On Nathanael’s eighth heaven day, we reflect with gratitude

This is not going to be as long as previous years, but it seems just as important this year to share something of our hearts at this time given that we have in previous years.

Have a look in the gorgeous eyes of my wife as she holds Nathanael.  I see a mix of grief with bravery — the capacity to endure whatever “is” of the present circumstance, and that was pretty much how Sarah was throughout the entire season we had of losing Nathanael.  Mothers know this, but not everyone does.  Mothers do what needs to be done.

Sarah as a mother has always had the correct poise throughout the last 10 years of our journey.  There were times early on where she struggled, but as soon as real church ministry opened up for me — 10 years ago tomorrow — she was the best asset any pastor could ask for.  Sarah’s wisdom has been absolutely fundamental to the sustainability of my service for God.

But these matters are an aside.

Eight years on tomorrow marks the occasion of the stillbirth of our cherished son, Nathanael.  Our remembering him is all we have left when there are other parents with eight-year-olds who watch them grow throughout their lifespan.  Anyone who has lost a child knows; once they’re gone, they’re that age forever.  There is no more growth to watch.

The eyes hold a lot of interest, and even though I’d selfishly like to keep the peering into my wife’s eyes to myself, there’s so much that can be pondered in simply wondering about what was going through Sarah’s mind and heart that early morning after Nathanael had been stillborn.

Heartfelt had previously agreed to send one of their pro-bono photographers to us because we knew that Nathanael would not survive.  She took a whole bunch of candids and posed shots for us.  They’re treasured possessions.  All we have to remember Nathanael’s whole life is a large shoe box of things.

We remember taking Nathanael with us everywhere we could before he arrived, though the most common place we found ourselves was in hospital on the regular weekly appointments that would often last all day — especially the eight amnioreductions, but the amniocentesis, the appointments with geneticists, the palliative care team, the chaplain, additional scans, etc.  It was never ending.  The entire season was a breakneck pace.  Even though we had the support of both sets of our parents, other family and close friends, we still had barely enough time to do everything we needed to do, and add to this, by about 22 weeks, Sarah didn’t have the energy or ability otherwise to do the physical things, so I had to become a house husband AND work as a pastor.  It was easily the most stressful time of our lives.  BUT we were unequivocally united throughout.

Having been a school chaplain for nearly five years subsequently, I was there when the kindergartners arrived in February 2019.  Every time I went into one of those Kindergarten classes to read a book to students, or spend time one-on-one with a student, or simply engage in play with students, I was sombrely mindful that THIS was where Nathanael would be had circumstances been different.

One thing you never miss as a parent of a child who has died is you track those who continue on with their lives; those and their parents who would have no idea what they can only take for granted.  Until you suffer loss you don’t understand what you’ve truly got.  It’s the same for us all.  There are losses we’ve not had that we can only endeavour to empathise with.

This year, we approach Nathanael’s heaven day knowing Mum is with him.  We’re comforted that they’re both in Glory, with Debbie, Mum and Dad’s daughter and my sister who was stillborn on September 21, 1973.  

We acknowledge that we’re humbled knowing that our God has us, and that from the vantage point of having been healed about as much as we can, that God is using what we’ve learned for his Kingdom purpose.

All this would not be if Nathanael had not come, if he had not existed.  Thank you, son.

Spiritual victory out of the clutches of material defeat

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.

“You never get over the loss of a child”

I was re-reading some of my old emails from Mum the other day when one comment she made struck me.  The email is from November 8, 2012.

“I was playing some songs on my iPad, and one was Frankie Valli singing Rag Doll and Dad cried.

“Rag Doll was on the album we got in the mail the day of Debbie’s funeral, and it struck a chord with us both.  Whenever we hear it, it has that effect on us.  I hugged him and he sobbed for a while.  You never get over the loss of a child.  Debbie turned 39 this year and we both recall her stillbirth like it was yesterday.”

I re-read the email with a fresh significance given our loss of Nathanael — who was stillborn eight years ago next Sunday (October 30).

