From Child Sacrifice to Beloved Child

You’ve done your spade work.

You’ve pinpointed the idols your parents worshipped, and owned how you were an unwilling child sacrifice to them.

You’ve been surfacing your rage at the arbitrariness of it all, the terrible cost you’ve paid from actions taken by adults when you were small and powerless.

Now what?

How do we find our way to serenity and joy instead staying stuck in turmoil and rage?

How do we break the parental idolatry-child sacrifice cycle of generations?

How do we avoid both replicating our parents idols? Or reacting and riding the pendulum to the other, opposite idolatry that results in child sacrifices as well?

For me, at least, I need a love greater than the pain to invade from the outside and set me free.

Speaking for Myself

As a voiceless, ignored child who is finding my true voice, I’m just going to say it.

I need an infinite, ultimately good parent who sacrifices Himself at His expense for me.

I need One who ever hears my cries, and is utterly good to me even when I’m at my worst and out of control and then displease or hurt Him.

In other words, I need the real thing and the right thing in huge doses to displace the toxic thing and the raging thing of being an unwilling child sacrifice.

I need to be plunged into the ocean of God’s immeasurable, utterly uniquely good love when rivers of rage from human evils are flowing hard.

Unbreaking the Utterly Broken

Something horrible done against my will to me needs to be broken off of me in my innermost being.

Something wounded and producing its own “superfund toxic dumpsite” of fresh wrongs inside of me needs healing and undeserved care.

It’s owning that I am both victim and victimizer, wounded and wounding, child sacrifice and one who blindly sacrificed my own kids as well.

It’s owning that, like so many of you, I had ridden the pendulum to some opposite extremes from my parents.

And, as a father of 20-something young adults, I can see how, beyond their own choices, some of my own blind spots of idolatry disguised as “the right way” have hurt them.

Encounters with Grace

I was processing all of this at a recent prayer retreat where we leaders were directed to stop preaching about but simply receive the love of God.

It was kind of hokey.

I’d heard it all before.

Yet, strangely, beautifully, this time I began to have a fresh experience of the immensity and immeasurability of God’s love for children.

That He especially loves children sacrificed against their will and over their objections to something terrible that selfish adults wanted more.

Something shifted and softened because something good filled my waste places.

I began to see that the answer wasn’t more analysis, or better emoting, or wiser coping strategies.

It was simply to plunge my sorrows into His infinitely more immeasurable and very personal love for adult children like me.

To go to Him with my bag of pain and open again the door of my heart and allow His ever-knocking love to come on in and reside again–holy and triumphant and happy!

Elegant Simplicity

There is a world of difference between a crass and simplistic approach and this elegant, indescribable simplicity of letting ourselves be loved by Him.

Images like my wife holding close a fussy, tantrum-throwing, resisting toddler until the child relaxed and allowed her mother’s love to envelop her and change her misery into peace.

If we will allow Him, God’s love will emotionally re-parent us and work tirelessly to redeem us from the damage and pain of our being an unwilling child sacrifice.

He will, if we allow Him to love us like that, begin to use our sorrow as a treasury of kindness, wisdom, compassion, and goodness to our fellow pilgrims.

Because it takes one to know one.

Because the best help is from someone slightly further down the same road we must trod.

What we need is someone who, in kindness and recognition, reaches back to grab our hand and show us the next few steps forward through the mist.

There is a solution!

A Movement Towards Freedom

I’m not going to comment on the political theater in Washington, D.C.

Instead, I’m going to take a deep dive into the world of injustices done to me and my own responses to them.

Because I’ve found a new level of spiritual freedom and fresh joy in the face of wrongs that will never be righted in this life.

Rocky Recovery From Injustices

Six years ago my world was rocked with a series of injustices by a group of perpetrators.

Slanders, gossip, plots, secret campaigns, financial retaliation, etc. all happened.

And the results:  a lost job, a lost career, a lost income and earning capacity, and a heartbreaking level of emotional/spiritual damage to everyone in my family, including my own soul.

Given the nature of what happened, there was going to be no vindication, no consequences, and no resolution on earth–the losses were irreversible and there was no recourse left to me.

Along the way, there have been times of progress and insight, and times of stuckness and darkness of soul.

Helpful disciplines of forgiving the wrongdoers and a new job and new career have been received and found good.

Something Still Amiss

Yet there’s still been this sense that all is not well and of something unresolved deep within me.

I found an undercurrent of buried anger, an edge within that didn’t used to be there, a lack of interest in pursuing God, or in going deeper in church, or in living the open, fruitful life He called me to enjoy.

