How to make bad things worse

"I see you're looking better than you were a couple of days ago. I wanted to stop by and tell you."

You should have stopped there.

I should have let you stop there. I was vulnerable and needed to talk to someone I trusted, not this perfect stranger to me. In the whole time I've known you, we've only had one conversation - a year ago.

"Thanks. I was struggling earlier this week, things have really been stressful. Thinking I'd be much better off if I just wasn't here."

Bad choice of words - she will think you mean something more than what you're saying. What I'm thinking of is stress leave, not "checking out." Oh what's the difference anyway. I just want her to go away. I wish she would just go away. I'm tired, I want to go home and get out of this awful place.

[condensed version of the repeated 10-minute tirade that followed] "Oh my God, Judy. You need help. You need to get help right now. I mean, call your doctor first thing Monday morning. I'm serious, get him to prescribe some antidepressants. I mean it! and I'm checking up on you on Monday to see if you've called him." 

Back-pedal. Let her know that is really not what you meant. AT ALL. 

Photo "Portrait of
Pointing Male" by
imagerymajestic at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

"Look, I would never commit suicide. Really. But I understand how some people can think that way."

Oops, I recognize that look. Oh crap, she's getting on her white horse and going to save the day. No-o, that's that LAST thing I want. All I want to do is get away from here, to go home, for her to shut up and leave me alone.

"No, that's way too close to the line. You've GOT to get some help. Talk to a therapist, are you seeing someone? you have to see someone." 

Oh great, now she's ordering me around!!! Why doesn't she just go away? Can't she see how stressed out she's making me? How can I get out of this? Maybe a little humour?

[By this time my head is in my hands as she rants on and on about how she was depressed and how she got help and that I need to do the same.] 

"So," I joke, "if I kill myself, THEN will you leave me alone?" 

This attempt at humour only adds fuel to the fire. Her reaction only shows how little she knows me. More and more she convinces herself that I'm in imminent danger and that she has to "save" me. Will she NEVER shut up?? 

[Finally I decide to be straight with her because beating around the bush isn't helping! I hate confrontation, but she's backing me into a corner. And when I am backed into a corner, I go on the offensive.] My voice raises; it is clipped and stern. "Listen. You are treating me like I'm two years old, like you have to be my savior or something. It's making me very uncomfortable, and I want you to stop this, and leave me alone."

She doesn't leave me alone. She goes on the defensive for a while, then turns around and attacks again, same pushy attitude, same ordering me around, same heavy-handed control stuff as before.

And she promises (sounds like she threatens) to check in with me on Monday. Which makes me not want to go there on Monday. Or any other day, if she was going to be there in my face all the time.  As a matter of fact, I hadn't started to consider suicide - even in jest (and it WAS only in jest) - until she started ranting about it. And now I was fantasizing about how many ways I could force her to shut her mouth!

You see ... how much better it might have been for her to say, "You look better today, you looked ill earlier in the week." and for me to say, "Thanks, I do feel a bit better," (which I DID until she started jumping down my throat) and left it at that. But no-o. My guard was down - I was tired - and discouraged - and vulnerable.

And what she actually said to me had the exact opposite effect than the one she wanted. Instead of giving me someone to talk to, she made me not want to talk to her about anything, because she'd only try to control my life and my thinking. Instead of making me feel like I was supported, she made me feel like I was being attacked, assaulted, and harassed. Instead of me knowing that I was cared for, I ended up feeling like now I was going to be her "special little project" and that I'd never be out from under her microscope. 

She may indeed have "meant well"... but her attitude and her actions were way over the top, and more of a hindrance to any help I might have been considering. I felt like someone who complained of a sniffle, suddenly being forced to go to the hospital and hooked up to an IV and a respirator.

Overkill. There's a reason they call it that. It's what makes bad things way worse. 

The power of liking

I wrote an article on a blog of mine yesterday (not this one) - and in my internet Mail Inbox this morning was an email from the site telling me that someone had "liked" my article. 