Having read the email, I quickly played Rag Doll on YouTube and it immediately struck a chord for me, too.  Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons takes me back to my earliest years.  Mum and Dad would play the LPs on the stereogram and my brothers and I would play. I was only 6 when Mum and Dad lost Debbie and my little brother was 4 and a half.  Our youngest brother arrived 15 months after Debbie was stillborn.

Music such as this, with the loss of Mum, with the loss of Nathanael, with the loss of Debbie farther back in the background, elicits such paradoxically tangible but unreachable emotion.

As I type these words, I have Rag Doll playing on a YouTube loop.

I know that Mum and Dad struggled a lot with our loss of Nathanael.  Like most parents and grandparents, their sadness was always a little hidden from us, and this was because Mum especially sought to support us.  But Mum was always up for truth talk in terms of loss.  And these days, with Mum gone, Dad is too.

Note the words of my dearly departed mother: “You never get over the loss of a child... we recall her stillbirth like it was yesterday.”  Nearly 40 years after.  Sadly for Mum and Dad, less than two years into the future at the point of her saying this in the email (2012) they had to endure another stillbirth; Nathanael.  A true vicarious grief of a son losing a child.  I’m so thankful for my mother’s faithfulness during this period of our lives, a faithfulness we enjoyed from all four parents, mine and Sarah’s.

I’m not sure everyone understands the grief we speak of.  Many try to make comparisons between losses and what grief is harder and easier to bear.  Many also imagine that grief should ebb away over the years.  In some ways it might.  But what is lost is lost and what is lost ought to be remembered and honoured.

Debbie would have been 50 next September, and at least one solace we have is that Mum’s with both Debbie and Nathanael now.

Thank you, Mum, again, for bearing your losses so authentically well, that is in tears and in support of Dad and all of us, during your life.

IMAGE: Mum holding Nathanael, October 31, 2014, which would have taken much strength, but her and Dad did it for us.

Acceptance within loss and grief is the secret of livingness

If there’s a universal struggle that all humanity identifies with, its accepting change that cannot be controlled.  Within this challenge is the fact of flow within change that makes change inevitable.

We dislike or hate the fact that certain change occurs, 
and that that change is certain to occur.

Certain change occurs and it leaves us feeling disempowered and at a loss to respond.  This kind of change is principally grounded in loss.  It connects us directly with grief.  It is inescapable.  If change doesn’t involve loss, it isn’t that kind of change that really troubles us.

Then there’s the fact that certain change is certain to happen.  There are times in our lives where one loss piles on top of another, on top of another, etc.  But ordinarily we go along living our lives as if the deep change of loss wasn’t ever a thing — until it is!  Until it strikes us where it hurts.  Then we find we battle for a way out — where the only way out is through.

I don’t know any other way to deal with the certainty of certain change that we cannot control without having the faith of knowing the reality of eternity.

When we face the certainty of certain change — implicating us in heartrending loss and grief — we recognise we need something more stowed to get through this loss and grief, and to prepare for the next lot.  There’s nothing more certain when loss and grief break into our lives than the fact it will happen again.  Before it occurred, loss didn’t even occur to us.

It sounds bizarre, doesn’t it, that we had no idea loss would leave us feeling absolutely bereft of response.  We somehow have the human capacity to empathise at two different levels, one of which is quite superficial, even though it feels authentic.  The true level of empathy, however, is acknowledging the depths of pain involved in the grief within the occurrence of loss, and this connects us to an entirely different world within this world.

The grief within loss that comes with certain change takes us to a doorway that we previously hadn’t approached, or if we had there is something new and unexpected about our approach this time.  There are nuances of grief in different kinds of these deep losses.

When we approach a new loss that leaves us reeling for response, we can wonder why it is we aren’t better equipped.

Is it the reality of compound loss?  Does this loss represent something new?  Is there something unique about losing this person or suffering this change that we haven’t experienced before?  And how does this loss impact us uniquely from the aspect of our present state of mental health?

Like trauma, loss can seem to pile up, and perhaps we reach a threshold where we reach a place where there is one loss too many.  It tips us over into the next level of crisis.

