The Beatles Revisited:  I Want to Hold Your Hand

     Sometimes if we are awake enough,  profound lessons can be found in the simplest of acts.  One night several of the grandchildren were spending the night in the camper out back with Granddaddy (otherwise known as Gary).  But one of the little guys, Isaiah (over 6 feet tall now!), had a stomach ache and he wanted to sleep with me in the house.  He tossed and turned and I consoled till the wee hours of the morning.  I had drifted off for a little while, when about 3 a.m. I felt this small poke and heard this sweet little voice say, "GoGo, can we hold hands?"  I took his hand in mine, but he adjust his hand until we had interlocked hands finger by finger.
      Those were simple words, yet an invitation to a king's banquet would not have birthed so much delight.  The invitation that spoke without speaking.  It's dark. I'm alone.  I hurt.  So would you join me?  I need you.  Let's touch, because if your big hand will take hold of my little hand, then we'll lay here together.....connected....and that will make me feel better."
     I couldn't help but wonder, is God moved to that extent and that deeply when we say, "God, can we hold hands?  It's dark and I'm alone, scared, hurting, or whatever, and i need you."  Does he thrill at the sound of his children's voices call on Him to meet their needs?  Is He as honored as I was to take that little hand?  Even though I was the one comforting, I felt such comfort.
      I call my writings "musings' because I muse a lot.  Often when I am carrying in all thee bags of groceries, I marvel at my hands and particularly think of the usefulness of fingers.  My hands are very small and my fingers relatively short, yet I can carry about 6 of those plastic bags stuffed full.  What strength is in a hand?
     But there's so much strength in the hand besides the physical.  Someone taking your hand in the right time and place can impart romantic fireworks, comfort for the brokenhearted, encouragement for the weary, and bring peace and solace to a fragmented soul.  God again, shows Himself brilliant, as our Creator  He even made those fingernails which women use as artist's palettes.  Of course, hands have not escaped the notice of songwriters.  I certainly remember bouncing around the house as a teenager to "I wanna hold your hand."  And around that same era came, "Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water.  Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea."
      In that most sacred event of marriage, the minister finally asks the couple to "join hands" and later the ever symbolic completed circle is placed on the finger of the hand.  Often we are asked to "lend a hand" or someone will say, "could you give me a hand?"  Jesus often "lent a hand."  Many times the touch of His hand carried healing such as with the blind man.  God's hands are mentioned a great number of times in scripture, especially His right hand.  Probably my favorite reference to His hands is the thought of being clay in the Potter's hands.  And then there's the scene where Peter walks on water and begins to sink  He cries out, "Lord, save me!"  Scripture says, "and immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him." Oh, the times He does that for us and we don't even know it.  But thankfully there are times we do recognize that it is His hand who is holding ours.
   
   
   
   

Love As a Shock-Absorber

Here it is: confession time. I have found myself to be way too much a perfectionist to be a real blogger. I have to write, research, edit, etc which is quite time consuming so.....I am going to try something new....just the tidbits of my musings. So how about, I just try some ramblings. The idea I have been chewing on for 3 or 4 days is that love serves as a shock absorber in all relationships, but particularly I am thinking about marriage. When the fantasy wears off, there will absolutely be a period of disillusionment. I like to call this the "slippery slope" of disillusionment. Truth is, if you don't intercept it and begin to embrace reality, your relationship will end.

One day I was driving down the road recently, having a debate in my head about evolution. I had just had a session teaching a client about some of the intricacies of the brain. The brain always proves to me there was an intelligent designer. But on that day, I began thinking about man with emotions. A wide array of feelings I might add. I even saw a documentary on wolves where the alpha wolf came to a precipice every day for weeks howling after his "wife" had died.

Maybe a rock after millions of years could possibly turn into a toad (still impossible! how did the inanimate object start to breathe and have a beating heart? give me a break!). But if the rock that turned into the toad really happened, not only did it breathe and have a pulse, it also had feelings? It began to love and be disappointed, etc?

Okay, the emotion of love, which no scientists can seem to quantify in the lab, is an amazing phenomenon. The emotion of love is so strong that Jesus went to the cross because of it. For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son.

When love is present in a relationship, the basic irritations are just that: irritating, frustrating, but they are absorbed in the big picture of "BUT I love you/him/her." Love absorbs it. This is the 1st Corinthians passage. Love keeps no count of wrong.

There are some things that can stop love in it's tracks however. One is a critical judgmental

filter. That would be a negative filter to clarify. One that blames and finds fault. Another thing is an oversensitive spirit. This one is easily hurt, feels abandoned, rejected, overlooked, left out, etc. and I can guarantee this one is linked to the script of the past. Unforgiveness can be a block to love. It can harbor and harbor till the infection in the wound turns to gangrene. Nasty stuff.

If you need more love, go to the eternal well. God is love. A fruit of the spirit is love. Love is there for the asking if you need more. As long as you can pick fruit, it is on the tree. Why pick just a little? Get a whole basket full. If you are living with another human, you will need it. Love is a shock absorber! to be continued.....