My eyebrows raised; my interest factor spiked. "Who?" I wondered. I clicked on it and found that not only did someone like it, that person started following the blog! Further, I had no idea who it was; the individual had just been browsing and stumbled on my site ... and liked what I wrote.

Hm!! 

I got this graphic from
this site on how to insert a FB like button

"Liking" is very powerful. There is an innate human need to be affirmed, to be approved of, to have contributions appreciated. That's part of the appeal of social media sites like facebook. It feels good to be acknowledged and appreciated for what you think or believe. Or what you've done. 

It's amazing how just a "like" on FB or an encouraging comment on a blog can lift my spirits. There are times when I wonder if I should even bother continuing, and then someone will like my link to this (or another) blog when I post it on FB, or they'll give me verbal or written feedback, and then I'll rethink my rethinking. Again. 

Liking is powerful in another way too. Knowing that someone enjoys my company - especially someone in whose company I feel safe - goes a long way toward whether I have a grumpy day or one filled with gratitude. Today someone came up to me and put an arm around me and squeezed. That person doesn't normally do things like that - at least not to me. But that show of support really made my day, because I'd been feeling isolated even though I was in a crowd of people. It was good to know someone thought enough of me to tell me, to show me. 

It reminded me to make a point of giving feedback, especially positive feedback. Do you know why most people in "helping" professions (psychologists, pastors, social workers, public servants) burn out so frequently? They give and give and give some more, and people take and take and take. The only things they ever hear are the complaints when someone's not satisfied. Very rarely does anyone come back to say, "Thank you for such great service," - or "What you said really helped me today." 

It only takes a couple of minutes once in a while. The way I figure it, folks are really good about saying nice things about someone after he or she is dead. 

Why wait?

A Bigger Picture

The last few months, I've been focusing on working out my response to some burning and long-standing boundary issues with my birth family. Basically the Cole's Notes version is that (1) I have boundaries now, and that I need to look after myself, and (2) they - well - they don't get that.  

I've been trying very hard to figure out what is the right thing to do, praying about it, talking it over with people I trust.

It all boils down to this.  What I've really been trying to do is the same old thing: trying to get these people to think better of me.  It is difficult for me to accept that the people who are supposed to be my safe haven - just aren't.  How sad is that? not only for me, but for them?

About two weeks ago, I got a relatively long letter ready to send to one family member in particular, explaining my reasons for pulling away and setting a boundary based on her behaviour.  But I didn't send it.  As loving a tone as I tried to set for what I thought I had to say - deep inside I knew that what I had to say would hurt this person, because she doesn't understand in the least and would take anything I said as a personal attack.  I know this because that is what has been done so many times in the past by this permanent citizen of the continent of Victim-land. (I know the terrain well; I used to live there, right by the river of Denial next to the over-inhabited city of Martyrdom.  It's a sad, pitiful place.) 

I just shredded the letter this morning. 

Found this photo at THIS SITE

Last week, on a totally unrelated matter, I sent a second letter to someone else - in response to an inner prompting that didn't have anything to do with me.  It was only a couple of paragraphs, and it was to someone I care for very much - who is NOT a family member.  As it happened, (and as God usually does) the letter arrived just at the right time, and met an emotional need that went beyond anything I could have imagined.  The timing was ... well, it was perfect.  And God worked it out perfectly.  I was humbled - awed - by it all and I still am. 

As I pondered this morning about those two letters, the differences between my motivations for writing them came crashing through.  The second had nothing to do with myself but only with the person to whom I sent it, and only to build up and encourage. 

The first, on the other hand, had more to do with justifying my choices and my feelings to someone who could no more understand them - than a person completely blind from birth could understand the colour red.  Different universe. As Someone wise said once, "[Don't] cast your pearls before swine, lest they turn on you ... and tear you apart ..."  Basically that means that if someone couldn't possibly understand - don't give them ammunition to use against you. Because they will.

