Empathy: Brokenness Sojourning Near Brokenness.

Over the last number of months God has made me aware of a deep wisdom. He's kindly let me see that when people are their most human they've let their brokenness sojourn empathetically with the brokenness of someone else, staying near physically or emotionally to gently and respectfully comfort, encourage, and heal. They've drawn and stayed alongside of someone else's heartache, sin or shame to lend a compassionate ear or hold out a lifting hand. Such people do so until others heal, strengthen, and get back on their feet.

I like this definition of empathy: the ability to see oneself in another’s place and understand the other’s feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. The operative words for me are imagine and understand and other. Experiencing your own painful brokenness enables you to come near another's wretched messiness because you know what it feels to be lost, alone, overwhelmed and ashamed. I used the word sojourn to capture the idea of staying in place, abiding for the time that is needed. Empathy comes near, even if haltingly at first, but it watches and listens at the level of the heart for find the human connection which acts like a bridge to the other heart. There is freedom in empathy because we lower your well-used defensiveness to help bear the burden of another who bleeds and cries like we do sometimes. We see a person rather than as a stranger or, worse, an enemy.

I know for many of us it feels counter-intuitive to see our brokenness can build a bridge to someone else's. Brokenness is failure and shameful, maddeningly so. Am I not supposed to be cleaned up before I should even try to wipe the blood, sweat, and tears off you? I'm positive I'll be no expert for your pain or fear. Plus my brokenness is dirty and ugly. Being broken is not an asset or a tool. It's to be locked away. I have a persona to protect and a dignity to preserve.

When we are at our least humane (marked or motivated by concern with the alleviation of suffering:) we instinctively distance ourselves from human brokenness: ours and theirs. Leave the mess to someone else better qualified or who has the time. Distancing can also be locating ourselves above the human condition, thinking thoughts like: "well, I'd never do that, or "I'm not like him," or, "Sure, I'm not perfect, but at least I don't [fill in the blank]." Pride hates brokenness so it puffs up and papers over reality from a distance. When we indict the brokenness in other people, we lose humane sight and empathy shrivels. Pride is also a deceiver of the first order, an enemy of the heart, really. Accepted brokenness confounds and deflates pride. That's good.

I think empathy is most humane when it sojourns near brokenness of another because it knows the loneliness of unyielding brokenness which fills a person with shame and fear. Someone who's come to grips with his or her existential brokenness learns to defuse the corrosive heart cancer of shame because brokenness is the human condition. No one escapes it. And such a person sees parasitic fear for what it is, a sleight-of-hand charlatan that requires a willing participant; one who'll agree with only one way of looking at a threat or a problem, and accepting immediately it's going to turn out bad.

But when I let my brokenness come near that of another without judgment or lame platitudes, I offer them the freedom to drop their guard and accept help. And if I stick around beyond the initial helping something miraculous takes place: the person I help loosens a grip on self-sufficiency, opens to grace, and learns the freedom of being given what they need with no strings attached. Both the giver and the receiver display a kind of nakedness here. No pretense or illusion of self-sufficiency pervades this transaction. I'm coming near you as I am, or you're coming near me as you are; no one is superior. No one has it together; there is just connecting in the place of brokenness and need. This time it's your turn to receive.

The real deal is to stick with it when brokenness is not healed, or relieved in a reasonable amount of time in the other. I've had varying degrees of success with this. The good news is I've been made aware of my limits when it comes to sojourning with someone else's brokenness. There are limits, although I think most of us abandon the helping well before we have nothing left to give. In my work I've had a few folks with whom I could see no way to go any further with them. I had nothing left to give including my frayed brokenness. I was empty and rattled. Sojourning would have left me seriously wounded and in danger of deepening my brokenness too far. So I see a boundary. Each time was painful and they've been a small percentage of all the folks I've sojourned with. I wish the percentage was zero. Not in this world.

If you're reading this I'd like you to do some soul-searching and see where your limits of empathy are. Look to see if you have short limits and why. Ask God to show you.When he does, ask him to help you extend the boundaries so the wisdom and grace you've learned from your brokenness can sojourn with others more deeply when the Spirit picks you to get involved. Also, where do you refuse to let folks see your brokenness so they have little awareness of your need for them to come in close. where do you live in the illusion of self-sufficiency? Where is pride your guide in this illusion? 

A sober understanding of our brokenness is a reality to be explored and gift softening the human heart and creating the possibility of empathy in us. people who learn to let their brokenness sojourn with the brokenness of others discover an uncommon freedom.

The Kingdom Does Work If It's Actually Tried.

