New Eyes – Part II Fearless

Last night this truth about new eyes played out beautifully right in front of my own eyes.  I have a seven-year-old son.  He is perfectly imperfect.  The boy is a spitting image of his old man, especially when it comes to his good looks!  While he has picked up a lot of good things from me, he has also inherited some imperfections as well.

One of those imperfections is the tendency to be controlled by fear.  From a young age I can remember being scared.  I was scared to put myself out there, to take leadership, to try new things, to truly be me, and most of the time I always backed down from a challenge.  I never wanted to fail.  That line of thought led to not trying.  Instead of learning that sometimes it is better to try and fail, I learned the painful way of feeling ashamed for not even trying in the first place.  My son is very much the same way when it comes to these things.

It haunts me.  I don’t like to talk about it.  Deep down inside I’m afraid that he might end up like me.  Do you hear the negative thought pattern in that statement alone?  What would be so bad about him ending up a lot like his Dad?  For me it is the fact that my family has a pattern of mental illness and I hold myself responsible for possibly passing down the trait to my son.  But do I really have any control over this?  The obvious answer is no.  And what if he does struggle with the illness?  I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’m glad I have been cursed with the blessing of depression.  It has led to a much deeper understand of life and relationship.  There is little doubt that without the suffering I’ve experienced I wouldn’t be in the place I’m in today.

Last night my son had trouble going to sleep.  I went into his bedroom to talk to him about it and cuddle up for a little bit.  Side note…take advantage of these opportunities!  As we lay in bed together he shared that he was scared and afraid to go to sleep.  His fear was that he would be alone, would wake up alone, and that we wouldn’t be there when he woke up.

My wife and I aren’t perfect parents but we have never left our son alone.  He had no basis for this fear.  The fear was created and manifested itself in his mind.  This is what fear does.  It starts with a thought that we believe to true and then creeps itself into our reality, crippling us and controlling our actions.  We have to develop new eyes to see the difference between the lie and the truth.

I gently pulled him close to me and made him make eye contact with me.  I reminded him that we had never left him alone. He acknowledged that to be true and agreed.  I then told him that we never would leave him alone and that we would be right across the hall if he needed us.  I also took the opportunity to remind him that even when we are alone we’re not really alone.  The spiritual life promises us that God has taken us residence inside us, making his home in our heart.  This is not Christianese mumbo jumbo but a deep truth that we need new eyes for truly discovering.  The amazing truth is that Jesus went to extreme measures to involve us in a never-ending relationship of love and fellowship with his Father through the Spirit.  We are never alone, never forsaken, we never have been and we never have to be.

My son then asked me to pray with him and as we held hands I asked the Father to remind my son about the truth of His Son.

I then kissed him goodnight and went to my own bed.  A few minutes later my son walked into the room with two $1 bills.  He said, “Daddy I wanted to give you these for making me feel better.”  My heart melted instantly.  I grabbed him tight and pulled him into bed with me.  He laid his head on my chest and we embraced.  I gently whispered into his ear that he could never do anything to make me love him less or more.  He couldn’t buy my smile, or my love.  After our hug he got out of the bed and said, “I understand Dad but could I still give you just one dollar as a gift?”  My heart melted again.  I accepted his gift and we kissed and said goodnight once again.

This should sound familiar.  Isn’t this what we do with God?  If we’re honest sometimes we all feel like we have to earn or buy the Father’s smile.  It simply isn’t true.  We don’t have to do anything but accept his free gift of love and relationship.  That’s what makes grace a gift.  Our Father is gently whispering the truth of his love into our hearts to remind us that He is always there, He is always good, He is always love.  This not only requires new eyes, but also new ears to hear.

Eventually my son fell fast asleep and before my wife came to bed she called for me to come to my son’s bedroom.  As I approached she said, “You have got to see this.”  As I entered the room she turned on a light and there was my boy, fast asleep, with his arms wrapped tight around his Bible.

When he woke up this morning we were dying to find out what compelled him to do such a thing.  His response, “I just started to read it so I wouldn’t be focused on being afraid.”  WOW!

Yesterday we talked about new eyes being developed through the faith of an innocent child.  Little did I know it would play out right in front of my own eyes?  My son became a living example to me about how we need to see our Father, and how his nature and words hold the potential for great power in our lives.  With new eyes we are able to confront lies with the truth.  We are able to see that we are not alone, that there is no need to be afraid.

Thank you son for being my teacher.  You have my heart.

Thank you Father for revealing the truth of who you are through the lens of a seven year old boy and his Bible.

Be blessed…you already are!

 

 

New Eyes: a series on reclaiming the beautiful

Recently I bought a Groupon for a new pair of glasses.  I should mention by the way that I’m totally addicted to Groupon.  My wife however is not so thrilled with my newfound hobby.

I haven’t had a new pair of glasses in years.  I got a great deal with the Groupon and I was so excited to get a new pair of hipster specs.  My old glasses were an old prescription, which is why I didn’t wear them very often.  Whenever I would put them on things would become blurry and not very clear.  I was amazed when I picked up my new pair of specs at how clear my vision was.  It was like seeing the world with new eyes.  The world around me became crisp, clearer, there were no blind spots, and it was like seeing again for the first time.

Sometimes in life we need new eyes.  Life has a way of creating blind spots.  The world and our lives become filled with blurred vision and fog.

May I make a suggestion here?  May I suggest seeing the world with some new eyes?  How about the eyes of a child?

Recently my eyes have been made new and vision renewed by some incredible young people in my life.  If we will pay attention our children can teach us a lot about life.  I think this is because children and young people hold to some basic truths that as adults we become blind to.

For the most part children still believe:

1. The world is a good place.  They still have a basic trust and live life through the lens that people are good and life is worth living.
2. They play a lot.  For them life is about enjoying moments of fun and playing with those around them.