Again, somehow it’s our faith in something that’s other than this world that gets us through that certain kind of change that is certain to occur — that which we have no control over.

When I speak of faith and doorways, just as there is a threshold of how much we can cope with, there is also a threshold that takes us through a doorway of utter dependence on God.  Because nothing else works.

When we come to the end of our own power, we begin to rely more readily on the all-sufficient wisdom and power of God.  Coming to a place of surrender is coming to the wise place of acceptance; of practising an acceptance of the things we cannot control or change.

Such acceptance is the victory of life.

It has us facing all the problems of life with a completely different demeanour.  No longer do we demand anything.  We put all our demands aside, recognising within them their futility.  And suddenly, in that split moment, peace beckons, hope unfolds, and joy is possible, again.

Acceptance will give us the unique tools of perspective that make us beautiful human beings to relate with.  Within acceptance is the capacity to hold space for ourselves and for others, and we experience the blessedness of being a gift to both ourselves and to others.  We therefore live in an eternal state thereafter where nothing of this world troubles us to an overcoming or overwhelming degree.

Giving up what we cannot keep,
that is, our grip on a certain safeness of life,
we gain what we cannot lose,
and that is hope birthed in another world.

Loss involving grief is the actual doorway into the life of acceptance.

Acceptance is the secret of a life that gives us power through our weakness.

When we live out of this power brought to us by our weakness, we recognise that the power through strength alone is folly, and that the only true strength is borne through weakness.

When we discover that it was in our weakness that our true strength was born, we begin to realise that nothing in this world can truly defeat us.  And that’s because our hope is in the world ever over the horizon — another world entirely, and that world is eternity.

The self-reflection, empathy, and repentance of the mature

One thing the past month, or even the past week, has reminded me of is the fickle nature of life.  It can seem unfair from whatever vantage point you see things from.  But life invites us all to see from multiple perspectives, and this is why empathy is such a necessary and vital character trait.

Indeed, as a couples counsellor and occasional mediator I see the dynamic all the time where there are contributions on both sides to impasses I’m called to assist in, and beside cases where there is an obvious slanting of injustice one way (abuse), both parties have some contribution to own.  At the very least what’s required is self-reflection on all sides.

The difficult thing for all of us 
when we’re implicated in conflict 
is to see our contribution.

It doesn’t account for the other person’s contribution, which only they can see and own.  But we must own ours, and this centrally is our freedom, because as see our contribution and own it, we pour contempt on our pride, and our heart is open to empathise with the other for our impact on them.

The mature person — the safe person for relationship — empathises.

It stands to reason, therefore, that 
the empathiser is at least occasionally wrong.

The empathiser repents.  This is what makes them mature.

Empathy is a character competency.  It is what defines us as a reflecting, thinking, feeling human.  It is a strength.  It is not a weakness.  It gives our relationships hope that we’re fair and just in our actions toward others.

It’s better to be manipulated by a person without empathy for the empathy we show than to be that person who exploits these matters and people.  Everything’s a test.  And empathy (or lack thereof) is a test and be assured of “witnesses.”  The only defence is to be beyond reproach as much as possible.

Here’s the head’s up for any who would listen.

Many times we can gloss over what we’ve done, thinking it was very little when from another’s viewpoint — and from the aspect of the common person — it’s more than that.  The worst people completely deny harms done, and then reverse the victim and offender (DARVO) making the person who has been harmed even more of a target.

We are not to be the people who minimise 
the true impact we have on others.

When people demonstrate to us that they’re consistently exploitative, THEN we consider and implement safe boundaries to protect ourselves.  Until then, we’re to be people with empathy, remembering that our empathy is always a trust and a test.

We trust our empathy to people as a test — when they prove faithful, we’ve made a friend, but if they prove consistently unfaithful, then it’s boundaries that need to be applied as we keep the unsafe one at safe distance.  Past performance is the best guide of future performance.

When we can accept the motives and consequences of our own unkind actions, that gives us power to repent and turn back toward attitudes and behaviours that are kind, especially as we extend these attitudes and behaviours toward those who don’t resemble our attitude and behaviour of repentance.

