The elephant in the room called emotional abuse

Until recently the only “abuse” that got any airwaves was the overt physical and sexual varieties, and even they don’t get the airplay today that they both warrant.

Just as the explicit abuses captured the lion’s share of limited attention, we can see how thin the societal bandwidth was (and is) for the less noticeable abuses — psychological, emotional, spiritual, financial and social abuse and neglect, to name them.

These more subtle varieties of abuse are played out in homes and workplaces and churches all over the world every single day.  When you know what it is, and you begin to see it, it is more common than uncommon.

Emotional abuse is patterns of behaviour that include:

c          ridiculing another person about when and how they express their emotions

c          judging someone as being weak or inferior for being “too emotional”

c          accusing someone of being in denial when they “don’t show enough emotion”

c          manipulating situations to cause an emotional reaction in someone

c          talking in ways or creating culture that discourages the expression of emotion

c          refusing to listen to someone when they’re emotional

c          calling someone names when they get emotional, especially names linked with the emotion they’re showing

c          telling someone they’re not allowed to show their emotions, or worse, punishing them when they do

c          punishing a person by withdrawing emotional support when they need it and they could reasonably expect it (parent and child, for instance)

c          making people feel guilty that they’re not enough or not doing enough

c          telling people they’re wrong for making “everything about your emotions”

c          making people feel guilty or ashamed for feeling the way they feel

Truly, the list goes on.  We can see from this list how commonplace it is.

It is justifiable in any event, and certainly in these post #MeToo days, to call enquiry to any relationship we have that features emotional abuse.

In and of itself, it’s definitely a marriage breaker if the partner who inflicts the abuse refuses to repent and remains self-justified.  It’s the same in workplaces with managers and coworkers.  Why would anyone stay in such toxic situations?  Well, there are plenty of reasons.  It’s never that easy!

Imagine being in a relationship or career or job where, for a range of reasons, you can’t just leave or change.  It’s a suffering redoubled in the compounding of grief — you can’t stay, and you can’t leave.  That’s a recipe for depression right there!  I’ve been in those situations.  Others I know and have counselled have been in those situations as well.

Emotional abuse, like the other inner abuses, corrodes our being.

It gradually though certainly furrows its way into our identity, where the true self makes way for a false self that is set on survival.  From confidence we’re reduced to fear.

Emotional abuse reduces us to a shadow of our former selves if we don’t get out of the toxic situation.  Almost never do protagonists of emotional abuse change, unless they have a true spiritual awakening.

Emotional abuse can even cause us to hate and despise that we feel the way we feel, though there is always part of ourselves that knows it’s somehow right to authentically feel with our emotions.  And it is right that we feel the way we feel.  God made us this way.

What can we do?

If we feel safe enough to do so, we can challenge people who we feel don’t allow us our own emotional freedom.

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If we don’t feel safe enough, those people cease in many cases to have any formal role in our lives, or we create boundaries.  It is saddest, however, when these people are in the ranks of family.  This involves some tough reflection and decisions to make.

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Bearing the marks of survival scars that speak of your endurance

“Scars are not signs of weakness, they are signs of survival and endurance.” ― Rodney A. Winters

We are not weakened by that which made us weak in the past.  Even those things that crushed us for a time were not the cause of our demise.

We survived.
We endured.
We were not overcome.
We overcame.

The traumas we wore on our bodies, when our psyches were ravaged, when it was as if soul was divided from spirit and we had collapsed under the weight of the situations that threatened to destroy us; these became the very battle scars we wear today.  We wear them in defiance of evil.  We wear them in defence of the good.  We wear them not with petty pride but with dutiful dignity.

We survived.
We endured.
We were not overcome.
We overcame.

We would not have chosen this way, but we responded in the only way we knew how.  We don’t teach these ways to our children because we want to, but because we have been equipped, it is our job to pass these learnings onto the next generation.