Point taken.  :s

Comparing the two letters, I realized that I felt about each of the intended recipients in opposite ways, too.  The first was written to someone with whom I have never felt and still do not feel emotionally safe, nor do I trust that person around my children or my husband.  She would find a way to end up making me look like the villain, a classic case of projection (attributing to another person one's own motives and character while hiding those very things from oneself).  

If I can't trust her with my own loved ones, what makes me think I can trust her with words on paper conveying my innermost thoughts? No, as difficult as it is for me to refrain from self-justification, I must.

The second letter recipient, though, has been a friend through a lot of ups and downs - and has been a safe place to land and be myself when I needed to be loved and not judged.

She is a kindred spirit.  A sheltered harbour.  A welcoming soul.  

When I prayed for clarification as to my motivations and whether to send that first letter (to the unsafe person), I was shown - given a bigger picture from higher up - how I don't need to chase after the approval of someone who will never approve of me.  

And conversely, I don't need to keep asking for approval from someone who already loves me anyway (wouldn't it be insulting after a while if your spouse or your child came to you every single day and asked if you approved of him or her?) I can accept that I am already accepted. I don't have to prove anything. 

As a people-pleaser in my natural state, I would normally be blind to that sort of thing.  It's not something I would have seen on my own. So I am grateful for this epiphany.  Even though it might not seem like a big deal to someone else, it's a lesson I never learned in active codependency, and I am thankful. It's simply this, in a nutshell: seeking approval from anyone but God only leads to heartache in one way or another - for me, or for the person from whom I am seeking approval.  Or both. 

And in the final analysis, God's opinion is the only one that matters anyway.

What a relief!!

Saying it

I was talking last night with someone very dear to me - got a text from him, and then called him on the phone and spent nearly 2 hours with him.  He needed to talk and he needed someone to listen who wouldn't judge him.  As he poured out his heart and his frustrations about being condemned for being different from family members and the members of their social group, I realized that there are people in this world who will never quite understand that if someone believes or behaves differently from the accepted norm, it doesn't mean that person is a bad person.  

It means that he/she is different.  

And I also realized that such "poison people" believe what they want to believe because they have their minds made up already - and if we don't tell them what our truth is, they'll fill in the blanks themselves based on what motives they have previously attributed to us (and that's not going to change, ever).  And they'll get it wrong, every time. If we continue to not tell them, to not set the record straight, they'll assume that their version of events is correct - and spread their perception of us far and wide.  (Um ... I think that's called "backbiting."  Maybe even "slander.")

I've been guilty of spreading such poison in my life ... and of late, I've been guilty of not setting the record straight with those in my life who have filled in the blanks and have spread their poison so far and wide that I am "persona non grata" (person without a status) in some places (places, I might add, where I no longer wish to go - because they are there.) 

Judged.  Condemned.  Executed.  Just for speaking the truth.  Just for trying to help someone who might want to be helped.  Yes, I'm talking about what I tried to do when I wrote and published Get Unwrapped! ... and the people of whom I am speaking are the very people who should have supported me - but never have.  I've mentioned their vitriolic reaction before on this blog, earlier this month.

I used to care what those people thought of me.  I used to.  Then I saw them - really SAW them for the first time, without the rose-colored glasses they thrust upon me from my birth - SAW them treat the man I was talking to last night like the scum of the earth just because ... well it doesn't matter about the because. Let's just say he isn't a 'clone' of them.

Thank God.

The whole experience showed me that I didn't want to continue subjecting myself or my husband or children to that kind of self-righteous, hypocritical garbage any more. So I withdrew from hanging around with them.  Months ago.

What a relief that was.  For me, that is. 

They were baffled by my refusal to keep in contact.   So, they filled in the blanks about me, too. (I suspect that this activity began even before I broke contact.)  