For us adults we can become jaded by the world pretty quickly.  Life smacks us upside the head and we lose our innocence.  Pain sets in and instead of truly living, we just get by from day to day.  We reach for something, anything, to live for.  We look forward to the next big thing, the next vacation, the next job, or the next relationship, that will make life worth living.  In so doing…we miss the beauty of the present.  We rob ourselves of living in the moment and enjoying the life we have been given.

How long has it been since you’ve been happy?  Can you remember a time when there was true joy in your life?  If you find yourself having a hard time answering those questions your overdue for a new prescription.  You need new eyes.

Take a look at the words below.  They come from Jesus, the Son, who came to reveal the Father to us.  He felt very strongly about seeing with new eyes.

At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. 

For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.

Life is tough.  Sometimes it is quite ugly.  Sometimes it gets the best of us.  It leaves in pieces, unable to believe basic truths; like the fact the we are loved and accepted, that others are worth loving, that life is meant to be enjoyed, and that the world is full of beauty.

When we choose to see with new eyes things become clearer.  When we see life through the eyes of a child the ugly becomes beautiful.  We learn to trust again.

Children also give us one last great insight.  They love their parents.  Children have an innate desire to know and love their parents.  What about you?  Has life left you so jaded that you have no desire to know your Father?  By seeing with new eyes we rediscover our longing to know our Daddy.  Jesus called him Abba.  He really is good.  He is the Dad of all Dads.  He looks at you and smiles.  You are his beloved, in whom He is well pleased.  We just can’t see it due to our own blindness.

I implore you, as the Apostle Paul would say to get a new prescription.  This week I challenge you to see the world and life with new eyes, the eyes of a child.  A simple trusting and belief that the world is beautiful, that life is good, and that your Papa is especially fond of you.

Be blessed…you already are!

The Healing Process – A Summary of Remembrance

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series of blog posts on the healing process.  I suppose this is because it reminds me of my own journey toward wholeness.  I am not writing to you as one who has mastered this process but as one who is currently on the road toward wholeness as I write.

Sometimes it is easy for persons who are far removed from suffering to give advice to others on how they should move forward.  As we distance ourselves from the pain it can be easy to forget how much suffering really does hurt and often the process that led to our healing can become a vague memory.  Purely speaking for myself, I don’t want to forget.  I hope I never forget.  As the healing occurs and wholeness is achieved I never want to forget just how desperate I was for life, joy, and hope.

It is by way of suffering that I have learned how to stop grasping at life and simply embrace it.  I have met so many that have tried to forget the pain, who have removed it from their hearts and choose not to look at the scars left behind.  To me the scars serve a purpose.  They are no longer wounds but reminders that the Father has made the ugly beautiful.  For me the ultimate healing does not come in forgetting, but remembering.  Remembering becomes a sacred spiritual practice where our hurt and pain are not ruling or inhibiting our lives, but serving as a reflective piece that bring joy and gratitude into our presence as we gaze upon the scars.

The steps that I have been writing about are not a guarantee.  There is no perfect formula for moving out of pain toward wholeness.  If you are looking for an easy ABC, 123, or 7 step process stop.  It doesn’t work that way.  You can’t buy your way out, unless you buy a shamwow, it does everything!

Confession, Community, Befriending Pain, Confronting Shame, and Playing through Pain are all a part of my journey.  I have found those steps to be huge pieces of the puzzle toward wholeness.  Your journey might look different.  The one thing that I am quite certain of is that suffering, pain, and heartbreak will fall on all of us.  I hate to be a Debbie downer but it is true.  The question is not if it will come, but when it will come.  And when it does how you choose to approach the darkness will have life lasting effects on you and your loved ones.

If I could leave this series with one lasting thought I would want you to know the following.  While the darkness finds us all it does not have to define us.  In viewing our lives as a story it is just a chapter, a piece of the puzzle, one piece of the pie, assuming of course that you choose to face it instead of ignoring it.  If that is your choice, (and make no mistake it is a choice) it might last a few chapters.  Our stories are part of a much bigger story.  A story that is being told on the grandest scale, a larger than life story about the whole world and all of time, a story that includes all people, everywhere, past, present, and future.  Our stories are folded into the great love story of the blessed trinity.  Their unique love and desire for relationship with us humans is the backdrop of this great story.  Everything in history, everything in scripture points to this story of God desperately wanting to be with us.

Your story is not over because it had been scarred.  Jesus was scarred as well.  He was bruised, crushed, humiliated, and rejected.  Jesus experienced the darkness and most certainly lived to tell about it and experience the joy and endless love of His Father.  In doing so the Son offers to bring us out of our blindness and give us new eyes to see the Father’s love for us.  This is where true life exists.  This is where new stories are written.  The best chapters of our lives are written when we understand who we are and that God really loves us that way.  This is true freedom.  Embrace it.  God is handing you a pen, blank sheets of paper, inspiring you to write the pages of your life in His warm embrace.  Beautiful indeed.

Stay thirsty my friends!

The Healing Process – Part V, Playing through the Pain

Michael Jordan is my favorite athlete of all time.  To me there is much evidence to prove that he is the greatest basketball player to ever lace up a pair of high tops.  I grew up in one of the greatest eras of the NBA.  Jordan, Bird, Magic, Thomas, Malone, Olajuwon, Robinson, just to name a few.  These guys forever changed the game that I love but Jordan was by far my favorite.  He did things on a basketball court that had never been seen before.  I have vivid memories of watching his moves and then trying to imitate him on my own basketball court in the driveway.  “Like Mike, if I could be like Mike”!

