What’s the best wisdom you ever received from a mentor?

Two years ago I asked the question posed in the title, and these, below, were some of the responses.  I am not going to quote people because some people aren’t comfortable with that, and besides, these are nuggets of wisdom come from somewhere else.

“You don’t need to fight every battle
that you are presented with.”

Defying our instinctual responses, the higher mind function of the neocortex simply requires us to pause and think, because just about every offence is a ruse.  The calm response at least provides us with balance as to how to act if it’s necessary.  Often, however, this is a hard-won wisdom of making our mistakes and entering problematic situations too willingly and paying the price for it.

“Nobody MAKES you feel a certain way.”

There is a great deal of truth to this, but we also need to ensure we don’t gaslight people in the process, in cases where people are living in toxic situations with impossible people.

The truth in this quote is ultimately we do choose our emotional responses.

“Don’t believe you’re ever as good 
as the best person tells you... 
don’t believe you’re ever as bad 
as the worst person tells you... remain humble.”

This is such a liberating truth for those who are given to fanfare, where conceit might be a stumbling block.

“People cope according to their values.”

People’s responses emanate from their values.  We choose our coping through our personalities and beliefs.

~

“Trust God, more so than any other person.”

“Accept a blessing when it comes.”

“Don’t make big life decisions when you are struggling in the trenches.”

~

“Do it now.”

How many of us are thwarted because of our procrastination?  If only we made the decision, using the decisiveness of our minds, we would get more done and we would be further along, and we would have fewer damaged relationships.

“Think twice so you only do it once.”

A bit like, “measure twice, cut once,” this advice saves a lot of rework, and yet as human beings, we’re destined to do a lot of rework.  Why is this?  We’re not always the best judges or discerners of situations.

“You don’t know if you cannot cope, 
you haven’t been through it before 
to get a term of reference.”

This is so true to life, given that just about every circumstance we face is new in some way.

“Use your powers for good, not evil (i.e., the true meaning of meekness).”

The backend of this wisdom is intriguing.  The true meaning of meekness seems to be central to the bookends of Romans 12:9-21, “Love must be sincere.  Hate what is evil; cling to what is good... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  Can there be any better advice or vision for life than this?

“In a world where you can be anything you want, be kind.”

Another challenge to overcome evil with the good of kindness.

“Don’t push the river.”

Accept the flow of things that cannot be changed.  Rivers are irrepressible and powerful.  It takes patience and humility not to force the pace of life especially when things are going against us.

“Do the hardest thing first.”

This is a bit like, “Do it now.”  There’s power in this wisdom.  I have always, as a general rule, eaten the least tasty food on my plate, and saved the best until last.

“The people crying at your own funeral will be your family.”

The moral in this quote is don’t put your work ahead of your life to the detriment of your family relationships.

“We judge others by their actions, yet ourselves by our intentions.”

The role of bias is something we need to cater for.  We always need to understand that we cannot see other people’s intentions, and neither can they see ours.

“The days are long, but the years are short.”

This is particularly wise for parents, because the parenting journey seems to take forever to accomplish, and yet as you look back afterwards you can really wonder whether it happened at all.

~

“Anything worth doing is not going to be easy.”

“Your history doesn’t have to be your destiny.”

~

“Learn to say no and learn it now.”

The quicker we learn to say no when we need to, the more empowered we become in an instant.

“It’s not you.  You are not crazy.  
What happened really happened 
and you are not that bad.”

Particularly those who are victims of abuse, who have been gaslit, need to read these words and believe them, and better so, to hear them from a loving friend.

“Don’t think you will change him or her once you are married.  If you feel there is something that needs to be address now, address it now.”

So many of us have entered marriage with unconscious expectations that our partner would change given time and the opportunity.  It is better to enter marriage committed to speaking the truth in love, and best to have operated that way beforehand.  One of the death knells of marriage is the incapacity to speak the truth in love.

“The students are here to learn from you as a teacher, not to be your friend.”

Such wise advice when we live in an age where we think we need to be friends with everyone.  Some roles call us to be something other than a friend, especially as parents.

