Turning the Page

Criticism can hurt, bruise and extinguish our hearts, but learning how to handle criticism can build new strength and resilience.

I could see the hope drain out of him as I watched both the subtle and not so subtle criticisms land upon him.

I was in a meeting with a guy I was supporting, and we were problem-solving.

Every solution he suggested was shot down. It was one little cat scratch after another. He would say a few words, and the critic would speak five hundred back.

The poor guy, I thought. I wondered what it was like when he was alone with this woman. No wonder he was depressed, anxious, and stuck.

Criticism can strangle a heart till it gives up and doesn’t try anymore. The words of a critic start to be believed as a truth in your own being. Your inner critic starts negating you. You’re on a downward spiral.

And look, some people don’t know how to give encouragement and praise. They think if they do give praise and encouragement, it might go to your head. So in a warped kind of way, they think they are doing you a service.

‘Can’t have you getting a big head,’ they say.

Criticism is a matter of the heart.

When someone is routinely criticized, it slowly becomes a matter of the heart—the seat of the emotions.

Courage is slowly sapped out of the heart, and despair begins to grow.

In the word ‘courage,’ we find the Latin word cor, which literally means “heart.” To have courage means to have heart.

Criticism sucks the life out of the heart.

What is your heart like when you have been criticized?

Does it in someway feel bruised and battered, like it has been in a fight with a schoolyard bully.

Maybe it feels exhausted like a blown-out candle. All that is left is a faint glow and some wispy smoke.

The Offer of gentleness

There is a beautiful passage of ancient scripture in the book of Isaiah that prophetically talks about what Jesus is like.

A bruised reed he will not break,    and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; Isaiah 42:3

Imagine you see a swamp full of reeds.

A wild storm, full of energy, has come through, and because they are tall and vulnerable, they have been bruised and battered in the strong winds.

They are now struggling to get themselves back to full glory and purpose.

Christ comes to the stand of reeds, and there is such a gentleness to his approach that as he walks through them, he doesn’t break a single one.

Instead, the very presence of being with them in their bruised state helps them recover. ‘You will recover, I am with you; let’s do this together.’

The second imagery is that of a smoldering wick.

A candle that was once glowing bright with light and purpose has been blown out by the energetic buffeting winds of criticism.

There is nothing left but the wisps of faint small ash floating away.

There might still be a slight small glow, hunting for oxygen to reignite, but nothing comes.

The Christ won’t come and stub it out. Jesus won’t wet his fingers and squash the life out of the struggle. Instead, with a gentleness of breath, he breathes on the embers and causes them to reignite.

With Christ, there is an assurance of both presence and justice.

Christ, who knows all and sees all, can bring truth to the whole of the struggle.

God is not a god who will add to your pain.

So often, many people feel that in their deepest pain that God is also judging them. That, along with the battering from the storms of life that God is also harshly judging them and raining down punishment.

God never adds criticism to our earthly load.

I can be assured that my heart, which has been bruised and blown out, that God won’t add to the pain.

How to Handle Criticism

So how do we handle criticism?

Firstly, in the best sense of the word ‘critique,’ there is value in having something analyzed and assessed. We can learn valuable lessons when someone is willing to give good and helpful feedback.

The problem comes when the energy changes from being helpful to being harsh and abu

Emotional pain can bump our lives into behaviors that can hurt us further. But we can make a change by learning to listen to the pain, where it’s sourced, and what it wants us to do.

He was in pain. I could see it, feel it, and totally understand it. I couldn’t take his emotional pain away, but I did want him to know one thing.

She was also was in pain. In everything she said and did, there was an expression of emotional pain. I wanted her to know this one thing.

The bumps of emotional pain

We all experience emotional pain. Possibly pain has been one of the most contributing factors in the development of your self. You get hurt; you avoid what hurt you. The sharp chisel blows of life in some way have shaped your very being and doing.

I keep thinking of bumper boats careering into you, pushing you this way and that.

Perhaps when people express the words ‘God, I want to die,’ they are really simply wanting the pain to end.

That pain of loneliness, abuse, shame, guilt, loss, rejection, etc.