One of the greatest moments of Jordan’s career came in the ’97 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz.  It was a tight series and hours before the start of game 5 it was announced that Jordan might not play due to having the flu.  Somehow I knew Jordan would make his way onto that court.  Michael Jordan is one of the fiercest competitors of all time in any sport.  And play he did.  From the start it was obvious that Jordan was not quite himself but he played, pushing through the pain and effect of the flu.  Jordan would end up playing 44 minutes despite his weak body. He was visibly tired and sluggish throughout the game. He finished the game with 38 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals and 1 block. With only a few seconds remaining and the game’s result safely in Chicago’s favor, Jordan collapsed into Scottie Pippen’s arms creating the most replayed and lasting image of The Flu Game.  The Bulls would go onto win the championship and Jordan would earn another Finals MVP award, further cementing his place in Basketball history.

How do you choose to handle the pain of life?  When we find ourselves in those seasons where for whatever reason life is just really painful how do you respond?  If your anything like me the tendency is to stop living.  Pain has a way of robbing us of experiencing life altogether.  It’s as if nothing good can happen or be experienced when life doesn’t make sense.

What if it didn’t have to be this way?  What if you could learn to play through the pain?  The problem with hurt, disappointment, and suffering is that we allow it to become our identity and control us.  When we live consumed by our shame, our past, our failures, we learn to stop living and life just goes passing by.  We become spectators instead of participators.  In all areas of life we end up surviving, just trying to get from one day to the next.  This cannot be the abundant life Jesus spoke of.

Over the summer one of the hardest lessons I have ever learned was to play through the pain.  Everything inside you tells you that your circumstances are so overwhelming that you don’t deserve to play.  Then we feel bad for letting our circumstances control us.  It becomes a vicious cycle.  We become anxious, depressed, stagnant, merely surviving instead of thriving.  What if I told you that one of the healing steps toward wholeness is learning how to play again?  It is true and is very important for the healing process.

Our minds only have the ability to focus on one thing at a time.  If we sit and focus on the problem then our problems become our life.  We start to own them, we wear them on our faces, and they become our identity.  We convince ourselves that we aren’t worthy or deserving of a good life with the ability to play.

The opposite is true as well.  Choosing to play and live again doesn’t make the problems disappear.  They are still there.  Our struggles and circumstances don’t magically stop existing just because we choose to play.  However, they do become less and less visible while play, and we truly live even if only for a moment.  When we are playing we are living in the moment and focused on that moment.  I guarantee while Michael Jordan was playing that game he was not thinking about having the flu.  He was focused on the game and doing what he was destined to do.

For many of us we allow the pain of our past to rob us of our present and our future.  There is nothing the enemy wants more by the way.  The father of lies loves to remind you of your past and destroy any hope for a better future.  This is what Jesus comes to destroy and do away with once and for all.  The abundant life he talks about is experienced in Him and relationship with his Father through the Spirit.  They are present in our darkness.  Waiting for us with open arms, inviting us to come to them and find rest, to be made whole, and learn to live again.  They replace our sorrow with joy, our fear with hope, our chaos with peace, and our pain with a promise.

What have you stopped doing that you used to enjoy?  Before your innocence was lost what made you happy and full of life?  Who have you stopped being because of the pain?  I encourage you to spend time thinking about these questions and then having the courage to rediscover them.  You are not broken, you are not unlovable, you are not worthless, and you are certainly not alone.

In choosing to play through the pain we choose life.  We take power away from the circumstances of life that have robbed us of so much.  We open ourselves to a greater understanding of our identity and new possibilities of our present and future.  We only get one life.  We have one shot to experience abundant life on this earth.  This is part of how we make the ugly beautiful.

Live this week.  Love this week.  Do something spontaneous this week.  Feed your soul this week.  Look the pain square in the eye and tell it to go to hell.  Refuse to be a victim and choose life.  Only you hold the power to do this.  Choose to live into your true identity as the Beloved and surround yourself in the unconditional love and embrace of the Father.  Life awaits…take hold of it!

Be blessed…You already are!

 

 

The Healing Process – Part IV, The five letter “S” word

What an awful word.  The mere mention of the five letter “S” word makes me cringe.  I much prefer the four letter “S” word and it’s a lot more fun to say!  As I look back on my own story over the past several months I am still dealing with the effects of this word.  So far in this little blog series of the path toward healing and wholeness we have talked about confession, the need for community, embracing pain, and now we are going to a look at shame.  It will be wild ride with a fantastic ending!

Shame:  the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another

Lets just cut straight to the point, a laser beam point of communication if you will and no beating around the bush.  As human beings we are jacked up people!  It’s true.  We’re all jacked up! I don’t care who you are, how much money you make, how perfect your kids are, how much sex you have, how much you read the Bible, or how much you pray.  Your still a jacked up human with a jacked up past filled with many skeletons that have never been removed from the closet.  And so am I.  Are you encouraged yet?  Keep reading, I promise it gets better.

I once had a professor in college who claimed he hadn’t sinned in like 30 years.  I come from a holiness movement background very steeped in good works and how well we perform for God.  It was all bull shit, and that professor was full of it.  While I will never forget my time in college and I am very thankful for it, looking back it was a playground for sin and the worst part was that everyone was lying about it.  It definitely wasn’t a safe place of confession like we have previously talked about.  If your sin got out in the open you were the topic of discussion, the object of prayers for repentance and salvation, and if you happened to go to the altar to pray during chapel everyone was guessing about what your sin might be.  No wonder so many of us kept it all in and suffered in silence.

That is exactly what shame does.  It causes us to suffer alone.  On the outside we throw together an appearance that we are proud of but on the inside we can’t stand ourselves.   Shame usually starts with guilt about an act that we’ve done.  Guilt is not bad in and of itself.  I believe God has wired us with a sense of right and wrong and a little guilt about harming someone else or making a bad decision is not a bad thing.  The problem is when that guilt leads to shame.  Now we’re in two different ballparks.  Even worse is when shame arrives at the hand of someone else.  We haven’t even committed the offense but we are damn sure paying the price for it.