Forgiveness when your world is falling apart

This is the bringing together of two gargantuan issues: grief and forgiveness.  There’s no better time to learn about the power of forgiveness than when you’re living in a state of spiritual bankruptcy.  Spiritual bankruptcy is the opposite of moral bankruptcy because it’s in weakness that our spirituality thrives.

It’s in grief that we experience and therefore 
ultimately learn true poverty of spirit.

The worst thing that can happen to us when forgiveness would be the best thing is that we would have strength enough to resist being broken when it is grief that dissolves all strength (a.k.a. pride) that corrupts hopes for growth.

POVERTY THAT LEADS TO WEALTH

Poverty of spirit or spiritual bankruptcy sounds bad, but it is the best thing for any human being to endure and survive.  Every human being ought to be afforded the opportunity to learn and grow through the gift of lament.

Lament, or real spiritual poverty, is the only way to spiritual transformation.
Something precious must be lost in the material for us to gain in the spiritual.

Like enduring power without accountability corrupts the soul, enduring loss revitalises our hope because we look to God to fill us.

It is the paradox of all paradoxes, and only those who have been there truly have seen the power of God operationalised, just as it was for Noah, for Job, for Jeremiah, for David, for the prophets, for Jesus.

Those who were reduced to nothing found resources within and without that empowered them not to give up.  Simply experiencing this is the most comprehensive victory itself.

Loss is the activator of spiritual power and gain.  Loss sets us up to gain precisely as we lose; as we bear situations that should crush us, and in fact do, but allow us to survive.  Loss tests our motivation, and basically everyone is humbled by loss, because our motivation is never that pure to begin with.  

LOSS HELPS WITH FORGIVENESS

Just how is it possible that loss helps with forgiveness?

Apart from times when loss is intermingled with a great unvindicated injustice, which complicates loss no end, loss leaves us in a place where we have no self-sufficiency or entitlement left.  And yet no matter how much injustice we must bear, being made spiritually poor we necessarily must rely on resources external to us conjoined to the surrender we bear for having very little left to resist.

When we are kept in a living circumstance of loss, where we wrestle with our grief, for months, we have at last a great deal of hope that we would finally grow, despite ourselves, when growing was previously thwarted because we, ourselves, stood in our own way.

As we are humbled day after day in our grief, having little or no strength to resist, we bear the broader portion of surrender because we have strength and power to do little else.

Loss helps with forgiveness because we are willing to try anything to receive a moment’s respite, and forgiveness is the direct path because the mercy we give away we receive also.

Forgiveness is like a boomerang, the more we give it away, the more it comes back to us.  But forgiveness is always the stuff of the heart, in that the heart must sense the need to forgive and then to follow that hunch.

Forgiveness isn’t hard when we have nothing left, but when we resist, we prove that the skerrick of resolve we have left is our nemesis.  He only gets in our way, and it only proves problematic.  So it is better to have nothing so we can start again, much better that than being poor and staying poor.

Forgiveness, therefore, is much easier when our world is falling apart than when we have our faculties about us, when our human strength gets in the way.  A life-ending loss is not a bad thing.

But again, we must live this reality over months and possibly years to understand it.  God transforms us slowly, over time.  There are no quick fixes.

Pain invites us to surrender our strength, and in surrendering our strength we gain God’s power.  And when for the first time we operate in God’s power, we find our human strength was what always got us in trouble.

Grief smashes our pride against the rocks of contempt and converts our hearts and minds to the perspective of reverence for the good things that can be done.

In this way, grief can be seen as a gift.

One man’s grief journey worth observing

I’ve got a man in mind who I think grieves very well, and I feel it is an example to us all, not that everyone needs to grieve the same way, because that is being unrealistic and unfair.  But as we watch people, much as we watch mentors, we can observe what works for them that might work for us, and we find something inspiring about their example.

Before I talk about the example that this man sets, I want to talk about the redemptive qualities of being curious.  I was preaching this yesterday.  When we think about the juxtaposition of hard hearts versus soft hearts, recognising that we all have times where we are bitter and resentful, the only way we can have our heart softened in order to engage in the surrender required to trust is by becoming open and curious.

