Painful Past, Painful Present

Have you ever tried on a pair of glasses that were not yours? I have and the result was dizzying! Literally. People were unrecognizable, signs were unreadable, and dimensions and distances were very distorted. I never would be able to navigate life well with my vision so grossly out of whack.

Many of us have distorted vision without ever donning a pair of glasses not made for our eyes.

Past hurts and wounds have distorted the way our hearts and minds experience other peoples’ words, actions, and intentions. Often, we are the walking wounded, unaware of how skewed our perceptions are. Without an emotionally and spiritually mature friend to speak truth in love, sadly people may live their whole lives feeling injured by virtually everyone around them.

Most of the time, this tragic way of viewing the world is seated in the experiences we’ve had with primary caregivers – whether parents, grandparents or guardians. God wired us up to need and want nurture, protection, love, and acceptance. Infants need this to survive. Children need this to thrive. Adolescents need this to individuate healthily. Adults need it to navigate the world successfully and to engage healthily in intimate relationships and fulfilling friendships.

Without those ingredients of nurture, protection, love, and acceptance, the world and other people are perceived as dangerous, untrustworthy, rejecting, and unkind. The experience of life’s early training grounds reinforced those perceptions and, perhaps subconscious belief systems.

Take heart because the situation is far from hopeless! The first step in any recovery program goes something like this: “We admitted we were powerless over our addictions [substitute your problem] and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable”. (Celebrate Recovery, Step 1 – parenthetical words are mine)

So, try not to get hung up on the word “addictions”. Addictions is just another word for idols. And an idol is anything, anyone, or any behavior pattern that holds more power or higher belief status than God. So, in place of addiction, the problem might be anger, jealousy, money, work, television, or emotional volatility. It might be believing about yourself anything that is contrary to what God says is Truth about you. When looked at from that perspective, we all have idols, right?

Admitting there’s a problem; that the way we’ve tried to deal with it, ignore it, medicate it, mask it, act out about it, or numb it has not only not been ineffective – often it has made things worse! Deciding that all those ineffective ways of managing didn’t help and deciding to attend to another course of thought, feeling and behaving (Philippians 4:8-9 (NLT)).

Here is the path to freedom: Put God first and seek His help. Decide to learn to challenge those automatic negative beliefs with alternative thinking. Decide to learn what healthy personal boundaries look like and put them in place. Decide to get help with learning this and being accountable to it if you really want to live life in freedom. And work at it.

Hope. Help. Healing. It’s all available. Step into it and live your life in freedom.

Doing Hard Things

I didn’t want to make the call. I anticipated the worst possible response. The relationship had been filled with past hurts, feelings of abandonment and rejection. There had been a chasm of cautious distance for years. Although the words “I love you” had been spoken, they did not feel true in light of the behavior. I played a part in all that hurt, no doubt.

Dread filled my heart and mind.

Yet, I felt God urging me to be bold and seek and offer forgiveness. To extend the opportunity for a different way forward.

I picked up the phone to dial the number and felt my chest constrict and my breathing get short and shallow. My throat closed up a bit. Anxiety. Crippling fear – another rejection loomed. How could I speak these words to someone who held such authority in my life? I could be crushed. Again. Deep breath. Slow, heavy exhale.

“What is the worst that could happen”, I thought? It certainly would be tough for it to be worse than it is right now, but harsh words could be spoken. I might not get what I hoped for.

“What is the best that could happen?” Well, there could be the thing I had always longed for: a genuine acceptance of responsibility and sorrow for the other party’s part in our hurtful past. There could even be – dare I imagine it – an expression of remorse and seeking forgiveness from the other party.

I dialed. I held my breath as the phone rang.

After many months of no communication, I spoke what God was impressing on my heart. I apologized for my actions, attitudes and behaviors that contributed to years of broken relationship and asked for forgiveness. I extended unsought forgiveness to the other party for the things I perceived they had done to hurt me without enumerating them.

It did not go as I had hoped.

There was a scathing endorsement of how horrible I had been, there was a lack of remorse – forget the notion of regret or admission of wrongdoing on their part. There was no granting of forgiveness. Pretty much my worst-case scenario.