Those painful feelings become so overwhelming that they block out any light.

The pain becomes such a normative experience that any belief that there is a life without that pain is beyond belief. When you’re in that place, there is no light. You’re surrounded and alone, in a darkness that is pounding against you.

Storm waves of emotional pain keep crashing against the architecture of your brain.

A Vicar is needed

Jesus experienced pain. There was the crucifixion’s physical pain, which is beyond our understanding, but there was also the emotional pain. Something that we can understand.

There was the pain of betrayal, vulnerable naked exposure, abuses, mocking, abandonment, rejection. Name the emotional pain, and Jesus would have experienced it.

One of the most liberating words I have ever discovered is the word ‘Vicarious.’

It simply means to ‘do something or experience something in place of another.’

Vicar Jesus lived a perfect life on your behalf. He got everything right.

Christ has also experienced every imaginable emotional pain that you are going through. He knows what being fully human is fully like.

You have to ask yourself this question. ‘Would you trust a tour guide who hasn’t actually walked the path’?

Jesus has walked the path and got the emotional wounds to prove it.

Meet Your New Vicar

When I am in emotional pain, I want a vicar. Someone who has been there, done that, and without any F.A.S.S. attitudes (Fixing, Advising, Saving, or ‘Setting one straight).

When you are in emotional pain, you want connection.

Alone, I die. Together, we climb.

A vicar will be someone who will help you tease out the pain. What is the pain, and where is it coming from. What are the bumps and knocks causing you to do?

They will also see where your pain takes you. Out of our being flows our doing. What habits have you created in your life to cope with emotional pain?

Has that pain led to habits and demands to work harder, keep busy, perfectionism?

The pain has an invite.

What does your pain invite or even demand you to do?

Pain can invite you into addictions: the bottle, the drugs, the porn.

Maybe the shopping mall, the binge eating, the self-harm.

Anything that numbs the loneliness, the shame, the loss.

The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. Bruce Marshall. The World, the Flesh and Father Smith

The invite of the brothel, or the porn website, is ‘Come. For the briefest of moments, we can dull the pain out of your existence’.

The one thing to remember.

You’re not alone.

I want to talk about the pain I carry, but who will listen without F.A.S.S.‘ing me.

We need to know that we’re not alone. When we are alone with our emotional pain, we quickly and easily succumb to the doing of things to dull the pain. We self medicate.

I have a friend who has been there done that. Knows every imaginable pain that humanity has within itself.

So I write to P.A.P.A.  I journal and express that pain. As I express something

Trust can get broken so easily, but we can build a new trust by cognitively reassessing our situations.  It takes time and effort, but it is worth it.

There was a rebuilding that needed to happen. It was a rebuilding of trust in themselves and with others.

Somewhere, some time, every one of us is going to have our trust broken. We live with an expectation that certain things will happen the way we believe they will happen. The rules won’t get broken. That the promises made will be kept.

But trust gets broken in many different areas of our lives.

relationships

career

health

Government

Church

God

I once sat with a man who, in his late forties, discovered he had manic depressive episodes.

Up till then, everything seemed fine. His wife told me that he had had a few strange moments in his life with some weird ideas, but for the most part, he lived within the bounds of what anyone would call normal.

Then all of a sudden, his illness truly took control, and he started acting highly erratically. He was admitted into the psych ward and began the journey into an awareness of his broken self.

With medication, support, and guidance, he returned to his family and started to rebuild his life. But there was a deep loss of trust in himself, his world, and his God.

As he talked with me, there was a need to rebuild trust in himself. The beliefs he had about himself, life, and God were all lying in rubble.

Trust questions knawed at his soul.

Do I trust my thinking?

Where was God?

What do I believe now?

Who do I trust?

Shame and guilt pounded on his soul. ‘What a fool’ was spoken out more than once.

When you’re in a hole, it’s easy to drown in the dirt you’re digging in.

Broken trust Bible

The Bible is full of stories where trust has been broken.

Josephs relationship with his brothers

Davids affair with Bathsheba

Peters denial of Jesus Christ

With each of these moments, there was a time where there was a breach of trust.

