Shock – "…because you matter!"

Post-Mortem

This was not a good day two thousand-ish years ago, and that is grossly understated. It was certainly not a Good Friday.

Their world had just been blown apart.

Everything they knew for the last three years has lost its hinge-pin. Death can do that, brutal death will do that more, it has a way of destroying every hope in you; it will strip you of your ‘why-a-bouts’ and void your reason without asking your permission or giving you advance warning.

Their reason for being, hoping, dreaming, future, for winning, was just gone. Gone. Gone!

They were terrorized. So, as friends, were trying to regroup and had gotten back together, loosely together, but now what? Would they be next? Who… would be next?

Peter, who usually had all the answers, was uncommonly silent, vacantly silent.

What in the world just happened? How could this happen?

Someone had provided some food, but nobody wanted to eat. Their system couldn’t consume one more thing.

Previously they thought. No, they knew things were going to change. They knew things would soon be very different, but this different? Not this kind of different.

Confidence and excitement were now just a blur replaced by angst and fear. They could vaguely recollect some things said, but it was mumbled in their heads with far-off interior voices.

Who, what, when, why, how? These cycling questions wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop queuing in their brains.

As they looked over at each other, the ‘connection line’ began to thin. Their reason for being ‘with him’ ‘with her’ was gone. Common ground was now starting to have the appearance of foreign soil. Would they still be friends? Could they get through this? Did they even care anymore? Was being here with ‘them’ even safe?

Phrases like; ‘I hoped,’ ‘I knew,’ ‘I couldn’t wait,’ ‘did you see it when?’ ‘He healed him,’ ‘Oh and look. Lazarus, back from the grave!’ These phrases exited their mouths with almost every exhale.

This was a house of confusion, a house of mourning.

This was Friday, but it didn’t feel Good.

About Pain, Attitude, Growth out of Pain, Life-Long Learning, Metaphor

Dumped On

There is no other way to say it. “This last week we got dumped on.” The Great Canadian North backed the truck up, filled the telescopic rod with hydraulic fluid and let ‘er’ go. Services stopped, vehicles were stuck, people were sent home, and the dig-out started and lasted all week. We had been prepped the week before with a practice run, but the alert for this last week somehow eluded us.
In my conservative opinion, small ‘c’ not to be confused with our political, which is our second or third favourite past-time, I think we got more snow in this last week than we did all last year. But, I’m no weatherman.
Life as we know it had to stop and alter its course. Some of my ‘usual’ got canceled, and that affected others and delayed their arriving home which rippled all the way down to the babysitter, who may have been cheering for the extra dollars; or, maybe not.
Things changed, babies were conceived, at least that is true from the last dump that happened here several years ago, and life had to reorient if only for a moment.
All that rearrangement, without apology, for gentle white snow that landed with a wallop.
What about you?
Have you ever been dumped on, I mean metaphorically speaking?
Have you ever had to alter, reorient, change, or stop life as it is to redirect?
Probably if you haven’t, you are barely old enough to read. If you have lived life in the real world, the chances are high that the telescopic rod has lifted and thrust its load your way.
So, what do you do when life unloads on you in a moment of time?
The first thing you’ll do is to stop. You’ll probably have to. Once you have picked up your shovel, snowblower, or backhoe, you begin to sort your way through the mess. But, when the mess keeps coming, that is when you will need to try a different tactic.
Take Job, pronounced ‘Jobe,’ for example. Here is a guy who has a book by his name contained within the Bible. He got dumped on. Just when he thought he had more than he could bear, the ‘B’ train unloaded.
Job handled his life and his tragedy with amazing patience and trust. You can catch this fantastic example and the message from this ancient stalwart of a man. Forty-two chapters, which is about thirty-six pages, maybe an hour and a half read, or two coffees will impact your life exponentially. Try and read it in one go; you’ll be glad you did.
Then, you can also catch some of my thoughts on this from Conflict #5 in my online book, Path Out – Eliminate the Swirl. Just follow the links.

Book Offer

About Pain, Attitude, Family Dysfunction

The Joseph Series: – Relationally Emotionally Bankrupt

It was that bad!

Don’t you just love/hate when someone gets removed from a situation then they begin to downplay, minimize, or outright falsify the story. “It wasn’t that bad they say.” This forms a pattern and often happens in a cycle of abuse. Once they are out of the terror of the moment, they capitulate and regress on their resolve, and back on the merry-go-round, they go again.

Joseph didn’t get that chance. He moved from bad to worse, to worse, to worse again, and then he was plunged into the worst of it all. He didn’t have time to capitulate or regress. Can you hear him, “You intended to harm me…you actually meant to hurt me… How come you hurt me, you are my brothers? Why don’t you love me?” then around it would go again. Joseph’s cycle was dealing with the facts, not pretending they didn’t happen.

Rejected; abused; lied about; humiliated; abandoned; cast off; demeaned; treated as wholly insignificant; sold, Sold, SOLD; bewildered; hurt; angry; despondent; grief; loss; shock; depression; denial; lonely; all alone; dirty; damaged; mocked.

It was that bad. It really happened. It really hurt badly!

Joseph was forced to be alone and had to process.

Where do you find perspective? Where do you find the will to live another moment?

