You’re just the man I want to counsel

You’re the man I’ve encountered so many times, and indeed so many times have encountered in myself.  And I want to help you, as others have helped me.  Seriously, I do.

You don’t know this yet, because you haven’t experienced it—this new life—but I want to plead with you to do this journey by faith—I must plead with you, because you’ll hate every step of it at times.  You’ll think the world’s against you and that those who love you aren’t treating you right, but you must believe me: we ALL want what’s best for you.

You may be a husband and perhaps you’re a father too.  You rationalise the good things you’ve done, and you think that’s enough.  As you’re happy to settle for “good enough,” you secretly demand others do the same.  I say “demand” because nobody can really challenge you at this point in your life, because it’s your way or else.  Relationally, it’s absurdity.

Little do you know it or perhaps you inwardly do, you’re making life impossible for those who love you, those who don’t want to give up on you, those who are secretly praying there would be a heart change of humility take place within you.

I want to serve you, dear man, to help get you to that place where your heart has been renewed and humility overflows from within you, spilling out and into others lives.  Deep down, you, yourself, see the need of this miracle.

But you hold on to the old way with stubbornness.  The old way has got to go.

You’ve come to a precipice for such a time as this.  The crossroad is stark, bleak, and it evokes dread.  Suddenly, by circumstances beyond your control, you’re forced to choose between two ways of life—neither of which you’ve ever lived.

The way ahead is a brand-new way and that scares you to death if you’re honest enough to stop transferring your fear into anger, or worse rage, where those who love you walk on eggshells.

The truth is, if you’re anything like so many people, that is, people who keep rebelling against themselves, others, and life itself, you need to be brought to the valley of decision.

What seems like the worst reality of all—to have lost everything or to stare down a significant part of that reality—is actually the catalyst of the very best thing that could happen to you.

BUT.  This is the biggest BUT.

YOU.  Yes, you man.  It’s up to you.  Your strength will be gauged on whether your heart can submit to the work ahead of journeying humbly one step, one day at a time.  It takes tremendous humility to do that.  And everyone who knows you, and even as you know your present self, may doubt you have the fortitude to manage such a transition into a life that is so other-than what you’ve lived.

The key task: stay in YOUR stuff.

Of course, anyone can do it.  But it requires rigorous honesty and the ability to stay in YOUR stuff.  Indeed, that’s all that is required.  The moment you point the finger to blame another person is the moment you lose all power for change, and you regress back to who you’ve always been.

The key to your progress and transformation is staying in YOUR stuff, that is looking ONLY for your own negative contributions to conflict and relationships, confessing these, apologising, forgiving, reconciling, making amends.  That’s when you know you’re transformed.  When you LIVE that most if not all the time.

You’ll need mentors and accountability partners, and certainly nobody who will feel sorry for you, but people who can empathise whilst helping you stay in YOUR stuff.

I want to work with you.  I want to see the miracle happen in you that happened in me 18 years ago.  And please be assured, you can only do this journey with divine help, so I hope you’ll reach out and up.  I hope you’ll learn to listen, to consider what others are saying, and indeed that you truly begin to LIVE for others, for in that and in that alone is life.

If you read this and take this to heart, you’re the man I sincerely want to counsel.

Those we love are loaned to us

It happened while I was driving.  “Those you love are loaned to you one day at a time... you don’t know when that loan period will expire.”

Our dearest ones—our partners, our children, our parents, our grandparents, and grandchildren—are loaned to us.  We so easily assume that we’ll have them forever.  This isn’t the case.

And it’s not just death that robs us of these relationships, but it’s death I want to focus on, because it’s inevitable, and by focusing on death, we make the most of our lives in the here and now.

~

If I had one last day to do what I love to do, THIS is what I’d do...

If tomorrow was my last day, and I had the choice of what to do, I’d conduct a funeral.

It’s quite an irony I find that I most love doing funerals and yet there will be an end in funerals for me when I’m the one in the casket.