Joseph trusted his brothers, but they sold him into slavery. Could he trust them again?

David broke marriage vows and commitments to God. Could he be trustworthy again as a man and as a leader?

Peter broke his trust relationship with Jesus by denying him and leaving him alone. Could Jesus trust him again?

All of these examples, plus many more, show the fragility of trust. Trust is finite; life is fragile.

There is a Fragility

As I sat with the man discovering his manic depressive illness, I witnessed his awareness grow about his fragility.

That given the right amount of stress, lack of sleep, and with a body that was vulnerable in its own particular way, then the fragility would crack. He would become unwell and unstable.

He was becoming aware of his weaknesses.

Before the breakdown, he would have given theoretical assent to this weakness, but now he was truly knowing and embracing it on a soul level.

He could have talked about physical weaknesses on a theological level, but now he was searching for God amongst the rubble of his own torn down city.

There is a fragility in life we can’t control and is open to breaches of trust.

Cognitive reassessments

Rebuilding trust requires the ‘brick by brick’ work of cognitively reassessing that which we are trusting in.

A cognitive reassessment means to look at the facts. The brick and mortar of the situation. Is there change? What actually has been done?

Brick by brick, we can build it from the floorIf we hold on to each other,we’ll be better than before. Train

Our subconscious can be reprogrammed through cognitive reassessments of behaviors.

Joseph had to do a cognitive reassessment of his brothers to see whether they could be trusted again. He did this by giving them several tests.

David could not be trusted to be leader and King again without going through his dark night of the soul. The behaviors of repentance and sorrow marked a changed life.

Jesus could once again trust Peter when he saw the brokenness of his heart.  He had to tell Peter three times of his trust in him.

We all have a story to tell but who is giving witness to it. A witness can help us change our plot, the next event in the storyline. 

I could see them.

I was looking at my Google Analytics for Turning the Page. It’s a kind of measuring tool full of statistics of how many people come to the website and what they are looking at.

This was in real-time. As I was looking at the dashboard they were looking at the website.

I didn’t know who they were or anything about them. Nothing other than that they had come to a particular page. The page was I’ve had Enough, Take my Life God, I Want to die

The route they had taken to get there was most likely one of writing a prayer. The prayer was short. It was ‘God, I want to die .’ A prayer typed into Google.

Turning the Page is ranked on Google on Page One for those terms. 

So here I am, knowing someone is on my website looking for help, in pain, and being anonymous. I am a witness to a struggle by someone somewhere.

I wanted to touch them somehow so they would know they were not alone.

Anonymous means a person unknown.

The person reading the blog post was anonymous, unknown by me, and being un-known in their struggle. 

I could imagine the situation. They were in emotional pain. There was a struggle, and all they wanted was to have the pain end. Perhaps, they hoped, God would take them, and then the pain would end. 

When you’re in a dark hole, the darkness can feel like it’s drowning you. 

You type a few words into Google and hope for help. An algorithm spits out some signposts. 

We don’t want others to know, and so we remain unknown – anonymous -without name.

I witness you

I remember years ago someone writing me letters. Handwritten, they were pages and pages of expression. Much of it was quite eligible and difficult to follow. 

It was something of the story of their life that they wanted me to be a witness to it. Every now and then, I would write back and ask a few questions. 

It was a release for them to get stuff out of their brain and onto some paper. To have someone be a witness. 

They wanted someone to know, to know them, to be known. To not be alone. 

I think something began to open in them.

That their story was real but only part of who they were.

There was more to them than the story they had been telling themselves. In the writing of the story, they were able to let go of some of the pain because the story had now been heard. It had been witnessed.

I see you, and I’m not afraid.

One of the most beautiful qualities of Jesus was that he saw into people’s lives and wasn’t afraid of entering a dark hole. 

Jesus walked with those on the outside. The broken and bruised, the racially and religiously prejudiced. The rejected ones. Those who were considered of no value – the anonymous people.

I believe Jesus would say, ‘I see you, and I’m not afraid.’

The apostle Paul asks a question. 

Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Romans 8:35

Here is another empowering question. 

Is your story, pain, past, and failures going to be too big for Jesus to handle?  

When we anonymize ourselves, choosing to remain unknown, we fear rejection.  That we will be shunned, that something will come between ourselves and others. That the witness will walk away. 

To witness the plot of the story.

As we listen and give witness to a story, we see a plot emerge. How various events have shaped the story. There has been a sequence, and each event has affected the next one.

Dan Allender writes this. 

To understand our story, we need to know our tragedies, and as we learn them, we will catch a glimpse of how we currently manage tension. 

Repetitive patterns have become themes in our lives over time, themes that impose structure on us even when a surface evaluation would tell us that these themes are nothing more than personal preference or desire.

We are not wholly our own, nor are we exclusively the result of what has happened to us.

No wonder reading the plot of our lives is so difficult. Yet i

When hope is deferred, our heart grows sick, but when we see and know the hope fulfilled in the now, we can build resilience to the struggles of the day. 

People traveled long distances hoping to get some of the money ‘falling from the sky.’ 

A few nights ago, I watched a news item about a publicity marketing stunt that made a seemingly genuine promise and failed to deliver.

A company had promised.

‘New Zealand’s first mass cash drop.’

‘We’re dropping $105,891.40 [$74,558.13 USD] in value from the sky’

‘YES. Actual money will be flying …’

Instead, it was fake money and vouchers for discounts at their online store.

There was anger, violence, and a huge disappointment. Hearts full of hope were sickened. 

Our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said

‘I cannot fathom how, at any point, someone would think that was a good idea. Clearly, it was not. It has caused harm, it has caused hurt, and they should apologize.’

You can watch the full news item here.

 

It’s the

snake oil salesman promise

online marketer promising whatever you want will be had with this new …

preacher promising prosperity if you give and pray and read your bible every day 

sparkly lights of a gambling machine

dream of things will be better tomorrow if you…

hope deferred

Yeah she’s a promiseIn the year of election

Oh sisterI can’t let you goLike a preacher stealing heartsAt a traveling showDesire – U2

You reach for the sky to grasp the money, buy the magic lotion,  give the offering, pray louder, longer.

Then, when the promise is not fulfilled, there are the words ‘you don’t have enough faith,’ ‘you have sin in your life,’ or ‘you just need to try harder.’

So you try again and again. 

The heart, that seat of the emotions, becomes cynical, fatigued, and in a word, ‘sick.’

Hope deferred

There is a verse in the Bible that talks about this.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,  but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

I wonder how much of one’s sadness, depression, angst is the sickness of having hope deferred over and over again. A ‘putting off’ of the sense of being fulfilled to another day.

Emotions get built up only to be disappointed yet again. So a happy face is put on, and off we go again.

Slowly and surely, the heart gets fatigued about life. We give up the dreams of a better tomorrow and become highly cynical about anything presented as a ‘tree of life.’  

Protesters march in frustration of broken promises. Protest songs become the mantra of a sickened heart. 

We defer to another time that feeling of a ‘hope fulfilled.’ 

A Desire Fulfilled

A young woman gets married. (desire fulfilled) She has two sons (desire fulfilled). Her husband dies (grief, loss, but she still has sons to care for her)

The two sons get married (desire fulfilled). 

Both sons die (hope takes a huge knock). All that is left is herself and two daughters-in-law. 

One of the daughter’s in-laws leaves—the other stays. 

This is the story of a woman called Naomi. Hopes built up then dashed. 

A loyal commitment is made by one of her daughters-in-law, Ruth, to stay with Naomi and help her. To live in the now of whatever befalls them both. 

“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.” Ruth 1:16, 17

She and Ruth return to Bethlehem, Naomi’s hometown, to begin again. 

So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

“Don’t call me Naomi,[pleasant],” she told them. “Call me Mara,[bitter] because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.  I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” Ruth 1:20,21

Naomi was bitter, angry, and was holding up a protest sign angry at God. Hope was gone; anger was in residence. There was no tree of life be

We can all carry too many worries, anxieties, and cares, but when we learn how to cast, we can find a new sense of wholeness, peace, and shalom.