As we observe people who model the right example, mentors each one, we have the opportunity of watching from near or afar.  And from this man, who shall remain nameless, because examples are not about identities, I’ve noticed the following traits in his grieving:

There are times perhaps each day, or most days, where the raw truth of loss is borne out in the sadness of a welling up of the eyes and even a few tears.  It doesn’t sound like a blessing, but it truly is when the truth is too hard to deny.  What happens is the truth is so sad that it insists being grieved, and the body and mind do what they’re designed to do.

What usually happens as a direct result of being in the sadness is a little gentle humour that says, “Gee, look at me,” or there is some other connection with something funny.  This is consistent with the use of humour in this man’s family.  So there’s space for both raw truth and humour.

But even if the conclusion of the sad moment is more sadness and no humour, there’s the capacity to bear what anyone would prefer would not be the case.

At other times there’s the will to get on with life and be busy serving others in the family.  Where he can be useful, he remains useful.

One thing that’s really admirable about this man’s approach—what really works for him—is he’s entirely happy on his own.  He embraces those times and has activities he’s always nurtured that keep his mind busy, and yet he’s also a person who doesn’t overthink—which is an example for many of us who tend to fixate on problematic thought patterns.  And while he’s very happy on his own, he also loves every moment with family members individually one to one.

So there are elements of facing truth 
as well as elements of taking refuge in other things.

We’re wise not to make this man’s example of grieving our only method, or the only method to strive for, because that would help nobody.  In this life, we put too many people on pedestals, we favour the few, and we alienate the many as a result.  There are a thousand different ways to “successfully” grieve.

The example I speak of here reminds me of how Sarah my wife grieved our son, Nathanael.  She too had moments where the truth broke through intensely.  The way she grieved was she allowed the sadness to break her when it would, but she also got on with things.  Humour played less of a part I think overall, but there were times when dark humour was very much front and centre, and some of those times we still laugh about.

One of the most redemptive features of grieving losses is our losses are truths that cannot be denied. We would never think of saying, “I never loved her/him,” so why would we act that way?

When we allow ourselves our sorrow and we let it do what it will in bodies and minds, we enter what is known as “flow” which is a creative act of mental and emotional connectivity.

If we can enter a state of flow in our grief, 
surely, we can’t help but grow even amid grief.

The important thing to be recognised in grief, however, is it’s a one-day-at-a-time process of living a life that feels absolutely foreign to how it ever was.  Sadness, therefore, must be allowed.

As our lives have been transformed
by the love of our lost loved one,
our lives are also transformed
by the sadness of their loss to us.

Grief challenges our comfort zone, and we struggle most when we insist that our comfort be returned to us.  But if we let the sadness be, if we can accept the discomfort and neither resent it nor judge our plight, the sadness can’t harm us, and we find a place where we take refuge amid the storm.  The sadness therefore becomes an integral part of our sanctuary.

Speaking truth in love – nurturing the ‘gift’

There is no higher human trait of emotional intelligence than being able to speak the truth in love, that is being able to speak truth in loving (i.e., kind, gentle, and patient) ways.

It just so happens that this is a biblical imperative, that, in speaking the truth in love we comply with the “new command” of Jesus, to love one another.  “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

To love as Jesus loved, we must strive to love people graciously with the truth; because we want the very best for them, even as they wish the same thing for us.

But it is one of the hardest things to do in relationships.  We either err on the side of truth and therefore we speak more directly or harshly than we ought, and therefore miss the quality of our communication that would make it palatable for the other, or we communicate in ways that seem loving and yet are not truthful, which it can be argued is not loving.

We could say that speaking the truth in love is a gift of grace given to certain people, and I’ve certainly known some who have that gift.  Three individuals come immediately to mind, and two of these are married (hint: I’ve worked with both wife and husband in different working contexts, and they both spoke the truth in love to me on several separate occasions).  I, personally, err on the side of love, and can quite easily miss the truth, and I do sometimes vacillate into the truth space too much, especially in professional roles, and therefore can miss love.  I know there are however many situations where I have managed to love other people well by blending both truth and love.