Funerals are the most salient of all living experiences.

The honouring of a life, of memories shared, honouring loss and grief, being there with and for one another, saying what needs to be said, memorialising an unforgettable life; these are just some of the reasons funerals are important.

At funerals, people cannot escape that most inescapable of realities of life—death.

On my last day, it will be me in that box.  Think about that for one moment.  It makes you reflect on what’s important in life.  I carry thought of my death with me most if not every day.  It influences many of my choices.

I will be the only one at my own funeral who’s not alive.  Everyone else there will be there to say their goodbyes.  And those who love me most will have difficulty saying goodbye, such is the impossibility of grief to reconcile satisfactorily.   And the reality of difficulty around saying goodbye shouldn’t be frowned upon.

~

Death gives life it’s meaning, if only we can view the whole of our lives, every single aspect, through the lens of, “This life is fleeting.”  Through the lens of death, perspective is granted.  We live wiser, more compassionately, sweating the small stuff just a little less.

If that loved one of yours isn’t going to be around for ever, what can you do to make the most of the moment?  Let’s not fall for the folly that everyone who’s here will remain indefinitely.  Cherish the time you have with them.  Make right what you’ve done wrong.  Set records straight.  Seek the forgiveness of those you’ve wronged.  Have those conversations you’d regret otherwise not having.

Make the most of the time and opportunity, now, while you have it.

A two-year period when home was not a happy environment

2009 journal entries are like a world away from the present day.  In those days, my eldest daughter (17 at the time) was living with Sarah and I, and it would be fair to say that all three of us had seriously unmet needs.

There are many reasons why there were unhappy dynamics in the home, and especially for wife and daughter there were seemingly insurmountable challenges to be worked through.

Three-way disputes erupted often, there was much aggressive and withdrawing behaviour, the slamming of doors, drive-offs, that sort of thing.  Regularly, all three of us would be exasperated.

Now, Sarah and I were doing a lot of work with our counsellor to help make our marriage the happy place we desperately wanted it to be.  Seriously, it took two years to navigate.

Yet for my daughter, her entire future was up in the air, and she was finding her way with school and a difficult part-time job and negotiating other momentous relational and logistical challenges.

When I look back now, I see both their situations with an enormous amount of pride.

Within the space of a year from May 2009, these two had both overcome the challenges they were both presented with.  From mid-2010 onwards, there has been a deep respect nurtured between my wife and my daughter.

When my daughter moved in with us in February 2008 there was such a clear values divide between my new wife and her, a stereotyped (not stereotypical!) 16-year-old.  Again, both had such pressing needs, and they both had very defined needs of me, and the fact that these needs were often presented in opposition, it’s little wonder my solace was work during these two years of my life.

But in the couples counselling process, I was still just discovering how to be an effective husband—how to put my wife first when my children had become my ‘number one’ when I’d been a solo dad for three years.

Seriously, it took nearly two years for two things to happen that would transform our marriage.

The first was that I needed to make practical changes to ensure Sarah really was my number one, and that our marriage unit really was the centrepiece of my life.  The second thing was a subtle though significant change in Sarah—she resigned herself to the fact she couldn’t change what she’d been so desperate to institute.  Both of these things coincided with my daughter’s moving off in any event, contented, into adult life.  Yet it was also as if my daughter had resolved to accept things she couldn’t change as well in this season.

I know there was a shift for all three of us.  All three of us grew up a little as a result.

And seriously, Sarah’s and my first decent year of married life was year four because of these adjustments that were necessary to be made—our persistence paid off.  It would be grossly unfair to say my daughter contributed to these issues, because in many ways she was vulnerable to growing pains in our marriage, plus there was a significant change in my relationship with her she had to adjust to.  My mother became pivotal in filling the gap.