‘That is a lot you are carrying,’ I said as they paused and took a breath.

So many worries, thoughts, and distractions going around in their head. It was, as someone described it, a monkey mind. Clattering noisy monkeys vying for your attention in the cage of your brain.

I had given them room to voice the noise, and only a little had slipped out.

For many of us, we have become so used to the noise of worry that we think it’s normal.

When someone asks how we are, we would never consider sharing something of the monkey chatter.  It’s just there, in the background, part of the ambient background noise we live in.

But all that noise can wear us down. A kind of fatigue sets in, and worry has its well-worn path to depression.

If you are depressed you are living in the past.If you are anxious you are living in the future.If you are at peace you are living in the present. Lao Tzu

The Wholeness of Shalom

Years ago, I listened to a talk by Tom Sine about Shalom, the Hebrew word for peace.

Shalom is not just an ending of hostilities but more so a coming together to a place of wholeness.

A ‘completeness’ of self where there are no fractures or splinters of distraction.

Shalom refers to a sense of harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare, and tranquility.

Many of us live far away from this place of wholeness. Peace is a lovely idea, but it seems like a distant dream for another time.

We get tastes of shalom every now and then, but they are fleeting, and we are back into the pendulum swing of anxiety and depression.

The fractured life of the anxious

It’s interesting to dig into the meaning of the word anxiety in biblical greek.

The word ‘merimna’ is used.

mérimna – a part, separated from the whole; (figuratively) worry (anxiety), dividing and fracturing a person’s being into parts.

We have the picture of one that has a distracted life—so many parts to them.

The image of one of those entertainers with multiple spinning plates on long poles comes to mind. We are jumping from pole to pole to keep everything moving and not have a plate wobble, tilt, and fall to the floor.

We try and control. We run from this anxious thought to the next.

The call to cast

Recently I was watching a young lady ride a horse. She and the horse were one. There was a wholeness.

Before the ride, she had got her saddle and, with a fluidity of motion, had cast it up and onto the waiting horse. She had done this many times.

She knew the weight of the saddle and the need to have a rhythm to her movement. Being quite short, compared to her horse’s height, it took effort and focus for her to cast her load easily.

In one of the passages in the Bible about anxiety and worry, we find Peter, a close friend of Jesus, calling us to cast.

 Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7

That same word ‘cast’ (epiriptó – greek) is also found in the story of when the followers of Jesus cast their cloaks onto the back of a donkey, so Jesus had a comfortable ride.

They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt, and put Jesus on it. Luke 19:35

The object of one’s care.

What is it like to be cared for? To have someone show genuine unconditional love towards you.

This care might be found in a few simple words such as ‘How are you?’ but genuine care goes deeper into a sense of letting you cast some of the weightiness of your life onto their shoulders for at least a moment.

To be the object of one’s love and care is something nearing wholeness or shalom. It means that you are not alone with your monkey mind.

How remarkable is it that we are the ‘object of one’s care’ when we consider God?

‘For he cares about you’ is not simply a nice warm fuzzy devotional idea. It is an active, passionate fact.

There is a desire in the heart of God for you to come close and to cast the fractured reality of your

When there is an invite to change, there is always that question of ‘Can I walk on water?’. But with repeated experiences, we can learn confidence and literally change the way our brain works.

I wanted to say ‘hi’ and introduce myself to her, but the ‘what if’s’ were started to hold me back inside my boat. What if she rejects me, ignores me, dismisses me?

I stepped out of the boat, walked on water, said ‘Hi’ and we have been married now for 34 years.

Walking on water is a brain change moment.

 

We all a little boat of beliefs about how life runs. We have shaped and sculptured our brain to think a certain way, believe certain things, and act in accordance.

But the boat can become cramped. Like an old jacket that once fitted us well, it now feels constricted and tight.

There is something about change that is difficult. There is a leaving behind what was once helpful and useful for that moment and then trying something new.

I am reminded of the story in the Bible of Abraham leaving his family and friends to go to another land. It wasn’t a farewell and see you next Christmas. It was a departure from known into the complete unknown.

