20 years later, I thank God for Mum

Tonight 20 years ago was again one of my loneliest nights.  It is actually difficult to comprehend from 20 years later just how much pain I was enduring and how much courage I showed in that season emerging from a life shattered by marriage betrayal, rejection, and failure.

Somehow, even though it did happen, the evidence of one’s healing is there are only good memories of a time when I actively did everything I could to recover from grief, despair, betrayal, depression, panic attacks, and alcoholism.  Somehow I’ve lost touch with the pain of it all, though I don’t forget how painful it was, if that even makes sense.

Back then, my mother was a rock of support.  As was Dad.  But since we lost Mum last year, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the incredible woman she was.  Mum didn’t take sides or play favourites, and this is why she was the best mother.  She was fair, knew what was right, and her and Dad were strands made of the same cord of integrity.

The pain I went through in that period of my life, and the burden that my parents (and particularly Mum) bore, cannot be put into words.  Day after day, for months, and in reality, the flux lasted years.  Nobody ever tells you when you become a parent what it will cost you.  I saw the labour of love my Mum invested in those tremulous days, each of them fraught with the nagging worry that one day I might lose all hope—let’s face it, the pain of divorce is too much for many people.

As I consider the many words in cards and other memorabilia that my Mum left me, I read her poignant words with a piqued insight, astonished at what she went through because of what I went through.

20 years to the day when I went to the Royal Show with my family and left alone, Mum remarks how the happiness she saw in me to be with my family earlier in the day had morphed into a life-questioning depression by evening when I returned.  No doubt at the time I was so heavily in my own fearful grief that I may not have discerned Mum’s, but I can only imagine the vicarious pain she was enduring—her and Dad—each and every day through that hellish season.

The trouble as I look back is my first initial recovery took nine months, and then I entered another transition that, from my parents’ viewpoint, provided concerns of a different kind.  I was over the initial grief, but I was still so off balance.  I got so heavily involved in the church that I began to lose sight of my daughters’ needs, but yet again, my parents filled that gap, until another whole year (or more) had passed, and I realised the mistake I was making.  But I acknowledge now, reflecting on what my Mum wrote me at the time, just how much Mum did to be a mother to my daughters, and all she and Dad did to hold us all together.

20 years to the particular night, with Mum now deceased nearly 14 months, I pay respect to what she did for me, one of her three children.

If you are a parent of an adult child grieving and you relate to holding that insurmountable burden, please know that no matter how painful it is, it is worth it, for you would give anything to support your kin.

If you are the one amid the pain of the deepest imaginable grief, hold on, for it will be worth it in the end.  Endure one day, one hour, one minute, at a time, and try as much as you can to connect with what you can still be grateful for.  I don’t say that to make you feel bad, but when you are enduring grief you NEED gratitude to cling to, for in gratitude is at least the mirage of hope.

20 years on I am so thankful for the life I have now.

IMAGE: Happier times.  Mum with my eldest daughter, her eldest grandchild in 1993.

20 years today, brokenness and redemption overlap

20 years ago, today, September 21, 2003, was a resurrection day, not that I knew it at the time. I literally had no idea. It would take me months to even see it. It would take me years to believe it. 20 years later I am living the life I didn’t dare dream (but always hoped) was possible.

The paradox of the beginning of a fresh new life 
at the dawn of loss that cataclysmically broke me.

17 years ago, today, September 21, 2006, was also a resurrection day; a day I had long hoped for. It had finally arrived. Three years of hoping, and a miracle of new life hoped for. Three years of long days and many agonising hours, three years exactly, two entirely different days and seasons, yet a consistent hope joining them both.

Both resurrection days were entirely different.

Precisely 3 years apart, I think, is no coincidence.

Let me explain more about the details:

The first one was the day before my first marriage ended, which happened to be the very first day of 20 years of sobriety thus far. If you had have asked me on that day if I knew what the next 20 years would entail, you would have discovered that I simply had no idea. If I went back to that day, and only knew what was about to occur, there is no way I could ever see it as a resurrection day. 

Within 24 hours my life would unravel; I would lose my wife, free access to my children, and my home that I had invested so much of myself in. Everything of that life disappeared in a matter of seconds at 8pm the following day, 22 September 2003. It all changed in the blink of an eye. And yet, as I look back to this date 20 years ago, the very essence of the new life was germinating. And yet, so much loss...