For the last year, Tricia and I have had the blessing and privilege as counselors to walk alongside of a couple who worked through a very sad and painful situation many Christian couples have encountered. They had to trudge through considerable pain and anguish as they headed toward healing together. These folks have been dedicated to the cause Christ for decades, and the fruit they've produced shows the love they had for people. Yet one of them stumbled and very hard work had to be done. They never gave up.

Last night, Jim LaMontagne, Tricia and I got to be part of a celebration of restoration and healing for them in the community they serve. Grace abounded. Mature men and women gathered in solidarity and gratitude for all that Christ had done in their midst to overcome the satanic schemes aimed at this couple and the community. As we worshiped, gave testimony, cried and laughed together, heard a word from God, and gathered around our friends to pray for them, I was struck once again that when we as followers of Jesus actually live the way of the Kingdom with one another, healing, reconciliation and restoration is the outcome.

Putting in the hard work of forgiving and rebuilding relationships is daunting. Doing so means confronting aching fear, and working through deep hurt or betrayal. Trust has to be found and rebuilt. People have to feel safe that when the unthinkable happens and whole communities are effected, the necessary due diligence has been put forth for them to lower their guard. It's all a matter of integrity, faith and spiritual maturity.

These folks did it. It took a year, but they did it.

A sadder reality is, if we don't live the Kingdom way with one another, we easily apply the "one-strike-you're out" rule, especially with our leaders, but not exclusively so. It was in the church I first heard the phrase "we shoot our wounded." In my 25 years as a Christian counselor, I've seen the vile devastation wrought by utter meanness from one Christian toward another, usually with a head held high. Churches are filled with walking wounded. As my friend and imagine cohort Jim likes to say: "we become self-appointed fruit inspectors," always measuring our brethren by standards we can't or don't live ourselves. In those instances, we ignore the rule and way of the Kingdom by pursuing our own selfish inclinations. Friendships, marriages, families, and churches split over such selfishness.

But, last year and last night showed me how Christians should work through the unthinkable with one another. It wasn't perfect or pretty, but it was right.

Here's what I've learned about how the Kingdom actually works in such tough situations when folks actually step up and try hard:

You head full into the pain together.You make sure you have a firm grasp of the facts, not hearsay or self-righteous gossip. That takes time; the dust needs to settle for truth to appear. Ask lot's of questions. Keep your wits about you. Work to share honestly from the heart. Listen hard for the heart of the other, especially the one who has stumbled and is being mangled by shame, guilt, fear, regret, and even self-hatred. Listen well also to everyone drawn in and wounded by what happened. Pray for wisdom and choose to love all the time. Don't jump to conclusions. Persist toward healing and reconciling if the people involved open. Be patient because there will be frightfully high emotions, confusion, anger, and doubt peppered throughout the task. Look to make peace. If and when the matter is resolved, celebrate joyously, and refuse to let the adversary open up old wounds or resentments. It is finished. Keep it that way. You may also have to mourn the loss of brethren who refuse to walk in the Kingdom way because of what happened, even if it didn't happen directly to them. Human sin costs.

The Kingdom principles of grace, healing, reconciliation and restoration are not practiced enough. They are talked about, but when a bomb gets dropped in the middle of things, or people have to wade waist deep through a persisting and painful mess, many abandon the very hard task of living through them, and not giving up when the way is rough. Wisdom, graciousness, and courage disappear. We lose much when we allow that to happen. Moving on without making the effort God requires of us is actually falling backwards.into darkness. It's never worth it.

I've not always lived the Kingdom way in my relationships. In fact, I've failed more than once.Not proud of it. My spiritual immaturity has been a thief and a liar. I'm still growing in this regard. But I'll say with assurance, with grace and good-natured courage, and the Holy Spirit's patient reminding, I'll keep making progress. Last night reaffirmed for me the Kingdom way is the only way that brings real life and hope.

10 Decisions You Need to Make Before Entering Counseling.

Many years ago as Tricia and I began our counseling through Klesis Ministries (a ministry we founded in 1990),  we recognized that unless people "owned" getting better from their side of the table, they would only engage so far in healing. It didn't make any difference how hard we worked or how skillful we were, if they held back we all went in circles.

Below are 10 decisions we ask people to wrestle with before we begin the counseling process. If they take it seriously, these decisions put them on sound footing to get well, at least in terms of their commitment.

1. THE DECISION TO BE WELL: While Christian counseling and healing ultimately depends the movement of the Holy Spirit, it is also true that you have a crucial part to play in the process. You must commit to doing what it takes to heal and get well. Even if if you have little idea what they might look like or entail in the process, you must choose this perspective. It opens you to trusting God. If your will is not decidedly in the effort, no matter how skilled or diligent the counselor, you will only go as far as you decide. 