Your Boat Their Water

What is your boat? I’m talking about the beliefs you have held and cherished and kept you supposedly safe.

Here are a few

If I’m in control, everything will be ok

God loves me, but it’s conditional on doing the right thing and following the rules.

My opinion has no worth.

I am unlovable

If it’s going to be then, it’s up to me

One thing I have noticed is that Spirit (Holy) doesn’t believe these things, and because of the nature of love, there is a mission of redemption going on.

It’s like watching a child who early in life decided that walking backward was the best way to get somewhere. But that’s not how it was meant to be.

So a caring parent helps them to learn to walk forwards and then life is so much easier.

Rob Bell writes this.

 

Spirit often exposes the assumptions we’ve been living with that we haven’t been aware of.

 

Spirit is on a mission to draw you to walk forwards.

 

Sometimes we’ve accepted rules and codes and limits without realizing it. And then Spirit blows in and exposes those assumptions, showing us how limited we’ve been, what we haven’t seen. We see what we don’t have to accept, how we can make new rules.

 

Spirit often reveals the ways in which we have ever so subtly submitted to the belief that this is just how it is.

 

Spirit refuses to accept that this is just how it is, because spirit is inherently creative. Rob Bell Everything is spiritual

 

 

But then there is the water. The unknown, the ‘what if’s’, the instability of ‘rocking the boat’, the fear of drowning in whatever is under the surface.

The call to walk on water

The story of Jesus’ friend Peter walking on water is familiar to many of us. It holds so many wonderful images that pull at the imagination.

As soon as the meal was finished, he insisted that the disciples get in the boat and go on ahead to the other side while he dismissed the people. With the crowd dispersed, he climbed the mountain so he could be by himself and pray. He stayed there alone, late into the night.

Meanwhile, the boat was far out to sea when the wind came up against them, and they were battered by the waves. At about four o’clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them walking on the water. They were scared out of their wits. “A ghost!” they said, crying out in terror.

But Jesus was quick to comfort them. “Courage, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.”

Peter, suddenly bold, said, “Master, if it’s really you, call me to come to you on the water.”

He said, “Come ahead.”

Jumping out of the boat, Peter walked on the water to Jesus. But when he looked down at the waves churning beneath his feet, he lost his nerve and started to sink. He cried, “Master, save me!”

Jesus didn’t hesitate. He reached down and grabbed his hand. Then he said, “Faint-heart, what got into you?”

The two of them climbed into the boat, and the wind died d

We all have a secret garden. A place we don’t want others to go near, but with three little words, we can build a bridge and not a wall.

I had been having a conversation with someone, and then suddenly, I felt the protection of a wall.  The conversation changed, there was a ‘downplaying’ of the issue we talked about, and a new topic was introduced.

I could sense a wall protecting something, a tender topic, something they weren’t confident in exploring with me, yet if we were to grow in a relationship, we needed to be willing to build bridges and not walls.

“Let’s build bridges, not walls.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Three simple words build bridges and not walls.  Tell me more.

A Bridge or a Wall 

I remember a man coming to me once for some advice about his teenage daughter. She had become a bit rebellious, and he wanted to straighten her.

I asked him to tell me more. He explained the situation further, and I got to understand the crisis that had happened.

The invite for him was to either make a bridge or build a wall.

His initial response was to come down hard and strong with his rules and opinions. We talked about what would be the most likely outcome of this approach, and he decided that she would most likely build a wall. A structure that would inhibit a deeper relationship and bonding between his daughter.

The other option was to build a bridge. A means by which he could enter her world, get to know what was going on.

Hopefully, through his being a model of good relationship skills, she might want to enter his world and understand his fears, but that is never a promise.

It would take longer, require patience, and learning to be quiet and to listen.

So we talked about some questions that he could gently ask her.

The ‘Tell me more’ invites.

He could not express his opinion (No F.A.S.S. – no fixing, advising, saving, or setting one straight). He was to probe into the problem gently.

Over time and with many conversations, he and his daughter built a stronger relationship. Each of them had different views on all sorts of topics, but there was growing mutual respect.

