Extraordinary kindness is both strong AND patient

On a night where I reflected over an extraordinary kindness that was extended to me four years ago, I sense that the extraordinary kindness I was shown was in fact gleaned from the extraordinary kindness of God — in whom extraordinary kindness is founded through Christ the Lord.

The extraordinary kindness I was shown was via an invitation to friendship and fellowship with a lecturer and professor who taught me in one of his last years before retirement.  I had faced a very hard circumstance, and due to some intransigent family ties, I was invited to quarterly New Testament Research Fellowship meetings he held — and I’m no scholar.  Much of what is discussed is way over my head, yet I’m able to contribute in other ways.  I sincerely appreciate the friendship within this group that includes family times, milestone birthdays celebrated, etc.

It may not seem like an extraordinary kindness, but because of its timeliness and the nature of the steady encouragement it has been, it has been extraordinarily kind.  An unanticipated silver lining.

God’s extraordinary kindness to send us the Saviour, while we were still sinners, is an infinitely more remarkable kindness.  Such a kindness can be replicated by us via the instrument of a grace that conveys unequivocal patience.  It’s that quality of overlooking an offence.  It is choosing to be kind even when others aren’t, and even being insistently kind when they’re insistently selfish, rude and uncompromising.

But extraordinary kindness is also strong to the degree that it won’t give up on a person who could still make a miraculous recovery, while also being strong to the degree that it won’t be trampled.  It is immensely kind to gently insist boundaries be respected — a kindness that will intervene in an attempt to stop someone injuring another.

It is up to each of us to practice this extraordinary kindness.  Because it’s from God we need to be connected to the heart of God to be purveyors of it.  It is strong and patient, to the degree that onlookers will wonder where such strength and patience came from.  It can only come from God, and it can only work through a channel of God.  This extraordinary kindness that translates into radical strength and patience is transforming and miraculous.

And the biggest miracle is, it transforms us as we practice it.

We only need to ask God for more ability to be extraordinarily kind and God will supply the situations and God will provide the grace.

Photo by Tom Parsons on Unsplash

When relationships die for a lack of intimacy

What do you think of the following quote:

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”
― Thomas Merton

For me, what Merton is getting to is there’s a banality in life, even most frustratingly in our closest and most intimate relationships, where there is little or next to no intimacy.

We may spend so much of our time talking to people about what our plans are or asking them what their plans are, or finding out what they like, how they’ll vote, whether they want tea or coffee or sugar with it, and we may miss an opportunity to explore the deeper connection that many of us just crave to unlock.  This is especially the case in marriages and deep friendships.

Many people are afraid of going to the deeper places for what they may be required to face.  For many it’s what it might cost them.  Many find it safer not to go there, to deny the deeper parts of themselves to themselves let alone to their partner or friend.  And relationships, and individuals, never grow as a result.

Then you get people who detest a lack of intimacy; people who find it so frustrating that people won’t open up and give more of themselves.

Usually it is one person who resists or refuses to open up who is partnered with someone who is frustrated by the lack of intimacy.  The one who refuses to open up may or may not realise that their relationship is dying for a lack of intimacy.  If they’re aware, they may feel incapable of going there, they may feel unsafe, or they may doggedly resist for other reasons.

Meanwhile, for that lack of intimacy, of not opening up, of withdrawing and repelling love, there is a soul who just wants to love who cannot.

The Merton quote shows us that when we desire to be known we want others to explore beneath the banality of surface-level questions.  People who crave deeper intimacy are ready to invest more of themselves in being known.  They seek their vital other to join that party.

Many people suffer loneliness in this life.  And it’s not always those who are alone.  There is such a thing as being lonely in a crowded room.  Loneliness also exists in relationships that should exemplify intimacy and don’t.

For those who will hear and read the cues, for those who have resisted or refused up until now, now could be the time to open up, to begin the process of risking vulnerability.

The one best quality of a true friend

If I gave you one wish as the quality you could choose that would be in your best friend, what would it be?  For me it would be that they would approach conflict maturely, because it’s not long in this life before we end up in conflict with those who are closest to us.