Shame produces lies, separates us from relationship with God and others, and devastates our lives from the inside out.  The lies of our fallen mind are very powerful.  If unchecked and confronted they eat us alive.  When the truth is not brought to the forefront than sooner or later we not only believe the lie, we live into it.  We become what the lie has told us we are.  This is a dangerous place and a slippery slope to be on.  Shame then starts a vicious cycle of emotional pain that includes loneliness, feelings of despair, depression, and anger.  The emotional pain leads to behavioral changes and where self-harm is contemplated and addictions are often formed.  The consequences of shame can be devastating.  Relationships fall a part, self-esteem is destroyed, and persons can become abusive or dysfunctional.  Shame is a killer.  It convinces us that we are worthless, that we don’t matter, that nobody cares, that life isn’t worth living, that we will never be enough, and that the world would be better off without us.

Perhaps you know these feeling swell and recognize some of these lies.  I know I certainly do.  They almost cost me my life on May 22, 2012.  I can write about the cycle because I have lived it.  I believe the most essential part of a healing process is the recognition of the shame that keeps us captive.  We know what it is, we hate it but it has become our best friend.  Almost to the point that we are more scared to live without it than we are living with it.  This is when you know shame has become a problem.  When it clings to you and becomes a part of your identity.  Please heed this warning:  If this is describing you, you need help, real help.  You don’t need to be prayed for, and the answer isn’t getting involved in your church, you need professional help.  Send me a private message and I’ll tell you how and where to find it.

I’m not trying to slam on the church and certainly not pastors.  I am one and I work at one.  The truth is that neither really deals with the issue of shame very effectively nor understands the direct correlation between shame and the pain that robs us of truly living life the way that Papa meant for it to be lived.  It’s just not as simple as asking forgiveness, praying together, or rededicating your life, whatever that means.  Shame, when it reaches the degree we are talking about needs to be overcome in much more helpful ways.  A person has to learn a new way of thinking, living, and loving.

Here are just a few of the ways that the cycle of shame has worked in my own life.  These are just my observations, reflections, and opinions.  They are a part of my story and have allowed me to experience healing.

1. While shame starts with guilt it quickly moves into the form of a lie that exists in your head.  It is not your identity nor is it who you are but our dark minds cannot make that separation and take the bait
2. We suffer in silence.  We couldn’t possibly speak about this to anyone we tell ourselves.  We can’t let anyone know what we’ve done and how bad we are.  Thus the isolation begins.
3. We lose complete knowledge of Father, Son, and Spirit.  In fact, we become angry and bitter with God.  Instead of being the way out of the pit, God becomes the one who put us in the pit in the first place.  God is just angry and must have felt like punishing someone and He chose me.
4. If this the case then what good is living?  If God hates me and I hate myself I’d rather just die.  This is what shame does.  Eventually we don’t even recognize our lives and just want them to be over.  The question is what are we supposed to do about it?

Of course I have something to say about this as well.  While I’m not a professional I feel like I hold a Phd from the school of hard knocks.  Here is a process that I have learned that has served me well.

1. Name the shame.  That’s right; name it, all of it.  It can be painful, hard work, and a scary process but it is well worth it.  All of the things holding you in bondage, making a slave out of you, name them.  Whether you did them or someone else did them to you name them.
2. Face the lies and refuse to be their victim.  The lies want to destroy you, the Father of lies want to steal, kill, and destroy.   The battle is in our minds.  If the lies can nest there the whole body will be given over to the darkness.  Once you name the shame, name the lies associated with them.  Take the power back.  You are not the shame and your identity is certainly not in the lies that the shame produces.
3. Confess it in a safe environment.  KEY WORD>>>SAFE!  Are there people in your life that you truly trust?  People that love you no matter what?  These are the people you want to share with.
4. Repent from it.  Many of you just tuned out but stay with me.  Repent in the NT comes from the Greek word metanoia, which means a change of the mind.  This is why Paul tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.  After you have named it, faced it, confessed it, you must change the way you think about yourself.  This is where you should be able to see yourself as you truly are, Father’s wonderful and unique creation in whom He is well pleased.
5. See yourself with new eyes.  Try giving God’s a try.  I promise you He is smiling!  He doesn’t make mistakes and He loves his kids, all of them, especially you!
6. Come out of hiding.  It’s time to live again.  Reclaim your freedom.  Run, relax, rest, hang out with friends, love again, embark on a new journey, or rediscover things that were taken from you.  However you choose, life is ready to be lived again.  It is waiting for you and so is God to experience all things in a new and fresh way, including Him.
7. Repeat when necessary.  For me this is usually every day!

I will end this post by making some of you very happy and probably making some of you very mad.  The spiritual life and how we view God has everything to do with this topic.  I can almost guarantee that however you view shame is in direct correlation with how you view God.  I must address this.  I can’t believe how good the good news is!

God is not:

God is not angry with you.  He is not disapproving of you.  He is not off somewhere in the cosmos holding the world’s largest hammer waiting to smash you into pieces when you screw up.  God is not disappointed in you wishing he hadn’t made you.  God is not distant and he’s not punishing you for your wrongdoing.  This is the god of our minds, the one we have created because of our shame in our fallen mind.  We have hidden from the triune God; Father, Son, and Spirit, and traded him in for an old mean god that woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  We have traded him for the god who gets his way by beating the hell out of his son so he doesn’t have to beat the hell out of us.  We can’t have a relationship with this god and who would want to?  Who would want to pray to this god?  Who would want to serve this god?  Yet we do.  Week in and week out people try to connect to this god who doesn’t even exist.

‎“I’m not who you think I am, Mackenzie, I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It is not my purpose to punish it; it ‘ s my joy to cure It. “ – Taken from The Shack by W. Paul Young

The Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:1; “That there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  A closer look at the original greek and the verse reads more literally like this, “At this time, in the present, no one is worthy of punishment.”  

