The love-hate relationship we have with Truth

IMAGINE the spontaneous laughter, when Richard Rohr OFM says, “Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”

Humour makes us laugh because it sounds absurd, but it is, of course, at the same time, 100 percent true.

The truth about truth is we have a love-hate relationship with it. We love it ultimately, because it delivers on its promise; to set us free. But not before we suffer one or some varietal/s of indignity we never thought would feel so humiliating.

That’s the Christian journey into transformation we’re encouraged to continue to take.

God is love. Not only do we know that, but it’s in the Bible. How God loves us is another concept. One way God loves us is with the truth. Indeed, though we can say it’s biblical that God accepts us as we are, we should also say it’s biblical that God loves us too much to leave us as we are. Both realities are true. God is passionate equally about both. His love wants the best for us at every point of our lives over our lifespan. He requires us to wrestle with truth if we’re to love and be loved better.

We love truth because it transforms us, but not before it torments us through trial.

In the same way a romantic relationship proves its potential — that the partners’ commitment to each other remains strong through the harder going middle stages — love never ascends its potential unless both face truth. About the other person, most certainly. About the relationship, yes. But about themselves, too.

Truth has the power to license deeper manifestations of love. Truth transforms, because it entertains the ugly bits that a shallow love would want to remain covered up.

Truth requires courage to face what feels like an adversary, but it turns out to be an advocate.

If we will allow Jesus to continue to transform us, our spiritual task is simple: invite the discomfort of truth, so that His love would deepen in and mature us.

And now here’s a truth that ought to rock us to our core: God so loved the world he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

No matter how shocking our truths are, the living God knows and still loves us. And there’s nothing we could do that would separate us from His love. There is no truth that God doesn’t know, and He still loves each one of us!

So don’t be scared of the truth, and certainly don’t be ashamed of or feel guilty for it. Be honest about it.

See how love makes it easy to love truth? Hate it no longer.

Give yourself to the reception of truth and the powers of love will become you.

Couples who Climb Out of Conflict into Contentment

THERE are five essential stages of love every couple must go through to ultimately experience a satisfying, productive and fun relationship. The first and second stages pass quickly, the third can seem to last an eternity — hell, not heaven — and the fourth and fifth stages come as the fruit of perseverance through stage three.

The five stages of love are what I call:

1.      Romance – this stage feels incredible but it doesn’t last long, although the irony is those couples who climb through conflict and ascend to stage five reclaim a more mature romance than any new couple could experience.

2.      Landing – this is what my wife Sarah calls it. She refused to get engaged to be married until we actually landed; no longer airborne in the fantasy land of romance.

3.      Disillusionment – believe it or not, when we reached this stage in married life, I used to think my wife was somehow broken… like, ‘what on earth did I get myself into?’ Only when we ascended out of disillusionment did she concede she often felt the very same way.

4.      Real love – ah the bliss of becoming realists together! Only a couple who endures the tenuous stage of disillusionment gets here. Some couples never get here, and divorce becomes almost inevitable, unless both partners can live in deep dissatisfaction. Then we must prevent backsliding into disillusionment. In real love is a skillset that the couple has learned to construct and deploy.

5.      Being a team – how sweet is a team of two? They combine with God to make a cord of three strands[1] which is not easily broken. Married life becomes more and more about the other person.

Every couple encounters the disillusionment stage. It’s where the untruths we believe about them and us come to be tested and seen as unviable, unsustainable.

To get to stage four, we need to take them and us off the pedestal. They’re on the pedestal because we have such high (read unrealistic) expectations of them. We’re on the pedestal because, in the relationship, we think we’re better than we are.

The moment we hit stage three, and it is usually in the first twelve months of serious relationships, the partnership appears destined for fracture.

Mature couples, however, convert conflict into opportunity. They learn through bitter trial that success comes on the other side of failure. It literally defines them. And maturity is only gleaned with time.

Tips for climbing through the disillusionment stage:

1.      Get to know and accept yourself and your partner; it is vital. I love The Enneagram.[2] It helps us appreciate the differences between us and our partner. I am a Type 2 and my wife is a Type 5. Before I appreciated how different she was compared with me, I naively thought she was simply being difficult and obtuse.

2.      Acknowledge the truth: conflict is an opportunity. Celebrate it, don’t lament it. Be open to creative solutions, and be willing often to surrender your own ideas.

