Before you have the Affair

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Men have an affair to stay in a relationship, whilst women have an affair to leave a relationship; this is one idea that I’ve been pondering in recent months. I’m not sure if its entirely true, but there is some truth to it.

I don’t usually like to talk about affairs. It gives energy to something detestable, but the fact is infidelity happens. Having felt the sting of being cheated on many years ago, I know how much the trauma becomes part of your story. I sincerely hope I never ever fall into marital infidelity or feel its sting on the receiving side ever again. Of course, like anything, there is more wisdom in never discounting the possibility versus saying it will never happen to me.

One of the terms I loved in AA was the acronym Y.E.T., meaning ‘You’re Eligible Too!’ In other words, it can happen to me and you.

It is wise to never discount that we could become addicted to something (if we’ve never been addicted before), we’ll never face depression (if we’ve never had depression before), we’ll never face divorce (if we’ve never been divorced), or we’ll never be affected by marital infidelity (if neither we nor our partner has had an affair before). These ‘Y.E.T.s’ have all happened to me, though at some time or other I never thought they would. They can happen to anyone. It is best to arrange our wisdom in such a way as to be alert, to ward against all possibilities of evil happening. Anything can happen.

When I think about the flow of romance within a relationship, time and again I’ve seen the folly in a relationship predicated on physical attractiveness. People seem happy to jump into bed with one another, never considering the baggage that they each carry; like, who are they actually yoking themselves with?

The ‘who’ is almost certainly
someone you have no idea about…

… even if you think you know them,
you probably don’t.

You truly have little idea who you are dealing with for at least six months, and up to two years. A lot of relational commitment can be pledged in such a short period of time. Isn’t it madness that we make such commitments to people we really don’t know yet. And still, we all tend to do it. Shudder to think how many children are involved in partnerships brokered on shaky ground.

But it isn’t just the ‘who’ that is of major consequence. Have an affair and you hurt your partner irrevocably. Sure, they may forgive you, but it damages the fabric of the relationship for years, and in some cases for a lifetime. It’s also not just the betrayal of our partner. Where there are kids involved, each of the children are betrayed, also, and they are set a lamentable example. And then there’s the parents, and other family, some of whom are at times involved — either by implication or by their angry denunciation that sends families into relational freefall.

Relationships founded on hot affection are not grounded on the rock-solid fundamentals that secure the relationship on the firm footings of sustainability. At least when we court well, (and I’m not talking affairs here), resisting all urges to sleep with one other, there is the opportunity to talk about and work on trust and respect, love and hope, and what our individual and collective dreams and desires are, to see if we are truly matched. Only in the fullness of time, and we’re talking preferably a year or more, are we truly positioned to decide with any godly wisdom.

Let love begin with husbands

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Both women and men are sinners who, in Christ, have been forgiven, but there is an ongoing consequence of the state of two human hearts within marriage.

Both men and women are culpable in the sight of God to the destructive patterns known to occur in the marriage relationship. Both men and women.

But it is both my experience and my belief, even as an egalitarian, that love must begin with the husband, before respect is received from the wife. If men can be men enough to be open to this regard, a great deal of good can be done within a marriage. This article does not dispute that abuses are not suffered by men. This article does not dispute that women, too, can be perpetrators of abuse. But this article must, for the common good, place the onus of responsibility on husbands.

I will often say in the marriage counselling service that I provide that the husband has more control over the success of his marriage than the wife does. There are some who would disagree with that. That is their prerogative. Again, my views have been formed through experience, even after running myself as a husband through the filter of my philosophy for marriage.

We must understand that we are married to someone who does not meet all the conditions that love demands. In this respect, God’s opportunity is to learn how to love someone who, occasionally (or perhaps regularly), does not deserve our love; yet, someone for whom the Father sent his Son to die for. At times they are difficult to love, let alone like. Our challenge as a marriage partner is to overcome, and grow through, our reluctance to love.

It is only when we have learned to love someone
we don’t want to love that we learn something
more of Christ’s love for us. We need to ask:
how hard are we to love, yet how fully loved are we?

If Christ loves us unconditionally
when we cannot even love ourselves,
can we love our spouse at a standard
much more than they could ever deserve,
to a standard to which Christ esteems for them?

We must also understand that we are married to someone who needs mercy, so we are able to learn how to give it. We are married to a person who does not respond appropriately, so we can learn how to be patient. The person we married, like ourselves, is full of emotional junk, especially when their buttons are pressed, and yet every bit of imperfection in our partner is a very resource God uses to sanctify us.