We didn’t want this for ourselves and we do not want it for our loved ones, but what choice do we have when trauma sets itself against our lives?

We survived.
We endured.
We were not overcome.
We overcame.

There comes a time in all our lives when our outward appearance is merely a testimony of what we’ve been through. We are no longer fussed if we don’t look pretty or handsome anymore, because we have much more substance than that now.

We look at our scars, and we see them as badges of honour in compensation for what we’ve been through.  No veteran looks at the adornments on their chest as prizes free of the cost of suffering.  

We too have come to accept that whilst we would not have chosen some of the things that have happened, we are glad to reflect on the choices we’ve made in how we responded to them.

As we look at our scars in the context of what they remind us of, we receive an irrefutably real yet strange comfort from God.  It’s a “well done, good and faithful servant” kind of reward, and it’s an inside job that we get to enjoy every moment we take to reflect on such a truth.

Our scars do not diminish us; on the contrary they speak of bravery done.  And this cannot be taken away.

Nothing and nobody can take this away from us. History has been written. And whilst there would’ve been times we comprehensively felt overcome, we were not overcome indefinitely.

We survived.
We endured.
We were not overcome.
We overcame.

Photo by Yukie Emiko on Unsplash

I was told I wasn’t trying, when my mother was dying

I’ve only told this story to my mother just now.  There never seemed the appropriate time before.  In fact, I haven’t given it much thought until now. 

The story is instructive, for it isn’t the only time a boss of mine has prioritised the work over the life-death welfare of family.

Wind the clock back to May 2011.  My mother was admitted to hospital with a nasty chest infection, and according to the doctor she was literally drowning.  (Official diagnosis was severe pneumonia.) The penny hadn’t dropped for us at that point in time.  What none of us knew was she was dying.

After 10 days in intensive care we finally were able to reflect on her plight.  But the first four of those days she was more than occasionally delusional — the first time in our mother’s life when we didn’t know her, and she didn’t know us.  On the final night of these first four, the Thursday, the doctor said she might not make it through the next 24-hours.  It was such a dark time.

Coinciding with this, I was in the midst of rolling out a whole-of-organisation “Safety for Life” strategy road show.  I worked for a Port Authority at the time (the largest port on the west coast of Australia) and I had 360 employees to present to in sessions of 20-30 each.  “Safety for Life” appealed to employees’ commitment to the heart and morals of safety — that safety truly was a life-and-death proposition in heavy industry, where the Port had had fatalities on and off the job.  The first and second of these sessions was run on the second day of my mother’s stay in ICU.

I recall the first session went well, but the second session I was preoccupied by my mother’s condition, concern for my father, and when I’d next get 40 kilometres down the coast to the hospital.

When I returned to my office, I had my new manager come in and he said in a harsh voice, “Mate, I hear the last session you did was below par.  I know your Mum’s sick but don’t drop the ball again, okay!”  I was flabbergasted.  I had clearly wanted to do better.  (And for the record, the remaining sessions were all very well and passionately delivered.)

What I couldn’t understand was he knew my mother was in ICU, and it didn’t seem to bother him.  He made no enquiry of her before that quip and didn’t speak to me afterward.  I was preparing to lose my mother!

As it happened, we rode out those four days with Mum, my brothers, our wives and Dad, and the ten days overall.  It was the scariest time.

Before this 2011 experience, I had had extremely good and caring managers for twenty years previously.  I found it unconscionable that a manager of people could not only put the job ahead of one of his people, but that he did so when my mother was possibly going to die.

I share this to say, these things do happen.

Leaders have a real opportunity when life is tough for those who report to them.  Their opportunity is to show care and concern and support, and to help when life is overwhelming.  I don’t know about you, but I would do anything for a manager who stepped into the breach for me in the above kind of situation, and I have very fortunately experienced that on countless occasions.  For me, that’s leadership!