Speaking the truth in love is that ability to provide feedback that is both incisive yet fair.

To speak truth and love is a wisdom of courage and discernment that is a blessing to the relationships we are in, but not everybody can hear or receive the truth even when it’s put in loving ways.  There are some who cannot handle the truth, and we all have those times, and there are situations like that for all of us.

We can call speaking the truth in love a gift, because we can fully appreciate that God gives us the courage and grace to communicate in these ways.  As we trust God, he gives us the capacity of courage to trust him even as we have developed sufficient trust to speak truth into spaces that will accept that level of accountability, which is love.

And yet we’re also called to love people well with the truth who won’t hear it.  Their not hearing it is their test and they’re found to lack humility.

In some ways speaking the truth and love would be considered not so much a gift but a character trait that can be nurtured.  Indeed, when Paul mentions the need for us to speak the truth in love in Ephesians chapter 4, he is encouraging all of us, whether we have the gift or not, and it is therefore a task and quest of discipleship to nurture the ability to speak the truth in love.

~

Where this needs to land is the imperative of every person devoted to Christ and therefore committed to “loving one another” to be committed to speaking truth in love above all else.  This IS how we love God.  Acknowledging that we don’t love people well when we don’t speak truth, when we shy away from it, there is cause for courage to trust the other person’s response.  To love others well, we must speak truth, yet kindly enough for them to know beyond any doubt that our heart is FOR them.

The more we engage in speaking truth in love, the more God blesses us with the capacity, which is a true gift for all our relationships, and it’s in all our roles.

... and that was my life in December 2002

I often like to reminisce over where I’ve been and where I’ve come from, and the past 20 years have certainly delivered a lot of change.

Twenty years ago I coordinated health, safety, security, and environment management for a major oil company across our vast state.  I was often away to the far-flung reaches up north, east, or down south.  Apart from my family, including daughters 10, 7, and 4 at the time, work was my focus, and escaping on the weekends.

Escaping.  Into my own land of beer, wine, spirits, cigarettes, cigars, and joints.  Such was my life at that point a mix of two opposite realities—work, where I was “on” all the time, and escapism, where I was unreachable—that it was bound to be upended.  But that wasn’t to occur for another 9 months or so.

Back then, there were times when I would surround myself with my substances of choice, after a long week, and simply go into another world where I was anaesthetised there.  There was a process involved.  And it always involved the steps of progressive consumption.  Alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, food—pretty much in that order.

Alcohol always surrounded these bouts of escapism.  I’d begin with a beer or four, then a nice wine, and then it was choice bourbon.  Because I breathalysed fuel tanker drivers in my day job, I’d occasionally assess how drunk I was as I went by testing the device.  No matter how much I drank, I’d rarely get anywhere near 0.08 blood alcohol content.  I tolerated alcohol far too well.

It was my weekly routine.  If I hadn’t started by the Thursday night, I was definitely “into it” by the Friday night, and I rarely missed a night between Fridays and Sundays—often it was Monday morning driving to work in the company four-wheel drive that had me feel guilty that I was administering an alcohol and other drug program and I was the one who had a problem with alcohol and other substances.

I did feel a hypocrite.  It was a runaway train I was on, and although I would never have chosen for that life to end, it was very close to ending 20 years ago, and deep down inside I wanted power over it to end the control my habits had over me.  Just another nine months and my life would be turned upside down.  Not the way I wanted nor expected.

So next year holds the 20-year anniversary for a number of significant things for me.  The year I gave up drinking.  The year I entered a program of recovery.  The year I first really surrendered to God having been “saved” nearly 13 years earlier.  The year I lost just about everything in terms of what meant most to me.  The year I became a single father.  The year I suddenly came face-to-face with who I wanted to be and finally had the power to live that life.  The year I began a quest to enter ministry.