I love this quote and this scripture.  So beautiful isn’t it?  But is it true?  I think so.  Let me now tell you what I think God is:

God is love.  That is His very nature.  You can’t morph God into something he’s not.  God is other-centered love eternally present in Father, Spirit, and Son.  Their love for each other is perfect and they seek to share it with us.  In fact, that is why we were created.  They don’t need it, but they want it.  GOD WANTS YOU to live in perfect relationship with him.  Our fallen minds prevent this from happening.  The problem with sin is not the act itself, but the root cause, which is the mind.  Our minds keep us from this picture of love that we see in the trinity.  The truth is that before the world was every formed or you ever thought of that the Father had already accepted you.  This was Jesus’ whole purpose in coming to earth and bringing heaven with him.  The Son is always glorifying the Father and the Father wanted to be with you.  Jesus came to share his Father with us by way of the Spirit.  He gave us a picture of His Father and invited us to join in the great dance that he had always known, the dance of other-centered love and perfect relationship full of joy, peace, and love.  But we are not invited to just watch the dance or merely observe the dance like an overweight kid in middle school who is afraid to get out on the dance floor.  No, we are invited to dance WITH God, and live in with confidence because of our Belovedness from the Father.  The truth is that there is nothing we can do to separate ourselves from the love of the Father. Absolutely nothing.  He won’t stop, he won’t give up, his love knows end.  Like the prodigal son returning home the Father’s arms are always open to you as well.  Before you can get a word out to ask forgiveness he will have wrapped you in His all consuming unconditional love, giving orders for the great feast.  Truly He is our Father and we are His children.  This is how God views us, how we must view God, and learn to live from this reality.  Sounds like good news doesn’t it?!

Be Blessed, you already are!

The Healing Process – Befriending Pain, Part III

The Healing Process – Part III

Befriending pain.

“The first step to healing is not a step away from the pain, but a step toward it.” – Henri Nouwen

Yes, you read correctly.  A major player in the healing process is not a fun one, but a necessary one.  This is often the step that so many skip.  Not only do we run from the idea of recognizing our pain, but rarely do we embrace it.  What is the point?  Why does this have to be a part of the healing process and journey toward wholeness?  Is there such a thing as suffering well?

Like most things in life Jesus of Nazareth can provide a great example.  Jesus no doubt experienced suffering and pain in his time on earth.  More astonishing to me is that he chose to embrace it.  He fully experienced the pain of the human experience for the sake of our joy.  He had to so that he could fully connect and comfort us in all of our affliction.  Jesus felt fully the pain of loss, rejection, humiliation, fear, temptation, and more.  You name it, and he felt it.  He chose to feel it.  He felt in the death of his friend Lazarus.  No doubt he felt when the news about the death of John the Baptist was delivered.  Unmistakably he felt it in the events that surrounded his betrayal, arrest, trial, and crucifixion.  Remember how he grieved so intensely that drops of blood fell when thinking about the path he was about to walk?  Why else would he get away by himself so often to pray?  He was in pain and he needed to be with His Father.  It was there that the darkness was exposed by the Father’s face.  Even Jesus needed to be reminded of the love of his Father.

What about us?  Could this be true for us?  Could it be that as we choose to fully experience our own devastatingly painful past that the darkness is exposed with the Father’s love and light?  I believe so.  This has been my experience.  When we wish away the pain we miss out on something very important.  We miss out on the comfort that the Father wishes to pour out through the Son.  We miss out on connecting with the Son in his death so that we may know fully the power of his resurrection.  As Paul said our suffering produces certain character traits that only come through pain and loss, the most important of which is HOPE.  Don’t we all need  hope?  Without it we are literally hopeless.

This is a part of the great mystery.  Still, we often take detours toward wholeness.  But you can’t shortcut wholeness.  The easy path around pain makes things worse and leads to decisions that lead to more hurt and pain.  We must learn not to avoid the pain.  We must learn to not miss a chance for growth.  Like a good friend of mine often says, “Never waste a good crisis.”  During my recent struggle I was sitting with this friend one day at breakfast and as I shared with him he had a smile on his face.  It made me angry.  I told him that I felt like I had been shaken to my very core and had no idea where to turn.  His response…”Good.”  Now I was really mad and I said to this sweet older gentlemen and I quote, “You Dick”!  I didn’t like his answer very much but he knew what I was about to discover.  He knew that it was only by coming to the end of myself through the necessary step of pain and suffering that I would realize my desperate need for God.  Not God from the religious viewpoint that most of us know Him from, I needed to really discover and know God: Father, Son, and Spirit.  I needed to experience their acceptance and accept the invitation to join in the dance that is the trinity.  This is why Jesus came by the way, to allow our fallen mind to see the goodness of the Father and to realize that what he wants more than anything is to live in relationship with His children.

As a society we don’t know how to grieve.  We certainly don’t honor the horrors that we experience.  The American way is to get up, dust yourself off, and get on with life.  It doesn’t work.  The pain will never go away, it is always there.  Sure, the intensity might lessen but the memory will always haunt.  If healing is a process and recovery is a journey toward wholeness, then fully experiencing our pain is an essential component.  If we will allow it, pain can become our greatest teacher.  The lessons we can learn about ourselves and others by facing our biggest fears and deepest hurts can be a great catalyst, launching us into a deeper understanding of who we are and who God really is.

Don’t take a detour around the pain; choose the narrow road that goes right through the middle of it.  On that broken road full of treacherous turns we are on the cusp of arriving at a destination actually worth arriving at.  Through the ugly experiences of our past we drive down the beautiful road towards new and abundant life.  The kind that Father has always desired for us to live.  It’s a kingdom type of life, a heavenly one; and we don’t have to wait for the life to come to experience it.  The kingdom is here, now, in this life.  Through the Son the ugliness of our darkness is brought into beautiful and glorious light as the Son shares with us the love of his Father, through the power of the Spirit.