It would be unfair to expect our friend or partner to be great at handling conflict, however, if we weren’t equally aligned and committed.

What if we could exist in a world where we could coexist with our friends, partners, associates, colleagues and family members in peace?  Is that a pipedream?  Unrealistic?

In a world that seems more divided than ever, it can seem unrealistic, and we can begin to accept that there will be relational brokenness.  It’s actually a healthy paradigm to hold in tension with the ideal of being committed to our relationships before the issues that would divide us.  A mature mindset needs to hold this tension, because there are people, no matter our commitment to them, who will break ties, who will insist on their own way, who will see things definitively.

If only we could be a friend, a partner, a boss, a co-worker, a parent, who would be so steadfastly committed to relationship that we would hold out hope that we might work through conflict.  To do this we would need to accept that there are times when we do disagree, and that disagreement can easily threaten the breach of our terms of acceptability.  Sure, there are times when we cannot accept certain behaviours, when we need to institute boundaries, where to not would be a failure of love.

Perhaps that’s what we might lament most of all as we ponder what little separates otherwise close friends, partners, families — that there wasn’t the commitment to relationship that we hoped there would have been.  Maybe we didn’t understand how important an issue was for the other person.  We may have paid a dear price; something we need to put down to raw and painful experience.

Maybe this is something that helps clarify the friendships and partnerships and relationships we cherish most — the safety that another gives us and the safety we give them; to give a third chance, provided there is adequate repentance.  And that’s the most beautiful quality of all in relationships between two parties — the quality that sees both capable of repenting before the other because their love for the other means the most.

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Taking stock of my drinking ‘career’ and what it means today

 

Apart from two escapades, one as a 15-year-old and one as a 16-year-old, I never touched alcohol until after I turned 18, despite being involved in the party scene for a considerable time.  But it was a sharp descent down the slippery slope once I started — leading to my parents once remarking that I had become a “weekend alcoholic.”  For someone who had resisted the urge to drink for the first year that I had my driver’s licence, I quickly become notorious for how much drink I could stow.  I don’t say this to brag or anything, more as an indication of how quickly alcohol can get its claws into you.

Some of my early escapades included sculling/chugging whole jugs (1,100ml) of beer and sometimes up to four of them.  There was one occasion where I sculled 750ml of rum!  An average ‘night out’ involved drinking up to that amount over a 5-6-hour period, and I could extend that by double if we doubled the period.  I could drink and keep on drinking.  Into the bargain I would smoke 40 or 50 cigarettes.  Whilst I would have considered myself an average partygoer, most of my contemporaries drank less, but those I ended up spending my time with mirrored my use of alcohol and other substances, namely cannabis.

Later in my drinking career, once I had settled down and had commenced family, my use of alcohol became more refined, but only slightly less dangerous.  I became a connoisseur of wine, which was just a cover so I could drink with a nice meal, then I started brewing my own beer.  As an afternoon shift worker, I would arrive home at 11.30pm and find it ‘easier to sleep’ after two 750ml bottles of home brew.

Ultimately, it got to the point where I could count how many drinks I could afford to have to feel drunk enough, yet not have a hangover the next day; 11 to 12 standard drinks were that measure.  If I had 15 standard drinks or more I was headed for a hangover.  I only ever had a handful of genuine blackout experiences, but I so frequently drank at dangerous levels.  While I could control the higher end of my consumption, something I didn’t seem to be able to control was the pattern of my drinking; besides a few years as a competitive bodybuilder, a time in my life when health (and bodyweight!) was a priority, and also a time when I couldn’t afford to drink, I was still characteristically a weekend alcoholic overall.  And apart from being on call every second week as an emergency responder, I was free to binge at other times.