The life that I had 20-years ago now is the life that I’m thankful that I lived.  I have no real regrets, even if that life represented me feeling trapped in my habits.  If that life hadn’t have changed, I wouldn’t have the life I have now, yet changes to my life then meant pain for so many in my family, myself with perhaps one exception foremost.  So very much pain!  But we survived and our love is deeper because of it.

The older I get the more I enjoy reminiscing on these eras and what life was like.

Life was so very different all those 20 years ago.  Over these next two to three years there will be several 20-year anniversaries to enjoy.  I’m thankful for God’s faithfulness throughout.  I’m thankful that I’m more the authentic man today than I was 20 years ago, but even back then I wanted to be more who I am today.

5 Reasons Wives Feel Vulnerable in Marriage

Here are what I feel are 5 reasons why wives feel vulnerable in their marriages.

1. WIVES DO NOT APPRECIATE DOMINEERING OVERTURES OF HUSBANDS

Who, really, would want to be married to a dictator? Yet, while many wives may at times find this an attribute in their husbands, their husbands may not see it.

When we consider a notional wife who must deal with the domineering husband we can expect one of two common responses. Either she will submit to such marital aggression or she will resist. The latter creates conflict.

Going back to the original metaphor—Christ and the church—we could never picture our Lord lording it over us. His Lordship is consummate of love and of serving the church, as the husband is to love and serve the wife.

The Bible never suggests women submit to aggressive, domineering, loveless husbands. Domination is the realm of abuse, and correcting wrong interpretations that “God hates divorce” (Malachi 2:16), i.e., the Bible does not say this, there is ample biblical reason for wives to leave their husbands, if there’s no recourse to change.

2. SOME WIVES FEEL NEGLECTED IN THEIR MARRIAGES

The difference between abuse and neglect is subtle; neither affords love. Where abuse is tangible and problematic in the short term—a bullet through the heart—neglect is like cancer. It tears away gradually and neglected partners are stripped of love in less obvious ways.

It is true that wives have need for affection, conversation, caring, and the nurture of their families. If these vital needs go begging—and there is little care for them in the husband’s viewpoint—the wife’s marital identity will suffer as a result.

One further area where neglect might be noticeable is in the area of finances. The husband is financially responsible for his family. Given that responsibility—to ensure the financial security of his family, as far as it depends on him—the husband needs to be a diligent steward.  And NOT controlling, financially!

3. SOME WIVES STRUGGLE TO TRUST THEIR HUSBANDS

It may not only be an untrustworthy husband attributable, here. Many women, and also men, find it difficult to trust a marriage partner or other important family because of unhealed hurts—the results of familial betrayal, for instance.

But, discounting the above situation there are some husbands who have found themselves untrustworthy—they have not been respectable in their duty as marriage partners. Whilst it’s incredibly important men feel respected in marriage, it’s equally important that women find their husbands respectable.

If trust has been broken, and little is done to restore the emotional and moral imbalance, wives may feel backed up against the wall.

If, however, one marriage partner’s mistrust of the other partner is more to do with their own insecurities, these issues need to be dealt with head on. Trust is the most important issue in marriage. If a partner deserves to be trusted, they should be trusted.

Honesty and openness, finally, are key qualities wives need in their husbands and, though these revolve back to trust, there is a deeper need that may go unsatisfied...

4. MANY WOMEN STRUGGLE WITH A LACK OF INTIMACY IN THEIR MARRIAGES

Men are stereotypically manly and at times emotionally disengaged. This can be disconcerting for women, who are naturally more adept at opening up.

But it’s probably not the macho default that proves the biggest barrier. It’s more likely to be the husband who is proudly or stubbornly distant—one who doesn’t want to see the importance of such intimacy. Again, this could be the many reasons; his family of origin was possibly disjointed or broken or distant in itself.

Notwithstanding how it occurs, a lack of intimacy provides wives marital loneliness.

It’s not that a husband must fulfil all his wife’s companionship needs, but if there’s a lack of intimacy he fails to connect with her heart.  And it’s his job to do that as much as he is able.

5. WIVES STRUGGLE WITH THEIR HUSBAND’S LACK OF VISION FOR THE FAMILY

One important way wives feel loved is through the devotion of a husband and father to his family.