Something was still not right but the obvious, conscious bases were covered.

It was during a key prayer meeting, then the sessions at a men’s retreat, and then a very applicable Sunday message, that a new thought came.

It’s this:   there’s a buried part of me that still feels very strongly like a victim of injustice who will never get justice.

Facing My Unwillingness

Emotionally, there’s been this undercurrent of unwillingness and an undertow secret protest–this should never have happened and I shouldn’t still be paying for the damage of their wrongs!

Life spun totally out of control, and so my control monster has been sulking and manifesting itself in little, ugly ways.

And this unstated protest expressed itself in sudden boilings up of anger, in feeling threatened when there was no threat, in isolating my heart from God and others, and in moods of depression and in bouts of insomnia.

Admitting that I was still silently playing the part of an unwilling victim was the first step.

I was outed as a silent protester who felt entitled to better treatment and who saw myself as getting a raw deal and stuck with it.

Turning Losses Into Gifts

It was after this admission that a verse in John 10 came to mind, where Jesus says, “Nobody takes it (my life) from me.  I lay it down of my own initiative.”

This insight proved to be a fresh path forward.

Combined with the words of Jesus in Luke 14 where He basically says, “Unless you give up everything in advance to Me right up front–your life, all possessions, and all relationships–it will be impossible for you to be My disciple.”

When one has already given away everything and lost it all to God up front, then no human can take it away and there’s no way to lose it anymore.

This voluntary, preemptive surrender of all, this glad and freely chosen laying down before the cross happened, freed Jesus to conduct Himself unbound by fear, anger, and depression in the face of threats and harms.

And even in the midst of horrific losses and of grievous bodily harm and death–He was serene.

Turning Over the Harms

So, in imitation of Him,  I made a list of every loss from injustice–especially the losses I least wanted and most regretted, the ones most directly caused by the wrongs of others.

And I turned this list of fifteen items into a voluntary offering list–giving freely to God whatever others might have stolen or taken from me wrongly.

And now every morning I rehearse this exercise–surrendering ownership of all resented injustices, offering them as tributes to the One who loves me most.

It’s now about Him, about my love for Him and freely giving Him everything.

It was no longer about them, or about the wrongness of whatever they did.

It was no longer about paying any ongoing costs I don’t want to pay from their evildoing.

Nobody took away these good things from me, for now I’ve gone back and given them up freely.

A Fresh Serenity and Joy

The result has been a surprising settling of spirit, and a fresh gentleness and peace within.

My insomnia suddenly went away, and so did the defensive aggressiveness when out driving cars and riding bikes.

I find I no longer need to scan the horizon against incoming threats and armor up all the time.

And I’m less “hungry” for wrong kinds of foods–apparently buried anger was been a driver behind food cravings.

I’m spontaneously smiling more often and there’s a song on my heart again!

Two Paths

We could spend all of our time and energy on real or perceived offenses and injustices–not only our own, but those done against our side, our group, or our causes.

We could shake our fist at the heavens for robbing us of the good we didn’t want to lose, and for foisting upon us bad conditions we didn’t want to receive.

And we would ultimately end up bitter old people who feel cheated despite all the good they’d enjoyed in life.

Or we can turn our injustices and losses at the hands of sinners into offerings of love put into the hands of the Savior.

We can make them into free gifts of devotion to the ultimate Victim of injustice who died in our place freely even though He did nothing wrong.

There is a solution!

Discontentment

Few societies and few nations have ever enjoyed the levels of affluence or good health or creature comforts or amenities that we Americans routinely enjoy.

Yet by all measures we are riven with strife, angry about everything, and four times as discontented as our great-grandparents.

How can we have so much materially (compared to the Third World) and yet be so horribly unhappy?

What’s wrong with us all?

The Bad Kind of Discontent

For one thing, there’s two kinds of discontentment.

The bad kind of discontentment comes from the insatiable “wanter” inside of us.

We carry around inside of us a chronic complainer, a compulsively comparing black hole of desire that disdains what we have and lusts for what we don’t have.

How much money would be enough?  A: just a little bit more.

No matter how much we make, we wished we earned 10% more and imagine our problems would vanish and our lives would ease if we attained it.

And because it doesn’t, we are entitled to complain and judge our current lives harshly and demand a problem-free existence.

And this festering, cancerous discontent makes both our selves and everyone around us miserable.

Simply stated, our expectations of life are whacked out and totally unrealistic.