I worked hard during the week to earn a decent drink on a Friday night.  Saturday night was the same.  And when I was really struggling it wasn’t unusual to ‘tie one on’ for the Sunday night too.  Quite a few Monday mornings, especially toward the end of my drinking career, I arrived at work rather seedy.  A great irony consisted in the fact that I had a role in managing an alcohol and other drug program as a safety manager, and breathalysing truck and train drivers (many of them teetotallers).  Yes, I did feel quite the hypocrite!

My drinking career ended abruptly on September 20, 2003.  That’s another story that I’ve written on several times.  One of the first things I noticed on stopping drinking was just how wonderful it was to have a clear head.  I still love the feeling of sobriety — to be in control of my faculties.  And yes, even a couple of drinks affects perception.  Once I stopped drinking, I was destined not to restart.  I really felt that God gave me a grace with which to abstain.

I’m always interested in the topic of the use and abuse of alcohol and other drugs.  These are slippery-slope devices.  Start, and you don’t know how hellish the finish will be.  And yet society romanticises the idea of drinking and gambling just to name two.  You only have to look at the proliferation of advertising for both of these, and you can see the problem is systemic through society.

In this COVID-19 time, I’ve been interested in the effect of lockdown and the impact on drinking patterns of at-risk drinkers.  According to The Lancet (August 4, 2020):

“... lockdown represents a risk factor for increasing alcohol consumption in people with alcohol use disorders and relapse for those who were previously abstinent.  Those who do relapse are at a high risk of harmful drinking and require a tailored approach for follow-up and intervention.  Support from alcohol liaison services could prevent relapse during lockdown.”

Many would suggest that such findings would be predictable, and the effect of lockdown should presume higher levels of alcohol consumption.  Recent lockdowns have been necessary, but there are far-reaching consequences in regard to safety in homes everywhere.

What I take from my drinking career is the slippery-slope nature of alcoholism.  There was a time when I really believed I would NEVER become alcoholic.  Yet, alcohol certainly soon put paid to such a naïve assumption.  Alcohol becomes a problem in too many lives, and very often it is functional lives that it affects most of all; people who hide it well beneath their otherwise ordered lives.

If you have a problem with alcohol, or you know someone who has a problem with it, my advice would be to heed the warnings before it’s too late.  In many ways it remains to be seen whether I dodged a bullet or not with my consumption.  It’s only when you have your own children, and they begin to have children, that you realise the importance of your health.  Whilst looking after our health is not a guarantee, it is a very good predictor for outcomes over the lifespan.

It was only through walking into the rooms of AA that I was able to put my drinking career behind me.  You quickly find that the only thing that stands between you and your addiction is honesty and the willingness to enter a journey of transformation and recovery.

Photo by Joyce Romero on Unsplash

The ignorant tones of abuse called neglect

It’s an abuse that may not feel like abuse nor feel like you’re doing abuse.  But more and more it is recognised as abuse.  And thankfully so, because while it may not feel like abuse, it leaves a damaging and lasting impact just the same as any other abuse.

Neglect is the kind of abuse that slowly sucks the life out of a relationship.  But it can also lead to disastrous outcomes for what it allows, especially in cases where a relationship needs to provide a protective element, as most relationships can and need to do, probably akin to the biblical principle in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12.

Neglect leaves relationships forlorn for years before it becomes obvious to the one who has been neglected.  There are probably more marriages damaged and destroyed by neglect than out-and-out emotional or physical abuse, and of course, neglect is often the undercurrent in more visible abuse.

One person has always put in all the effort, made all the compromises, made allowances, expanded the boundaries, made excuses, and covered a multitude of sins; not out of love, but out of fear for loss.  There is a refusal perhaps to see the writing on the wall.  The neglecting spouse is either oblivious or they do not care, and in the latter case, it could be assumed that there is a more of an overt abuse going on than there appears.

Neglect leaves children feeling unloved and it leaves wives feeling betrayed.  It’s birthed in anything from sloth to selfishness to entitlement to privilege.  It’s that warrant that consistently refuses to act on even the most basic opportunities to serve others.  Rather, neglect exists to be served.  And it’s most obvious in self-neglect — “he’s so lazy he won’t get out of his own way!”

