Those we love are loaned to us

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

Funerals are the most salient of all living experiences.

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loss teaches humble survival in the adversities of life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Psalm 35’s biblical curse against the abuser who thrives

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

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

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

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

Imbibe these words from the psalm:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May ruin overtake them now suddenly...

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

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

THEN.

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

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

THEN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those who overpromise tend to underdeliver

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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