Secret Garden

One of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs is Secret Garden.

He tells the story of wanting to enter the deepest parts of a woman’s life. It’s a secret garden, a place she hides and doesn’t let anyone in.

She’ll let you in her heart.If you got a hammer and a viseBut into her secret garden, don’t think twice.

She’ll lead you down a path.There’ll be tenderness in the air.She’ll let you come just far enough.So you know she’s really there.

She’ll look at you and smile.And her eyes will sayShe’s got a secret garden.Where everything you wantWhere everything you needWill always stayA million miles away.Bruce Springsteen

We all have secret gardens. Walls are built to keep ourselves safe.

We have been hurt, so self protectively, we build protection around ourselves.

But what walls do is that they hide the best of what the garden has to provide to the world.

The most precious rose is kept locked away, and no one can delight in its beauty and purpose.

I’ve snuck into a few people’s secret gardens. Seen the roses, smelt the fragrance, and helped some walls be taken down and rusty gates swing a little wider so others may be blessed by the beauty within.

Walls are needed

To be honest, some people will not treat the tenderness of your heart with the love and respect it needs and deserves. You’ve been there, done that, got the tee-shirt and the pain.

So you’ve built a wall, but you still want to be known. There is a flower garden in your soul that needs tender care and love.

You don’t want a mechanic, an engineer, or an accountant. You want a gardener to tend the soil, prune the vines and smell the roses.

True gardeners are hard to find.

It’s interesting to note that the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection was Mary, who thought he was the cemetery’s gardener. John 20:15 Perhaps he was. Maybe he was the gardener of dead souls.

Tell me more.

I wan

We often have the same negative thoughts going around and around in our brains, but we can change them when we arise and bind the brain with truth.

I always marvel at those men and women who lift heavyweights. It takes time, effort, and wisdom. Many of them you will see wrap a binding around their wrists or their waist. Boxers wrap their hands.

Perhaps you have seen other athletes wrap some support around their legs.

All to give some extra support to some weaker and perhaps fragile are of the body. Perhaps it has been previously injured and needs some extra support.

The verb bind means to tie, secure,or fasten as with string or rope. 

I don’t want to wake up in the morning.

One of my most-read posts is the post ‘She prayed to God that she wouldn’t wake up in the morning.’ In fact, since writing it in July 2018, it has been read over 1600 times, and over 83% of those reads have come through a google search.

There are many that pray not to wake up in the morning.

Life at times can feel too heavy, too hard, and you want it all to end.

The thought of having to lift that heavyweight of life, yet again the next morning, creates feelings of despair and hopelessness. In that place of emotional pain, it all feels too much.

Your feelings feed your thoughts, and you find yourself in a downward spiral—a vicious spiral sinking you into the mud of hopelessness.

I wonder about the words, phrases, mottos, and sentences of thoughts that are repeatedly said over and over again. Binding them to the brain.

Words have power. Sentences have meaning. Paragraphs shape our beliefs. Life happens one thought at a time by default or design.

Bind them on your heart

In the Jewish faith, the men wear a phylactery called a Tefillin,, a small leather box containing Hebrew texts at morning prayer as a reminder to keep the law.

They, in a very literal sense, are binding scripture to themselves.

Then there are these verses that talk about the binding of scripture.

You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. Deuteronomy 11:18

Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;bind them around your neck;write them on the tablet of your heart. Proverbs 3:3

My son, keep your father’s commandment,and forsake not your mother’s teaching.Bind them on your heart always;tie them around your neck.When you walk, they will lead you;when you lie down, they will watch over you;and when you awake, they will talk with you. Proverbs 6:20-22

This seems to be an active process. Not passive.

I arise, and I bind

Somewhere in the years between 390 and 461 A.D., a man by the name of Patrick writes a prayer. It’s a prayer about focusing your thoughts.

In the oldest translations from ancient Irish, we have the lines ‘I bind myself’ and then with later translations, we have ‘I arise today.’

“I arise today” is generally considered a better translation of the first line than “I bind unto myself today.” according to the hymnology archive. 