Is it hard?  Hell yes it’s hard.  Is it worth it?  You bet your ass it is!  It requires a courageous heart and a determined spirit to travel this road.  Perhaps that is why it’s the road less traveled.  It is much easier to ignore the pain, to wish it away, to numb it with busyness, addiction, and self-harm.  My question to you is which road would you rather be on, the road of self-destruction, or the road to wholeness?  The choice is yours.

It seems only appropriate that as we started this post with a quote from one of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen; that we end it the same way.  He sums it up way better than I ever could anyway!

Be blessed my friends, you already are.

“Embracing the pain and bringing it into the light of the One who calls us the Beloved can make our brokenness shine like a diamond.”

The Healing Process – Part II Community

Confession is a great start to the healing toward wholeness.  In my opinion it is the first piece of the puzzle.  The straight edges if you will that allow a framework for the rest of the puzzle to be put together.  Now, it’s time for those jagged pieces to be in some sort of order so they can be fit together.  Here is what I have learned about those pieces:

Part II – The absolutely essential piece of Community

While confession is an important piece, community is the catalyst for it.  Have you ever tried to confess on your own?  Especially if the lies of our fallen mind are in full effect, confessing to an angry dis-approving God is nearly impossible.  When we fail to see the unconditional love of the Father we need others in our lives who can help us not only see it, but who can make it a reality in the ugliest of circumstances.

The journey toward wholeness in my opinion must include a healthy community and family.  It is one of the unique characteristics of our DNA, part of God’s design in creation.  He never meant for life to be lived alone.  The islands of our western world and way of existence go against God’s original plan for us to live in circles of extended family and community.  I absolutely hate it when Christians say really uneducated things like, “Jesus is all I need.”  It’s simply not true.  Many books have been written from this position and numerous songs of worship composed around this thinking.  It’s not only untrue, it’s not even Biblical.

Community has always been God’s intention for the human race.  The early church is a great example of this as they absolutely depended on each other both spiritually and physically for their needs.  The church for them was a collection of human souls deeply desperate for the need of not only the supernatural but also the physical touch and support of each other.  This is not just a New Testament concept.  Community was a huge part of the Old Testament as well.  The children of Israel may have wandered for 40 years, but they didn’t wander alone.  They were led not only by a cloud and fire, but with each other.  They understood the concept of community, family, and their need to accept and give love and support to one another.

Unfortunately, this concept is almost non existent in our American, Western understanding of faith and view of the world.  No where in the world does the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality exist like it does in the US.  We live isolated in our neighborhoods and suburbs, hardly  knowing the people who live right around us.  Our faith communities are no different.  Sure we go to church and attend worship but that is hardly community the way God intended it.  It has become way too easy for a person to just be a number in a service.  Our churches are silos where people who suffer sit alone in their darkness, instead of hospitals where the sick are loved and cherished for who they are.  Unfortunately our  past experience says church is no place to share pain, hurt, loss, and struggle.  After all Christians are supposed to have it all together right?  And when we have tried to confess in those faith communities the outcome is often tragic.  Often we are shamed by the very ones who should be extending grace.  The church is the only community I know that is good at devouring its own.

Confession is a great way to start to healing.  Community is the catalyst and I believe healing happens best in community.  So how do we find it?  Community is hard work, plain and simple.  Not only does it require us to be completely open and honest with our struggles, it also requires us to gracefully receive others and all their junk as well.  Families are messy and community is all about building extended family.  Don’t be dismayed though, there are communities out there that exist and thrive like this.  I have found two of them.  There is no doubt that I would not be where I am at today if it weren’t for the healthy communities I have found.

1.  While it seems like I have bagged on the faith communities (trust me it’s for good reason and past experience) there are healthy communities of faith that do exist.  What to look for?  A church that is solidly grace based.  Way to much shame is thrown around the church.  This is mostly due to awful theological interpretations and a misunderstanding of the triune God of love, mercy, and grace.  Look for a leader of a church that displays and promotes this kind of acceptance and grace publicly.  It it is not happening in public, it is not happening in private either.

2.  Don’t limit your search to churches.  When the church (the institution) fails, seek it elsewhere.  The church isn’t the organized system of religion we’ve come to know it as anyway.  The church is the body, the people.  Find a support group, talk to others who you know have gone through hard times, communities are out there.  If you live in the KC area I highly recommend researching the BT community I have grown to love and know as family.

I also happen to be a part of a faith community that functions in this way.  For KC folks Kaw Prairie Community Church is the most grace filled church I have ever seen much less been a part of.

3.  Build your own.  Starting and maintaining healthy community is not rocket science.  It requires a few key essentials and starting your own can be difficult, but it can be done.  I have done this as well.  Here a few things I looked for in starting my own extended family.

• People I could trust.
• Environments of safety.  It’s hard to open up when we don’t feel safe.  If we are to share our stories we have to trust our listeners with our hearts.  Don’t share your heart with people you don’t trust.
• Fellow sufferers.  Nobody offers love, grace, and support better than people who have been there and done that

The road to wholeness is not an easy one.  We cannot do it alone and you are not alone.  You would be amazed at the people you rub shoulders with everyday who suffer alone.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Confession is a great start and community, extended family, is a beautiful gift from the Father.  Together, as we learn to be in relationship and receive blessing from Father, Son, Spirit; we naturally want to give that gift and affirmation to others.

This is a major part of the ugly beautiful.  In community our ugliness is not alone.  It is shared, cared for, and turned into a beautiful story of redemption and wholeness.

Be blessed friends, you already are, and you are not alone.

For a good listen and truthful reminder I love this song.