Neglect sucks the hope out of a relationship when there’s the putting up with it year in, year out.  Any resistance to challenge neglect is not met with honest self-reflection that would prove a timely course-correction, but is met with the resistance of stubbornness, which may well be borne of fear and oftentimes pride.

There’s an ignorance in neglect that seems hard to reconcile.  We may ask why a person won’t go the easier way of trying or putting in just a little effort to reap a handsome reward.  This is why neglect is so nonsensical.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Until you realise that it speaks of a heart that isn’t in it.  For some reason, there’s a motivation problem, which again speaks more of ignorance than arrogance.  They don’t know what they don’t know.

There are ignorant tones of abuse in neglect.  What should be visible and obvious to the perpetrator isn’t always, or at least there’s ignorance in not seeing the error of their ways.

Saddest of all for children is the neglect that failed to love.  Those who have not been loved, who have not been met by a parent figure, may well often go on to not know how to love, for they’ve never been loved, or they face such a mortal wounding on their inner person they’ve got a lot of work ahead to reclaim their personhood.

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Ambiguous Loss and Complicated Grief

 

Whenever I think about ambiguous loss and complicated grief – which many call ambiguous grief (though, they are not strictly the same) – I think about the article in this publication on page 8. There is something in the credibility of experience that is impossible to match. I am only now entering my second known experience of ambiguous grief.

But let us explore the issues of ambiguous loss and complicated grief so we may understand them.

Ambiguous loss is loss that occurs without finality or understanding. This can involve the experience of grief because of ongoing loss. Ambiguous loss is a mental and emotional no man’s land. Complicated grief occurs when we are “stuck” and can’t get past the pain. The grief work we engaged in has not yet resolved our grief. Given that most grief involves harrowing intensity for up to twelve months – and it is usually resolved within a year – complicated grief can last for years, and in some cases a whole lifetime. But there is always hope for healing if a person is diligent and surrendered enough to detach from spiritual distractions to their grief.

Many people experience complicated grief because of compounding issues of loss over the years that either could not be dealt with or weren’t dealt with – for whatever reason. The outputs of complicated grief are often, though not always, anxiety and depression. Likewise, ambiguous loss is likely to cast us into a place of continual and fatiguing helplessness, which may produce debilitating and despairing depression.

Many of us have experienced ambiguous loss; an elderly parent with Alzheimer’s disease; a marriage that hasn’t worked (especially abusive or neglectful marriages) for years; living day to day from an unsustainable income; living on the edge when someone dear to us has had stage four cancer; waiting for death, in its imminence, to come; the sudden, yet gradual, loss of innocence when a child is violated and continues to be abused.

For many of us, also, there is this pressing matter of complicated grief, whereby our depression and anxiety (or stoic denial of either or both) are actually covers for the real matter of grief lived out within a complex web of dynamics. Grief is often the clearest invitation to adjust into maturity by taking responsibility for our lives. It always takes longer than we would hope.

We may never have learned how to cope with grief. But the beauty of investing in the right way to cope with loss is we have a model that helps and works for instances of subsequent loss. The only right way to cope is to do all the right things as much as possible. Coping and growth always involve pain.

***

Ambiguous grief shares elements of ambiguous loss and complicated grief.

Ambiguous grief involves a ‘new normal’ that hasn’t arrived yet. Losses are continually experienced, which brings ongoing pain. Growth in resilience is the opportunity as we learn to tolerate unresolved grief. There is no easy way to do hard work, but God’s grace makes resilience possible.

I wrote this article on Saturday July 5, 2014 — four days after our world had been blown apart.  I remember desperately trying to understand ambiguous loss and complicated grief at that time.  We were sandwiched between them.

The dangerous role of unacknowledged stress in conflict

Stress unquestionably impacts our responses to conflict situations.  It is a mountain to climb if we’re to respond well.  And those mountain-climbing efforts of ours are aided by the poise of patience, if only we can remind ourselves to pause, pray, prepare to respond.