Women Who Are Afraid to Love Enough

or....Women Who Struggle with Fears of Intimacy and the Lengths They Will Go To Avoid It

I have long considered the other side of the coin to Robin Norwood's book, Women Who Love Too Much. Her book addressed the dynamics of strong women attracting weak men. These women basically were addicted to a man's "potential." The faulty thought pattern went something like this: "If he just had a good woman by his side, he could get a better job, quit drinking, be a better father to his children. As the worm turns, the scenarios in the book never had this potential realized, so the female loved too much and the male didn't love enough.

Throughout the years, I've seen another recurring pattern that has a very different look and a very different thinking pattern. These are women with a vision for a traditional marriage but once in the marriage, they maneuver endlessly around the edges of intimacy. Often they struggle with their strong desires and natural passions before they say, "I do.' But once the "I do's" are done, their fears of intimacy surface big time, as unpredictably as a thief in the night.

Before marriage these fears are camouflaged because she is outside the circle of intimacy. There is an invisible internal map embedded on a chip in our hard drive coded with our ability to do closeness and distance. It is not until we are actually faced with this inner circle that the codes will show up. Yes, it will show up in a big way in marriage with avoidance of sex, a tangible flag flying that no one can miss, but that is just one symptom. She will always have a reason, endless rationalizations, and a parade of problems to be solved before she can be intimate. She must always keep something in the middle of the relationship and then "one day' when she has enough time, rest, passion, etc. she will grant this man entry into her vulnerable world. In face she does an amazingly intricate dance of avoidance in her life, hoping people will love her enough to join her in the denial and cover-ups, and when they won't, she will experience it as a betrayal.

this is one of the most difficult strongholds to break through. I believe it is constructed in the mind with the same building blocks as anorexic thinking patterns. Anyone coming to tear down this wall will be experienced as a threat, someone who just doesn't understand. I am not going into the deep dynamics here of the theories of attachment that explain the hardwiring, but suffice it to say that the fears run deep, covered with a thousand strategies to control. The outward cover is one of compliance but the internal driver is one of defiance, giving a "come here, go away" message that is crazy making.

Francis Frangipane (The Three Battlegrounds) defined a stronghold as a "house of thought." I believe he also said, a stronghold is something that has a strong hold on us. the woman who is ultimately afraid to love enough is imprisoned in her house of thought. The door knob is only on her side of the door. She alone must open the door. She has likely convinced herself that she doesn't really love her husband, she married too young or for the wrong reasons. So she is left with the belief, "of course, I could love. It's just that John or Harry or whomever is so this or that. Her fears construct an intricate system of denial and hold her husband hostage.

This subject will be continued over time, but suffice it to say, it takes a lot of courage to start to face the fear, but everything begins with the statement, "I have a problem". That statement alone begins to put up the white flag of surrender.......and an invitation to God to come in with answers.

Judgments: If I had a hammer

I can simply state that all our thoughts and actions either move us toward another or away from another. Because of hurt and fear, we develop a host of savvy ways to protect our hearts and consequently one of the tools in our coping kit may be a "judging mind". The beauty and the beast of the judging mind is that it creates distance. It separates. It divides.

Judgments are placed from a one-up position. Becoming a judgmental adult often stems from the coping style of a dysfunctional family. A trademark of the dysfunctional family is the use of evaluative language. Loss and the grieving of that loss is always at the center of the dysfunctional family. And those living if grief are susceptible to depressive filters, filters that are negative and critical.

A title of a book years ago, was Hurt People Hurt People. I am not speaking here of a clear cut moral judgment, for there is good and evil on the earth. I am talking here about the thousand little negative critical opinions we can generate in our own need to feel in control. It is so easy to create a courtroom scene: the one on trial, the judge, the jury, the evidence. So beware of the thousands of possible adjectives that can describe someone in your head or out of your mouth.

Once these adjectives are spoken and ingrained as part of the story you tell in your head, they will become true to you. How convenient to build a box for someone and slap a label on it.

This is most deadly when it is your mate. There you can keep them locked in the box till death you part and give yourself justification for your coldness and distance. You can for justified for your "withholds". This is a great methodology for covering up fear of intimacy. Some people build boxes for everyone around them. They are the constant victim. Again, how convenient! You can stay safe and protected that way.

Years ago, my mentor in Florida, Dr. Stan Tsigounis, insisted in supervision that we speak something that was "right and good" before we offered one complaint. It is an incredible exercise to groom our eyes for what is right and good.

LESSONS YOUR MARRIAGE CAN LEARN FROM THE TITANIC

The world has been fascinated with the Titanic long before the recent movie made its debut. In fact, Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember, has undergone 65 reprints. Several weeks ago we heard Jack Deere deliver a cutting-edge message at our church on the Titanic as a prophetic symbol for the church. You may easily extrapolate the basic message just upon hearing the subject matter.