The Healing Process – Part I Confession

Where does the healing begin?  This is the question that plagues so many of us.  In our deepest times of great sorrow, pain, and suffering it can seem if there is no way out.  The darkness is so real, the lies about ourself and our situation consume us, and we are left spinning out of control, completely hopeless.  No matter the nature or cause for the suffering the healing question is always  present.  There is no need to compare stories or the level of pain caused by life’s circumstances.  Pain is pain.  Suffering is suffering…period.

So, where does the healing begin?  I would like to share with you what I have learned in my journey and where healing began and continues to happen for me.  It will be a three part blog series.

Part I – Confession

As soon as some of you read that word huge triggers went off in your head.  It carries negative experience and connotation for many.  Please keep reading.  I guarantee you that my description of this practice will be different than you  may have ever experienced this word before.

James 5:16 tells us to, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”  (ESV)  The Message Bible reads a little different saying, “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.”  This is a verse that many shy away from because the thought of pouring out your guts and all of your dirty sins doesn’t exactly sound like a good time.  Nor should it.  That is a bad interpretation.  In the greek the verse actually translates, “Openly share and acknowledge where you have missed the mark and you will be made whole.”  Isn’t it the difference interesting.  The verse is actually saying to us that confession is not only healthy, but a necessary step to healing and wholeness.

Wholeness is a key part of the verse.  Notice is doesn’t say fixed.  Many of us are wanting so badly to be fixed that we’re missing the true healing, to be made whole.  There is a big difference.  We’re never going to be fixed in this life.  Our minds will always be fallen and we will always struggle with truly accepting our identity as Beloved children of the triune God.  Instead of being on a journey to being fixed, try the shift in your mind to be on a journey toward wholeness.

I learned the art of confession in Colorado while taking a medical leave from work this summer.  For eight days I sat in a room with strangers (who would become like family) and openly acknowledged where I had missed the mark.  It was liberating.  It is impossible to heal what we fail to acknowledge.  In this sharing of missing the mark I experienced such freedom.  It was like a literal weight was being lifted off my shoulders.

Confession is a practice that is not about focusing on the sin or the missing of the mark, it is about the wholeness that awaits.  As our lives are shared and the lies we have told ourselves about our lives are exposed, healing begins.  In that place of honesty we can get to the true source of our pain, shame, and darkness.  Once the darkness is exposed the light can pierce through.  This is where the seed of hope springs forth.  In the darkness we find that we are not alone.  That many have traveled the path of suffering and gained wholeness.  We also realize that Jesus is in the darkness with us, revealing to us the beautiful love and relationship of His father.

Our wholeness is of great interest to the Father.  He has invited us into the great dance of relationship with Son and Spirit but our blindness due to the lies and isolation of our pain keeps us from participating.  Father is not concerned with where you have missed the mark nearly as much as you think he does.  Father is deeply concerned and waiting for you to accept the acceptance He has already offered you through the Son via the Spirit.  It is really good news isn’t it?

Who would have thought that the road to wholeness and healing would start with confession?  Certainly not me.  I always pushed my missing the mark deep down inside myself, hiding from the angry God who was waiting to punish me for my shortcomings.  This is quite possibly the most effective lie the enemy tells us and Christians especially have bought it hook, line, and sinker.  Now I can’t imagine my life without confession.  It feels really good to confess and share openly knowing that my wholeness is of utmost importance to my Father.

This is true for you as well.  Our next post will discuss healthy ways and avenues to practice confession.

Until then listen to this and receive it!

 

From Mourning to Dancing

“We hear an invitation to allow our mourning to become a place of healing, and our sadness a way through pain to dancing.  Who is it Jesus said would be blessed?  “Those who mourn” (Matt 5:4).  We learn to look fully into our losses, not evade them.  By greeting life’s pains with something other than denial we may find something unexpected.  By inviting God into our difficulties we ground life – even its sad moments -in joy and hope.  When we stop grasping our lives we can finally be given more than we could ever grab for ourselves.  And we learn the way to a deeper love for others.”

– Taken from Turning my Mourning to Dancing by Henri J. Nouwen

In the middle of my fall into the ugliness of life over the past six months I have discovered many beautiful things.  One of them an author that I have grown to love even though we have never met and never will.  He has passed from this life to the next.  But thankfully the words and inspiration of Henri Nouwen live on through his writings.  For more about Henri Nouwen visit this page.

I had heard of Henri Nouwen for a long time but never took the time to learn about the author or read any of his cherished books.  The first time I sat down with a Henri Nouwen book in my hands was in Marble, CO where I was recovering from the trauma of trying to take my own life.  The retreat had a library and I had time on my hands.  As I combed through their shelves a simple, small book caught my eye.  “Making All Things New” was the title and the author was Henri Nouwen.  I was captivated by the first page and read the book in two days.  Nouwen’s words jumped off the page as if they were written just for me.  I have since read two more of Nouwen’s works and learned much about his life.  Henri Nouwen understood suffering and pain.  He also entered into the ugly beautiful and wrote much more effectively than I ever could about making the two co-exist.  Many of Nouwen’s suggestions seem paradoxical, in great opposition to each other, but then again much of Jesus’ words have hit me this way as well.  Pray for your enemies, lose your life to find it, the last will be first, blessed are those who mourn, just to name a few.

The process from mourning to dancing is also one of these ideas that initially hits us this way.  How in the world do you learn to live again by choosing to fully enter pain and suffering?  But isn’t this what the Son does?  Doesn’t Jesus invite us to fully live by entering into his suffering, and our own?  Jesus’ own journey included the ugly beautiful.  The cross is a great example.  It was an ugly road and an ugly scene.  The road to life the way of the cross was full of humiliation, insults, rejection, physical and mental pain, exhaustion, and extreme suffering.  It was also the only time that Jesus would experience what many of us experience at difference times in our own lives…the awful feeling that the Father could not be seen.  Notice the language I used there.  It was not that the Father turned his back on the Son.  This was not the case and is a bad theological interpretation of the words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”?  The Father never turns his back on His Son (nor does he turn his back on us).  How could he?  It was not that the Father could not bear to see the Son; it was the Son could not see the Father due to the darkness.  In the moment where Jesus fully entered into our darkness the face of the Father was no longer visible.  No doubt that Jesus felt fully alone in that moment and came to know the full extent of the human condition.  Its what allows the Son to comfort us in all our affliction.  How could Jesus come meet us in the darkness unless He experienced it himself?  Jesus fully entered into humanity, taking on our eyes, experienced loss, pain, hopelessness, suffering, and lived to tell about it.  There is no doubt that Jesus danced again.  And so can we.