3.      At disillusionment’s worst there simply seems no hope. But nothing is further from the truth. Commitment often isn’t tested until it pushes us to despair and beyond. Partners who don’t give up get through. When partners know how close they came to giving up, they see the stark reality of their partner’s unwavering commitment to them.

4.      Relationships can slip back into the disillusionment stage for a variety of reasons. The way of reclaiming your relationships’ vitality is to remain ever committed to the two of you!

5.      Discovering where we, as individuals, have made our contribution to the mess. It seems the opposite, but taking responsibility for our own contributions to conflict is empowering, and it is great for the relationship because it models something that can be reciprocated.

---

[1] See Ecclesiastes 4:9-12.

[2] Type One is principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic.

Type Two is generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, and possessive.

Type Three is adaptable, excelling, driven, and image-conscious.

Type Four is expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental.

Type Five is perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated.

Type Six is engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious.

Type Seven is spontaneous, versatile, acquisitive, and scattered.

Type Eight is self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.

Type Nine is receptive, reassuring, complacent, and resigned.

Backsliding out of forgiveness?

POSSIBLY the most powerful thing I’ve learned about forgiveness is that it’s hard. By that I mean I learned very little about true forgiveness when it came easy.

Gold comes mined from a deep search. And a deep search is necessary when bitterness has confounded all previous attempts to reconcile the matter in our mind and heart. When feelings of resentment continue cropping up. When we’re frustrated because we’re frustrated.

Chances are it’s something the other side hasn’t done that leaves you adrift from peace, though you have vowed to forgive. Or, it could simply be the case you know it’s right to forgive, but you’ve struggled with a heart that can’t seem to let go.

The harder forgiveness is, the deeper the life lessons that are learned, the more present and future benefit we get. Be encouraged when it’s especially tough to forgive.

Now you know there’s a purpose to the difficulty of forgiving certain things, consider the following biblical promises of forgiveness[1] you can make that ensure it sticks as you recommit to the process:

1.      I will not dwell on this incident – when I find I am, I will refocus my thinking on something more productive.

2.      I will not bring this incident up and use it against you – once we make this promise vocally, the other person and ourselves can hold us to account. If we do bring it up again we will need to apologise and own our error.

3.      I will not talk to others about this incident – gossip erodes relationships. Period. It ends all hope of peace. It ends the hopes we have even for having peace with ourselves.

4.      I will not allow this incident to stand between us or hinder our personal relationship – putting the relationship first, no matter who it is we’re relating with, is advancing a person’s dignity so they may see how valuable our dignity is.

When we engage in the behaviour of forgiveness, our thinking changes and our attitudes begin to shift in a positive direction.

Owning our contribution to conflict makes forgiveness easier. This is why abuse victims require empathy — they didn’t contribute to the conflict that causes their grief. But even for abuse victims, the only hope we have of being free in life is to find a way to forgive our past.

---

[1] Credit to PeaceWise for these principles. Peacewise.org.au

Forgiveness facilitates freedom into functionality

RANDOM things are said in deeper conversations. Invariably wisdom goes unnoticed. The following sentence I heard piqued me: forgiveness facilitates functionality.

In simplest terms, forgiveness makes being functional easier. Being a functional human is equated with partaking in the abundant life, which is from the wellspring of Jesus.

Everybody ought to want to be more functional, because that’s where love, joy, peace, empowerment and hope — the fullness of life — come from — from being functional.

But forgiveness is not easy. We must continue to guard our hearts through the process. We must acknowledge the truth that buoys our faith. That is, the choice to forgive breeds life, even though it feels like death in the sacrifice of ourselves for possibly no gain. It warrants all our surrender and promises nothing but for the faith that compels it to begin and sustain its work; the hope of reconciliation that obliges us to not give up. And if we can let go with unconditionality, then we have power through the Holy Spirit to facilitate freedom into a fuller functionality.

There can only be unconditional forgiveness like there can only be unconditional love. Conditionality make both forgiveness and love counterfeit. They cease being what they say they are.

Forgiveness facilitates intrapersonal functionality. Personal wellness is gained when we lose something (by letting it go) that can only condemn us. It is a commitment to go a new, albeit uncomfortable-for-a-time way. The commitment to grow and not to rescind can only be a blessing.

Forgiveness facilitates functionality in relationships — within families, communities. As we let others go and refuse to any longer judge and punish them we let ourselves go. The irony of unforgiveness is this: when we judge and punish others we only end up judging and punishing ourselves and hurting those we love. When we’ve finally stopped judging and punishing God opens our minds to the endlessly creative possibilities in life.