Their answers/guesses haven't been very pretty, and (naturally, to make them appear saintly and me, villainous) they have painted me in the worst possible light.  I know they're 'projecting' - a psychological term that means to attribute to others a motive that is actually hidden in one's self.  In other words, they say I'm vindictive because they are vindictive; it's what they do without even realizing it.  Yet they don't want to admit that they're vindictive - so they accuse me of it.  It's how they get to sleep at night. 

I've decided to give them the answers that should have gone into those blanks they filled in. Of course they'll continue to believe what they want to believe, just like always - and it will change nothing in how they behave toward me - or toward the man I spoke with last evening.  But the right answers will be out there.  I'll have spoken up.  I'll have said it.

"Saying it" has always been taboo.  We didn't talk about the elephant in the room even if he WAS standing on our toes.  It just wasn't done!  And if someone committed the cardinal sin of even saying that there WAS an elephant (never mind in the room!) that person would be taken out and (emotionally) executed: crucified, so to speak - a slow, sadistic, and painful death in front of as many people as possible. And the executioners would feel perfectly justified in their actions - because for them, the illusion of perfection is preferable to the reality of brokenness, after all. ("What would people think?" prevents so many from getting the help they so desperately need.)  When I wrote my book, I exposed the elephant. They couldn't get past the fact that I had the gall to do that, so as to see the wonderful reality and healing that came of my brokenness. And so, they have been nailing me to the cross of their self-righteousness.

So if I'm going to be condemned to such a fate anyway - it might as well be for the right reasons.

Accepting criticism

In the last few weeks, some of the work we do has been under review.  The tricky part about reviewing something that people have been doing for a long time is that it's pretty easy to get up in arms about being subjected to some constructive criticism. Since our "widgets" are documents that are going to end-user clients, and I take great pride in my work ... when someone questions my wording or grammar or even my logic, I have a tendency to get a little 'put out.'  Most of my errors have been typographical, the odd preposition not used the correct way, that sort of thing.  But today there was a document with some major errors in logic and in content. Ouch.

Source (via Google Images):
http://www.oilogosphere.com/blog/report-card

At first I tried to argue it, to say, "This is why I said that."  That didn't go very far.  So I went into "roll-with-the-punches" mode.  And while that was happening, the person took that opportunity to give me a lesson in what should have been the basics for me.  I was not impressed - and still less impressed with myself AND the whole reason for the review in the first place.  But I held my tongue.  

I did ask for some suggestions from a co-worker regarding one of the points that was raised.  And I got some helpful hints, which I plan to use.

One of the things I appreciated about the reviewer's talk with me was that it was made clear to me that this didn't need to be fixed today.  "Set it aside until tomorrow.  Then make the changes and when it's done, bring it back to me." It kind of surprised me - that this person would be that gentle with me.  That extra time, and the person's kind attitude, gave me the time I needed to decompress.  It's amazing how a little time and space can give me some perspective.  And help me to let go.  So here I am letting go ... again!! (grin)

Nobody likes to be told that something they thought they knew how to do was wrong all along.  But... better to know and be able to take steps to correct it, rather than continue to do it wrong!  And now I know how to produce a better widget.  The quality of my work will improve.  And that is a good thing.

Faking It - Part 3

I have this recurring nightmare.

It's Sunday.  I go to church.  I'm keenly aware of my own inadequacies.  I look like myself, like I always do.  But when I walk in to the entryway and see all the people chatting before the service, something is wrong.  All the women look like Barbie dolls and all the men look like Ken dolls.  Plastic smiles abound. Blank stares.  Perfect bodies, perfect smiles, perfect clothes.

I try to get them to talk to me.  They won't.  There's no relationship, no frame of reference at all.  I look at my clothes: rumpled.  I go to the rest room and look in the mirror - yellowed teeth, acne, and greasy hair.  I want to talk to someone about real things but all I hear are perfect conversations about perfect families and perfect kids with perfect Grade Point Averages.  Nobody seems to have any problems.

I know it can't be true.  I run from perfect person to perfect person, begging them to come outside their plastic shells and talk about what's real. Surely someone can relate to my pain; surely someone is struggling too.