Grandiosity and Bloated Pride

We also have a bloated ago that pretends to be on the throne of the universe.

We unconsciously adopt a viewpoint where we sit above it all, in judgment of everyone else, and hurl thunderbolts at any who disagree, oppose, or fail to carry out our divine will.

We see ourselves as high, big, great, and all-important.

The world revolves around us and all other lower beings should bend to our will and exist to serve us and our chosen causes and beliefs.

But when our edicts and pronouncements fail to change a single person, or sway the nation, or bring down heaven on earth, we again are entitled to complain, rage against, and take it out on others.

The Monster Within

In other words, we have a monster inside of us the Bible calls the sin nature.

It is both willful and wounded, stubborn and hurting, vicious and afraid of everything and everyone.

The wrong kind of discontent is its default setting, and we are enslaved to our fallen self and there’s no worse slavery than a person who is enslaved to their independence.

More of self will never be the solution to the problem of self.

More me isn’t the answer to the problem of me.

And it’s inescapable–we take our monster inside of us wherever we go.

Trapped in a vicious, downward circle, we need an intervention from on high to restore us to sanity and make us a new person and fill us with a new kind of life.

The Right Kind of Discontent

Happily, there is another kind of discontentment that one learns to come to terms with as the beloved of God.

It’s the truth that this life cannot every satisfy or complete us– and doesn’t need to do that.

It’s where we stop expecting earth to be like heaven, and instead let the real heaven shape us in the meantime and live to be a blessing to others.

I end with a prayer found inside the pocket of a dead soldier on a Civil War battlefield.

It summarizes perfectly how powerfully good the right kind of discontentment can be, and how powerfully it can better us and ready us for eternity.

The Unknown Soldier’s Prayer

I asked for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for
but everything that I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered,
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

Roots of Despair

With such a cheery title, I’m sure there’s little temptation to read this.

But I think anyone honest will have to admit that they struggle with despair at times in their life.

The Mandate to Be Cheerful

As Americans, we supposed to be publicly pleasant, put on a happy face, and post our perpetual awesomeness on Facebook.

It reminds me of the children’s song, “Sunshine Mountain” that speaks of climbing upward on an ever brightening path–happy all the way.

The pressure to be positive (or at least fake it) and project a persona of optimism is always there.

Nobody wants to be a “debbie downer” or a “johnny raincloud”.

Which means we carry an unspoken mandate to bury what’s unpleasant, have strong incentives to not delve deeply into our own souls, and end up in profound isolation in our darkest moments.

Moments where disclosing honesty and empathetic listening might actually lift our despair.

False optimism, and the pressure to be always upbeat, makes despair worse.

Let’s dispense with it!

Saved by a Siamese Cat

So, in the name of honesty and in a spirit of empathy, I’ll tell my story.

I have two memories of childhood that stand out from the rest because they tell a tale of early and deepest despair.

When I was seven or eight, I remember being in my room and thinking suicidal thoughts and trying to choke myself with my bare hands because I had despairingly concluded, “Nobody loves me”.

With a workaholic dad and a non-nurturing Asperger’s mother, there was a feeling of profound abandonment, searing pain, and an utter despair that it would ever change.

And these thoughts and feelings always peaked in wintertime.

Interestingly, my normally aloof and nasty Siamese cat heard my weeping and walked into my room and rubbed against me repeatedly right after this–which broke through the despair.

At least I had a cat that loved me, and it was enough to end the incident.

Rose Hip Poison

The second memory was several years later, when I was ten or eleven.

I had formulated a suicide plan where I’d run away from home, cut up these large seed things growing on the rose bushes, add them to water, and drink my “poison drink” and end it all.

And I actually followed through with my plan.

After drinking this rose hips mixture and waiting under the large pepper tree down the street, nothing happened and I realize my suicide attempt had failed and that I would live.

But, again, it disrupted the despair and I went back home and never attempted suicide again (though seasons of prolonged emotional darkness and of seasonal despair in teen years were regular occurrences).

And when I got born again and the joy of Christ filled me, I enjoyed over three decades of largely unbroken hope until a cluster of trials in my late 40’s conspired to surface these long-buried things.

Current Pain Surfaces Ancient Pain

Strangely, I had completely forgotten about these two incidents in childhood during my adult years and only recently recalled them.

Recalled them because, upon my mother’s passing and the death of all my secret hopes of maternal nurturing, there was a season of buried despair coming to light while grieving her.

And it was then I understood this despair had roots that went a very long way back and had reached alarming levels during childhood.