Forgiveness facilitates functionality in our reception of the Divine. We only truly receive the fullness of the Lord when our hearts are wide open. And what happens when our hearts are wide open? We forgive. It makes no sense not to.

But it’s only by faith that we choose to forgive. Faith fuels the forgiveness that facilitates the freedom that converts to functionality.

By faith we choose,

To let go of blame,

For the bravery to lose,

Is the vehicle of gain.

Forgiveness is going backwards to go forwards. In owning our own stuff, and in letting go of theirs, we allow each of them and us the freedom to be, without judgment and toll.

Four basic steps to biblical reconciliation

RECONCILING moments, situations, conflicts and relationships is the major life task. None of us is immune to the hurts that come so frequently with ferocity in life. Yet, when we show we can overcome these hurts using a tried-and-tested method that is easily learned, and practiced with persistence, we find we have overcome our world in Jesus’ name (see John 16:33).

Here is a biblical four-step process of movements, an established wisdom, for the reconciliation of relationships:

1.                  UPWARD

Looking upward in conflict is learning that the first step is the goal of glorifying God.

As we started to look up, finding ourselves appropriately positioned to do the next three steps, we committed to continuing to look up. God’s Holy Spirit works miracles from this position of our heart.

2.                 INWARD

Looking inward is about making our best self-assessment regarding what my contribution to the conflict is. We get the log out of our own eye, to use Jesus’ own words (Matthew 7:3-5). We establish a desire to work out what our unmet demands were. Before we approach the other person. Because if we’ve got something to apologise for, we go to the other person in the conflict in a state of sustainable humility.

The other person won’t listen to us unless we’ve owned our part of the conflict.

3.                 OUTWARD

Having readied ourselves to apologise for what we did wrong or failed to do, we go outward to the other person, who generally reciprocates — if they see we’re sincere in simply owning our fault. If they still don’t own their part of the conflict we do not yet have reconciliation. They may need time or they may never reciprocate. All in God’s timing, which we’re blessed to accept. Whatever they do, we have glorified God all-the-more in being honest about our contribution, being prepared to leave it at that, in faith. And yet if there is reciprocation, we have the last step in view.

4.                 ONWARD

Looking onward to a future bulging with hope, reconciliation as a vision is achieved when both parties have reckoned the results of conflict and have redeemed their contributions. Parties can indeed then look onward as trust between them is enhanced.

AN OVERVIEW

Reconciliation first looks upward (GOD),

then inward (MY sin),

then outward (YOUR sin),

then onward (US loved).

Acknowledgement to the PeaceWise process and The Peacemaker book by Ken Sande.

Being an Everyday Peacemaker

BLESSED are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9). Nothing sets Christians apart more than their love.

They glorify God, serve others diligently, all-the-while growing to be like Christ.

Some of the following relational gold was gleaned at a recent PeaceWise workshop:

“Conflict is an integral part of how God grows us up.”

— Steve Frost

Spiritual growth cannot happen in a vacuum. Time alone in solitude can teach us, but it is inadequate on its own. Conflict is an opportunity to overcome fear and pride, among other things. We cannot demonstrate humility unless we’re in relationship with others.

“Breathe peace in the midst of… [conflict, frustration, confusion, being emotional or overwhelmed].”

— Steve Frost

The hardest of all times to exercise composure is in the heat of conflict. The opportunity a close relationship with God presents is to execute breathe prayers — to literally breathe every bit of stress out that we can as we breathe every bit of peace in.

“The enemy love of God.”

— Steve Frost

The gospel holds out and open to everyone the preposterous love of God that loves most those who are most violent toward Him. As Jesus prayed that we human beings be as close as He and the Father are close, He echoed the grace that loves its enemies, notwithstanding anything they do. Such a love has not only conquered the world, it continues conquering the evil in our personal worlds.

“Live as someone never condemned by God.”

— Steve Frost

So many Christians continue to be dogged by their sin, and they therefore judge others any time they see them sin. But if we see ourselves as scandalously forgiven by God, never to ever be condemned again, living constantly in the light of such truth, we grant others the grace within which we live.

We must live as the kind of people God insists we already are.

“Conflict is a wild ride in learning.”

— Steve Frost

As I’ve often said, life is the learning ground, and the Christian life is the epitome of that.

“There is always, always, always hope.”