Furthermore, the husband’s identity as a family man can either actualise or limit the family structure. His vision for the family needs to be grounded in the day as well as focused on the near and distant future.

The trouble is, today, many men are necessarily consumed by their careers, their other interests (for instance, sports), or by a myriad form of escapism. Everyone needs time to chase their dreams, but a family man needs to be devoted to the home. This is a balance that can only be struck by individual husbands and wives through negotiation. Who can define family vision satisfactorily but the couple in question?

Still, some wives will find their husband’s lack of vision (and interest) for the family frustrating, and potentially alienating.

What have I missed?  What would you add?

Why do we love?

It’s a question that has long vexed so very many people.

Why do we love?

We cannot help it, or better put, we cannot help but crave it, because we need it.

And when we don’t receive it, the absence of it rips our guts out, it kicks us where it hurts, it harms us more than we can ever describe.

The heights of love, the depths of it, its breadth and width, is unfathomable, in terms of what it gives when we have it, as much as what it takes away when we don’t have it.

Nothing else in life matters other than love, it is the thing that makes and breaks our lives.  And the greatest paradox of all is love and grief are just different sides of the same coin.

There is pain because of loss, and we all experience loss because of love, because we have either been deprived of love, or in loss deprivation occurs.

When all that matters is weighed up, and all that is counted is either significant or it isn’t, what remains as significant is love, and everything that isn’t significant has no part in love.

The best way of grounding love is family, is kin, is clan, is mob.  If ever we desire to touch someone we talk about family, and family always reduces us to the humanity we all bear.

Think about the concept of reconciliation, of a father to a son, a daughter to a mother, brother to brother and sister to sister.  The emotions involved in such a process and event are incalculable, completely beyond both measurement and description.  But it’s the same concept when brokenness pervades.

We love because we cannot help loving, needing love, surviving by love.

The hardest way for a person to suffer in this life is to go without love.  That dearth of positive emotion is like a dagger to the heart.  No human being can survive let alone prosper without love, and yet there are so many who endure that living death without love.

And still there is something in the human spirit that refuses to give up on love, for those who do give up it is such a brutal trauma that the harmed become harmful.

If we do not love, meaning that we turn our back on it, we only harm ourselves, in the inevitable harming of others.  Nobody can refuse love and prosper, and indeed the reverse occurs.

All children need love, and because we are all children, it is apparent that we need it copiously.  Try depriving one human being of the love that they need.  Such a process is a crime, and not simply against that human being, but against all human beings that come in contact with that human being.

Inevitably every human being is harmed because no human being has been perfectly loved.  And the only recourse for every human being is to find a way of forgiving the harm that has been caused, because if there is no forgiveness there is no way the human being can love or be loved.

Forgiveness is like a gate for love, and unless the gate is open, love is inhibited.  Forgiveness opens the gate of love, and in the receiving and giving there is a prospering, not simply for the person forgiving, but for everyone they’re in contact with.

Love, therefore, is freedom, and yet there are so many people who are not free, because they do not love or cannot love or do not have access to love.  It is not simply about the desire to want to be loved, and if it was simply about the desire more would walk directly in that way.

The desire to want to be loved must be matched by the receipt of love.  In other words, a person must experience what it is like to be loved to understand that the desire to want to be loved is right and such an appropriate and irrepressible desire.

Love is not an offer that anyone can refuse.  No one turns their back on love and survives to tell the story.  To refuse love is to commit a crime against oneself.

It’s like trying to understand how people can abuse others, how people can wantonly commit harms against others that seem unconscionable from the viewpoint of love and simple existence.  Nobody can embody love and produce harm.  Love and harm do not coexist.

Why do we love?  We love because we are wired that way.  We love because God first loved us.  That’s the true truth.  It cannot be any other way, and the simplest evidence of such an audacious fact is that none of us can escape the need of love.

Why do we love?  We love because we cannot survive without it.  Everything of life that works well is because of love, and everything that doesn’t is because of a lack of love.