But this is a painful process.  For it to come to fruition it calls for us to knowingly enter our own darkness, to fully dive into our hurts, pains, and suffering.  The places we don’t like to acknowledge or talk about.  But like a good friend of mine often reminds me, you can’t choose to heal what you don’t acknowledge.  The truth is that our pain is not going away.  The hurt will not disappear.  Suffering will not stop rearing its ugly head.  The only way to dance in the middle of these things is to engage them.  Avoidance is not the solution.

When we choose this way, the hard way, the narrow road, the ugly becomes beautiful.  When we enter our own darkness in all of its ugliness we find something beautiful.  We discover joy, we feel peace, and we find hope.  There, in our darkness, we find Jesus.  Jesus is always in the darkness whether we acknowledge it or not.  He’s waiting to share his life with us there, connecting us to His Father through the power of the Spirit.  It’s the beautiful work of the triune God.

Are you tired?  Are you heavy burdened?  Are you hopeless, hurting, in need of rest?  The Son is inviting you to come to Him and learn to dance again.  He tells us that in Him we will find rest for our weary souls.  Life beckons.  Real, abundant life waits in the darkness where the light of Father, Son, and Spirit exposes the darkness and reveals glorious light.  It is here that we learn to dance again.

“Many of us are tempted to think that if we suffer, the only important thing is to be relieved of our pain.  We want to flee it at all costs.  But when we learn to move through suffering, rather than avoid it, then we greet it differently.  We become willing to let it teach us.  We even begin to see how God can use it for some larger end.”  – Henri Nouwen

My sincere prayer for myself and for you…Is that we would learn the painful practice of entering the ugly beautiful, a place where mourning turns to dancing.  Where pain is met with healing, where joy is found in sorrow, peace is felt in the chaos, and hope comes bursting onto the scene.  A place where the loving arms of the Father are always open, waiting to embrace us in the great dance of life in the Father, Spirit, and Son.

You are not alone on this journey. You have not been forsaken.

Welcome to the Ugly Beautiful

Welcome to the Ugly Beautiful.  If you are reading this you are probably wondering what that title is all about.  What is the ugly beautiful?

For me, it is the current and future journey of life.  Life is messy.  Sometimes it is really messy.  In the midst of our lives we all experience some messy times.  Divorce, trauma, tragedy, loss, abuse, addiction, shame, guilt, rejection, depression, isolation, and the list goes on and on.  The question is not if these things will find us, but when they will find us.

Spoiler Alert…life is coming for you.  Most likely when you least expect it, it will find you.  It has found me and I have learned that wishing and hoping for life to be perfect without the ugliness is both a lie and very foolish.  None of us are exempt from the complexities of life, relationship, and hardship.  Life happens…period.

The question then becomes how are we going to deal with it when it comes?  There are two options.  You can take the ugly and compound it into something worse through different coping mechanisms like avoidance, busyness, or suppressing your feelings and pain to the point where you no longer feel, all of which make the ugly even uglier and usually end up in addiction, loneliness, or depression, which make for quite a miserable experience and quite frankly a miserable existence.  Or, you can try something different.  You can face life pain and suffering head on.  Instead of avoidance you can choose to dive right into the middle of the pain, sit in the suffering, and take the hard yet rewarding road of  self discovery.

Make no mistake, it is HARD work.  Self discovery and dealing with the hands we’ve been dealt is really hard work.  It is the narrow road, the road less traveled.  It is much easier to avoid our pain and suffering than it is to face it head on and choose to not let your circumstances control you any longer.

However, by choosing this road and by doing the work a mysterious thing begins to occur.  The ugly becomes beautiful.  Life can be both simultaneously.  By choosing the hard work of facing life’s difficulties head on we discover that joy can be experienced in the midst of great sorrow.  That healing can come the way of suffering.  That peace can be known in the midst of chaos. If we will allow it, our pain can become more than what defines us, it can become our greatest teacher leading to a life full of hope.

How do I know this to be true?  Because  I am experiencing this to be true in my own life.  I have traveled life’s darkest roads and lived to tell about it.  I have known the misery of living and isolated life, dreading each morning, fighting through each minute, each hour, of each day.  I have experienced a literal hell on earth.  I have tried all the ways of dealing with these issues that I mentioned above.  Nothing worked, nothing.  Then I discovered a better way.  I am now on a road of recovery, a journey toward wholeness.  I have stopped trying to fix myself and allowed myself for the first time to feel.  To really feel the pain, to sit in the suffering, and to truly find myself in the middle of it.  In doing so, I’m learning to dance again.  To be free, to recognize the lies that have invaded and destroyed my life and replace them with the truth of who I am, and whose I am.

This is the ugly beautiful.  This is real life.  Real, messy, beautiful life.  I hope you will join me on the journey toward wholeness.  Together we can learn to dance again and rediscover the mystery and beauty that surrounds us and calls us to live a better story.  The past does not have to define us.  The story is not over, there are still chapters to be written, the ending is far from being told.  The remaining pages are there waiting for us.  We hold the pen and how we choose to engage the ugly will determine how much of the beautiful is written on those pages.

I don’t know about you but I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.  Life doesn’t have to be that way.  We don’t have to settle for the ugly, we can make it beautiful.  Out of the ashes we can rise and truly live.