Not that I knew it,
but I was about to be reformed.

Even as I endured a kind of revenant experience,
(a death-of-self experience)
a door was being prepared for me
to be opened as an eventual resurrection experience.

Even as I watched my eldest daughter 
commence the bravest of journeys.

Even as my relationship with my three daughters 
was being re-engineered through loss.

Read in my mother’s Facebook comment five years ago how mortally afraid my parents were for my life.  Oh how faithful my mother and father have been in my life, and in the lives of my family!

Wind the clock forward three years to the second resurrection day, Sarah and I held each other for the very first time. We count September 22, the day I asked Sarah’s father permission, as the commencement of our courtship. Three years I had spent as a single father, having grieved nearly half that time. I had ventured into the loneliness of a life that couldn’t pick and choose when I could see my children. And yet I was embraced by a community called the local church, and they showed me that God had a bigger vision for my life.

The first resurrection day was coincidently the day before a death, where one life died, where the door to that life slammed shut, and threatened my very existence. The second resurrection day was the completion of a barebones construction work; a man rebuilt for marriage, even if I still had so much to learn.

Doors slam shut in life, and it
always happens without warning.

50 years ago TODAY my parents 
suffered the loss of my sister to stillbirth.

TODAY I spend with my Dad and 
we remember not only Debbie but Mum, too.

We never see doors slamming shut as a favour done for us. We always resent the fact that we have lost control. But a door slammed shut isn’t the end of the story. And this is something we must hold onto amid the resonance of an impending and enduring hell.

There is no better example of a living hell than loss, but just picture Jesus descending to hell before He was resurrected. God becomes real in our lived experience when we continue to hope beyond the experience of a form of death.

A form of death, a door slammed shut, isn’t the end of the story... the story continues to unfold.

Even as a door slams shut in our face,
with the hope of resurrection, we ultimately rise.

As much as we can, we must diligently trust for a better day to eventually arrive. If we can do that, and trust in the eventual resurrection day arriving, it will eventually arrive. Hope is pivotal. And such hope is a mirage without faith.

See how faith in God, faith in redemption, is important 
when you find your life smashed against the rocks?

You may choose to trust in something other than God, and I would say good luck with that, because it is only in diligently following God that we are able to trust in a force that is entirely good and trustworthy; it may take years, but redemption is the destiny of those who have faith enough to step out each step of life’s journey the best they can.

I could not have planned the coherence of these two resurrection dates. Only as I looked back could I see that God was communicating His faithfulness through such a ‘coincidence’.

20 years ago today, brokenness was mine for an extended time.  But brokenness was the catalyst for the redemption that was coming.  “If you’re going through hell,” as Sir Winston Churchill said, “keep going!”

“Do not grow weary in doing good, 
for at the proper time you will reap a harvest 
of goodness if you don’t give up.”
—Galatians 6:9

Image: my daughters and I in December 2004.

It’s not about you!

The Purpose Driven Life (2002) is a book by American pastor, Rick Warren.  There are over 50 million copies in print and audio.  One of the most fascinating facts about this book is its first line.  Warren’s first sentence is, “It’s not about you!”

It’s an astounding way to start a book that is essentially a 40-day journey in learning the purpose of life.

That four-worded sentence that starts page one, we could say, is the beginning of wisdom.  If only we lived this truth out, we would live lives full of purpose and meaning.  

Let me explain in the only way I can, through some illustrations from the real days of my own life.

On the flight that I took yesterday and the one I’ll fly home on today, I selected an aisle seat and not a window seat.  I would very much love the view out of the window seat, but I pick the aisle seat every time I can for a simple reason.  I would rather be the person inconvenienced than inconvenience another, and it’s not because I’m a so-called “people-pleaser.”  There is deeper motive.  I exist to serve others, and in the serving of others, and making others feel special, God does something inside ME to remind me of the power there is in being a blessing.  

Doing things for others is good for me!
In actual fact, there’s no better investment 
in my own happiness than existing for others.  
Do this and you’ll discover it’s true for you, too.

It's the same with a cuddle I received from my 10-year-old son yesterday morning when he “mistakenly” woke me up at four in the morning before I left for the airport.  I needed to be wake at 5:10AM.  He woke me up for that brief cuddle because he NEEDED a quick cuddle.  I’m not sure he mistook the time at all, and if I had have been more focused on my sleep than on his love, I could have chastised him, sent him back to bed, complained of having been woken up, and I would have missed the opportunity to love him with the hug that he needed.  It’s not about me.  As parents, we are living sacrifices for our children.  How do we love other than being a living sacrifice? 

