November 2019 – The middle …

Living & Forgiving

Recently I have given a lot of thought to the subject of forgiveness, in preparations for various teaching workshops.

Whilst I have often heard forgiveness talked about as if it is a simple one off choice, the reality is often more complex.

What many do not realise is that forgiveness is not an act of superficiality.

Over the years my heart has always sunk whenever I have heard this whole, ‘just forgive’ and everything is ok mantra.

It suggests in a flippant manner that this is easy.

Personally I am not convinced that Jesus agreed as he hung there on that cross.

We all encounter the simple day to day stuff where we can easily irritate and disappoint one another despite the best will not to. And it is important to let go of these as we go along. A collection of grudges is never going to benefit anyone!

But in the more complex areas of injustice and trauma, forgiveness is more of a process.

It certainly starts by making an intellectual choice to forgive, whether someone else; dead or alive, or yourself (preferably whilst still alive!).

But if it also ends there, we are reinforcing any existing disconnect between head and heart.

I think that forgiveness is a threefold business.

First we exercise our free will by making an intellectual choice to forgive.

Then secondly, we can ask Jesus for help to practice forgiveness in real terms in real life as well as to help us spiritually. Let’s face it, He totally has the monopoly on this forgiveness thing given His whole cross experience along with His ongoing love for us.

Or even, if we are struggling to choose to forgive intellectually, we can ask Jesus for help with that too.

But the third more tricky and timely bit is dealing with all the painful emotions of the heart that allow us to experience a heart rather than head only, level of forgiveness.

Most people simply skip this bit or pretend it is not necessary. A bypass of which will often lead to other problematic behaviours or physical ailments. But we all have free will and can exercise it how we wish whether passively or actively.

Thus, in order to experience the freedom that accompanies the giving of a heart level of forgiveness, we have to actually experience, own, acknowledge and work through all the painful feelings that we have about the matter we are attempting to forgive.

Depending on the depth or breadth of the original wound, there may also be a need for professional intervention. This is no different to our physical health.

Typically a process of forgiveness involves a process of mourning for whatever losses are attached to the matter needing to be forgiven.

A refusal to engage with this, impacts us.

Not the one you are attempting to forgive, but us.

An inability to give forgiveness to another is to hold on to unforgiveness ourselves.

And that costs.

It is complex but possible to forgive.

To clarify what I mean by forgiveness, I am talking about letting go of all the painful feelings that naturally accompany painful experiences of others.

What I do NOT mean by forgiveness, is that what happened does not matter.

It matters.

You matter.

Your experience of it matters.

Any lasting impact matters.

It equally does not mean that you need to deny or diminish your true experience.

It also does not mean that you will automatically always continue a relationship with said person.

It even does not mean that it is not right and necessary in some cases to involve the appropriate authorities.

Forgiveness is often a complex and lengthy process that may need repeating.

It is certainly way too huge a subject to do any real justice to in a piece this short.

But in short, when we do not or cannot forgive another, it costs us to hold on to those painful feelings. So whilst it also costs us the pain of going through the process on a heart level to forgive another, it costs us more to avoid doing so.

We don’t have to settle for a superficial intellect only level of forgiveness when a deeper heart level is possible.

But at times we may need professional help to achieve this.

That we may continue to whole heartedly live, learn, love, forgive, be forgiven and repeat!

The heart of the matter

At various points over the years I’ve had a heavy heart every time I’ve heard the realm of emotions demonised within Christian arenas.

I’m encouraged by the new level of receptivity in recent years, but we still have a long way to go.

God gave each of us a heart and I believe He wants us to live with our hearts open to what life has to offer. Whilst also exercising wisdom and discernment in the face of avoidable pain.

But if we avoid the heart by focusing on the spiritual alone, the physical, mental and emotional do not cease to exist or cease to be adversely impacted through cumulative neglect.

I was reminded of this recently when I attended a training day delivered by a fellow Christian and member of BACP. This individual specialises in working with those struggling with addictions in sex, porn and love.

In the simplest form, the root cause of these addictions is an inability to tolerate painful emotions combined with genuine unmet emotional needs. This is further exacerbated by the experience of trauma especially when it occurs during the formative years.

Basically, exactly the same as what drives every other type of addiction or unhealthy behaviour whether around food, drink, drugs, sex, porn, spending, gambling, over work or the more blatant and physical self harm of cutting, burning etc.

But whichever way you look at it, the above are all forms of self harm.

And yet the most important commandment in the bible is still to love the lord your God and love your neighbour as YOURSELF.

It is ironic that our failure to learn how to love ourselves when we hurt can result in us hurting ourselves even more.

The above behaviours which we all fall victim to in various ways are a form of communication that as a society we just haven’t learned how to look after our hearts.