I left that workplace about 20 months later to commence a fulltime pastoral role.  The relationship I had with this new manager didn’t get any better, and for the first time I encountered a narcissistic bully who had positional control over me.  The ironic thing is part of my role as Port Safety Advisor was to call out and advocate for bullying and harassment as a contact officer.  This story I share here is just one during that time.  I went through a variety of depression throughout this period in my life, simply because I was in a situation that I could neither change nor easily escape from.

Praying for you if you’re lonelier than sad right now

We all feel it from time to time if we’re honest.  Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking you’re the only one.  Feeling lonelier than sad is a frightfully desolate place the soul comes to rest; a place resembling anything other than rest.  And don’t let anyone gaslight you into thinking you’re ‘less than’ for feeling perfectly human.

Lord, oh dear God,

You know so well that restlessness of soul begotten of the Gethsemane place.  You know those blood-shaped tears, and You know them ever so personally.

As human beings, we think we have the market cornered on feeling abandoned, and yet You were there to taste that sort of forsakenness Yourself.  You know sorrow like we rarely encounter it, and still You know that we DO encounter it.

This prayer is for that one right now, whose heart is broken and whose soul is torn in an anguish they cannot quell.  You are there with them, right now, by Your Presence, by Your Spirit, in that bout of spiritual attack that leaves them feeling utterly forsaken.

Remind them now, Lord, via this prayer, that they’re not alone, that they’re not forsaken.  Be with them in their lonelier-than-sad kind of sorrow and help them get the relief they so sorely seek.

Beckon to them hope for the coming day, that Your rescue is on its way and that their joy is set to return.  Abide with them even as they abide with You in this bitter and terrifying lament.

As the weeps turn to wails, as the reflex shivers and sniffs ebb and flow, as the thoughts come in to distract and destroy, Lord, come!

Keep them safe from harm, Lord, as You know our human capacity to render to enemy what can never be his to take.  As the stormfront of depression makes its hit, give to the one I pray for some testimony of their ability to withstand its force.

As those winds roar, Lord God, make it so they have a faith within that rises up in spite of their felt weakness.  Help them take to the shelter You have prepared for them; the shelter of a kind person, who may listen, notwithstanding Your covenant and faithful shelter — as they may encamp under the shadow of Your wings.

Present them with a new hope, now, Lord.

In and through the name of Jesus,

AMEN.

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What an alcoholic says to anyone who insists their drinking is harmless

Not only is pornography a big issue in society, but it is just as big an issue in Christian circles.  And the same trend is revealed with alcohol.  Alcohol advertising together with the societal impact of alcohol abuse shows just how troubled a relationship our culture has with alcohol.

I’m an alcoholic.  Yet, I haven’t had a drink since September 20, 2003.

I may not have stepped into the rooms of AA at all in the past 13 years, but there was a time when I would go to meetings four, five, six times a week.  Probably not so much to help me get over the drink!  Once I decided I never looked back.  But I have counted the number of times I’ve been at AA meetings and was invited to share.  On 160 occasions I started my ten minutes of sharing time in the customary way with, “Hello everyone, I’m Steve and I’m an alcoholic.”

When I say I’m alcoholic it means I don’t drink and will never drink again because I lost the right to drink — yes, to partake in even one!  I can tell you now, it’s not the stopping drinking that gives you the power for sobriety.  It’s everything else you do as far as the AA program of things goes.

I found, like millions before me, that when you put everything into it — boots and all — you succeed.  It works.  It simply does.  The program for recovery works on honesty, humility, unity with others on the journey, and a commitment to service.

But this isn’t about singing the praises of AA or Celebrate Recovery or the 12 Steps.

This is about the concern I have that our churches and Christian groups are giving ascent to a drinking culture more and more, year by year.  I see Christians going out and posting about the drinks they’re drinking.  I see them stocking up on booze (the rare Scotch’s they have and the souvenir beers they keep).  I see them scheduling “fellowship” get-togethers with drinks.  Particularly the younger set — anyone from the twenties to the forties.  I see them talking about their favourite drinks, bars, and local eateries — yes, I know, you have to have your Shiraz or Cab Sav with a luscious steak, or a Semillon blanc with your chicken or fish (that used to be my excuse too).