However, since much of my life is given to another great institution called marriage, I could not but muse and mull for quite a while on the similarities between the gigantic ocean liner and many of the marriages I have encountered. One such tragedy is indelibly imprinted on my life, or I grew to personally care a great deal for this couple. In fact, they lived in a home and in the midst of a lifestyle that would be quite representative of a luxury liner. They had been married for nearly 35 years. For their entire married life this couple and their children, while they lived at home, were found on the church pew each Sunday morning. He, a leader in the church as well as in the business community, was a favored Sunday School teacher. She was a fervent student of the Bible and could sharpen her Biblical sword with the best of them.

She had another kind of sword in her arsenal as well. It was her tongue. This tongue could be sweet as honey, quite full of wit, yet could whip out some of the most cutting, biting remarks I've ever heard. And the main one on the receiving end of this sharp sword was her husband. Her critical eye rarely missed a thing about him--his tie, his shoes, his car, how he spent his time, how he did his work, how he sat, where he sat, and the list seemed to be endless. I guess he felt that way. After a multitude of warnings, begging, counseling with professionals and the pastor, suddenly the ship sunk. She arrived after a Bible study one morning, and there on the dressing table in the bedroom lay a piece of paper: "I love you and always have, but I can't live like this any longer. You can have everything. All I want is peace." And as she looked around, everything of his was gone as if he had never existed. Her world crumbled. Suddenly everything was clear, but it was too late. No chance for further discussion. No chance to renegotiate. No time for I'm sorry.

At 11:00 p.m. when Jack Phillips received the seventh warning from the Californian stating, "Say, old man, we are stopped dead in a field of ice," he radioed back, "Shut up, shut up," and went back to communicating frivolous messages from passengers to their friends and relatives on shore. Phillips had sent the first five messages regarding "a field of ice" ahead to higher ranking officers, but they were totally ignored, so he ignored the sixth and final warning. After all, "the ship was unsinkable."

What made the four-block-long ship unsinkable? The main argument made for this seemed to be its sixteen compartments which could be shut off individually. The ship could sustain water in the first four compartments and still stay afloat. No one could imagine an object large enough to hit all four. The iceberg, however, towered 100 feet above the water and 800 feet below. It managed to cut a gash in the first six compartments. I believe couples are deceived the same way. After all, there are many compartments that would seemingly sustain the "marriage ship"--the vows taken in the presence of witnesses and God, the children, friends and family, joint finances, church relationships, memories of Christmas, vacations, on and on.

Believe me, I have seen marriages be able to take some really hard hits--infidelity, abuse, and the list goes on--and still stay afloat. But I've seen that no marriage is unsinkable and that a relationship can only sustain so much damage. One should not be so naive as to think that just because it survived a really bad swounding, it will keep on surviving more and more damage. Not all marriages end in overt divorce, you will notice. Some die a quiet, unnoticeable death.

One could say that pride sunk the Titanic. Everything seems to lead back to that culprit. Even the fact that there were no binoculars aboard seems to be traceable to pride. Who could imagine that on this oceanliner, Frederick Fleet, the lookout perched in the Crow's Nest, had made a request for a pair of binoculars! Someone felt so cushy and secure that this provision which would appear to be a necessity was, in fact, not provided. In my musing on this subject, I keep hearing, "You have eyes to see, but you do not see. You have ears to hear, yet you do not hear." How many wives and husbands have, in fact, tried over and over to explain a particular area of dissatisfaction, only to have a gesture of change made, a mere tap of the little finger on the table of life.

I so believe that marriage is a garden to be tended, especially in our day and time. Maybe Albert and Etherl who lived out on the farm and were concerned about getting the crops planted and having shoes for the kids weren't facing the troubled waters marriages face today. There was a day and time where Etherl probably wasn't going anywhere even if Albert never said, "I love you," or even kissed her goodnight. That era is bygone. Proactivity is the only course open to those who want to strengthen and thrive. Binoculars. Wow! Do you have some? A man told me last week that he should have gone to a marriage seminar every six months, should have read some of those books that his wife kept bringing home, should have gone tot he classes offered at the church on relationships . . . but . . . well, you know the PRIDE word. The sixth compartment may have been hit. Time will tell if it's too late.

And then the end of the story--the lack of adequate lifeboats, only enough for 1,178, only half enough. In the fury, only 28 were in the first boat that held 68 passengers. Only 12 in another one. What a disaster! Unlike the Titanic, the children are the ones left on the sinking ship of divorce. Sometimes a wife or husband. . . while one is so selfish that he or she jumps into the lifeboat and leaves the others on the ship. But in my experience, the children are always left on the ship. They are, without fail, the victims.

Urgency. Vision. Humility. An equipped lookout. Eyes to see. Ears to hear. Diligence. All around us the messages are coming, "Say, old man, we are stopped dead in a field of ice." Are you apathetically throwing the messages away? I hope not.