- It is not fair, it is not reasonable, it is not right. Where does all this come from? These are the fruits of sickness and dysfunction. These are the fruits of abuse and poverty.
- The question becomes … What do I do with what I have experienced? What do I do with what I am experiencing?
- How do I come to understand the affects of all of this upon myself? How can I reshape how I feel and respond to these events and their affects?
- How do I learn (and relearn) to manage myself?
- A man once said to me that “I have a lot to learn about people”. I have learned that while this is true I also have a lot to learn about myself.
- I started with the question: how could I ever have known? Who was around to teach me? Who was committed to try to teach me?
- A problem that I have encountered in the church is that some people in it presume to know the answers to these questions. It is my experience that this is a lifelong journey of discovery and I am responsible to do most of this work.
- I think the question now becomes “who will walk with me in this journey of discovery and restoration.
- What will I do with this strength. How will I invest myself?,
- Isn’t all this interesting? Lots of good questions … Who will do the work? Why does this work matter? What will grow out of this work? What will fail to grow if I do not do this work?
- Many of us have direct and indirect knowledge of the terrible cost of a failure to do this work.
- Who will I trust to walk with me? Who will say that I have proven myself to be worthy of your trust?….
Many a time we work so hard to cast out the hell from “in there” to “out there” only to realize that the very hell we try to cast out is only given life, energy and fueled by our demand to um-pluck it out of the depth….You are more than a paragraph, you are the book.
Musings of a Friend