I know some who have discussed their drinking with me, and deeper down they know there is an issue with how much and how often they drink.  It’s become habit.  And it’s a slippery slope that ends up nowhere good, even if they insist that they’re only “moderate” drinkers.  Anyone who drinks every week, more than once a week, for every week of their lives has a problem with the drink.  I drank no more often than that.

It’s more about how we protect our right to drink, like we can’t survive without it.  Ironically, it’s those who insist they can go without it who often clutch hardest to their bottle.

We need to be honest.  If we drink for the effect — just to get a little tipsy — you know, to take the edge off — we’re dealing with our feelings in a way that’s not healing.  God’s not in on it.  It’s the same when we need to alter our mental state with anything.

There is only freedom in the purest joyousness of sobriety.

I’ve always told my daughters that if they can drink one or two (literally that amount and stop) every now and then (not weekly) and they were never preoccupied with wanting to drink, they had every right to drink.

Anyone who drinks more than this, in my view, especially if they’re Christian, is on the slippery slope, and they could be relying on the drink more than they rely on God.

Our drinking isn’t harmless.  It can slowly become deeply habitual and even ritualistic.  Of course, there are so many of us who are (or were) closet alcoholics.  In 2002-2003, I was a safety manager for an oil and fuel distributor breathalysing truck drivers every Monday morning and at other random times.  I would counsel them if they blew over and would be part of their performance management — all the while I knew I had a drinking problem, myself.  Utter hypocrisy, I know!

If we don’t tell on the sin, the sin will eventually tell on us, as Sy Rogers would say.

If you have committed your life to the Lord, and you drink, all I say is can you honestly ask God if change is needed?

From my experience, anyone who has to insist their drinking is harmless may well have a bigger problem than they think.

Oh, and by the way, I have a tougher stance again on Christians partaking in illicit, mind-altering drugs.

We must ask ourselves, what are we running away from?

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When a child endures the injustice of becoming pseudo parent

For many years we have discussed this fact, my eldest daughter and I.  The time when I was utterly a broken man, and she, at eleven years of age, was part of my support.  Oh, I had my parents, my newfound friends at AA, two sponsors, and others, but the truth was, when I cared for my three daughters, my eldest daughter, and perhaps to a degree my middle daughter too, often propped me up emotionally when life was brutally tough and just too hard.

The process of grief lasted at least a year, but was interspersed with much growth.  But there were inevitably times when I was still so enamoured with the life I’d had that had come to an end.  I very much understand the enormous challenges single dads face, not that I didn’t see I had changes I needed to make.

Yet, there she was, my eleven-year-old.  In many ways, when my first marriage dissolved, so did her childhood.  I’ll never forget the single tear that rolled down her cheek the day I had to break the news.  I had made a promise that as it worked out, I couldn’t keep.  I would never have ended the marriage, but, as it worked out, the marriage was ending.

The ensuing months I made dramatic changes.  Quit drinking and every other problematic habit.  Committed my life to God.  Gave much of what I had away.  Devoted my life to service.  Received the call of God.  I was a transformed person.  But the marriage was over.  It wasn’t too little, but it was too late.  And I wasn’t the only one picking up the pieces.

I did become the kind of father I always wanted to become, indeed a father I probably couldn’t have been in that marriage.  But I did rely on my older daughters, particularly my eldest, too much.  My eldest was required to take on too much for someone her age.  And I wasn’t the only adult to fail her at that point in her life.

Probably the worst of it is the fact that after three years of grieving and recovering, when I was finally in a position to embrace love, marrying again meant even more change for my then fourteen-year-old eldest daughter.  Again, she was required to change.  I faced grief in the changes that were forced upon me, but her grief was a vicarious one.  She was a reluctant and quite innocent a victim, as children are.