I think both versions have merit.

I pray St. Patricks prayer every morning as part of my thinking compass.

I bind unto myself to-dayThe strong name of the Trinity,By invocation of the same.The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever,⁠By power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;His baptism in Jordan river;⁠His death on cross for my salvation;His bursting from the spiced tomb;⁠His riding up the heavenly way;His coming at the day of doom;⁠I bind unto myself to-day.

I bind unto myself the power⁠Of the great love of Cherubim;The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour;⁠The service of the Seraphim,Confessors’ faith. Apostles’ word,⁠The Patriarchs’ prayers, the Prophets’ scrolls,All good deeds done unto the Lord,⁠And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself to-day⁠The virtues of the star-lit heaven.The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,⁠The whiteness of the moon at even,The flashing of the lightning free,⁠T

There was no self-confidence. It was gone like vapour from ash. But something reignited when we looked at the pebbles and not the mountain.

It was like I was looking at an empty shell. They were there in the room with me but there was very little confidence within them to do anything at all.

It had gone. Any self-belief they had seemed to have been sucked right out of them.

How did this happen? Well, they had been hammered on.

What does that mean?

Well, it was like someone had come, with a large hammer and pounded against the very fabric of who they were. The hammer was words.

‘You’re wrong, that’s not right, why are you doing that, your stupid’

It was loud, persistent, and kept on coming much like a dripping tap.

Eventually, that constant dripping wore an indentation out of the soft-hearted place of their soul.

The indentation became a hole. The hole became a chasm. The chasm became a vacuumous empty shell.

Being a shell there was a fragility and the possibility of it being completely crushed.

It was soul abuse.

Sitting in the ashes

I have found that there is much healing and hope to be found in simply being with the other. What this does is that it establishes the person as having significance.

They matter. Not for what they do but for who they are.

When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly,God is the electricity that surges between them. Martin Buber

One of the familiar images we have in the Bible is that of broken people sitting in ashes. Job 2:8; Esther 4:1; Jonah 3:5–7.

We find people, much like ourselves, covering themselves with ashes at times of grief, loss, and brokenness.

What’s leftover is mere ash.

As I write this I am looking at a fireplace. The fire Has long been extinguished and all that is left is the remnants of what was. The heat has gone, the bulk of wood has been consumed, and now only fragments of what was being left behind.

I sit with the ashes of what was and wait to see what comes forth.

Strawberries from ashes 

Last night I had my very first spring strawberries for dessert. I went out into the garden to the strawberry bed, lifted up the bird net, and plucked six ripe large berries.

A few months earlier I had taken ashes from the fire and spread them around the strawberries.

You see there is something quite useful in wood ash. It’s called Potassium (K). In fact, wood ash contains 10% potassium which is very high for any natural substance that is used as a fertilizer.

Ash is also full of trace elements.

Potassium is vitally important for reproduction – flowering, setting seeds, fruiting.

Ash contains the potency of new life.

Please stop talking at me

I’ve sat in the ashes where there is burnout, depression, anxiety, confusion, loss. Confidence gone like a vapoury smoke.

People suggest things to do. They make recommendations, set out plans and prescribe what needs to happen. At times you just want to put them out of the room – your mental health room.

But no one dares to sit in the ashes with them. No one is sharing breathe over the embers hoping something will reignite.

No one is holding them in an embrace of love.

Reigniting the soul

I like to look and listen for the smallest of the small and in the pile of ashes, there is a problem.

How do we reignite the soul?

There is a felt emotion of being crushed under a mountain.

I so want to see the breath come back into the dry bones of this fellow traveler.

This person who can’t get out of bed, brush their teeth, or cook a simple meal.

How do I empower the soul to move?

I look at the pebbles under the mountain.

The pebble

We all have problems. They can feel like mountains.

It’s important to understand that it is a feeling. For one person that mountain will seem inconsequential, a mere speck, but for the one in ashes, it may feel like a  towering dark citadel of doom.

They look at it and they are crushed. Any confidence vanishes.

Feelings only report what is familiar.

But under every mountain is a pebble that can be shifted. It