We have not learned how to love or comfort or sooth ourselves when we get hurt. And as we cannot go through life without getting hurt unless we shut our hearts down, which isn’t living, this is pretty important.

Unmet emotional needs drive all our dysfunctions, insecurities, fears and harmful behaviours.

Yet this stuff can be learned.

We all have to learn how to proactively look after our physical health. We understand that we need certain conditions starting from birth for our physical bodies to grow up and mature in as healthy a way as possible. We can’t choose our DNA but we can choose whether to look after our body’s in a healthy or harmful way.

In the same vein, none of us can choose the family we are born in to or the surrounding culture but we can each choose to proactively create the required conditions that facilitate our hearts as well as our minds growing in to maturity. This doesn’t just happen. We have to proactively take responsibility for implementing a healthy rather than harmful way to do so. In short, this means responding to our broken, hurting hearts with love, understanding and compassion.

Not more harmful behaviours.

To neglect our body, mind or heart is to fail to appreciate or understand their worth or their requirements for healthy working.

And such neglect leads to unnecessary harm.

Furthermore we must learn to look after our hearts for a failure to do so can also lead to manifestations of illness within the body.

This means we must get over our collective, ‘no feelings please, we’re British’ approach.

Irrespective of age or gender, every one of us has a heart.

It contains feelings we like and feelings we don’t and the more willing we are to learn how to manage the feelings we dislike, the less vulnerable we are to engaging in unhealthy behaviours or at the extreme, addictions.

Feelings matter.

The heart matters.

Our unmet emotional needs matter.

And fortunately we all have access to a God to whom WE matter.

A God who is able and willing to meet our unmet emotional needs both through those around us and through Him direct.

He is equally able to help us to tolerate rather than deny our difficult emotions.

And He is willing.

Nothing shocks Him.

Let’s face it, there is literally nothing on this earth that He has not seen!

Will we seek His help in the matters of the heart?

Will we accept professional help when He guides us to do so?

Or will we individually and collectively continue to live our lives in little emotional prisons of our own creation because actually on a heart level, we don’t believe God will help us to have a different experience?

The time has come to wake up and realise that the heart matters.

Retreat, Rest, Reflect

The time to retreat from all was upon me again.

And so it was with excitement that I relinquished my responsibilities to enjoy the freedom of time out.

Leaving at a lusciously leisurely 10.00am on Tuesday, I drove straight to a sea facing establishment that I had pre booked for lunch.

The place, the view, the staff and the food, did not disappoint.

No sooner had I made myself comfortable at the table with the sea stretching out ahead of me, when I noticed a rainbow seemingly rising up from the water.

I always love to be reminded of God’s promises to us.

After conceding defeat to the mash accompanying my winter warming bangers, I took a slow stroll along the sea front and in to the town.

A quick browse around the charity shop resulted in the reward of a white stuff dress for the grand sum of £2.50. Result!

Upon my return walk to the car, I saw yet another rainbow!

After checking out the towns offering, I headed for my sea facing caravan to get settled in before dark.

As promised, I could indeed see the sea from here.

How I relish the chance to indulge in sea staring and rest.

There was even enough light left in the day to check out the beach.

The next day following a relaxing lay in and breakfast, I decided to explore a few towns away along the coast. Unfortunately, my hoped for walk had been rained off.

In this town amongst all the pretty gift shops I found a cosy pub serving some excellent homemade vegetable soup. Proper.

I quickly realised that I wasn’t in the mood for shops or crowds though. Not unusual for me.

When I looked up other sea facing places away from the masses, I discovered a cliff top cafe overlooking the sea. A quiet one. Much more my cup of tea. And of course cake.

Upon returning to my caravan, I opted for a lazy afternoon nap. Something I haven’t found much time for in recent weeks!

When I did resurface, I got myself comfortable for a film night. SO relaxing.

The next day arrived bringing yet more rain. No walks for me.

Instead, I enjoyed breakfast and coffee on my sofa looking out to sea.

Here I reflected upon the year thus far.

I love having time to step back and survey the big picture. Examine what has happened in the year to date and think and dream about the year to come.

After a few hours of commitment free time to do just this, I revised my game plan for the day and opted for a local garden centre where the food was highly recommended.

I’m a huge fan of a garden centre; all those beautiful living things as well as the enticement of the gift shops. This one was top notch.

The cafe had interesting signs on the wall, blankets for those brave enough to sit outside (I wasn’t and only just managed to resist a blanket anyway) and a menu full of proper home cooked food. No processed rubbish here.

I decided upon a sausage and bean casserole which was suitably filling and appropriate for the wet and windy day.

Next up was a little coffee shop attached to a Hotel. In here I finished reading my newspaper over a pot of tea with the obligatory sea view.