We tend to think and say, “Well, they’re children, and they’ll be fine; children are resilient, don’t you know?!”  It’s a cop out for the abuse adults do to children.  And the cycle continues when those children become adults if they don’t recognise it must stop with them.

My daughter’s grandmother (my mother) has been a saving grace all the way through.  They have about as close a bond as any grandmother and grandchild could.  And this is not said in any other way than to point out that they have been there for each other at the depths.  My mother has been there for my eldest daughter when I couldn’t be.  I’m eternally thankful for that!

Why do I write this?  There are times in many of our lives when our children, or one of them, is required to do more than their age ought to require of them.  Whether it’s in broken families or in those apparently together, these dynamics can happen — where parent becomes “a friend” to their child in order that they might be assisted to cope.  And whether it happens or not is not so much the point.  The point is it’s unfair on the child.  They lose part of their childhood (or the whole thing), because they’ve busy doing a role they’re not ready for.

I don’t know how to compensate for this other than to be honest.  I trust that in being transparent some healing is still available.  And that’s my prayer.

Learning is Succeeding

He failed.  In the failing, however, he succeeded.  Every time.  Well, every time he chose to learn, that is!

Every time he didn’t learn, he didn’t succeed.  God was that patiently loving that he gave him more opportunities to succeed, as if the success itself was the learning, for it was.

So, whenever he failed, he tried to remember that in his failing there was a choice.  Choosing to try again, in and of itself, was success, and perhaps success of the most important kind.  Not that choosing to learn is usually a comfortable experience.  But he chose to learn to embrace his failures.  At last, he smiled.  

~

He discovered something hidden about life.  Rarely do people see this.  Perhaps it’s only the heroes who do.  Failures define them, but not in the way you’d think.

In the mixed-up world of success, we only see or notice or care for the end result.  We hardly pay attention to ugliness of the process.  But the ugliness of the process makes every success all the sweeter.  There would be no success if it weren’t for failure.

True success doesn’t come unless it is shrouded in many failures.  True success is always a journey.

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God’s love must change our hearts before we can love others

Are you up for a wrestle?  We think we know love, but I often need reminding; the concept of love came from God, not us.

It seems so simple — love — but the trouble is we’re often a whole lot better at talking about it than we are at doing it.  My heart is not geared toward love by its natural inclination.  None of our hearts are.

God must change my heart before I can love others.

As a segue, here is a revolutionary quote from Mister Rogers in terms of how God’s love can work through us in our relationships:

“I don’t think anyone can grow unless they’re loved exactly as they are now, appreciated for what they ARE rather than what they might become.”

It is hard to love those who are doing things we dislike.  And I don’t mean, “I love you; I just don’t like you much at present.”  What I mean is love is practicing faith in the person, no matter how they’re behaving in the present situation or toward us.  Love is impervious to indifference.

Practicing faith in someone requires patience, especially when they’re not responding as we’d like.  This requires a heart that is FOR them, which is a heart that has the capacity to offer grace; that gift of undeserved favour.

As Christians we commonly talk about the grace of God in Christ’s going to the cross as the means of atoning for our sins.  We far less commonly extend that grace, yet we often expect that grace to be extended toward us.

To extend God’s grace to someone requires us to bear the cost.  I must admit that while I’d like to think I do this often, it is a comparatively rare event when I do it — AND when my heart joins in I mean.

What I mean is it’s relatively easy to extend God’s grace begrudgingly.

It’s much tougher to “overcome evil with good,” because that requires faith, which is trust that vindication will come through the means of an opposite action.  Faith that in giving something valuable away, that it will come back.

Only those who have faith can love like this.  And yet I know how often I fail the grade.

It’s infinitely tougher to love in a good-hearted way when our hearts are oriented the other way.  It’s like steering a ship into a force-10 gale.