Be assured, the fruit of real Christian faith is the fruit of repentance.
Faith and repentance are intrinsically linked.

When a person doesn’t reflect values of repentance and is consistently bullish in the face of their wrongdoing, they have not faced the truth of their impact on others.  They haven’t empathised.  And the key sign is bewilderment at being held accountable, and often the defend-reversal-of-victim-and-offender (DARVO).  They act as if they did nothing wrong, never once demonstrating they have ANY inclination to self-reflect.  And this destroys trust and, inevitably, relationships.

~

It doesn’t matter how much Bible or theological knowledge a person has, or how well they can preach and teach, or how big their church is, or how esteemed they are, if they cannot self-reflect, empathise, and repent, they’re not mature in the faith.

They’ve forsaken the fundamental things for glorious things.  It’s equivalent to the words, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  (Hosea 6:6; Matthew 9:13; 12:7)  God is always more interested in how we treat others than in anything else we achieve.

“A new command I give you,” said Jesus, “Love one another.”  We love others by self-reflecting on the impacts we make in our relationships, in empathising with others, and in repenting of our contributions to conflicts.  This IS faith (and love) in action.

Abusers don’t abuse everyone, just those who refuse to enable them

Abusers abuse the person they drew into their inner circle who ‘betrayed’ them.  The other side of that equation is the person drawn in is given the harrowing choice — enable the abuser, support them, be their cheer squad, OR ELSE.

Abusers don’t abuse everyone.  Indeed, it would curtail their mission if they did.  But the important thing is it’s only those who get close who see; those who get close are required to submit to a system that anyone in good conscience would have severe cognitive dissonance with.

Many people who are drawn into a “special” circle find themselves privileged and they feel special, so it’s often an accommodation that they are, for a time, prepared to make; often in the subconscious hope that things will change — but they never do, they only get worse with abusers.

The one who is drawn in, who is trusted, who is given a special role, and told they’re special — and who doesn’t like feeling special?? — has real choices to make, which almost nobody can make instantly.  They find their enabling of the abuser has some justification, because there is SOME good done, besides there are skills they like using, and of course there are perks — which seem justified at the time for “a job well done.”

There are many who are not elevated to the status of “special” and the special one at least subconsciously feels special — it tickles the pride, besides their belief and enrolment in the leader’s vision.

An abuser will count it the ultimate betrayal when someone they groomed for the inner circle, who will become a crucial part of their grand vision and a vital enabler, resists their “role” and decides they want no part of enabling a malevolent system.

Those who walk in integrity cannot bear the cognitive dissonance of bargaining away their sight for “another image” that doesn’t bear a strong resemblance to the truth.

The unfortunate thing is those who have such integrity are cut off at the knees by the abuser and the rest of the complicit inner circle, and hence by the entire community.  They’re scapegoated — a truly biblical concept (Leviticus 16:8).

Abusers draw to themselves people who are full of light, capacity, skill, and potential.  These people in their inner circles are by virtue of these characteristics, “special.”  Anyone who’s ever been selected by an influential, charismatic leader/partner feels special.  Their being selected is something not easily given up.  So you can see how pride is an inherent part of the system here.  Those with integrity will hate having been drawn in once they see what they’re implicated in.

When a person is drawn into the circle, and they hold a special place it’s doubly hard to give it up. Not only does it feel good, but there’s the risk of the loss of disappointing the leader/partner if they give it up.

Most people who refuse to enable an abuser still have little idea how much their refusal will cost them.  Abusers are cultish.  They have no tolerance for those who do not believe in their vision, especially for those who have been given a special role and special levels of information.

Abusers won’t ever abuse everyone.  Often just one person at a time will do.

Today, when nobody is promised tomorrow

Having lost Mum in August and having arrived at a place of transcendent peace beforehand, for most of this year I’ve had the sense of foreboding.  Not a bad sense.  Just that I need to be prepared for what’s coming.  I think we all need to be prepared for what’s coming.  Who knows what’s coming, I just have the sense now’s the time for readying.