~

Step parenting is hard because it’s never natural, and there are ‘love’ challenges to be overcome—both ways.  Love does not come naturally, even if that’s our desperate desire.  This is so hard to say and admit because our love wants to overcome these challenges.

Bonds of love that are nurtured over a decade and more are not procured overnight.  And step parents and step children need to acknowledge they’re a threat to each other.

For the parent who has children in the marriage to their step parenting spouse, there’s the constant need to balance the needs of all, and yet the marriage must come first, otherwise that which is the very foundation of the family becomes brittle.  This assumes that both adults in the marriage are genuinely seeking the best for the marriage AND family, including individuals, and that that balance is being struck, with no selfish desires present—and we need to be really honest in assessing this.

Our experience pastorally is that couples who are conflicted DO NOT SEE their selfishness.  And then there’s the situation where both partners have real needs, but conflict begins when they individually DEMAND their needs be met a certain way.

Even good desires can birth conflict through a source of selfishness.  The ‘what’ might be appropriate, but that doesn’t mean the ‘how’ is.

Within the marriage of partners who are genuinely seeking the best of all, the children must be loved, but children aren’t entitled to shake the foundations of the marriage, and yet neither is either partner.  The common good must be sought by all, because only in this do individuals thrive.  If individuals don’t thrive, the common good isn’t served.

Children as well as the parent and stepparent all prosper with effective counselling support.  It’s best if all parties (both partners and the child/ren) genuinely seek contentment for all.

NOTE – my wife helped me write portions of this article.

Loss teaches humble survival in the adversities of life

Loss is an eye opener.  It opens one’s eyes to the depths of life possible in this life.

Until we’ve suffered through loss that cannot be shaken or resolved, we don’t realise what little power and control we possess in this life.  It’s true that this doesn’t occur to us until we’ve suffered, though there are rare individuals who do somehow empathetically understand without having yet suffered the salient depths of grief.

But suffering is and always will be the rudest awakening, even if it may not be quite as raw as our initial foray into trial.

The depths I sank to in my darkest sortie into grief 18 years ago were a ground zero—the end of one life and the beginning of another “reality” that was completely foreign—and yet I was astonished with how hard 2016 was.  Put this into context with the utterly incomprehensible 2014 losing Nathanael and being simultaneously stressed by the leader of our church.  Though I knew in 2016 what it was like to live as if all my desires were dead, that year showed me what it was like to live as if I were existentially alone, such was it that I was absolutely cast out of all that I loved doing and being.  I’d been considered “disloyal” when I’d done my level best to be faithful, and I felt many considered me an abject failure.  There were so many fragments of rock bottom in that year, 2016.

Only in the past year or two has the Christian world been rocked by what I knew back then was a toxic dynamic—that of blind loyalty.  Thankfully, such blind loyalty to one’s leadership has been shown to be the toxic dynamic it is.  This dynamic caused me no end of grief, and you know this is the case when you try to please people and it still isn’t working.

Such a year like 2016 forces you to sow hard into the rebuilding, like building again from the foundations up.  Sowing as it’s occurred has been the easy bit, because I’ve got no problem saying yes to God.

What I’ve struggled with is soul tiredness of a deferred hope that makes the heart sick.  Sowing, sowing, sowing some more, yet little reaping in the way you expect to reap.  Yet God has opened unexpected doorways.

I’ve found personally that though there are times I’d give up, even in this present season, I’ve also found my God and my faith won’t allow me to.  I keep getting cause for hope, and that’s at least an admission of how blessed we really are.

And that’s it.  Somehow, no matter what’s ripped away from you, there’s still so many reasons to be thankful.  And still, what cannot be ignored is that riveting experience of a mind bludgeoned by thoughts of dread for the loss.  And again, that’s the blessing having truly carried our losses as cosmic burdens from that first day forward to the very present, that life has come to now have a depth about it that’s irrefutable.

Loss teaches us that life is fathoms deeper than we’d previously contemplate.  Loss shows us that the bandwidth of life is unintelligible.

