care and healing, and because of this, can lead others to care and healing.

A relationship of higher worth than gold

What single quality in a relationship, any relationship, would make that relationship not only worth keeping but celebrating?  I was asked this question recently, and it got me pondering.  “Just one quality, that’s all I can pick?” was my answer nestled in a question.

Just one quality.

Then it was another conversation I had only two days afterward where I was serendipitously given the answer, or what I feel is the answer.

Two completely unconnected events.

A relationship not only worth keeping but celebrating is a relationship where short account is not only allowed but encouraged and practised, where there is license for all parties to speak the truth in love, where respect and equality abide, where we can be home WITH and IN another person.  Where neither lives in fear of the other person’s reaction.

Think about a relationship in terms of being comfortable in your own skin around another person, much as you were if it were just you conversing with yourself.  This is the ideal for marriage.

We have no problems thinking about and trying to resolve our own truth, so when we are able to be honest with others about what we think and how we feel, and about how they and others impact us, we are at our very best relationally speaking.

Conversely, it’s the same for the other person in a reciprocal arrangement, which relationships are supposed to be, to have license to raise anything that’s on their heart.

Importantly, speaking the truth in love is about communicating with kindness, gentleness, patience, and grace.  Whenever someone communicates in this fruit of the Spirit, they ought to be received, listened to, and responded to in ways that reveal they have been listened to, and thereby respected. Reciprocation in one word.

It's only when people cannot or will not communicate in the fruit of the Spirit that people end up upset, and boundaries need to be installed to protect against further harm.

Additionally, it’s also when there is no ability to keep short account, where a person receiving the truth cannot handle the truth, where there is no agency for a person to communicate truth.

Many relationships are like this, where the truth would be a bridge too far, because there isn’t the maturity in the person or the relationship to be able to bear such truth.

Too many relationships, including too many marriages, feature the communication aspect of sweeping difficult issues under the rug.  In peacemaking terms, this is what’s termed peacefaking.  It’s a fake and very fragile ‘peace’—and really no peace at all.  It’s only a matter of time in these relationships before an impasse threatens to or breaks the bond.  This is because the relationship was never based in the full measure of truth, because that freedom wasn’t extended to the other, which is the maturity that is prepared to struggle with the awkwardness of truth, knowing that it’s not truth that crushes relationships, but the despair of betrayal for not speaking what needs to be said.

In the same way, where truth is communicated gently and kindly, and the person receiving the truth reacts angrily against it, it leaves the person communicating the truth in the awkward position of needing to decide whether it’s safe to do so or not.  So many times, it’s not, and so people avoid telling the truth in these situations as a result.

~

If any of us has a relationship where the other person is able to hear our truth, and we can hear theirs, where no truth is held back, that relationship right there is not only worth keeping but celebrating.

Imagine being in a relationship where anything that needs to be communicated can be communicated and there is a maturity in the relationship to sit in the reality of truth.  Imagine not having to second-guess when and how to raise important truths.  Imagine being rewarded by being thanked for bringing the truth.  Imagine being the one who is trusted with this truth and thanking this other person.  In other words, the person who shares their truth with us, even though it may temporarily upset us, shows us how much they trust and respect us.

Realistically, this trust and respect should prevail in all marriages, and these qualities are incredibly beneficial in the workplace, too.  Indeed, without a doubt, any relationship that bears the qualities of truth-telling is a relationship worth not only keeping but celebrating.

Telling the truth is a loving thing to do, but if the reaction of a person means truth can’t be told, the whole relationship suffers for want of the fullness of truth’s love.