2. THE DECISION TO FACE PAIN: In the course of getting well you have to decide that you will face the pain necessary to heal. If you want to avoid the pain, you will only waste your time and that of the counselor. There will be struggles to face in the forms of grief, anger, guilt and shame, but you will not face them alone . Jesus will walk with you as will we. Exposing the pain begins the healing process. Walking through suffering with Christ leads to the treasures of faith, hope and maturity. (Romans 5:1-5; James 1:2-4; 1 Peter 1:6-7)

3. THE DECISION TO FACE A FEAR: Along with facing pain, you will also have to face what you are afraid of. It could be hidden sin that makes you ashamed. It could be the fear of going through trauma again. Maybe you are afraid of being abandoned and rejected. It could be the fear of facing the responsibility of being well. Whatever the source of the fear, it has to be faced so that it is not the LORD of your life, but Jesus is. Fear cripples; facing it in Christ's presence leads to freedom. (Psalm 27:1, 56:3; Isaiah 41:10; Mark 5:36; John 14:27; Hebrews 13:6; 1 John 4:18) 

4. THE DECISION TO GIVE TIME: Emotional or spiritual healing for most does not happen overnight. There are no quick fixes or magic bullets. You must have patience and perseverance to allow the Holy Spirit time to heal you as He chooses. He will not force progress faster than you are willing to embrace. Settle in your heart the commitment to take whatever time is necessary to let the LORD free you from what binds and afflicts . (Psalm 40:1-4) 

5. THE DECISION TO WORK: Counseling and healing are hard work. You must decide to work at the process of getting well, otherwise you will depend on others to do it for you. That means doing homework assigned to you or any other task the counselor gives to help you heal or change. Passivity hamstrings the process. Lip service nullifies authentic effort. No one is going to fix your life for you. You must choose to make the effort to do what the LORD asks of you to heal. (Philippians 2:12-13) 

6. THE DECISION NOT TO BLAME OTHERS: It is a chronic sin of men and women to blame others for their problems, and failures. But to do so is often to hide behind a smokescreen and not take responsibility for one's growth and maturity. Exposing sin, your own and that of others against you, is a decision to live in the truth. Refusing to make other people responsible for the choices we make honors God's call on us to " live as children of light." (Ephesians 5:8) 

7. THE DECISION TO TRUST: Underlying the decision to get well is the decision to trust God as you work through your problems. This Psalmist tells us that the "LORD's unfailing love surrounds the man or woman who trusts in him," (Psalm 32:10) and Isaiah tells us that "the one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame." (Isaiah 28:16) dealing with deep-seated addictions, traumas and pain requires that your trust in God be grounded in the belief that He passionately loves you, and will see you through the struggles to be healed. In turn, you also have to trust that we your counselors have your best interests in Christ. 

8. THE DECISION TO EMBRACE THE TRUTH: Implied in all of this is the decision to live in the truth at all costs. Through the healing process, Jesus tells us that knowing the truth will set us free. (John 8:32) The LORD " delights in men who are truthful," (Proverbs 12:22) and He " desires truth in the inner parts." (Psalm 51:6) The decision to get well is the choice to know the truth about God, about yourself, and about others. You must decide to let the Holy Spirit lead you into the truth so that lies, illusions, fantasies, and deceits can be brought to light, and their influence neutralized. 

9. THE DECISION TO FORGIVE: In order to be healed and live the kind of life God has for you, He wants you to decide to forgive those who have hurt, abused, betrayed, abandoned, offended and violated you. Obviously, this can only be done by His grace, but you must choose to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in forgiving. It is essential to your getting better. Even if you can only pray for the willingness to forgive, you have to decide to move in that direction (Matthew 6:14, 18:21; Colossians 3:13; Ephesians 4:32) To forgive is to free yourself from the effects of the sin against you, and to not condemn the persons who harmed you. 

10. THE DECISION TO LIVE A NEW LIFE: It takes courage to live without old hurts and fears to hide behind. You need to decide to discover what it means to live as one of God's treasured Beloved despite your brokenness.

In Defense of Inner Healing.

There comes a time in a man's life when you just have to say something; you can't let this one go by. To do so would be a missed opportunity at, best, and cowardice at the worst.

This, for me, is one of them.

Almost 2 weeks ago I was at a "school" of sorts held over a long weekend in southern Connecticut. I'd been invited by a friend to be a part of the worship. I was glad to do it . . . always a chance to play the instrument God fashioned me for.