What I’m saying is that stress adds to the potential for things to go wrong in our response, just as stress adds to the potential for things to go wrong for the person opposed to us in the situation of conflict.  Rarely ever do stressed persons respond well to conflict.  But we can if only we’re honestly aware.

Ken Sande defines conflict as, “A difference in opinion or purpose that frustrates someone’s goals or desires.”

Conflict is about the frustration we and others experience when we don’t get what we really want; the frustration of our goals when others block our way.  It is inner dissonance within us about what is going on around us.  And yet there are also other causes of inner dissonance.  Other factors in our lives that are being frustrated; factors that make us sad, anxious, indignant or fearful.

This is what this looks like — a normal life in this oft-confounded reality we call life: you’re already preloaded with the stress of having your parents in (or facing) aged care, children/grandchildren in school and the associated logistical and emotional complexities, grief from the loss you suffered last year (or sometime in the past), the choices or attitudes of a loved one or three bothering you, the dreaded uncertainty of the coronavirus locally and globally, the ever-present workplace burdens and general busyness balancing demands of work and having a life, notwithstanding the ups and downs of mental health concerns, and any number of other issues you realise you’re forced into accepting (but haven’t arrived there yet).

If only we take a few moments to honestly assess where our stress levels are at, we can often find sufficient reason for, or the cause of, the poor response we made to a conflict.

An honest assessment leads to something very good for both ourselves and the other person we’re in conflict with.  There is hope that relational repair can be made when one person reflects on their actions and decides the relationship is worth the effort and humility required to chat it through.

When we look at the stress we carried into the situation we responded badly in, we begin to empathise with ourselves — of course, we can see why our anger rose or why we crumbled in tears.  There is no justification for self-judgement or self-recrimination.  Maybe the other person responded poorly, or perhaps it was the both of us.  Everyone can be forgiven provided we/they can reflect on our/their behaviour and apologise, repent, seek forgiveness, and indeed, these are the steps that make forgiving people easy.  We can see a heart change toward us.  Or, they see our heart change toward them, that we have the humility to apologise and seek to restore the relationship.  That we see and believe that the relationship is always more important than any one issue.

It’s important that we see the inner drivers that direct our emotional ship.  Stress is both a rudder and the fuel load.  If we have no idea the role that stress plays in conflict, like a fully laden ship without steerage, we will wreak destruction as we collide with others.  But if we’re in touch with the stress that pushes our responses over the edge, it will cause us to take greater care and mete out appropriate repair, which will indicate how important our relationships are to us, which is always what the other person needs to see.

Relationships too often break down when people cannot or will not acknowledge the role of stress in their part of conflict.

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Be the kindness you can be, and what God will do, you will see

In a world in love with power, we may hardly reconcile how much power there is in rejecting power.  In a world where people are more tempted than ever to project their specialness, there is one quality the draws special attention to the more authentic specialness of a person.

That quality is the opposite of narcissism; that ‘entitlement to exploit others’.  The quality I speak of is kindness.  Kindness sets apart a specialness to any person devoted to it that kind people never crave, but always deserve.

As I cast my mind back to the kindest people who have impacted my life, one of the clearest examples was a lady I knew 15 years ago.  She just seemed to be thinking ahead always about how she was to bless everyone.  She always seemed five steps ahead of everyone, but poignantly her thinking was directed toward everyone else.  She gave of herself in every way conceivable.  She was generous with her time, her money, her physical presence, with the words she said, the smile she wore, her sense of laughter and joy, the party invitations she gave out to everyone, even to the courageous things she would say that were always rooted in love; the kindness of integrity.  She made people feel they were the centre of her world.  She was kind to everyone, no matter what they thought, looked like, did or didn’t do.  In many ways, she was like an angel, and yet I know she would be the first one who would’ve said she was just human; and a bit broken like the rest of us.

One thing I’ve come to appreciate about kindness is this: it’s a gift that keeps on giving, and just as much as the ripples of kindness move outward upon the lives kindness touches, those ripples ripple inward as well, and just as much are the kind blessed.