As God is inclined to do, He used a current painful situation to uncover a long buried root of similar pain so He could shine kindly light on it and heal it.

I realized also there were other despairing situations over the last five years and places where I had given up on their ever changing for the better.

Despair was like a prowling predator, waiting for just the right combination of circumstances to pounce.

Prowling Mercy

But Christ was also biding His time, letting things worsen and ripen, and ready to pounce on the pouncing despair and kill it with His grace-outpouring love.

Thanks to His work of exposure, I had a heaven-sent opportunity to consciously choose hope over despair and to recognize that Christ had already carried the impossible weight of all my despair on the Cross.

And once my enemy had a name and was exposed for what it was and why it was, I’m happy to report that despair has lost a great deal of its former and hidden power over me.

He made me temporarily worse so He could make me permanently better.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one carrying a load of disguised, buried despair deep within, or the only one wrestling with feelings of overwhelming despair when repeatedly assaulted by life.

Yet Christ was even there in my worst moments of childhood despair–sending His love through a strangely affectionate cat and using my ignorance of plants to cause me to create an herbal infusion instead of poison.

And He is there for you as well–and always has been and always will be, too.

Crisis of Despair

Despair is such an ugly word.

We naturally recoil from it.

The Horror of Despair

Despair describes a state of hopelessness, of giving up on things ever getting better, of finality and irreversible loss.

It is a place we never want to go to, and a place we want to leave as soon as possible.

Suicides and self-harm happen in the place of despair.

Loss of faith happens in the place of despair.

Hostility is born in the land of despair.

So are desperate, heinous acts by people who feel they have nothing left to lose and no way out.

Even to the Strongest Believers

Yet despair happens even to the best of people, to those with the strongest faith.

Interestingly, the Psalmist asked, “Why are you in despair, O my soul?  Why are you cast down within me?”

Job, as well, had this to say to his accusatory, blaming friends, “For the despairing man there should be kindness from his friends.”

John Bunyan’s classic, Pilgrim’s Progress, has the main protagonist, Christian, end up a prisoner in the castle of the Giant Despair later in his faith journey.

In our lengthening years, and among the most mature saints, there will be a season of despair that mush be faced and overcome–which sounds so counter-intuitive.

Later in Life Despair

I agree with John Bunyan.

Later in life our youthful dreams and youthful hopes are much less likely to happen and probably won’t ever happen in this life.

Sad things we thought would resolve or change for the better are set in stone.

Ugly traits, bad habits, and deficits about us that we felt we’d eventually overcome have become chronic conditions and areas of lifelong poverty of soul.

We aren’t going to end our days as that perfect, all-together, all-successful person that the pop culture fairy tales tell us we will be.

It dawns on us that we’ll never be President of the United States, or a world famous celebrity, or a tycoon who owns his or her own island.

Some relationships that once were precious are irreparably broken and once close people are permanently distant and estranged.

Despair Intensified

Then our parents and our friends begin to die off.

Our careers stall as younger candidates for jobs are the ones who get them.

Our nest empties and our homes echo with too much silence.

Our bodies begin to ache and hurt and protest and won’t cooperate–and they get fatter and wrinkled, too.

The culture and society we once knew, loved, and felt at home in has changed and left us a stranger in a strange land.

Which is why, among the older believers, the Giant Despair is lurking and seeking to ambush us without warning.

My Own Confrontation with Despair

With my mom’s passing, my dream of maternal nurturing has died a final death.

This long unspoken dream, centered around a deepest unmet need from my childhood, is over with no possibility of realization.

So I found myself carrying an impossible weight and separated from God by an infinite emotional distance in recent weeks.

But I didn’t understand why all this was happening.

It took a few weeks before I had a name for this burden:  despair.

It was a stage of grief where one really, really knows our loved one is never coming back and accepts our loss will never be unlost.

So I was carrying the weight of fresh despair and it was crushing me.

The Nighttime Exchange

Late one night I finally found a name for my nameless enemy, and it struck me that I was bearing a weight I was never meant to carry.

Christ bore all the despair of sin on the Cross for me–but I was holding onto my share of it as if it was a possession I was jealous of surrendering.

And I knew, I knew surrendering that full weight of my despair and offloading the unholy freight was my one way out and up.

I chose to entrust my despair to Christ, and to embrace the settled reality that He already carried it for me and relieved me of this impossible burden.

Oddly enough, the lightening of spirit was palpable and immediate.