During the course of the extended teaching, the speaker (who has a growing influence), at least 5-6 times denigrated and mocked a mode of healing Tricia and I've been closely associated with for 25 years. Some history:

In my 30's, through a series of God-orchestrated "circumstances," I spent a year going through inner healing with a very brilliant and spiritually gifted Episcopal priest. I went weekly for the duration. God let me know in no uncertain terms, I was going under the "spiritual" knife over issues which dogged me since my teens. Prior, I doubt I'd heard of inner healing. If I did, it registered little meaning with me.

My year of emotional, psychological and relational healing set me free to such a degree if I'd not gone through it, I'd have never been a counselor, or spiritual director. I wouldn't have led retreats or been sitting at my desk writing this blog about my thoughts and experiences planting imagine/Northampton. Ministry, at all, would have been a distant and far off land traversed by others.

The healing I received through the Holy Spirit from stifling memories and quietly suppurating heart wounds liberated me in a manner nothing else had. It was a redemptive, internal unbinding which opened authentic emotional manhood to me. Prior, I was a boy inside, a 35 year-old boy. He died when I could finally forgive my father for what his brokenness did to me. My anger was cut from its blood supply and I unlocked. I healed.

In fact, I so unlocked that God soon sent folks to me for inner healing. I was so enthusiastic about my experience of the process that I studied with this priest after our work together, and did extensive reading. Studying with him felt akin to being in graduate school, so extensive was his mastery of theology, biblical and cultural anthropology, psychology, and Christian spirituality, especially related to healing. I was able to trust the Holy Spirit, access my own healing and what I'd learned to help people overcome sometimes devastating wounds.

For the last 25 years to the present I can testify God works through deep healing in ways only he can.
I'm not sure what experience the speaker had to so categorically mock the inner healing ministry, but he must have seen abuses or gross ineptitude. From my experience and watching Jesus use Tricia brilliantly to heal deeply scores of women crushed by the sin of others committed against them, I'm bewildered by his position. Frankly, this teacher is completely in error with his blanket denunciation.

So in defense, I need to lay out a few key inner healing principles:

1. Healing, in general, has always been a critical component of the Gospel message: healing of the catastrophic separation from God because of sin, healing of relationships, healing of the body, and healing of the heart and mind, of nations: (Ps. 103:1-4; Mt. 10:8; Lk. 9:6; Mt. 14;14; Mt. 24:14; 1Cor. 12:9; Rev. 22:2) A key reality of the Kingdom of God is access to healing. Jesus demonstrated it in the Gospels as a means of establishing his identity as God's Anointed One ushering in a new way of life; the way of the Kingdom of God included healing.

2. Inner healing applies the Gospel to the experience of, and how a person thinks about or responds to his or her most emotionally crippling experiences in life. Biblical truths about forgiveness, salvation, redemption from sin, and the radical love of God illuminate a person's perception of his or her intrinsic worth. Wounding experiences always threaten to steal the truth of how God values each one of us. What happened in the past obstructs our ability to apprehend the beauty God sees in us. As that occurs, we disengage emotionally from the wonder of God's gracious gift, and settle into living an emotional half-life preserved by a noxious tangle of lies. Worse, we disappear and pose or find an acceptable persona behind which to hide. The authentic self is suppressed and held at bay for to avoid true intimacy and vulnerability at all costs.

Here's what inner healing accomplishes:

Isaiah 53:4 asserts Christ bore our griefs and carried our sorrows on the cross. He took them completely and opened the possibility of healing from their deleterious effects in our hearts so we might be freed from re-living horrors for a lifetime. Miracles occur through inner healing because what he bore on the cross and accomplished through the resurrection; miracles which overturn the emotional lordship of abuse, neglect and violation.

Psalm 247:3 states simply that God "heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds," because of human cruelty, indifference, lust, oppression, and deceit. It's not hard to break a heart or crush a human spirit, especially in the tender and trusting years of life. A broken heart dims the light of life in a person, muting their unique voice, and subverting their power to truly live. Through inner healing the Holy Spirit neutralizes the domination of evil and restores a person's ability to pursue living life to the full, a gift Jesus said he came to give (John 10:10).

In Luke 4:18, Jesus quotes Isaiah, declaring in the synagogue, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." People who need inner healing are held captive to what others have done to them, or to the sin for which they are most deeply ashamed. Inner healing through the Spirit gradually unbinds people to live at liberty from the wounds they suffered or oppression they lived under. They don't pretend it "never happened," rather Jesus confronts and removes the fear, shame, unforgiveness, anger and condemnation infecting and ruling their hearts. His love helps them internalize God's favor.