Kindness might as well be generosity redoubled when it seeks no praise.  Indeed, how could kindness be kind if it were to seek reward?  Kindness sees or foresees a need and fulfils that need at just the right time, without a thought, being the pure instinct of love, and is always backed by the right benevolent motive.

Most of all, kindness is the antithesis of bullying and narcissistic abuse.  It can do no violence, because it is filled with thoughts to bless.  Kindness does no violence, because it sees the supreme way for all, including itself, and is sold to the idea that nothing can compare with, nor overwhelm, nor conquer kindness.  And kindness, most of all, is defined by others.  We can know whether we’re kind or not by what others say about us.

Want to see what God’s up to?  Do your kindness.  Be the kindness you can be, and what God will do, you will see.  Kindness is colour blind.  Kindness leaks onto others.  It is contagious.

Grappling with the COVID-19 mental health realities

In January it was bushfires, and in February we began to hear about a new virus.  By March, it was well and truly on us, and by the end of that month the minds of everyone in the world were trained on COVID-19, barring schools of deniers, doom’s-dayers, conspiracy theorists, among other factions.  Knowing nothing in practice about the Spanish Flu from 1918-1920, we attempted to grapple with the so-called first, second and third waves, knowing that the first wave was all that mattered for that time being.  We quickly braced for lockdown, and depending on our area of the world, the next few months made the previous years of our lives look pretty boring in stark comparison.  I think we all feared the worst, given that lockdown presented a huge number of unknowns.

Fast forward a few months, and we know a little bit more about what we’re in for, and we’ve faced so much over those intervening months — the war over masks, Black Lives Matter only two — not to mention huge decisions over schooling, work, our elderly loved ones, etc.  The virus is highly contagious, and whilst it doesn’t kill everyone, there are still so many unknowns about it.  And it has crippled us economically.  All the uncertainty, job losses, fears for contracting the illness, physical distancing and masking issues (to wear one or not), and the idea that we are contained to one area of the world for some time yet, all bear down upon numerous other realities we cannot change and can only accept.

More and more of recent we are hearing in the news media that this virus is here to stay for the next year or two or three.  Many countries in the world are facing economic outlooks of recession, if not depression.  Just now there are grim reports out of Indonesia and the Philippines.  Areas like these who cannot contain the virus will slip into poverty that will see malnutrition and starvation killing many more than even the virus.  Countries only need what happened to Beirut with the ammonium nitrate explosion disaster to leave them completely exposed to devastation.  And there are so many developed nations that face far worse outcomes than this Westerner can conceive.

We may well imagine what a major weather or environmental disaster might do at this point — like a 2004/2011 tsunami.  The fact is, these concerns and so many more keep people awake at night, they do cause nausea, they do cause panic attacks, they do tip people into addiction, and they do cause a sense of despair in many who are just trying to step one yard at a time in this life.

Dealing with the COVID-19 mental health realities is a conundrum all its own.  The solace we can take from all this is we’re in this together.  Many are losing jobs at the same time.  Many are in lockdown at the same time.  Many are losing loved ones.  Many are seeing property prices collapse at the same time.  Yes, many are facing financial uncertainty at the same time.  We’re all riding this ‘wave’ together.  And we will get through together.

But this doesn’t stop us from feeling very alone in our own individual ways of coping with the present disaster.  Moreso now than ever, we’re facing the reality that this crisis will continue, when only a few months ago we may have doubted the predictions of experts.  As that reality grounds itself in our psyche, as it lands as an irrefutable fact on our experience, it will have a deeper and further impact on our outlook upon life.  The thought of carrying or wearing a mask even six months ago for most of us would have been the last thing on our minds.  Now we are thinking about our elderly parents and grandparents in a completely different light, and even young people have been seriously ill from or died of COVID-19.

How will we get through this next several months to a year or two?  How will we get through this period stronger and more resilient?  The fact is, we will.  In getting up each day and doing the best we can, we will get through this, just like those 100 years ago got through.  We will get through, and things will change, and we will need to be ready to continue to adapt to change.  The thing we need to remember is we will get through this.  Those who insist on it will get through.