Their disobedience is our opportunity:
to love them to the extent of Christ’s love.

Put another way…

We know something of this love
when our disobedience is met with their grace.

Imagine love being in the hand of the person who knows Christ’s love for themselves. Unlimited love. If that person can love their partner like Christ loves them, they have an effective premise for love.

Men, all this must start from us. At least in having read this, we commit to the only control we should ever take: to love and to keep loving. We do all we can to take our responsibility. That our wives are increasingly safer in our marriages. That we love them and keep loving them, even beyond our own feelings of disappointment. That we know they’re loved when they say they feel loved.

I can tell you that I know many husbands who have wrestled with love to the extent they discovered how to love their wives — and theirs, as a marriage, is comparative bliss to the attainment of contented marital maturity.

The disclaimer to all this is, of course, the situation of rampant abuse, where a marriage partner has no say or influence over their partner’s behaviour, where there is no repentance, to the extent the situation is unsafe to remain in.

The dynamics of love and control in relationships

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There is something of a paradox in love. Nuances are the deal. Love is both near-on impossible, yet too incredibly easy.

For some, in some situations, love is neither the desire nor do we have its agency. Love’s not so easy. Situations like these we feel controlled or we act out of a need to have control. Relationship in this way is about taking and demanding and not giving or letting go. No matter what we try to do, the person we want to love will not receive that love. Whatever we give doesn’t seem to be enough or even the right thing; it isn’t perceived as loving.

They perceive us as controlling and we perceive them as controlling, and never the twain shall meet.

Yet love in a different situation is a pure delight. There is no effort required, and no effort expended. It’s a flow downstream. One will give to another, even as the other is pouring love back. Love, as it can only do, gives and gives and gives. And the nature of love in the other person feels that love; they reciprocate in-kind.

Love doesn’t feel like control.

And yet at times there is an attempt to love that feels like control. Someone may be gently speaking truth into our life, but because that truth elicits pain, because the soul is exposed to an inconvenient or uncomfortable truth, such love feels like control. It doesn’t feel like we’re getting anything; if anything, our security is being taken away. There is a lack of trust that undermines this love. (Or the wisdom of protection, where ‘love’ is determined to be control, where the person is deemed unsafe.)

Trust is the foundation of being able to receive love.

The trust of wisdom is this:
‘this trusted person’s wisdom is loving and well-motivated.’

Love endeavours to speak truth and understands relationship trumps truth. And yet if we push that too far, relationship becomes untenable. Boundaries are disrespected and broken, and co-dependencies form. And control, demanding it and submitting to it, characterises the relationship.

Control is clearly an indicator that love has become
a runaway train over the precipice into the abyss of hell.

At some point it has ceased to be love. And control is the person’s deception who cannot see their actions as implicitly attacking or withdrawing. The person who feels controlled can only ask, ‘Am I being controlling; are others responding to me as if they are feeling controlled?’ It’s the only way love can re-enter the relationship, for love is initially and always introspective; it asks, ‘what can I do to give or add?’ And not ‘what can I take or demand?’

If we feel controlled,
what does the love in us do to respond?

How do we resist being controlled in a loving way? Of a sense, it requires us to take control, assertiveness if you will, and initially what we must do is stop responding; to stop reacting because we feel like we’re being controlled. This is easier said than done, for even in stopping our responding the other person probably feels controlled, because now they feel ignored. But when we do respond we can be kind and gracious.

We all have the capacity to love, but it is only when we face love, most commonly the love of God for us, that we draw on this capacity to love.

If we’re not behaving in a loving way,
i.e. we’re not perceived as acting in a loving way,
we need to stop and ask ourselves why;
to work with the other person’s truth.

Likewise, we all have the capacity to control, which is the reverse of love. Whenever we are disconnected from love we will seek to control, because in love’s absence fear fills the void. This is because we are so truly geared to receive God’s love; we need it to survive.

If we don’t have God’s love for ourselves,
we become every relationship’s worst enemy,
because we’re acting only on our own behalf.

God’s love is a security affirming we are secure.
With God’s love on our side
we don’t need to fight our battles,
as we allow Him to fight them for us.

We just love in faith,
knowing that love is God’s will.

The difference between love and control is cavernous, even if it is full of enigmatic nuances. It’s like the divide between Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. Love and control are kingdoms apart. And yet I know, personally, just how subtle the drift is from an intent to love to behaviour that controls. I can feel it in my own heart within seconds — when fear enters, and insecurity presences itself in me against God’s will. Blessed ever am I to be aware of this as it happens.