And this insight helped me see that there were many other areas of impossibility and “never will change” situations from the previous 8 painful years where I had secretly despaired and self-bore it all.

So I surrendered these things too:  spiritual and emotional damage from a toxic church, spiritual harm to my adult children I cannot reverse, a career path and good income lost, losses of relationships that are permanent.

This surrender was deeply freeing, and continues to be so as I watch over my heart for any despair slinking back into it.

Hope Awaits for You

Will you join me in signing over the ownership of all your despair areas to Christ?

Will you join me in offloading the weight and the freight of your despair onto Him?

And will you join me in receiving from Him in exchange an abounding, renewed hope that’s founded on His grace-giving, redemptive love for us?

Will you let Him love you in your places of deepest, most painful, entrenched despair?

God’s plan is to kill off all of our youthful, hidden, and false hopes of self-success, self-fixing, self-sufficiency, and self-importance… and then provoke a crisis of despair in us.

Then He says, “Come to Me!  Let go of those ego dreams and fantasies!  Bring all your despair here!”

And He says, “Hand it over Me and permit Me to lavish you with enduring, real hope through the grace of My Son.  He’s your true hope now!  He’s the One who turned despair into a resurrection hope that never fails or falters in the end!”

The Weight of the Desert

I find myself carrying weights around.

Not the ones you’d find in a gym.

Emotional weights.

The Pattern of Heaviness and Freedom

And as I journey through life with Christ, I find a pattern at work:

Something traumatic happens.

There’s a “bigger than me” something oppressing me after the events are over.

I enter a desert season where a slow, grinding kind of crushing happens to my soul–where the Bible becomes the letter that kills and I feel exiled from a life with God.

A crisis is reached where that weighty something gets a name and becomes known.

Then I consciously and very specifically pray about it, transfer ownership of that weight to Christ, and see Him carrying it for me.

Intimacy and connection with God are restored through Christ’s sin-bearing, burden bearing work applied to my innermost self.

Then He helps me enter into a new level of freedom and insight, allowing me to escort others through their deserts and find oases in their journey.

Nameless Oppressions

Some of the crushing burdens of the past are sin’s horror, sin’s terror, sin’s alienation, and sin’s shame.

In each case, there was a season of struggling against an unnamed foe.

A season of carrying an impossible but undefined weight that crowded out God and others.

A season of being made temporarily worse so I could be made permanently better.

Interestingly, the New Testament describes being “conformed to His image” and “the fellowship of His sufferings”.

Conformed to His Cross

It is where our pain becomes the Pain–His Pain.

Where our sufferings mirror those of Christ in some small way.

Where some aspect of fallenness, some side-effect of sin is in play and we need to be saved all over again.

And when that tormenting burden finally gets a name, we recognize we now have something in common with Christ’s sin-bearing experience on the Cross.

A contact point through which we can transfer the burden to Him and see Him bearing it entirely and forever for us.

A great exchange happens, and a supreme encounter with His redeeming love happens as well.

Sin’s Desolation

This time around it was the desolation and devastation of sin.

The barren, bleak place one enters in seasons of deepest loss.

Our soul becomes a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world.

We are left devastated amidst a landscape of barren sterility.

No sustenance or greenery is in sight, and our would withers.

Like the man with the Legion, we howl amidst the tombs tormented and alone.

Like the children of Israel, I was on a seemingly unending wilderness journey with no end in sight.

And the difficult part is we really don’t realize what’s going on in this desert of grief we’re in.

The Resolution

Last night it came to me.

I have been carrying the devastating desolation of sin without realizing it.

It was a burden too great for me, far too large for my puny shoulders to ever carry.

But well within His infinite capacity and well borne on the Cross already by Christ.

Desolation and devastation were no longer my burdens to carry, but His.

And the obscene weight of it came off.

In the devastating and desolating experience of His Cross, He bore it all for me there.

One more inner weight has come off.

One more silent torment has been lifted.

One more Jordan River has been crossed.

One more movement from self-bearing and self-sufficiency towards letting Christ bear everything.

One more story of liberation to tell, and one more nameless foe has been named.

Grief’s Wasteland

There’s a hidden phase of grief that is rarely spoken about.

It happens when everyone else moves on with their normal lives while you, the mourner, enter the most desolate wastelands of your grief.

Entering the Wastelands

I’ve seen widows and widowers go through this.

Now I’m in it.

It’s why there’s been no new blogs for a few weeks.

I just haven’t felt like posting on FaceBook or writing new blog entries.

It’s not like there’s been nothing going on or no new lessons to share.