When God’s love emanates from our hearts it’s because we’ve chosen what God wants.  Our heart has been convicted, which means God’s Spirit has convinced us.

See how easy it is to love with God’s love when God’s love has convinced us?

We can talk about God’s love all we want, but we never rise to the radical standard of God’s love unless we choose to lose.  Doesn’t sound very attractive, does it?

What if we told those seriously considering faith in Jesus that they would have to lose everything to inherit the Kingdom.  Would there be many converts?

Well, you don’t need to convince a convert to Christ — they’re already convinced!  This is because the work of conversion doesn’t rely on us, but on the Holy Spirit.

The Mister Rogers quote stands as a perennial example of what God’s love is: 

A love that sees the best in a person especially when they’re not at their best.

It’s the sort of love we all expect to receive but are reluctant to extend.

It’s a love that sees the potential in every human being.  It’s a love that believes a person can grow, and when people see we believe such things a funny thing happens.

They do tend to grow!

God’s love changes us from the inside out, so when others receive God’s love through us, they’re loved from the outside in.

Image (not quote in the photo) by Ben White on Unsplash

God doesn’t work by magic, but the surprises are many

It’s taken me a long time over my past seventeen years as a serious Christian (15 years in ministry) to dispel the idea that God is going to bless me around the corner because of some secret wish.

We all expect God to come through for us in some significant way — “God, if I do this, you’ll do that.”

Many of our prayers can start out this way, or we can even pray thinking that if we pray, we’ll get our way.  God will answer THAT prayer.  But God doesn’t work that way.

I think we pray expecting our prayer to be answered because deep within us we strongly desire control over our lives.  And who could blame us?

When we believe in God, we may have nurtured a belief deep down that we’re not even aware of, that if God is benevolent, that God will be benevolent with me!

We can begin to believe that bad things won’t happen to me, because, quite frankly, God is for me, and if God is for me and focused on blessing me, I’m beyond harm.  This is actually a harmful attitude.

Think of the bargains we make with God.  If we’re remotely honest.  We all have deep wishes we desperately want satisfied.  We can very easily fall into the practice of saying to God, very unconsciously, “Lord, if I’m a good Christian, I know you’ll do such-and-such for me.”

But God doesn’t work like that.  Even if we’ve done everything right, and attended to every detail, there is no guarantee with God that 5 + 5 = 10.  God can’t be bargained with.

I can’t say to God, “I’ll study and get the degree and then you get me that great job...”  There’s no guarantee that even with great grades and grade point average that we’ll get the opportunity we set our hopes on for years.  The truth is there’s a possibility I may never get a job in that field I invested 5-10 years of studies in.  Is that fair?  No, it doesn’t seem that way.  But life also isn’t limited to this one missed golden opportunity.  There are others.

God isn’t transactional.  But God is transformational.  God works by surprises that we never expected.  God blesses us in ways that are too high for us to conceive (Isaiah 55:8-9).

I find that if I wind the clock back five years, I would hardly believe looking forward that I’d be doing some of the things I’m doing.  God also connects us with people and situations that seem bizarrely coincidental — God-incidences I call them.

We must learn to root out of our psyches all the bargains we make with God — “If I do THIS, I know you’ll do THAT, God.”  It’s a recipe for disappointment at best, and at worst, in the long run, it’s a plan for despair.

One of the most empowering things we can do in our faith is to identify all the conditions we place on God, and quickly, thoroughly and often repent of them.  They keep coming up because our hearts are geared to cling to idols.

The fewer the unconscious bargains we make with God — those ‘agreements’ we strike that, in reality of things, will never come to pass — the more content we will be simply to serve God with what we have and who we are.

When we free ourselves of the pressure to manipulate God for our own ends, we’re freer to look for the surprise blessings that God is doing all the time.

We may not be able to successfully bargain with God, but if we’re diligent in our faith, we will soon find that God blesses us in better, more abundant ways than we could have even imagined.

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