Loss invites us into humility, to know that we’re truly small, and this simply serves to right size our expectations.

Loss teaches us to estimate ourselves more truly according to the reality of our being.

Loss summonses us to maturity, and though that’s the hardest living process of all, we wouldn’t be who we are today—empathetic, resilient, and compassionate—without having grieved.

Psalm 35’s biblical curse against the abuser who thrives

You know what it’s like.  The abuser has done their horror.  Then they redoubled the horror through silencing you, through gaslighting you, through denying, attacking, reversing victim and offender, through every weapon you did not know about until they pierced you with it.  They win at every post, and they leave you destitute for justice.

Then you open the Bible and find yourself reading psalms like Psalm 35:

The psalmist calls for the Lord to contend with those who contend with them, to fight against those who fight them, to take up the shield and buckler, and brandish the spear and javelin.  “Arise to my aid... defend me against those in pursuit...”

The psalmist continues to implore of the Lord, repeatedly, “Say to my soul, ‘I am your salvation’.”  You know how it is, that need that God would reassure you that he IS your salvation—because it feels as if he’s silent.

Imbibe these words from the psalm:

May those who seek your life be disgraced and put to shame...

May those who plot your ruin be turned back in dismay...

May they be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of God driving them away...

May their path be dark and slippery, with the angel of God driving them away...

And, again, you’ll relate with this...

And since they’ve hid a net for me without cause...

And since they’ve dug a pit for me without cause...

May ruin overtake them now suddenly...

May the net that they hid there entangle them...

May they fall in the pit that they dug for me...

THEN.

And then, my soul will rejoice in the Lord...

And then my soul will delight in God’s salvation...

THEN.

Then, my whole being will exclaim, “Who is like you, Lord?”

Oh Lord, who is like you??????

For our Lord is the God of justice.      And still, you wait.           Don’t defer your hope.

And all of this imprecation is biblical; it is godly, simply because you’re asking God to do it.

And as you pray these words of God over your enemies when you’re triggered, God allows for it, for such visceral emotion, for the spill over, for the boil over, for the spoil of lament, expressed in disgust.

It may not make you feel any better, but at least there’s a godly expression of anger for the hour or the day of its visitation.

Those who overpromise tend to underdeliver

Those who enter our lives with much spunk and panache often eventually leave a trail of devastation.  It’s a generalisation, I know, but it’s a trustworthy model for many types of relationships, from romances to work relationships to business partnerships to matters of spiritual direction involving power disequilibrium.

Think of it this way.  Not always, but so often we find that those who spark most curiosity and interest in us threaten to win us over at such a deep level that we commit far too much to these people far too early.

In other words, we don’t yet know who we’re truly dealing with.

It takes a while before the shine of ‘romance’ dulls in relationships generally.  Call it 12 months at a minimum before we sense that all isn’t as it seems.  Yes, I use the word romance, but this dynamic is evident a great deal more commonly than we realise.

The person who comes into our lives with charisma gives us a dopamine hit and we love being in their presence.  They’re funny, they make deep sense to us, we love being around them, because we connect with them!

It’s fine if they were just funny, or they were genuinely loving, but so many people trade out of their charisma, manipulating people and/or situations.  Much charm is manipulation.  They store up the favour they create and then they capitalise on it.  That’s okay if you know about it; if they’re transparent about it, and you’re okay with it.

But the fact is, much of the charisma that a magnetic person exudes seduces especially empathetic people, because they’re attractive personalities, and empaths are drawn to highly connective people.  The trouble is, empaths aren’t always aware of this dynamic, and some charismatic people take advantage of this favour.

This is in some ways a warning to us all for those only just entering our lives now, as well as those who have entrenched themselves; those who threaten or promise to be problematic.

This is also a reminder for all of us to thank those figures in all our lives who tend more to underpromise and overdeliver.  They don’t use the powerful influence of manipulation to draw upon what won’t ever be repaid, but they instead rely on being quiet achievers, expressing faith that their deeds will speak for them when their words might otherwise be hot air.