At my age, I’ve lived long enough to have had many experiences of life, yet I do crave 10, 20, 30, 40 more years, mainly for my wife and younger family members to not have to grieve me for too long.

Yet, in acknowledging Mum’s in Paradise, I do sense every day could be the last, and if so, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.  Living with one’s death ever beckoning yet still possibly thousands of days away breeds gratitude, and it also puts seemingly big issues (that aren’t) into their proper perspective.

There are some momentous times ahead!  The climate change emergency and the threat of global conflict are the front runners, but more truly there are a stack of personal and private challenges in all our lives that will command our attention, that will derail a day’s thoughts and longer.  Now’s the time to prepare.  Now’s the time to get ready to be ready.  Now’s the time to be organised to step into whatever the moment calls us into.

The blessing of losing a loved one is it reminds us of OUR eventual fate, which reminds us to make the most of the day we have.  None of us is promised tomorrow.  If we leave it there, we can easily become anxious, but if we imagine we’re powerful to act, we can live purposefully while we’re here, for the days and probably thousands of days that remain.

To have my father, my wife, my children, my grandchildren, my wife’s family, etc, around me is enough to be thankful for.  I truly thank God for all these relationships.  Every moment of every day can be an investment in our loved ones’ lives, if not by our presence with them, then by our carrying them in our thoughts and prayers.

One thing that assails our thinking in loss is that the past was better than it is now, and that we’d be back there in a flash to relive what we can only imagine was better with our loved one with us.

But life’s not like that.  Life continues to move forward, second-by-second.

Even when we, ourselves, are gone, time will continue to move forward, second-by-second, so all we can do, and all we should do, is keep making the most of the seconds we have.  And a lot of that, paradoxically, is not about achieving or doing anything — quite the opposite if we’re to truly enjoy the moments we have, especially with loved ones.

And yet, the current moment prepares us for a destiny that awaits our stepping into it.

And that destiny begins or continues, today...

What does end stage grief look like?

We inevitably read our own grief process into another’s grief process because the only eyes we have are the eyes that we have.  It can seem impossible for us to imagine a person battling with something we don’t battle with, just as it can seem impossible for us to imagine a person enjoying a sense of peace when we find it unimaginable.

Of course, empathy helps us enquire curiously into the void.  Where we don’t understand, we can simply question and wonder what it is like for the other person.  And a journey can begin to unfold of curiously finding our way to destinations others have been to or arrived at.

In recent times, our family has lost our matriarch, a dear and cherished wife, our mother, our grandmother, our great grandmother, our sister, our aunt, our dear friend.  For me and my family, personally, we also approach at this time the anniversary of the loss of our dear Nathanael Marcus, who was lost to us through stillbirth on October 30, 2014.

Many people I know feel very sad for us, but the place Sarah and I are in, and have been in for many, many years, is a place of what I term end stage grief.

Just like there is end stage kidney failure, or end stage heart failure — and just like there would be an end stage to any process — I find there is an end stage to grief.

What does this end stage look like?

It looks like peace, but it also looks like continual facing.  We face the loss of Nathanael, and of Mum, in the same sorts of ways.  We are at peace.  But also their presence is continually on our minds.  We carry them with us.  Not one moment over the last six weeks has Mum’s presence left me in terms of my conscious thinking.  She is always there, but this — what I call remembrance — does not cause me any pain.  And it’s the same with Nathanael.

When it comes to healing, we all have our own thoughts and perceptions about what this concept means.  In terms of the present context, without question with both Nathanael and Mum we feel as healed as anyone can get in this life.  If there are any prayers that go our way, they are best prayers of praise and thanksgiving, for the purity of remembrance in loss.

Such a purity comes when losses are faced and never denied, where the process of grieving is honoured at every stage, where tears are shed when they need to be, wherever we are, no matter who we’re with, and when we finally accept that we are happy to carry the memory with us continually in our minds, because it is no longer painful.

I’m so blessed to be married to a woman who grieves like I do, who just never denies, who never deflects, but also never dwells on an issue longer than it needs.  All throughout the season of losing Nathanael, for the four months of waiting knowing he wouldn’t survive, there were times of intense sorrow, but not hours nor days, yet there were hard days and easier ones.  We cried, moaned, and wailed when we needed to.