Being a little more tired in the morning 
is WORTH the sacrifice of affirming my son’s love.

I compensated by making the choice 
to get a nap on the plane.

The last example is a common one.  It is all too easy to say that my job (or anyone’s for that matter) and my workload (or anyone’s for that matter) has an insane and unsustainable pace about it.  A lot of the time I feel I’m doing three, four or six things at once.  Many people have warned me not to burn out (because people have), and their motivation is often correct and therefore, with empathy, beautiful.  But think of this.  A high and “unsustainable” workload is only one way to look at it.  There are degrees of perception.  

One day I will be gone.  What am I sowing?  What legacy am I leaving?  What am I even doing all this for?  To be remembered?  No!!  I’m doing this to build into OTHERS’ lives.  Period.  The legacy I’m leaving is I’m showing others how THEY can build into OTHERS’ lives.  It’s not about me.  When others realise it, it’s not about them either.

Going the extra mile, and turning the other cheek, both biblical phrases, invite us into the service of sacrifice.  Sacrifice requires faith, and faith engages hope, which we need anyway.  

Can you see that sacrifice actually engages 
what we all desperately need in this life?

Faith is vindicated in our seeing hope rise in others, 
THEN our hope is bolstered.

I want to finish on what we were born for.  We were born for resilience.  We were born to overcome.  Jesus, as the lamb who saves the world, is the archetypal saviour.  His three years of ministry before he was nailed to a Roman cross symbolised the life we are called to follow and live.  The resurrection is a symbol of overcoming against the odds.

We actually NEED to access this life 
to not only survive but to thrive.

What I want to impress upon everyone reading this article is BELIEF is supremely important in this life because it requires and invigorates HOPE.  

We are nothing on any quest without hope.

We were born for resilience, 
we were born to overcome, 
not to be defeated, 
and I can qualify this 
by the very fact that life is hard, 
life it is full of hardships.
FOR EVERYONE.

Overcoming is a quest for everyone.

~

But there is a way to succeed in life, 
and it is common to every life.

Thoughts and words and beliefs of defeat kill hope, and whilst we need to be realistic, we can also be grateful that we had what it took to keep going!  We got through.  Even when it seemed impossibly hard.  Just think of all the thousands and millions of heroes that got through their impossible challenges—we stand on the shoulders of those giants and we too, with the right supports, will get through, too.  

But we must believe.  We must access hope.  
For it is hopeless without hope.  
We are defeated before we begin without hope.

It’s not about you.  It’s not about me.  When we understand this, we are on the cusp of the right motivation that positions us for victory, because we will always win when humility is our way.

When we get it wrong, it isn’t the end, but merely the beginning, because trust builds when we have the humility to own our error, and to set it right.  Relationships don’t crumble because of conflict, they crumble when people don’t have the humility to own their wrongs.  When it’s not about me, when it’s not about you, we begin to live with a heart of empathy, and that gives us the power to right the wrongs that we do.  

Such empathy delivered through humility is leadership.

It’s not about you.  When we discover this, we discover the purpose of our lives, and life has meaning all of a sudden, and we become leaders overnight, because our heart has been set right.

Let me finish in this vein.  Recently, I heard Justin Langer the former Australian cricketer and coach speak.  He finished his presentation with an astounding statement.  

He said, 
“leadership is about making people feel special.”

My mother, whose soul rests now from this life, epitomised this.  She made every person who came into her orbit feel special.  She was such a wonderful example.  Think of an example in your own life, watch and adopt.

When we live such a life that we are compelled to make everyone around us feel special, we begin to live the life we were called into from the beginning.  We are not simply expressing leadership, we are expressing the very heart of life.  

We are here to TOUCH lives.

In a world that is often narcissistic, 
we become the antithesis 
through making people feel special.  

We show narcissism the opposite spirit, 
and we prove the power of humility.  

Wise persons will observe and adopt it.

Life’s not about you.  
Live this and watch your life expand in service.

~

A final word on motivation, because life can crush our spirit.

Allow good things to come and learn to let go.
Good things will come of their own accord as we sow good. 
Have faith to let it be so.
And be wise, diligent and prudent about your self-care.

This above is the heart of wisdom.