NOTE: none of the articles I write that represent the darker nuances of life are written from specific experience of particular persons.  In other words, if I know you, I’m not writing this about you.

Why the abuser seems to be the only one to win when nobody does

The person exploiting people is never really held to account.  They serendipitously dodge all manner of challenge.  Even when they are caught up with, they manage to get away with it because they carry on with their created narrative, that has just enough ‘truth’ about it that it leaves people believing “good enough is good enough.”

Of course, ‘good people’ believe them.  These people we might call ‘good enablers’, because abuse only thrives in circumstances where the majority give assent to it, neither wanting to rock the boat nor, in many cases, are they able to see it.

Once we see it, once it’s been done to us, 
however, we cannot unsee it, ever.

Most of the enablers hold to the view of the greater good.  “Why hold someone to account for the little they do wrong, even if those ‘little wrongs’ hurt so few?”  The vast majority of people will allow abusers to do their ‘little wrongs’, because, quite frankly, “Nobody’s perfect,” as if there must be some allowance for a bully to abuse people.

The abuser generally finds some angle to exploit through a self-justified, pull-the-wool-over-their-eyes self-righteousness.  In this very exploitation, there is the plain manner of entitlement.  They are more senior, or they know more, or they know more people, or they have more influence, and they magnify this advantage.  They make maximum use of what they can exploit, when many people would simply shudder at the thought of this kind of manipulation.  And in manipulation there’s zero empathy for the unfortunate.  Those who take advantage are the strong who take what they can while they can—and, ultimately, nobody wins.

The abuser seems to be the only one to win when nobody wins, because a conquest brokered and made is no victory.  When even one person loses out, all lose out, and yet our entire world runs on the folly that if one wins another must lose.

“Someone always comes second... or last.” 

But relationships aren’t a running race or a sporting event.

In the economy of relationships, the only true victories are outcomes where everyone wins.

When we pray “on earth as it is in heaven,” the common goal is at the forefront, and outcomes are always win-win.  And when everyone wins, it’s “on earth as it is in heaven.”

In the faith, the strong are to bear the weak, and it’s only when the strong (those with power to abuse) do this that God’s work is actually being done.  Paul talks about this in Romans 14.  Only when a person has the power to abuse, but they don’t, instead they lead with humility, does everyone win.  This is truly inspiring leadership.

If ever we show contempt for a brother or sister, if ever we take advantage, and we do so routinely by showing scant levels of care—call it ambivalence—we fall short of what we’re otherwise capable of, and we show disdain for the power we hold and for those who rely on us for a fair go.

And yet, just about every Christian leader falls into this trap at some point or other.  We must censure the will that says, “I deserve this” or, “They don’t deserve it” or, “They deserve every bit of [the bad] what they’re getting.”

Those who abuse are found to be those who are in power, who have power to wield, because if there’s no power to wield, there’s only vulnerability.  This is why those who are abused are completely or apparently voiceless.  They may shriek about injustice, but just about everyone pretends they can’t hear when the powerful influencer is the manipulator.  It’s only the prophet who will stick their head up so it’ll be cut off.

Nobody wins when even one person is silently abused through trauma, neglect, alienation, contempt, and any number of other crimes done secretly against a soul.

Nobody wins when it might even seem that everyone wins.

When even one silently suffers, it’s a blight on everyone else, for they either abuse or they standby as witnesses to it.

The least of these, the most vulnerable, and those who stand to lose most, are the greatest in God’s economy, and nobody can dispute this gospel fact.

With faith, when you’re weak, then you’re strong

There’s a Bible verse that’s often taken out of context, among the many that are, which is often used to abuse believers who struggle in their life.  If you take it as it comes in James 1:6-7 it does sound damning to those who struggle with their mental health:

“... you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.”