When a relationship is going healthily it’s easy to love. But when there is a disagreement, the temptation to influence can easily morph into control.

Love keeps itself accountable to the truth.

So how might I conclude? The only thing we can do as far as love is concerned is to ask God, ‘what I can do to love better and more?’

Love is not something that I should expect if I’m not first seeking to initiate. Love starts with me. It ends with me.

For every controlling interaction I experience,
love is required,
for love is the only way to influence others toward love.

We could say, in relational terms, that love’s opposite is not fear or hate, but the behaviour of control. That control could be based from fear or hatred, but ultimately the opposite of love is control.

Best advice I ever got hurt, then its truth hit home

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It seemed so simple, but I was gobsmacked by the profoundness of what was said. There, as I lay there, my wife scooped in my arms, in bed to sleep, I was wide awake with awe, at the advice I had five minutes earlier heard my wife utter to me.

All she said were these words, ‘Just remember to be kind to them, remembering how it felt when others were unkind to you.’ Everything in me in that moment wanted to defend or justify my position. But she said what she said in such a gracious way that she whispered me.

Sincerely, God had spoken those words through her. I knew immediately, in having been corrected, there were two powerful truths working in unison: The Holy Spirit was urging me, through my wife’s advice, to be kind, even though I felt affronted, and, I knew first-hand just exactly who my wife was referring to about those who were unkind to me. I have long resented the fact that some key others didn’t deal with me as gracefully as they could have. And here I was tempted to fall into the same trap.

Everyone deserves kindness, because everyone is coming from an angle where they deserve to be understood. Nobody goes about their way thinking it is wrong even if it is wrong. And yet, at the very moment we want to be unkind, when we are prepared to burn the friendship or even a budding acquaintance, to go there is so unnecessary when kindness can breathe hope into the despairing soul of a rapport about to destroyed.

Kindness gives the relationship just one more chance when one party or both are just about done. It is the grace of God, which is the undeserved favour we receive without ever having made a case for earning it.

Kindness is the will of God in all circumstances,
no matter how offensive another person’s behaviour is.

It can turn an enemy into someone who is no longer threatened by us. It can turn a stranger into a friend. It causes people to take a second look our way to encounter beauty in life. Kindness is the redemptive power of God, which is a response of grace against the odds in response to an offence given.

This kindness response is learned paradoxically. I have learned through my experience of having been treated unkindly, just how much it hurts not to be treated graciously even when I’ve been in the wrong.

This is a compelling reason to be Christ follower: who else epitomised kindness even in death?

Kindness is learned most profoundly —
the urgency of its importance —
in having been deprived of it.

Could stress be distressing your relationships?

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So many people I encounter are under the direct burden of stress.

Levels of general anxiety in the population today are as high as at any other time in the history of the world. And yet, as you read this you might be like much of the world, living in comparative luxury compared to others who cannot read this, and there are those historically who have faced much harder realities than we do today, yet possibly experienced less general anxiety.

These below are just four items on what would be a long list:

The Infection of Information

We are infected in this day with a plethora of information that has the impact of burdening us more than we are able to cope with. Information is killing us. And it isn’t even as if it’s a case of discerning what information is good from what isn’t good, it is just the flood of information that creates stress and manifests as anxiety.

Don’t just think about the ills of comparison through excess time spent on social media (though envy is a stressor). The problem is much more complex than that. It’s literally keeping up with the flow of information coming in that has an effect on our relationships with real people. Information as a priority, unfortunately, tends to trump people. The more tools and techniques we use to try and simplify our lives in this day the more our lives become complicated.

It’s because we have so much
that we want so much.

There is a new addiction in our age, and it’s called the Fear of Missing out. And it isn’t just young people who are addicted; indeed, it is an irony that it is the over 40s who are most entrenched with Facebook these days.

But it’s not just the infection of information that burdens us with stress that overwhelms our capacity to relate with people.

Honesty with Ourselves and with God

This is a stressor that many people cannot stomach let alone reconcile. Even some espoused Christian individuals, particularly those who major on doctrines (information, again, over people!), cannot have an honest relationship with themselves or God, because they lack the courage of vulnerability to be truthful with themselves. They may bend out of context Jesus’ words, ‘the truth will set you free’ all the while refusing the Holy Spirit’s power that would heal them of their pride by giving them a continual awareness of it.