Having had my fill in every sense, I returned to my accommodation where I packed up my stuff and drove home!

And I still have a few more days to reflect on all before resuming my full responsibilities.

Nice!

The wisdom of the heart

Sometimes life becomes lack lustre.

It is true that we all experience differing seasons. Some more welcome than others!

But sometimes, it is as if the life blood has been drained from us.

This may be marked by prolonged difficulty with sleeping, lethargy, fatigue, lack of motivation, low mood, indulging in destructive behaviours and even physical ailments.

Often at this point, medication may be sought to get shot of these pesky and unwanted emotions.

And there is of course a time for medication.

However, all too often, upon careful exploration and investigation, another matter becomes apparent.

That is that the individual experiencing these symptoms is in some type of situation; relationship/employment/group that at best is unhealthy for them. This may even have been going on unnoticed and unchallenged for many years, thus leaving them in the above state.

Whilst the progress of medication is vital, if used to suppress the very emotions that are indicating an issue that needs addressing, all they really achieve is enabling the individual to continue in the very situation that is causing the distress in the first instance.

Unfortunately, what compounds this aside from our obsession with the quick fix, is that we are a culture that puts our trust in the mind and its capacity to think, well above our heart and its capacity to feel.

But, when the heart is repeatedly left untended it can and does impact every area of life. The upshot of which can be the type of symptoms I have described above.

As I reflected on this predicament of humanity, I noticed just how difficult it can be for us humans to trust, let alone act upon what our hearts tell us.

As mentioned, our culture dismisses the realm of emotions as if these are just some ridiculous part of ourselves that will simply disappear if we ignore them for long enough.

And so we have developed a personal and collective suspicion over all matters of the heart. We think that it is to be distrusted, silenced and overruled by the mind.

Of course, it is important to point out that we would indeed be foolish to attempt to live by feelings alone.

However, we appear to have thrown out the baby with the bath water.

In doing so we have lost the art of listening to, respecting, discerning and acting upon the wisdom of the heart.

On some level we always know in our hearts what we like and what we don’t.

Yet, despite this inside information, we often commit ourselves to situations; relationships/employment/whatever that we know in our hearts are wrong for us.

This does not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with the person/job/whatever. They may be phenomenally brilliant. Or not. But if they are not right for us personally we will know this by the sinking of our heart.

But sometimes we find it really difficult to admit or acknowledge let alone act on the truth that our heart is revealing.

At this point, our mind with all its ‘clever’ thoughts may also step in to remind and re-iterate the mantra of our culture; just keep going no matter what the cost and you don’t need to be bothered by the silly business of feelings.

This could be further exacerbated by the chants of the ‘should brigade’. ‘You should be ok with this, you should try harder, you should be grateful, blah blah blah …. ‘.

And this is how we become stuck in something that is not good for us.

Despite our attempts to quieten the warnings of the heart by distracting ourselves with all manner of doing, it will often awaken us in the dead of the night. Here, free from distractions, it brings to mind the situation that is not good for us but that we are attempting to ignore.

If we still dismiss the warnings of the heart, over time, we may become more and more unwell, mentally and physically. A case of the writing is on the body.

And yet still we may endure our situations.

We may struggle to reconcile the discrepancy between what we wish for with the lived experience of the situation.

We just want it to be different and it may be too painful to see that it is not and cannot be.

Fear and doubt may crowd in on us to stifle, shut down and silence these deepest longings of our heart. They may whisper to us that we will not be able to have that which we most authentically long for. And that we must make do with that which is making us unwell.

Sometimes, it is even a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of scripture that keeps folk bound in situations that are harmful for them.

Whatever the reason, when the wisdom of the heart is ignored repeatedly, we get stuck doing the same thing that is getting us the same result.

To choose, whether actively or passively, to stay in any situation that is harmful to us, is a form of self harm.

Somehow this seems to be in keeping with the culture of stiff upper lipping it out and being ‘strong’.

As if it is a sign of superiority to ignore the body’s own warning system that there is a problem that needs tending to.

Or as if it is super spiritual to suffer unnecessarily.

How much of our lives do we end up wasting in situations that do not fit us let alone allow us to grow or thrive? And how often do these situations actually cause us to become diminished in some way?

Maybe through fear of what others would think if we left the situation or fear about where we think we should be especially at certain ages and stages of life.

And yet, if we can face in to our own truths, to the deepest desires of our heart and pursue these with integrity, commitment and support, we can discover and create a life that we actually want to live.

At which point, we can expect to see the return of our energy, motivation and drive, improved sleep and health, renewed enthusiasm and the recovery of our get up and go.

The heart knows.

We would do well to pay attention to it.

Life is way too short and far too fragile to commit any serious amount of it to anything that destroys its quality.