There has, and there are.

Isolated and Barren Country

Last summer I drove through the NE corner of California between Reno, NV and Klamath Falls, OR.

And I was struck by how totally barren and unpopulated it was.

It was sage brush country, an arid Great Basin region that defied all mental pictures of California.

Lovely in its own way, yet terrible in its sheer desolation.

Which is why I keep thinking about it as an apt metaphor for where I’m at now.

Finality and Loss

Part of it the finality of losing the second parent and of now being the oldest living generation in my family.

Part of it is the amplification of mother loss–losing her nurturing to Asperger’s, losing her physical presence as a child to her full time employment, losing her always speaking voice to a stroke five years ago, and now losing her finally to death.

It’s made me take a deep dive into my soul and necessitated a drive through some ugly wastelands lurking within.

It’s been hard to walk with God, hard to feel close to loved ones, hard not to gratify this intense need to distance and isolate myself.

Ugly Connections

I now increasingly see a most ugly, long-hidden connection between maternal deprivation and an entitled drive to enjoy mitigating comforts and compensatory pleasures.

Of course I’m not speaking of the conscious, rational mind where principles, good theology, and objective wisdom reside.

It’s a broken heart crying for it’s mother and knowing its cry will never be heard in this life.

And settling instead for life’s crumbs.

Meanwhile, life is moving on and I’m moving full on into the anger phase of grief.

Tantrum Time

My sin monster is stamping its foot and protesting and shouting, “How dare You let this happen again?!” at God.

It’s slogan is this:  if I can’t have my mother’s nurturing, then I won’t accept anyone else’s love, either!

It’s on a campaign to retaliate against God for His apparent failure to amend the problem.

So it is wagging a relentless campaign to deprive God of my presence and strike back at Him somehow.

If I feel this way, then God’s going to feel this way, too.

Take that!

Of course this thinking makes no logical sense and is utterly self-punishing and self-defeating.

Freeing Truth

The truth is God is the God of the orphan and has a special place in his heart for those deprived early in life of parental presence and love.

The truth is He has allowed this Grand Canyon within my soul to exist so that He and He alone could fill it–and He will fill it.

The truth is He is supremely patient and has navigated millions of His children through these terrible wastelands of grief.

The truth is He is a God of all compassion and all comfort, brimming with mercy and tender, gentle care.

In Time for Good Friday

When in doubt I look at Jesus, the visible image of the invisible God, and His extraordinary care for the forsaken unfortunates of His time.

He is the silent partner in this blasting desert, the oasis who sustains me along the way, and the ultimate friend waiting for me on the other side.

And the truth, of course, is He Himself knows what utter forsakenness, sheer abandonment, and ultimate grief feels like–the crucifixion!

Christ has been my co-sufferer all along and folds all my suffering into His own.

The truth is He is holding onto me with firm and kindly hands even when my grip on Him is loosened.

He will outlast my tantrum and bring me up from the depths to the surface again.

And, as I write this, it occurs to me that this is Holy Week.

And that, my friends, is no accident!

The Cursed Place

In honor of Easter week, and for a refreshing change of topic, my next four blogs will center on an uplifting story from ancient times.

It is the story of Ruth.

Actually, it’s the story of Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law.

Seeking a Better Life

During a famine, Naomi, her husband Elimelech, and her two adult sons left the land of Israel to go further inland to the Moab in search of food.

At first, they seemed to do well and her sons took Moabite women as wives.

The prospects for a new, better life outside of Israel and all its troubles seemed favorable.

Then the deaths started.

First her husband, and then her two adult sons, died in short order.

She was left without any adult male family member.

Losing It All

To our modern ears, that’s no big deal.

But in ancient times, it was the worst tragedy to befall a middle-aged woman near the end of her child-bearing years.

Noami was left with no male protectors in a violent world, with no male descendants to provide for her in her old age, and with no possibility of a change in her fortunes.

Her one and only option was to return to the family home in Bethlehem of Judah and beg for her bread.

She told her two widowed daughter-in-laws, Ruth and Orpah, to return to their father’s household and try again to start a new family with a new husband.

Youth and fertility were still in their favor, and their father was near at hand to place them into new homes.

One of them then left, but Ruth swore to accompany Naomi back to the land of Israel and to stick with her no matter what.

Ruth even swore she would be a worshiper of Yahweh and abandon the gods of her forefathers.

Back Home in Disgrace

But when the two women arrived at this small village, it created a buzz of gossip.

“Is this Naomi?!” exclaimed the women of Bethlehem.