God blesses the obedient; those who will honestly journey with Him; those who have the capacity to fervently repent of their wrongful attitudes, for we all have them. I have found that the way God works with me is, my pride that refuses to be honest becomes a curse against the peace I could otherwise have in my heart.

If we cannot be honest with ourselves and with God, we will be severely limited in our relationships, and because we are not being honest about getting the log out of our own eye, it’s only a matter of time before some relationships shatter through conflict. Some relationships suffer such damage they become irreparable.

When we are honest with ourselves and with God, we see our pride, and how we are tempted to elevate the issues we argue about over the person, and completely miss the will of God.

When we’re honest with ourselves and God,
God gives us the capacity to repent of our pride.

Being Aware of Emotional Indicators

Stress has an impact on us at a psychological level affecting the way we think and feel. Like all of what I talk about in this article, awareness is the key. As we recognise the feeling of stress and anxiety within us, we can choose to talk calmly to ourselves, to allow God to comfort us, even as we hope beyond the stressful present moment — ‘This, too, shall pass’.

This kind of stress is manifest in a particularly strong way when we are interacting with people, especially when we cannot control the situation, because we all like a modicum of control. And when we are stressed, more than ever, we demand control. If we hear God saying to us, ‘it’s okay, surrender your need of control to Me’ we can simply do something active in the interaction itself to surrender control. None of this is rocket science.

Getting the Balance Right between Activity and Being

Possibly the final frontier in reconciling stress is how far we skew the balance in our lives regarding activity versus being.

There is just so much to do in life. We often accept that without challenging it. Nobody is making us do this or that.

Many things that we choose to do
we don’t have to do.

Very often the wisdom path is in saying no, which in the moment of saying it feels awkward and uncomfortable, but is the best remedy for busyness.

As we fight for the peace we could have in life
we reduce our burden and deal with our stress.

Not enough being evokes anxiety;
too much doing is stressful.

Want Control? Then Take Your Responsibility

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What I write about below is personal psychology 101. 

Most people in life want control over their life.

Indeed, that’s a huge understatement. We all want more control over life and our lives than we can seize.

But this want of control, when needing control becomes an idol, creates situations where, most often, we surrender control.

Here’s how that works. 

When we interact with life and with others in a way that demands control, that very action forces others in a direction they would prefer not to go. That creates conflict. Conflict creates the blame game. The moment we begin blaming someone else is the same moment we refuse to take our own responsibility for our contribution to the conflict. In refusing our responsibility we surrender the only control we have; the only control we ever have, that is, the control we have over our own responses — over ourselves. If we think we can control or have control over others we’re deluded.

Controlling others requires you to surrender
the only control you’ll ever have.

The ‘internal locus of control’ (psychology term) suggests we have control over a great many things, for instance, how we respond to others and what choices we decide to initiate. By taking responsibility we take our control. By owning your contribution to conflict, and not taking theirs, you’re able to apologise for what you did wrong. Having an internal locus of control gives us maximum control over our own lives.

The ‘external locus of control’, however, sees issues of conflict as the other person’s problem. It’s the blame game — the game that gets us nowhere. By refusing to take our responsibility we lose whatever control we could have in attempting to control the other person. Having an external locus of control gives you minimal control over your own life, and it damages your relationships, because others are confused as to why you refuse to own what you did wrong.

Taken further, the person who cannot own what they did wrong becomes an unsafe person, and these very people can make it their mission, and have the temerity, to suggest it’s others who don’t take their responsibility, that, in their view, ‘others are unsafe’. Can you see how this kind of person will never have the only control they could have, because they refuse to take their responsibility?

The sanest way to live life, and the only way to relate with others, is by taking responsibility for our lives, for our actions, words, mistakes, errors, faults, and successes.

When a relationship is not what we hope

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There are times in all our lives when there is a relationship that doesn’t quite meet our hopes. There is a particular kind of relationship that continues to elude us with a loved one or a friendship that has experienced fracture.

It is quite a common theme in my pastoral, chaplaincy, and counselling work to be confided in to the extent of:

‘Please help me, I’m so sad
because of this relationship —
I don’t feel close,
or they don’t seem to care,
and I don’t know what to do
about this situation or my sadness.’

Professionally, of course, these moments leave me feeling out of my depth, but then I quickly realise that hardly anyone is expecting me to fix their problems. What I have to offer is the care of listening and interest of and capacity to journey with a person. I am still so amazed by what the Holy Spirit can do when I’m feeling hopeless and useless in my own strength. In endeavouring not to fix the person’s problem, the person is ministered to by the Holy Spirit operating through me.