In end stage grief, we are connected with a world that grieves, and this is the point of grieving, that we might empathise with the grieving of others, and thereby be of use even as we are healed of our grieving, even if that looks like we bear our remembrances continually yet peacefully.

Love costs to the degree that precious losses need to be carried.

In being connected with a grieving world, God has connected us with a truth we may not have previously seen, or that previously didn’t have our attention.

In end stage grief, we carry our remembrances peacefully, bearing the occasional shards of pain, knowing that “these, too, shall pass,” and knowing with a gentle smile that the best is yet to come.

Repentance, the right response for relationships in conflict

There are two responses available when relationships hit rocky ground: to avoid responsibility or to take responsibility.  When one party engages in the former it ruins relationships, when both engage in the latter there’s life for the relationship.  The former offers despair, the latter offers hope.  But it takes two parties taking responsibility for a relationship to negotiate the inevitable rocky places relationships inevitably must negotiate.

The trouble is when either or both sides of the conflict gaslight the other into submission.

Such behaviour is a sure sign of swaying out of the way of personal responsibility.

Repentance on the other hand is each person’s opportunity of response in offering hope and peace to the strained relationship.

Now, of course, before I go much further, I need to attend to the elephant in the room that is abuse. Where repentance is inappropriate, because of the nature of manipulation, intimidation, and control in the relationship dynamic.  When in relationships with abusers, it’s common to face the odious situation of being DARVOed, where they become defensive and reverse victim and offender.  A worthy response to abuse is boundaries to ensure safety, and boundaries ought never be gaslit as “a refusal to repent.”  The blurring of lines is what sullies all parties and those who really would have repented are categorised as bad as the abuser is.  The heart of the one who would repent is steadfast — their nature is to own any wrongdoing, but the nature of the one spurning a rebuke is treason against the gospel of grace.

Repentance will never be something the abuser engages in, but it is the power of humility in a person who is concerned sufficiently for the truth, for the other person, for the relationship, that they’ll reflect on their own contribution.

Repentance is the biblical prooftext of salvation.  Repentance is proof that God has opened the eyes of a person’s heart, that they truly understand that God’s chief interest for us in our earthly lives is that we “love one another” as God himself did in Jesus.

Repentance is the transformation of 
behaviours showing a heart of attitude change.

Too many Christians, however, do not LIVE this doctrine.  They would prefer to argue the point about how persecuted they are.  They would rather defend their theology.  They would rather stay in their ignorance.  They would rather speak than listen.  They prefer pride over humility.  They insist on winning, and this is the world’s way.  They do not LIVE the biblical imperative of “As much as it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

There are people we cannot live peaceably with, but this is not before we’re tried to live humbly alongside them.  They by their ways of insisting on being in control have pushed us into a position where we couldn’t bear the toxic relationship any longer.  It was unsustainable.

I think I must have written a lot of these kinds of articles, and I really wonder what you, the reader, thinks.  More of the same!  Yet, repentance is the heights, the depths, the width, and the breadth of the gospel of peace and love.

There are too many people who still insist on having their own way rather than investing in the wisdom of reconciliation through the divine agency of repentance.

It’s as clear as this: only those who can and will repent of their wrongdoing are safe in relationships.  Those who cannot or will not repent show their disdain for others (and God) by forcing their relationships to be built and based on the satisfaction of their own desires.

Those who will repent are those who are mature of character, having sufficient humility to get the log out of their own eye, staying focused on the internal locus of control.

Those who will not or cannot repent exemplify an obvious disregard for others, and they exert a non-negotiable power over the relationship.  They make the relationship untenable.

Repentance is the right response for relationships in conflict, for even if the other person does not repent, you win in the eyes of God.  Though it’s never good to be abused, it’s better by far to be abused than be the abuser.  It’s better to have the right heart and ‘lose’ than to have the wrong heart and ‘win’.