Naomi’s name meant “pleasant” in Hebrew, but her words in reply were anything but pleasant.

“The hand of the Lord has gone forth against me!” (Ruth 1:13)

“Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara (which means bitter), for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.” (vs. 20)

“I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty…” (vs. 21a)

“Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?” (vs. 21b)

Feelings We’ve All Had

God has personally cursed me.

God has given me a bitter pill to swallow.

God has taken everything good, everyone I love, away from me.

God has deeply hurt me and is therefore against me.

I have been judged and everyone knows it.

This is the voice of depression, the agonized cry of despair.

Pain becomes our only window through which to view all of life, all events, and even our God.

Background of Disobedience

Part of the mystery of why Naomi felt that way was this:

You weren’t supposed to leave the land of Israel and go live in a neighboring pagan and idolatrous land.

You weren’t supposed to give your sons in marriage to pagan, idolatry-raised women.

Her husband’s name, Elimelech, means “My God is King”.

But he abandoned his King’s land, and disobeyed his King’s rule in the Law of Moses.

Naomi only voiced what all the other women were thinking:  this is what happens when you defy the Living God, go your own direction, and seek your fortune away from His presence, His people, and His land.

You’re only getting what you deserve!

And, more than we care to admit, there is an element of consequences from our own choices and being our own worst enemy–then complaining bitterly about it when we pay the price.

Blaming God

But what’s interesting is that Naomi doesn’t say, “I’m to blame”.

Her depth of despair and cry of protest was this:  God has turned against me, the widow who followed her husband and then lost both him and her boys.

She took it extremely personally, and very much blamed God personally.

It’s the most common response to God when a cluster of tragedies descend and destroy our old, cherished life.

He turned against me.

He must hate me.

I’m on His bad list.

There’s no hope for me.

So I’ll turn on Him.

Who–even the strongest believers–hasn’t felt this way at times?

Is it any wonder that those who have endured a barrage of traumas and tragedies, who are carrying within them grief upon grief from losing so much, have all this anger against God within them?

The Unknown Unknown Good

But is this the end of the story for Naomi?

Or for us?

Or could there be something else beyond “being cursed” at work?

Thankfully for Naomi, and for us, the story continues.

Things we cannot see–the unknown unknowns–are in play.

For God, looking beyond all these bad words and negative attitudes coming out of Naomi, had something good in store for her.

And it all centered around that foreign daughter-in-law Naomi brought with her back home–the non-Jewish girl from a pagan background that refused to leave when she had every reason to do so.

It’s called grace.

Ego-Suffering Unto Life

Our fallen self, our wounded pride, does not go quietly.

Faced with dethronement, suffering, and death at the hands of the Risen Lord, it snarls, fights tooth and nail, and uses every diversionary tactic in the book to delay the outcome.

Left unchecked, our pride destroys us in the end and brings misery to everyone around us.

Suffering is the Cure

And if we don’t understand what God is up to, we may well ally with our sin nature and take its side in its struggle against God.

In other words, suffering is God’s favorite tool to break the grip of our ego, expose its true nature, and roll back its reign over our lives.

And not just any suffering–unrelieved suffering we cannot control, cannot end, cannot change, and cannot fix.

Our pride revels in control and getting its own way.

It prizes comfort, ease, convenience, and favorable conditions.

It therefore takes discomfort, disease, adversity, and unmitigated sorrow to get at it and get to it.

Treatment Plan for the Christian

As a Christ-follower, this makes sense because it’s the very pattern that ended Jesus’ life and set the stage for His resurrection.

Suffering is actually a sign of our increasing freedom, our coming and final liberation from sin’s reign.

It is how we grow up and become more like Jesus in character in this life.

It purifies our dirtiness like a smelter purifies the dross from the silver.

Instead of protecting our ego, we are commanded to continuously crucify it and always put to death the deeds of the fallen ego.

Get with the program, in other words.

Trust God for what grace you cannot yet see and for the good place He’s taking you disguised as suffering.

Fighting the Cure

As I’ve battled chronic insomnia– and the diminished mental alertness and relational liveliness that goes with it– only one response to this suffering has ever helped.

To yield to the God’s treatment plan, and surrender to Him and what He allows as a voluntarily sacrifice.

My first response, however, is usually to fight against it as I would a trap and seek a means of escape.

If that fails, I try to numb the pain through various means or seek relief through diversions or medicines.

If that fails, the final pre-surrender stage is despair and sullen withdrawal from God.