Recently I wrote the online book, Path Out – Eliminate the Swirl. Get the book, and I will help you process. The book is available through following the links on this site or at Amazon.ca.

We are told that it took thirteen years for Joseph to come up for air. Thirteen years is a long time to process. He did it well, but first, he had to deal with the stuff that he had to process.

Tragically we can miss the depth if we just read it as a nice informative Sunday school story, or if we just moralize it and throw in a pithy saying or two.

There is a real help for real hurt. There is a real process for real emotional damage. There are strong, reliable aids within the depths of this story that will restore your years.

Let me help you.

You Don’t Have To Live; You Get To!

About Pain, Approval, Attitude, Family Dysfunction

The Joseph Series: Sometimes It Gets Bad

There was disdain that the brothers had built toward Joseph; legitimately it could be called hatred. Joseph was his father’s favourite and his brother’s bane. When Joseph was sent to check on his brothers, and they spotted him coming a long way off, they plotted to kill him. Well, most of them.

Joseph was sent by his father to see how the brothers were making out with the family business of shepherding. They had relocated many kilometers away, and in a day with no communication resources, Joseph was the communicator between home/dad and his sons.

A couple of these brothers had previously committed mass murder, it was in their history, and now all but one brother was ready to kill Joseph. Rueben pleaded and they compromised by attacking Joseph, stripping him of his robe, and throwing him into a waterless pit. No sooner did Joseph hit the bottom that they sat down and ate their meal. Heartless. It was just another day in their wilderness, tending sheep.

The brothers, with the exception of Rueben intended to leave Joseph there to die.

Joseph was guilty. Of what? He was guilty of previously sharing his dreams and goals as he tried to find a place within the family dysfunction. He was also guilty of receiving an inordinate amount of favouritism from his father. He had the robe, the Dreamcoat to prove it. Joseph was the firstborn son of Rachel, the wife that Jacob had loved more than the other wives.

Animosity was not new to this brood. The family’s distain and contempt had been growing for a long time.

Unaware and totally naive, Joseph walked straight into the ambush. He was the easy target of a family that was full of anger, disunity, unrest, and deception.

Insult to injury, the brothers had a twisted moment of conscience. They decided, rather than kill him, sell him to a traveling caravan of Ishmaelite’s.

Joseph sold for eight ounces of silver. At today’s price, his life was worth $147.52.

For Joseph, this was not a good day. However, he was able, through thirteen years of processing, to get an accurate perspective. But, it was equally not a good day for his brothers. They just didn’t know it yet.

Much later Joseph said this before he died, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20, NIV)

You Don’t Have To Live: You Get To!

Change, New Path

Path Out –

Chapter 1 Bought the Hat and T-Shirt

Defeat Conflict All Five Ways

You needn’t have been alive very long to suffer the emotional effects of conflict, trouble or misunderstanding. These effects have probably already lasted way too long.

When you have pain from mishap or wrong done, and you have wrestled with the hurt from a life that has gone sideways or soured, you have got to do something. Somehow you have to process your shock, hurt, remorse and grief.

It is Personal

Pain and hurt were brought home to me in a poignant and remarkable way. I had taken my family through the shame, regret and humiliation of bankruptcy. I had failed in business. As a Christian, I was against this failure and everything that had transpired to cause my life to fall apart. Caught in the middle and found guilty, I was reaping the full harvest of a life gone wrong, mine. I was in complete consternation.

I had to move away from family and home to find work, just to make our ends meet, and, possibly find a way out for us. This separation only added to the guilt of my circumstance. I was alone with my thoughts, and I didn’t like them.

I had rehearsed the events that led up to bankruptcy ad-infinitum. I took that rehearsal to the Lord in prayer many times. I felt lousy, condemned and abundantly guilty.

I had owned my mess in its entirety, but the weight of it continued to oppress me. I knew it was my fault, and I knew I had to live with it.

After seven months apart I was able to relocate my family to our new home and try to start new.

One more time I cried out to God and was asking him to forgive me. Then something strange and remarkable happened. I heard his response to my thoughts, in my thoughts, and it shocked and halted me. He said, “I can’t.”

What do you mean you can’t?

I immediately thought I had heard wrong, and so I challenged the thought. “You are God, who always forgives. Something is obviously wrong with my hearing and, or, my understanding.” I reprocessed the part of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” I had forgiven and repurposed to forgive again. I came again, “You are God, who always forgives.” He responded, again in my thoughts, “I can’t forgive something you are not guilty of.” I was perplexed, hopeful and still halted.

I began to understand, and from that moment, began to find a lasting peace.

I had taken care of and owned “my stuff” for which I was guilty. I had thoroughly dealt with it in openness and confession but “it” was only part of the problem. I was stuck because I had seen “it” as the whole problem. There were four more ‘causes’ that worked into the complexity of the problem. It was only when I completely dealt with all five of these sources that I was able to walk out in freedom. I was forgiven, clean and on the path to restoration.

Five Sources of Conflict

The sources of conflict were: Myself; Others; The World Around Us; The Devil; and God. These are the five areas that I needed to understand and now need to communicate with you so that you can make sense of your life and completely deal with your hurts and remorse of your past. They are the precise points where you can experience victory; a victory uniquely yours. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I [Jesus] have come that they [you] may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10, NIV) [Inserts, my own.]

You Don’t Have To Live; You Get To!