But all I hear are the condemning voices telling me, "That's not speaking in faith!" and then these Barbie and Ken people talk about fashions, curtains, private schools, and the stock market. They wax poetic about this conference or that speaker, this singer, that skiing trip.

All attempts at conversation about real feelings, real relationships, are met with disdain. 
 

Where AM I anyway? doesn't anyone understand what it means to connect with each other and quit faking it?

Thankfully I wake up.

I ... DID wake up.  Didn't I? or did I?

One Story of Forgiveness - and More

The phrase "Like mother like daughter" made me cringe when I was growing up. My voice sounded like my mother's voice when I answered the phone and often even her close friends would launch into a conversation with me, thinking I was her. It was embarrassing.

Even more embarrassing because she was the last person I WANTED to be like.

I grew up terrified of her. Her temper was ... red-hot and dangerous. At 8 years old and less than half her height, I ran away when she lost her temper; that only made her more angry. After she caught up with me, well, it wasn't pretty. Though I would have denied it at the time because I protected myself from the truth in order to cope, deep down, I believed she was a monster.

That was my unconscious perception of my mother for over forty years. Everyone thought she was a saint; I even deluded myself into thinking that she was, that I was being brought up in a "Christian" home, that I was lucky she was bringing me up right. But she wasn't. When she got mad, I'd better not be the one in her cross-hairs or I would be in for it. Aside from the times she lost her temper and lashed out physically, the constant criticism became second nature to her. She didn't even know she was doing it. In fact, she thought she was raising me right.

I hid from the bare facts of my childhood until I was 42 years old. And when I finally faced them, I nearly went insane with rage. How dare she! How dare they!! Everyone in the family was complicit. We weren't allowed to talk about what went on inside those walls. Only after I couldn't run from it anymore - not that long ago - did I realize how very angry, hurt, and resentful I was against her for robbing me of the right to be a child. For over five years I was unable to forgive her. For the first two of them, I couldn't even stand the sight of her. I cut her completely out of my life. I did come to some modicum of tolerance for her. I thought I had forgiven her, but I had only made excuses for her behavior and never really faced my own feelings.

So as I got into a spiritual process of recovery and began to systematically look at these hurts, I realized that I had to forgive her, but I was a very long way from that. And it was suggested to me that as a child, I was never allowed to feel my feelings but had to stuff them deep inside. Feelings, I was told by my counselor, were healthy to express in safe ways. Feelings are for feeling. That's what they are designed to do. They are a pressure relief valve, a signal that something is wrong and needs to be righted, or that something is right and needs to be enjoyed in the moment.

I journaled my forgiveness journey. I wrote down all the big - and little - things she did and said that hurt me and how that affected me at the time, the messages her behavior gave me, how terrifying it all was, the repercussions throughout my lfe, and how limiting it still was for me as an adult. In putting this all on paper, I gave myself an avenue, and permission, to express all those feelings that should have come out when I was a child, but I didn't have the self-awareness or the emotional maturity - or a safe enough forum - to do it at the time. I was too busy surviving.

I cried and cried and cried. For weeks. All that hurt poured out of me, in tears, and in ink on paper... I poured out to God all the bitterness and the anguish that a small child of eight years old could feel after 40 years of holding it in. Occasionally - and these times were precious - I spoke to my inner child and told her the things she should have heard, true things that countered the lies that she was no good, that she was evil, stupid, crazy. Truthful things like she was special, that she could be herself and people could like her just the way she was, that she didn't have to change for anyone, that what happened to her wasn't her fault. Day after day - all that garbage poured out of my spirit. It needed to come out into the open; it was killing me inside.

As all of this emotion came to the surface, it became clear to me that what she did to me was wrong. It might have been for the right reasons sometimes - but the way she went about it was wrong. She didn't know how to praise or encourage. She thought it shouldn't be necessary because she didn't need it growing up. She felt sorry for her mom, who was herself a victim of spousal abuse, and so my mom did everything in her power to make her own mother's life better. It was different for me; I was terrified of my mom and did my best to avoid her attention, because the attention was doled out in criticism, fault-finding, and abuse.