One of the most powerful passages undergirding the efficacy and practice of true inner healing is 2Corinthians 10:4-5, "For the weapons we fight with are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ." What it says regarding the inner healing process, although admittedly in the context of Paul's letter he's not addressing the process of inner healing per se, is that even lies which grow from being hurt, defiled or abuse by others must submit to the lordship of Christ through inner healing. There, he asserts authority over the distorted, anguished thinking of people who've had their sense of self radically altered by sinful acts and the lies attached to them. When terrible memories are healed internally it's because Jesus makes them submit to him and replaces what occurred with love and utter acceptance for the wounded one. Emotional a re exposed and strongholds are destroyed.

Romans 5:1 "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Not only is the person made spiritually whole from the substitutionary atonement of Christ on their behalf so that positionally they're at peace with God by faith, but they experience peace from tormenting memories of terrible things. Inner healing leads to peace because the destructive power of what people did to (or withheld from) them loses its force through Jesus taking authority over it. Subsequently, peace with the past settles in over time.The peace given through justification sinks more deeply into the heart of the wounded because it can be more clearly seen. Guilt, shame, and fear can't stifles its presence.

Paul speaks of an existential/spiritual transformation in 2Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new." The healing is so existentially profound and complete that a new way of being is created by regeneration. Inner healing revives the grasp and deepens the reality of being a new creation to the person devastated by abuse, neglect and hatred. This transformation from old to new to which Paul refers occurs instantaneously at the point of new birth. However, sanctification is the process by which we grow into our new creation relationship with God and others; we learn to live love and service as our primary way of being. Inner healing becomes necessary when people are emotionally, physically or spiritually traumatized and can't embrace fully this new creation way of living. They need to be freed and settled into the new way.

Ephesians 3:17-9, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God." At the heart, inner healing slowly opens people to being firmly established in the passionate, affectionate love of Abba Father. Being filled with the fullness of God is his longing for his Beloved that we might be unleashed to receive and share such love from what we've experienced in him. Inner healing lowers a person's guard so he or she better receives love and gives it with growing generosity and abandon. A guarded heart is a heart rooted in the shallows of God's healing love. Healing helps people be less defensed and protected; less hidden and opaque. They become conduits for unconditional love in ways never imagined because that same love freed them to healthy vulnerability.

Inner healing exposes and defuses the toxic, cancerous fear that overtakes the heart of someone who's been terrorized and dehumanized by human evil. 2Timothy 1:7 proclaims, "For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and love, and of a sound mind." God himself has graced us with an ability to think soundly (from a firm grasp of the truth), love well and live in the vivifying, fructifying power of the Spirit. Inner healing attacks and exposes the sources of malignant, abiding fear. Fear is a cruel taskmaster keeping people enslaved and irrationally confined to what appears safe, but actually just imprisons them in an illusion of self-guarded safety. Inner healing opens people to the unparalleled power of Christ over life and life's enemies. It also opens people to the power God has placed in them to live their lives in freedom and life-giving enterprises. Crippling fear teaches people to stay away from life; inner healing unchains and beckons them to an authentic present and promising future. Fear is gradually silenced by the gentle, peaceful, but authoritative voice of the Spirit in the jangling memories of pain and terror.

3. Inner healing takes advantage, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, of the incredible power of imagination. It's that creative faculty of the mind which makes mental images, creatively formulates or signifies the minds conversation. Ideas, concepts, experiences, mental constructs and thoughts of all kinds can be pictured through the imagination in some form. It is the imagination that the Spirit employs to vividly depict memories, painful or otherwise, and then provide a way the mind can bring Jesus into the middle of the painful remembrances such that people "see" his Lordship over the offenders, and offenses against the person. Being able to put ones self back into the horror and "see' Jesus in the midst of it powerfully makes real the healing of the ordeal which has paralyzed the person sometimes for decades. Not only that, but healing actually occurs. The terrible sting and binding power of what happened is neutralized, and the person gradually emerges authentically from it's taint. 

Tricia and I've witnessed this hundreds of times as counselors, and we've kept a pile of cards and letters from over the years testifying to the lasting effect of God's work in the deep heart. Inner healing is a powerful means by which God frees the captive. While there are all sorts of counterfeits and inanities practiced in the name of inner healing, to be sure, the inner healing we've experienced, were taught, and practiced is at the heart of the applied Gospel of Jesus Christ

We also know many gifted and spiritually mature Christians around the country who are serving the Kingdom of God beautifully by helping heal crushed hearts through inner healing. They are hard-working bringers of the Good News and bearers of hope to the voiceless, feeble, maimed, and broken in our midst.

The teacher I heard recently denigrate this ministry of healing just doesn't realize how sadly far off the mark he is, and what a disservice he does to the Body of Christ.

May Jesus open his eyes.