I paused, I silently prayed for God’s strength and Spirit to guard my heart and tongue as I concluded the conversation by saying: “I forgive you. I would like to go forward with a fresh, clean slate and not look back. I am going to hang up now because I do not have anything else to say. I hope you can accept this.”

That conversation hurt deeply. Surprisingly, though, I did not feel as crushed as I anticipated with my worst-case scenario. I think examining the potential positive and negative outcomes ahead of time helped guard my heart and mind. Despite the hurt, I was determined to not follow my heart and instead to follow God. God also impressed upon me that reconciliation takes two. The following week, I called again. I did not bring up the past but checked in on them and the conversation was civil. A breakthrough, considering.

There were no overnight miracles. Over time though, God did restore that relationship. It has never been stress-free. It has always been hard work. There are still times we hurt each other. And it is all worth it.

The most feared phone call of my life did not kill me. Doing the hard thing allowed me to reap a harvest of improved relationship with someone important to me. Had I not been obedient, that person may have died, and I may have lived with broken-hearted hurt and regret, never experiencing that particular miracle of reconciliation. It is not a perfect relationship – is that even a real thing? But it is good enough.

When we do the hard things, God provides the harvest. The harvest does not always look or feel the way we expect. It is, however, always good.

Psalms 126:5-6 (NLT), “Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They may weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest.

Living Satisfied

For so many of us, food has become more than nourishment for our bodies. I’m preaching to myself here, people! Sometimes it is the feel-better go-to when we are lonely, depressed, disappointed, angry, tired, worried, anxious, feeling forgotten … you fill in the blank. It might be a different feeling for you. And it might be a different substance for you – something besides food. #food #substance #feelings

It is important to recognize if food, or something else, has been transformed from a healthy part of life to an unhealthy coping mechanism that deprives of real peace. (Illicit substances are rarely, if ever healthy under any circumstances, but that’s another topic for another day.) #coping

Because the truth is, if we are not eating to fuel our bodies, we are using food (or whatever thing you’ve chosen) as a cheap substitute for the substance -- the nourishment -- we really require.

Our cravings lie though. They tell us comfort will be found in food, gadgets, pills, alcohol, relationships, and other things that leave us wanting and feeling broken. #cravings

That’s right our cravings lie. Think about it. Did that extra helping of pie create lasting peace for you? Did that supersized order of fries make you feel less alone? Did that diet pill ease your disappointment? Did that drink (or several) change your feelings of loneliness and instantly make you feel loved and accepted? Did it last, or did you wake up the next day still feeling the same empty feelings and cravings?

My guess is, if we stop letting our cravings lie to us, the answer to all but the last question is no. After the initial satiated feeling, guilt or remorse kicked in. We step on the scale in the morning and notice it has ticked up a couple of notches – and that’s not the goal we’ve been aiming for. Agh … failure. Again. We realize that the false hope of the diet pill or alcohol faded as quickly as the effects. And sometimes those placebos come with unpleasant after-effects.

There’s only one way to achieve real healing. Only one thing that will dash despair every single time without a guilt or remorse hangover. #healing #nohangover

John 4:32 (NLT), “But Jesus replied, ‘I have a kind of food you know nothing about.’”

And He was not talking about cake. If you’re confused, you are not alone – His closest followers were as well – they thought he was talking about not being hungry for food.

He was not implying he didn’t need to eat food. The next few verses (read them for yourselves) reveal what He meant. It is deeply soul satiating to be connected to the Father; to know and do His will. To sit in His presence and bask in His endless, perfect love. To live out the Purpose He designed specifically for you. #perfectlove #satisfying

Verse 34 in the New Living Translation says (Jesus speaking) “My nourishment” comes from doing what God desires. According to a quick google search, nourishment, in the Oxford dictionary, is defined as “food or other substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition”. #nourishment #health #growth

So, growth, health and good condition come from doing what God desires.

The real antidote to loneliness, depression, disappointment, anger, weariness, worry, anxiety, and feeling forgotten is a deep, abiding knowledge of who God is, knowing who He says you are. The real antidote comes from doing what God desires and living in relationship with Him -- and seeking that connection to Him when those negative human cravings, emotions, and cognitions try to lie to us with false hope. Not perfectly, but purposefully.