As the built-up pressure came out of me, as the tears washed away the hurt and the rage, the storms subsided and more and more often there was a calm. The knowledge that what she did to me was wrong ... was a revelation to me. I had taken the first step in forgiveness. "What you did was wrong." And the second followed it: "What you did hurt me - in ways you can't even begin to imagine." And the third, "I have a perfect right to be angry!"

Expressing that anger - to God, whose shoulders are so broad and who loves me so unconditionally, was the only safe outlet for that amount of rage. He was so patient, so kind. He held me and let me rant, let me weep, let me do whatever the child in me had to do to get that poison out.

Slowly, a new realization dawned on me. I began to understand that I wanted her to pay for what she had done - not just pay, but pay ME back. And then I remembered something that Joyce Meyer said. Something about what happens when someone hurts you - it's like they stole something from you. Something irreplaceable. Like self-respect. Or self-esteem. "But they don't have it anymore," she said. "The moment they took that thing from you, it flew from their hands and they couldn't give it back to you even if they wanted to!!"

It was like being owed a bad debt. They owed; they couldn't pay. It could stay on the books for a long time, or ... I could write it off.

All that was left was for me to make a choice. Was I going to keep that debt on the books or was I going to write it off - the way a bankruptcy trustee writes off the debt of someone who's unable to pay his or her creditors?

I struggled with this for quite a while. The words of a speaker I heard once at an AA meeting came to me. She talked about having to forgive her mother over and over and over, and that it came slowly after a long time of consistently doing that. But she kept at it and it eventually reached her heart. That made such a big impact on me!

Finally I prayed, "Lord, I'm willing for You to make me willing to forgive her in my heart. By the power of the sacrifice of Jesus, and definitely not my own strength, I choose to forgive her, as often and as many times as it takes to be real to me."

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure when it happened. It was gradual, as I kept turning that over to Him again and again, being honest with Him about it, asking Him to take it one more time, yet again, and ... thanking Him for His patience. But as I did, I started to see my mother in a new light...as someone who herself was emotionally stunted at the age of two years old by her abusive stepfather, and who was deeply bound up in her own fear. One day as I was thinking about her, I found myself - well, misting over. I looked within and found that God had given me compassion for this woman. I found myself wanting to help her, not retaliate.

That's when I knew that I had forgiven her in my heart. What an amazing feeling!

That's when I started noticing other things too. I believe that something spiritual happened in the heavenlies when forgiveness finally won. I remember sitting across the table from her during a visit, blown away as she opened up in detail for the first time to me about her growing-up years. She, who just a few short years previous had been unable to understand how I could be upset about things that happened 40 years ago, admitted to me that she grew up in fear, and that she was still afraid. "I guess things that happen to you when you're little really do follow you into your adult years," she mused. I nearly fell off my chair. Finally she understood... something I thought would never happen.

Since that time, our relationship has deepened. I call her and we talk for an hour or an hour and a half at a time, when before, I'd avoid doing that and she'd call and send me on a guilt trip, and then I'd call her or write her out of a sense of duty, and even then the conversation was superficial. Now, it's so different. We talk about "real" things - spiritual things, important things, things of the heart. Often.

And the best part is I've noticed a softening in her, a desire to be free of the fear that has been such a part of her life for over 70 years. She has asked me some very pointed questions. Me, of all people - the one before whom she did not dare be wrong. How ironic is that! She's nearly ready to admit that she is powerless over other people, the very first step in healing.

I couldn't be more pleased for her. She's about to start an amazing journey.

Special days - special people

We had a birthday in the house today. Somebody turned 21. She was the star of the day. Everything revolved around her!! And we loved doing that for her!!