It’s unfortunately common for Christians and Christian leaders to point to this verse when people show ‘doubt’ in their ‘faith’.  I use ‘inverted commas’ to show that there’s another side to these two words that needs to be understood.

A person who struggles with their mental health does not choose to struggle; their struggle is beyond them in the moment.  In other words, at the time they don’t have the answer they need.  This is often portrayed as ‘doubting’, but it isn’t.  Just as the apostle Paul himself was unable to do the right thing at times (Romans 7:15-20).  Equally, Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians that he begged the Lord three times to take a “thorn in his side... a messenger of Satan” away from him—like he had no ability to free himself of this torment.  Would anyone consider Paul weak and unworthy of receiving anything from the Lord?  No, nobody would level that claim against the most famous apostle of Jesus.  And there are countless examples in the Bible of people who struggled.

It’s the same with the concept of faith.

I’d argue that someone with faith and poor mental health is an example of someone with GREATER faith than someone who’s life is going swimmingly along.

The faith of the person who has a dark day after good day is an inspiration when they continue to call upon their God and say humbly, “God, help me, I need you to get through this hour.”

Thankfully we’re living in a day where people are more supported than ever with their mental health concerns, but the culture of society still lags, and the culture within the Christian world—in this particular way—lags further behind than that.

It takes enormous strength to keep fronting up in faith when it’s clear that your mental health isn’t being healed as you’d like.  Christians with ailing mental health are forgiven for having times when they actually give up.

Strength of faith, however, is shown in coming back after days of having faith vanquished.  See how God has the last word, and how God never gives up on us?

Those who give up occasionally but never ultimately give up have great faith, for their occasional or even continual struggles show just how much courage daily living requires.

This sort of strength that feels decidedly like weakness is often criticised as weak, judged as disobedient, and condemned as unworthy, and those that live the struggling life will often self-criticise, and judge and condemn themselves.  It’s never helpful to the struggling when they’re criticised for holding on.

The simple fact is this: an up-and-down life of hardship and struggle under that burden does not exemplify a lack of faith, it reveals it.

God will break and remake

I heard it as loud as a shout, but it was at the same time completely inaudible.  God said to me, “Break and remake.”  It then took me a little while to discern what God was saying.  Then it dawned on me.

God was saying, “I will break down anything that is built in some other name than Mine, and I will remake my church by justice.”  Certainly fits with Psalm 127:1, which says, 

“Unless the Lord builds the house, 
the builders labour in vain.”

In the 60 Minutes Australia program that screened last night, September 19, Hillsong Church was exposed for its culture of deplorable institutional responses to sexual abuse.  Not only did the megachurch fail to promptly and properly investigate these cases, and refer the cases on appropriately including with law enforcement, but it also actively sought to protect the perpetrators, twisting theology of forgiveness and grace to further abuse the abused.

Hillsong Church—as well as a range of other despicable expressions of modern church, namely Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek, Mark Driscolls’ Mars Hill, James MacDonald and C.J. Mahaney’s Sovereign Grace, and we cannot not mention Ravi Zacharias’ International Ministries—have this also to contend with: just about every evangelical church in the world has taken their cue from these ‘heroes of the faith’, so much so that these same celebrity cultures have infiltrated the local church, because power has been made accessible, desirable, and even ‘cool’ and has become the measure of success for the church.  Little wonder now that there exists in churches of all sizes now, pastors and church leaders who have grown entitled to ‘eat their sheep’, because if their ministries are growing, and everything’s working, then there shouldn’t be any complaint if there’s a little collateral damage along the way.  (I know that this isn’t the majority of churches, but there are far too many churches, pastors, and leaders for whom the vulnerable exist as fodder for their machinations.)

I also think, that given we’re due for a reformation, according to Phyllis Tickle, that “Break and remake” could also testify to the concept that the reformation that is in train right now as we speak is a reformation of God not only breaking what is detestable in Divine sight, but remaking out of it something new, fresh, truthful, and glorious—justice for the abused and traumatised, and ultimately, safety and sanctuary for the vulnerable.  