The mental health realities will necessarily cause us all to grow more in empathy and compassion.  We all have the opportunities to become more pastoral.  We will all have opportunities to care for people amid times also when we may be cared for.  It takes humility to accept care, just as it takes humility to provide good care.  And it is care that we need to reach out for and provide as needs arise.

What is most unquestionable about the COVID-19 crisis is that it’s here for some time yet, and there will be a high human impact and cost, and that prayer is never more important.  The Lord Jesus, of course, commanded us to love our neighbour, and that is our imperative today and all days, and we must also leave room enough to ensure we look after ourselves so we can look after our neighbour.

For those who are depressed or dealing with severe anxiety, let us pray that those of us who are desperate would get the help that we need, whilst praying also that there might be an opportunity to serve and help when we are able to.

Loving Lord God,

We lift our world before You and ask that You heal our world in good time, that You alleviate hunger, protect our health workers, get aid to those who need it, compel governments to govern well, and give the all-sufficient power of Your grace to all those who need it.  For the Lord Jesus’ sake, we pray.

AMEN.

If any of this disturbs you, I encourage you to contact help in your country.  International Helplines Checkpoint: https://checkpointorg.com/global/

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Like two ships passing silently in the night

All relationships go through trial and challenge if the attachment lasts long enough.  Whether it is conflict, which is most common, or incongruent goals, or for myriads of other reasons, it can often be that one is trying desperately hard to communicate something very plainly and importantly to the other — seemingly never getting through.  It’s like two ships passing silently in the night, one sending out a desperate search beacon, and the other unable to receive that message.

How many husbands have not heard that desperate plea from a wife who is unhappy, discontent, unsatisfied?  Perhaps there is loneliness, where he is present but not present if you know what I mean; the lights are on, but no one is home.  Or, maybe he’s just plain absent.  It could be marital infidelity, or continued unfaithfulness, and such betrayals are brutal, and indeed very hard to come back from.  Or maybe it is a silent abuse; he may be completely oblivious, but his control is worsening, and the relationship is becoming miserable (or worse, unsafe).  I call it silent abuse, because perhaps nobody else is aware of it.  It could be it’s the way he talks to her.  And for some it’s the reverse; it’s the husband diligently trying to get the wife’s attention.

Whatever the matters are, there is a desperation in the communication for one of the partners, and the other partner just doesn’t seem to be aware of what’s going on, or worse, they refuse to listen, being completely ignorant to the consequences that are coming.  These refusals to listen, or the inability to understand, push the desperate partner to the brink of their tolerance and beyond it.  And the growing desperation creates desperate times which call ultimately for desperate measures.  Truth insists its voice be heard eventually.

Suddenly when there is a big fracture, the one who has been warned for a long time becomes desperate in response.  Their ‘journey’ is only just commencing.  Suddenly their attention has been piqued, but perhaps it’s too late.  On so many occasions, way too late.

Like two ships passing silently in the night, for many relationships Time is called.  For the one who never sowed into the relationship when they could, their grief is only beginning, whereas the one who gave endless opportunities has already grieved.  One can’t move on when for the other that’s all they can do — move on.

This could be a timely warning to someone reading, who is taking their marriage or relationship for granted, who is currently being warned, yet they’re not heeding it.  It could ring true for the person who is desperately trying to get through.  Theirs is a very common challenge, and much more common than they may care to realise.

How many relationships are like two ships passing silently in the night? — too many!

Every relationship coupling has its time and opportunity, and for those who don’t want to experience the grief of a relational tearing, it is wise to listen and respond now while the opportunity presents.

Perhaps as two ships are passing silently near each other in the night, one might be warning the other of an impending hazard.

To prevent both ships and relationships from running aground, there must be a way to navigate past and away from the hazards, whether they be shipping lanes, or the hazards known to human relationships.

Photo by Don Kawahigashi on Unsplash