Then, failing that, I finally realize the core issue, and once again turn my life and my will over to God for Him to do as He wills.

Then I start to grow up in trust, in patience, in humility.

Then it’s wash-rinse-repeat time in a different area, or at an even deeper level.

For the Unbeliever

To the pre-Christian, it seems like the alternative to the reign of our ego is sheer chaos, unending death, and unrelieved terror.

But what the sinner cannot understand is God’s supreme love is at work.

You are being prepped.

God is not your tormentor or an aloof bystander.

He’s herding us into the stockade, making us part of His flock.

He’s stripping us of all rivals, and ruining the joy and credibility of our idols.

He’s working to end the reign of our cruel tyrant, the sin-monster, and replace it with the reign of an all-loving Savior.

He desires us.

He desires the person He’s afflicting to know Him and come under the healing charity of His Son.

It feels like we’ll lose everything dear, everything worthwhile, if we yield and let go and get small and be vulnerable and humble ourselves.

But it’s actually losing nothing and gaining everything of ultimate value.

It’s knowing Him and having Him in us and us being in Him.

Get with the program, in other words!

Check-Out Line

One of the great, ongoing tragedies of my dad’s life was his broken relationship with his own father.

Although softened by time and by distance, it lay dormant but alive within him even after my grandfather had died.

How It All Began

I say this now because of what happened to his faith while he was my age now–in his fifties.

The church of my growing up years survived a rather dour, nasally-toned liberal preacher and my parents helped find a “positive-thinking”, church-growth oriented new minister.

This leader and my dad really hit it off–it was very flattering to be singled out like that as a person of promise.

They formed a real friendship and he, in turn, mentored my father in the area of faith–especially in prayer.

It was during this positive season that I came to faith and began to be mentored by my dad in the faith as well.

Repeated Evil

Then tragedy struck…twice.

The first great shock to my dad occurred when it came out that this telegenic man full of charisma had, in fact, moved to the Bay Area to be closer to his longtime mistress.

It was all a pretext, all a sham.

And in retrospect I realized how very devastating that scandal was for my dad.

My parents and their church tried again.

So they hired a new man who seemed, on the surface, to be positive but more authentic.

But it turned out preacher #2 had an unchecked anger and control problem that deeply wounded my father….again.

Another male-on-male friendship with an authority figure had soured and led to heart-break.

It was too much for him.

So my dad checked out emotionally and spiritually.

The Check Out Line

My parents changed churches, but a wall of protection descended over my dad’s soul.

The guy who warmly supported my own new faith, who gave me great books and who prayed for me–was dead to God and the things of God.

Materialism and travel and the good life reasserted themselves with a vengeance.

Looking back, I realize it was a pain deeper than all words that these two wounds resurfaced in my father.

He had nobody near him who asked, nor did he allow anyone to ask, “What’s really going on here?  What good were you hoping these two men could give you but got the opposite?”

It wasn’t until the last week of his life, on his deathbed, that regrets welled up with him and he asked my sister and I to forgive him for failing us as a father.

Which broke our hearts, of course, but which gave us a chance to speak heartfelt forgiveness into him when and where he needed it the most.

Leaving the Check Out Line

Recently, I’ve realized that I, too, had been in the same check-out line.

My circumstances, of course, are different.

But strangely, my own emotional and spiritual check-out season was the result of a double-wound in quick succession at the hands of a church family.

And I don’t think all that was an accident.

In fact, I would say it’s an opportunity to break a very hellish, generational cycle.

The Choice to Be Alive Again

It’s liberating to realize that I don’t need to wait until my deathbed to make peace with the double wound.

It’s freeing to know I can also make peace with the deeper abandonment/self-reproach/self-condemnation issues the double wounding exposed.

I can have honest conversations with my kids sooner, can tell them it wasn’t about them and explain how it wasn’t even the bad circumstances–it was the deeper, unspoken baggage I carried which needed God’s extraordinary surgery to expose and break.

I can ask them for forgiveness from a place to deep repentance and tenderness.

I can choose to receive emotional and spiritual healing from Christ, to make amends from this point forward, and check back in 30 years sooner than my own father did.

By grace, I can and I will have a different outcome to my story by writing new paragraphs and different kinds of chapters.

Some things may not be recoverable, and some damage may not be repairable–and I will have to make peace with that reality as well.

Perhaps you’ve been in the check out line too long, and haven’t yet realized it’s time to check back in–not just for God or yourself, but for others who need you to be emotionally and spiritually “all there”.

May I offer you a hand up?