We’ll know that the reformation is in full swing when the culture surrounding Christian ministry is safe.  How that will be achieved locally and globally will soon be revealed.  Nothing other than safety for the vulnerable can be the measure.

Everything that the church does that doesn’t serve God’s purpose will need to be broken.

God will break everything not done truly for the Kingdom’s glory, and God will remake something beautiful out of that brokenness, which is a justice for the vulnerable, whether that be in this life or in the life to come.

God will break what was built that profanes the name of God, because what profanes the name of God is a broken humanity that breaks human beings through abuse and trauma.

God will remake the church out of the broken pieces, but God will only use the broken pieces that truly serve the Lord’s Kingdom.

God makes the most beautiful things out of broken pieces, especially as the Lord puts our lives back together.  But lives should not be broken in the first place, hence it is better for anyone to be drowned at the bottom of the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to abuse and avoid being held to account.  (See Matthew 18:6-9)

Image from: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/dde2wp/kintsugi_is_the_japanese_art_of_repairing_broken/

Why feeling misunderstood is normal in depression

I love R U OK Day.  I love the theme, and I also love that days like this are about changing the culture within our culture to be more compassionate towards the many who struggle.

But there is something that the world just doesn’t get when it comes to a person suffering a mental health dilemma.  When we’re anxious or depressed, from our own internal viewpoint, we see no empathy, we see no connection, and we see no interest in our world helping us.  We truly feel either somewhat or very unloved and abandoned.

Immediately we are in a depression, and sometimes it can be spiritual attack that takes right there in an instant, or a triggering of some kind, THEN we know this.  It’s profound how isolated and foreign to the world we feel when we’re struggling.  And it doesn’t really matter a great deal if our environment is supportive or not at that point.  In many ways, we’re unreachable.

This is something as clinicians we’re very clear about.  You cannot assume that you have the faintest chance of understanding someone until, by chance, they say to you that they feel understood.  Until then, you’re in the dark.

When you feel a blend of confusion, overwhelm, and that you’re misunderstood, especially if your hope has evaporated, and all joy and peace has gone out the window, you feel as if you are beyond help and a complete burden on anyone who would try to help.  This is a huge barrier to overcome, but those who do help aren’t daunted by this sort of barrier, because they themselves have been there before.  Those who do help are the wounded healers in the Henri Nouwen tradition of practice.

But what the world needs to know and understand and accept, is feeling understood is the primary unconscious hope of the person who’s struggling.  But their default is, “How on earth can my world understand me, when I don’t understand me, what’s going on, and what to do about it?”

When we’re depressed, we feel shut in.  We feel cornered and isolated.  All energy has been drained and despair fills the void hope left behind.  You suspect you’ve been running ‘strong’ for too long, you fear you’ve run out of steam, and worries for burnout are real, and worst of all, you just don’t know how you’re going to get the time and space to recover.

Fear runs deep in the overwhelm.  And sorrow for hopes that seem impossibly far off.

You dare not hope that your world, or important people in your world would understand, but you desperately need them to, so that leaves you in a place of expecting someone to reach out and be your miracle.  This is a desperately sad reality destined for disappointment.

Whether your world or those within your sphere understand or not, again, is irrelevant.  Until the person with depression is themselves convinced that they’re understood, the default is that you don’t understand.

It’s important for those helping, for those wounded healers, to know this, and to operate with this knowledge front of mind—not as a put off, but as the very angle of approach that’s needed.  To hear something like this:

“Hey, I know that you must feel that I can’t possibly understand you right now, and I accept that I can’t really know, but I am interested, and I do want to be there for you as you may need.  Please know that I’m not forcing my way in, but I’m here for you to sit with you, to help you, and if I could, to offer some words of encouragement and love.  Would that be okay?”