Birthdays are special times when we can lavish attention on the people we love and nobody criticizes us for spoiling them. We get outside ourselves, outside our little lives, pursuits, and schedules, and let something be about someone else for a change.

I wonder though. Why do we have to wait until someone's birthday or anniversary to tell someone how much they mean to us? How many of us have wished - after someone we love has moved away (in this world or out of it) - that we had told or showed that person how much he or she meant to us? How many hours, weeks, years have we wasted being so busy making a living that we forgot to make a life with the people we love? How many older people do we know who are alone and lonely because their family members only got criticism and never knew they were loved, so they never even phone home?

Who are the people in our lives who made us feel special? wanted? loved? accepted? I have known people like that in my life; most of them were people who never knew how much their attention, their openness meant to me when I was growing up. Special memories, made all the more special because they were so rare. Some of them I was able to approach and tell what their influence meant to me...and I am so glad that I did. It wasn't hard. A personal note in a greeting card. A thank you note. An email (a real one - not a forward!!) A text. And lately - just writing a message to someone or putting something on their wall on Facebook.

It's a whole new perspective on things. I remember what it's like to try and do something for someone and have him or her cut it all to pieces before I hear the words (if ever, that is), "Thank you." I decided that just for today, and for all the todays I can, I can try to look for the yes, the positive, the uplifting, the encouraging word. Not just for what others do, not just for what God does (although it starts there) but also for what I do. I am way too hard on myself, and I think that I am hard on others because of it. So - why not I give us both a break?

I'm learning that it doesn't take much effort to build someone up rather than tear him or her down. To see the positive first, rather than the negative.

It just takes a little re-training of my mind, a little bit of faith in myself and in others ... and a whole lot of gratitude to God.

Bankrupt!

I was talking to a friend of mine today about how we know that God will provide for our needs ... but what exactly ARE our needs?

"Oh God, I really NEED a Porsche."

We might laugh at that kind of prayer. But it shows how deeply ingrained our western culture is and how it has seeped into the church.

What do we mean when we say that God will provide for our needs? Does it mean that we'll never, ever, not in a hundred years, go without? Is there room in our theology for a God who would allow a Christian to suffer want?

Is it ever God's will for a Christian to declare bankruptcy? There now, I've said it. The B word.

It's not something that is all that easy to do in Canada. In the States, declare bankruptcy and within six months you have at least some credit rating back. But in Canada, it's a very grueling process. You have to list all your assets and liabilities, then your bi-weekly (or monthly) income and expenses, itemize it, have a bankruptcy trustee go over each one and allow or disallow each one. The debts are forgiven in the sense that you don't ever have to pay the creditors back - at least not all of it. They are prohibited from calling you up to demand payment. That in itself is a great relief.

But for nine months, every expense is scrutinized, and every last cent that isn't spent on necessary (and approved) items is given to the bankruptcy trustee to be distributed to the creditors at the end of the nine months. If you've kept your nose clean, at the end of that period, the bankruptcy is "discharged" and you don't have to report to the trustee anymore. So that means there is a little more money at the end of the month.

However, that's not the end. Your credit rating is absolutely ruined. And it stays ruined for years. YEARS. Seven years, to be exact. And then you have to start from scratch.

The whole process is designed to make a person think very hard before committing to that kind of step. And it's also designed to teach people who have not managed their money well, HOW to follow a budget.

The mechanics aside - what is the will of God in this matter of a Christian declaring personal bankruptcy??

The truth is - I really don't know for sure. All I know is what we went through.

We had tried to operate a business. "Spend money to make money," we were told. So we got a fax machine, and spent money on faxes and on long-distance telephone calls to grow our contact network. We got lots of good contacts - but no sales. More and more money disappeared into the phone bill. We were spending some $700 a month in long-distance alone. This went on for quite a while. We borrowed to pay the bills, and we borrowed to pay the loans we got to pay the bills. The debt was crushing us. We felt like failures. We were stressed out all the time wondering where the next meal was coming from, or who would call us next asking for a payment.