I recall a time when a particular relationship was not only strained, but the relationship, as it had been, was over. I was impelled into grief; cast into the place of loss that I was completely ill-equipped to handle.

When people say God
doesn’t give you more than you can handle,
part of me wants to laugh,
but part of me also gets angry.

Life does give us more than we can handle.

God allows this to bring us
to an understanding of Himself in our suffering.

This is why we need God,
because at times life cannot answer our questions of it,
and only God at those times can help.

… but never in a way we initially expected…

The above relational situation taught me so much, because at some levels there was no hope. I had to get used to the fact things had changed forever. There was no way of reconciling the relationship to how it was. I was forced to adjust. But I also found a way to reconcile with this person in a way that only God could have procured. And yet there was a blessing in disguise, a God compensation if you will, for the fact that things had changed irreparably. I have written about this before:

God takes us deeper into Himself,
and, as a compensation,
we get a gift that nothing in this world can provide.

That can, however, seem short-change for those who have not yet experienced such a compensation. For whatever reason, they may never experience what I and many others claim as faith-facts. But it’s only as we press on in within our pain that we stand to benefit in a way that is entirely of God.

When I go into some of those moments with others, pastorally or therapeutically, so many in a moment of sharing are overcome by their sadness and heave out their tears. Again, I can feel quite useless, because it is completely inappropriate to console them in a way I would like to. Such consolations I talk about I can only give to family, otherwise others and myself are vulnerable to a possible inappropriate use of the power God gives me to care. And yet, stopping short of such consolations is the very power of God, as God gets me to step out of the way, so His Spirit can work in this situation of my holding and containing of the person.

Still, the sadness of being in some kind of relationship that doesn’t rise to the hopes we have can very well feel overwhelming. And yet, God’s power doesn’t seem to operate until we get to this place of feeling overwhelmed.

Feeling overwhelmed is like arriving at first base
in the economy of God’s ministry for the grieving.

And there is something very precious about a person-to-person relationship that is both safe and intimate at the same time.

Such a therapeutic relationship works for healing through the power of God because, and only because, it is platonic. Such a relationship does not and cannot rescue a person from their immediate pain, but somehow gives them the courage to continue on in the journey of hope toward resolution.

And I would argue that the effectiveness of the counselling relationship is because of that very reason: we do not interrupt the flow of God’s healing Spirit that requires a person to do their own work even while they’re urged onward in faith by any of us privileged to walk alongside with them.

Name the game and you take its power away

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One of the healthiest devices known in the field of counselling is the concept of naming what is going on in the room. As I was reminded recently, one way of looking at this is to imagine each phenomenon as the game. There is incredible value in naming a game.

Naming without Shaming

For instance, sometimes it is abuse that needs to be named, and if we can name the game early, locate it and put it on the table, it can be discussed as an object; it can be discussed without apportioning direct blame; it can be discussed in a safe way; it can be discussed in a way that does not frighten off a person engaging in abuse who cannot yet contemplate what they are doing. What beckons isn’t immediately threatening. The person engaging in potential abuse, it is hoped, can meet the concepts without feeling accused.

It is the accusation itself
that amplifies the threat.

The power of naming the game
is we take its power away.

Before we move on from the concept of abuse, it must also be acknowledged that many people who engage in abuse will refuse to see it as abuse. But every person in therapy must be given the opportunity to face the therapist’s teaching and decide for themselves. Those given to being abusers ought, like everyone, to be given the opportunity to repent. God’s miraculous grace is not beyond the abuser. But repentance (a change of mind that leads to a change in behaviour) is required.

Counselling Friends

Another game that can be named is the pure fact that a process of therapy can and often does involve a complex process and a convoluted bunch of emotions.

Sometimes in churches we are required to counsel our friends, but our friends ought to be given the opportunity of knowing that the game can change friendships.

Indeed, for the pastor and counsellor it is wise to recognise that every relationship is vulnerable to disruption, even destruction, when it is exposed to the truth of the therapeutic process.

It’s remarkable how many relationships do change when licence is needed and given in the gentle though firm interrogation of relational dynamics to arrest toxic patterns and to breathe life into marriages and other family dynamics.

The power in naming the game
is we give licence for people
to opt in to or out of the process
having been forewarned.

Sometimes it is a pastor or counsellor’s job to put at risk the personal relationship they enjoy with the person to improve a family relationship that person has — “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” it says in John 15:13.

It is in the identification of issues
that gives people command over truth.

The power of naming the game is
we take its power away.