— Li Ai Gamble

This is something we wish every person tempted to, or carrying out, suicide knows; a reason to live. We cannot control the outcomes of life, but we can control our attitude of simply being obedient to the teachings of Jesus the best we can.

“We are so busy we’ve lost touch with what we’re actually feeling.”

— Steve Frost

Becoming more in touch with our feelings requires us to slow down. And we’re more alive as a result.

“The heart is the origin of the weirdness; it is also the wellspring of restoration.”

— Steve Frost

Probably the quote of the workshop. As Canon J. John says, “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.” From our heart comes the filth that compels us to sin. From that same heart can come reconciling love that wins other hearts and restores God’s vision in the realm of relationships.

“Success for me is faithfulness to God.”

— Steve Frost

As we run the risk of pain and suffering in this life, especially as it portends in our relationships, we have to continually remind ourselves that it is success when we cooperate with the will of God.

Acknowledgement to PeaceWise that has resources here.

One fact transforms bitterness into forgiveness

SEVERAL months, maybe years, a gulf between you and peace has come and since widened, because of an interpersonal conflict. Perhaps.

You’ve tried everything in your grasp, and your search for peace and reconciliation continues.

One fact transforming bitterness into the acceptance that produces the peace to forgive is this: we don’t have all the information. It’s a fact that drives us into the belly of understanding, for the pure fact of our recognition of our lack of understanding.

Life’s deepest level of understanding is recognition
of how much we don’t yet understand.

There are details about the person we withhold forgiveness from that we don’t know, yet ought to know about them and the situation.

Information is what holds us adrift from reconciliation. It’s what we yet do not understand. Even as Jesus said of his assailants when on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” we too can reckon upon the same rationale.

We hurt each other when we don’t understand each other.
Conflict is about misunderstanding.
Forgiveness is about understanding.

As soon as we acknowledge our own ignorance, God’s perspective incoming, He gives us a plenteous portion of His grace to extend to others within our relational reach. Just for being honest.

Think about any situation where we range from disagreement to dissent to resentment and there is something vitalising, tantalising, that’s missing. As soon as we gain crucial knowledge, understanding comes, then forgiveness.

Understanding germinates when we’re informed,
 producing the compassion to forgive.

It may not be too long a bow to draw to say,

all unforgiveness comes from misunderstanding.

When we’re bitter, perhaps the best question to ask to be reconciled to peace, and the other person or group, is this: what information am I lacking here? What information, if it came to hand, would turn my understanding on its head?

A Contented Child within the Separated Home

Marital separation and divorce is never the plan when parents come together and have children. But how do parents navigate the hurt of separation and simultaneously love their children the best they can?

Here are some do’s and don’ts to consider:

Do consider the other parent in your planning. You know you’re successful when the other parent thinks you’re thinking of them.

Don’t undermine the other parent in any way around your child. Hurt their mother or father and, like a boomerang comes back, you hurt them. Does any parent want their child hurt? And would any parent knowingly be party to that hurt?

Do speak well of the other parent. Find things they’re doing well and give credit where it’s due. Acknowledge their intentions mean well. Be patient if they doubt your intentions.

Don’t get angry with the other parent. Exercise patience with all the resilience you have in you. Be patient when you’re tempted to get upset.

Do spend short periods of time together (parents with child) if at all possible. This is not about giving them false hope of marital reconciliation, but it is one way to model maturity and the common threads of love for your child.

Don’t hold resentments, but instead find what YOU did wrong and show humility in saying sorry, demonstrating understanding for what you did wrong, making restitution, endeavouring not to do it again, and forgiving. It runs both ways, but it starts with you.

BUT don’t be the only one who says sorry all the time.  Far too many broken relationships feature the same dynamic as what occurred before the relationship concluded.  It’s horrible finding out you were paired with a narcissist who won’t apologise.  If you do find you’re the one apologising most if not all the time, this won’t be lost on your children.  They will respect you for the effort you put in to be congenial.  It’s not a waste of time being the adult.  It’s the wise thing to do in the short-, medium- and long-term.

When your ex-partner thinks you’re trying, they see your heart is in the right place, and trust is in the process of being restored. The child is then the chief benefactor.

POSTSCRIPT: far too many partners feel completely unsupported in the process of co-parenting, even though they are doing everything they possibly can. It is exhausting. I have always said, it takes at least one functional parent to make childhood doable. Please do not be discouraged if you find yourself parenting alone. You are enough.

I developed this to guide co-parents through a family ministry I am involved in.

Image: hopscotch slabs laid by yours truly at the school I work at.