In desperation, we went to the Orderly Payment of Debt (OPD) office. They looked at the debt load and (bless them, they didn't laugh) told us that if we went for OPD, we would be mortgaging our children's future for the next 30 years. They advised us to declare personal bankruptcy.

That period of time was the most wrenching of our lives up until that point. We were dealing with the possibility of being stigmatized by the very people who claimed to care about and love us - as long as we measured up to their expectations, we found out. The internal struggle, the pain of daily wondering when it would all fall apart around our ears - early on in the mortgage with no assets to call our own - we agonized about this decision.

And that's when we got a first-hand dose of "Christian love and concern." When I mentioned to one person that we were having significant financial problems and we didn't know what to do, she said, "Well, THAT's not speaking in faith...."

OUCH. And then she started telling me that she knew how I felt, how she and her husband were struggling to have enough money at the end of the month, and how God always made sure that they were able to pay the bills, yada, yada, yada.... She just didn't understand that it wasn't like someone could write us a check for a thousand dollars and fix everything. We needed over fifty times that amount just to make things manageable.

Another lady called me on the phone every day. She assured me that she and her husband were praying for us, that they were believing for a miracle. "Did you get your miracle yet?" was her first question, every time.

Finally, we knew it was time to declare bankruptcy when we sat across from a loans officer at a finance company to take out our second loan to buy groceries.

So, that week we decided to go to the trustee and declare bankruptcy. Although the initial setup was a difficult experience to say the least, the trustee looked at us at the end of the meeting, and said, "None of your creditors is allowed to demand payment of this debt ... ever again." For me it was like a two-ton weight fell off my shoulders.

And the next day the phone rang. It was this lady again. "Did you get your miracle?" she asked. "Yes," I said. She was excited and wanted to hear all about it. "God used us declaring bankruptcy to erase all of our debt," I told her. She stammered, cleared her throat, and made some excuse to hang up.

She never called again.

OUCH again.

We learned not to let anyone know about our predicament unless we had to. It was our experience that nobody wanted to hear anything about financial difficulty in the life of a Christian unless it was already resolved. It was a taboo subject, and fodder for criticism and judgment from many in the church. It went against some people's theology, a theology started by Wall Street and legitimized in the Christian community by such charismatic folks as Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, and Robert Schuller.

I'll tell you what I think. I think that God can use ANYTHING for His purposes. I think that in some cases (not all) it IS God's will for a Christian to declare personal bankruptcy. It's not something a Christian would enter into willy-nilly. Going that route is not without a whole lot of heart-rending soul-searching and prayer.

I also think that Christians need to cultivate a response to the shocking news that someone has failed financially (or for that matter, morally), a response that isn't based on snap judgments, but on a desire to understand. Not a desire to understand the mechanics of the failure or to comprehend whose fault it was, but to really hear the heartache and the shame that is behind such an admission... and to focus on THAT rather than whether it's right or wrong.

God taught us so very much through the bankruptcy. He showed us just how powerless we were to get out of this mess on our own, and that was an object lesson to us of the spiritual predicament that ALL of us are in - unable in our wildest dreams to have a relationship with a holy God based on our own merits. When our debts were forgiven, we got a true picture of forgiveness - we never had to wonder whether this company or that company would come after us for payment. We knew they never would. "Just as if we'd never owed," was the perfect illustration of the Christian concept of Justification by Faith.

We did learn how to live within our means. Cutting up the credit cards, living on cash only, was a huge adjustment but we learned how to do it. It made life so much easier after we were discharged from the bankruptcy and nobody would give us any credit for years afterward. And we resolved never to get into a debt we couldn't pay back - ever again.

And there were so many experiences where God really came through for us and met our everyday needs through the kindness and the generosity of His people - for not ALL people in the church judged us. Some of them actually loved us... and showed us they loved us. God Himself worked a couple of really amazing miracles of provision along the way.

I think I'll save those miracles for another post.