Citing cause for Encouragement

One of the great opportunities in working with a pastor or counsellor is the likelihood that they will identify something (and perhaps more than one thing) to encourage. Given that most people burn out because of a discouragement, not having been noticed or acknowledged or praised or valued, even having been rejected or left out, the role of encouragement cannot be understated.

And yet those who are in helping professions have the uncanny knack of identifying niches of brilliance in those they come to know.

This runs counter to the above two points, whereby the power in naming the game — the strength or performance of someone as yet unnoticed — is power not taken away, but a power for truth through the identification of the game.

***

Some people do take advantage, especially of caring kinds of persons. Once the game has been named, however, there is nowhere to hide. Once the game has been named, a genuine kind of freedom can be realised.

This article acknowledges the wisdom of my father-in-law, Ray Brown.

Good news for some is never good news for all

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With every piece of joyous information, there is always a pocket of commiseration. Celebratory moments have their share of instantaneous despair. Such is life.

The jubilant sharing of a pregnancy, and the hopes of a new life to be born, have a sobering effect on those who have miscarried, suffered stillbirth or infertility. It is impossible to rationalise just how deep the pain is in the loss of a new born life, that of a hope that will not go away that will never be realised.

Good news for some
is never good news for all.

When academic brilliance is lauded by parents at the receipt of a scholarship, a special needs parent is once again reminded they have a child who will never achieve anything like that. Parents of special needs children face a grief that never goes away, for the reminders of their loss repeat each day. The same goes for parents with a teen or young adult who has gone off the rails.

There is shame at the same moment there is joy.

And yet the paradox of life presents itself afresh: those who struggle early in life often prosper later, and those who prospered early can often struggle later. Very few people go through life without having struggled.

That time when you are single, and a best friend tells you the wonderful news that they’re engaged to be married, you cannot help but feel lonely in that moment. Something deep inside a single person grieves such news because they know the relationship will drastically change, and often the married friend can seem to have no idea, or even resents that their single friend can’t accept change and move on.

For the divorced person, any reminder of a ‘successful’ family is likely to remind them of the failure that time cannot scrub away. Yet they know full well that ‘successful’ families aren’t always what they seem, for there are skeletons in everyone’s closet. Theirs are simply exposed, and that exposure has been opportune, perhaps, for a journey of growth in courage to be vulnerable. It’s the same with those with troublesome family dynamics who look on when other families get on well. There’s a grief that’s palpable. Separated families constantly face the grief of doing life without loved ones, and it’s doubly worse when it’s outside your control.

That announcement of a position secured within a company or on a board or at a school, the kind of position that you have often coveted, that has gone to someone else. Part of the disappointment can be the shock of hearing the news when we also experience others being universally joyful at such news.

It’s isolating when everyone else is celebrating
and you’re reeling at the shock of news you didn’t expect.

When we move an elderly parent into an aged care facility, there is the sadness of a diminished life in that parent, but those who have lost parents well before age could weary them can have a different perspective. They may quietly think, ‘Well, at least you’ve had the last 20 years; I haven’t.’ Nothing spiteful, just reality.

The reverse occurs when someone cannot escape their grief or trauma and they seem to go on and on about it. Some would be tempted to give these people some advice, ‘be more positive,’ ‘count your blessings,’ or to offer some glib cliché. Of course, it all falls flat, because the advice is coming from a person very poorly positioned to comment. The evidentiary fact is the position of the heart to give advice to someone who has exhausted all simplistic solutions. Advice doesn’t work well in cases where the complexity is overwhelming.

When someone’s relationship is going gangbusters and yours is in the toilet, or when they’re being waited on and pampered, yet yours is a torrent of abuse or a sea of neglect with no horizon.

Good news for some
is never good news for all.

It is important at this juncture to recognise our feelings of disappointment amid celebration, and not to immediately surrender to guilt or shame, but to legitimise them and let the feelings have a place.

We feel what we feel,
and feelings have purity to be honoured.

Feelings show us who we are,
that God gave them to us for a reason.

God wants us to feel.

Our opportunity in sharing good news is to make a broader scan of those who are around to anticipate the impact. Of course, we are not responsible for how people take change, but we can be kind in the way we share. We can anticipate disappointment in others even if we’re ecstatic, and to legitimise another’s authentic felt process is to forge depth of trust.

It’s okay to be disappointed,
and better to acknowledge it,
we just endeavour not to stay there.

Yet, out of all this, the Lord is the God of the disenfranchised, the abandoned, the outlier, the lonely. He remains with us through all our adversity.