In God’s economy, nobody gets away with anything.  If we’re wrong in any way, best we admit it and get justice done as far as it depends on us.  If the other person chooses to lie before God, they transfer their debt they have with us over to God.  And they ultimately will be required to repay it in full.

When all is said and done, there is only one way to please God, and that is by a faith of repentance — a daily commitment to do justice, to love mercy, by walking humbly with our God.

The lawn I didn’t want to mow, and one last week with Mum

The morning of Saturday August 20 my nine-year-old son mowed our lawn.  It was just his second time.  Even though Mum was in hospital — like she’d so often been in the past two years — we had no idea at that time what would take place in the early afternoon.

With the lawns mowed, I was writing a card for my 30-year-old daughter for her birthday.  I got to the word “of” and my phone rang.  It was Dad, and he was quite frantic for Mum, so I immediately picked up my keys, the card and a pen, and left for the trip to the hospital.

As we got Mum more settled, we still had no idea how the next week would unfold.  The next Saturday, Mum died.  Only on the Monday (22nd) did we get our first hint of that most odious of phrases, “palliative care.”  On the 25th, we had that palliative care “chat,” and, just before Midday, on the 27th Mum was gone.

It will be one of those weeks that will be forever etched into my memory.

Having been with Mum and Dad for a couple of hours, I set off for my daughter’s 30th birthday.  It was a great celebration, but a little sombre knowing that Mum was in hospital and Dad with her.  We sure did reminisce over the past 30 years, and as my daughter reminds me, the days may be long, but the years are short.  Those 30 years sure do seem to have flown by!

That last week with Mum and Dad in hospital felt like an eternity at the time, but as I look back every one of those key moments went like a flash.  Those key moments that endure upon my memory include Mum impressing the physiotherapist and doctor at one point, and Mum being so chuffed she kissed the doctor on the cheek.  Those moments include Mum’s delight for the ice cream dessert, not being able to stomach the other food.  And, of course, there was the irrepressible smile that would cover Mum’s face whenever a family member arrived to be with her.  She greeted each and every one with the same brimming joy as if they were the only person in the room as they entered and they embraced.

Each of these key moments, among some of the others that are private and just for the family, are scattered through a long week, but a week all the same that went all too quick.

When Mum passed away, we spent a lot of time together the week following preparing for Mum’s funeral.  And since times there’s been a lot more time than normal devoted to all things family — losing Mum has been a defining event in our lives.

There’s no way you can anticipate how you’ll feel after you lose a loved one.  It’s like you have no idea when one of your children is born how much they will change your life.  And no matter how much you anticipate how much life will change, you never end up getting anywhere close to how it feels when the moment finally arrives.  Mum’s loss leaves us with a feeling that’s astonishingly different to how we thought it might feel. 

During the time that has passed between August 20 and September 30 when we next mowed the lawn, my wife, son and I had been on a road trip, part of which encapsulated visiting the town Mum grew up in, where she worked, and where she and Dad met and started dating 60 years and one month before she died.

So when September 30 arrived, even as I had been studying the growth of the lawn over the past six weeks, I took my time even rationalising that I didn’t really need to mow it.  I could’ve left it another week or three.  But I decided to cut it anyway and just to take some photographs of how much the lawn had grown in that time — a time that spanned moments we had no idea, to a time where we’ve carried Mum’s memory with us for seemingly so long now.

The difference in the level of the grass is significant.  Loss, I find, separates time into the portion of time before the loss and the portion after the loss.  There is an innocence in the time beforehand, before you have any idea what the cost of loss is.

Nothing prepares you for what you feel when you no longer have that person in your life.  It’s like the one thing you can’t have you desperately want, and even though I know where Mum is, and I do have fond thoughts of seeing her again, it still feels so distant.  And yet, amid all this is a peace that Mum leaves with all of us because of the person she was.

Never before and never since has the cutting of the grass been so significant.  It’s amazing the potential of the banal moments of life when they become milestones.

Every moment I pushed that mower, Mum, I thought of you and your incredible sacrifices of love for each one of us in the family and your friends.  Mum, your memory will live on and on.  You were the mightiest of encouragers and gave us all a strength of a matriarch.