Tag: difficulty

Curse Replaced with Blessing

Yes, yes it has been.

Curse broken. Perhaps for good.

The ball got rolling on a Wednesday night in a coffee meetup. Had you been there and heard the deep sharing and easy laughter between me and the couple I was with, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’d known each other longer than we had. The man had been in significant pain since I’d met him. A family picture later that summer had shocked me into wondering what a stroke for me would do to our family. But no one could explain to my friend exactly what had happened to him to produce that half slack, half frozen face. And the pain continued unabated for months, specialists all across North America mystified. Until one doctor put down her instruments and said, “Tell me the whole story.”

At the end of it, her conclusion had not been remotely suspected. “I think you’ve been cursed.” She followed by asking if they wanted to join her at her church’s prayer meeting that night. Sure, why not? Who would have guessed––that night the shroud lifted. Pain-free for the first time in six and half months.

Say, WHAT?

“Wow, I really don’t have any kind of neat box to put that in,” I admitted out loud.

“Yeah, neither do we! Someone cursed me. That curse has now been broken.” 

They even figured, looking back with 20/20, where, when, and via what object the curse had come. Still, our Western, excluded-middle minds struggled to accept what it meant. But who can argue with suddenly re-straightened face muscles? 

The six months of debilitating pain had never been illness. The summer’s stroke-like event…wasn’t. All along it was a real, honest-to-God––well, some very different Being, to be sure––curse. Too weird. My friends laughed in assuring me that this was the most natural and self-evident explanation for every last member of the First Nations community in which they lived, eh? Way up there where only the Ice Road takes you.

“Of course!” Of course someone cursed you. 

Really?

The next day I found it hard to stop thinking about. 

Come Saturday, I was still thinking about it, and while listening to a podcast, my ears perked up as curse was brought up there. The host meant it more like I understood it. Curse, the opposite of blessing. Curse, the negative, untrue thing I say about myself, even if only in my head. Curse, the result of experiencing harm. 

Then this landed like a ton of bricks:

“Curse will never be fully gone until it is replaced with blessing.”

In that moment, I knew what I needed. 

In that moment, I saw myself in some sort of ritual done in community. I’d ask Tammy to lead it. For I, like my friend, hungered for release. I wanted curse replaced with blessing. I’d been entirely sick of my trauma still affecting me for awhile now. Really, really fed up. 

I’d processed. I’d dealt. I’d healed. But not enough, cause here it was, hanging around. Waking me up. Dragging me down. Filling up brain space. Unshakeable. 

I wanted to be done with it.

I didn’t want to dwell, anymore. 

I didn’t want those men any longer encroaching on my mental space. 

I was more than satisfied with the number of times I’d chosen and re-chosen forgiveness.

I no longer cared what actual lies had been told about me, or why so many people believed them or did nothing about them.

I. Just. Wanted. To Move On.

Really and truly. New life, new job, new community, and fine enough with forgetting the old. I’d embraced the new start but was failing, still. 

And sick of it, did I mention? 

I have no interest in wondering ‘Why…’ or ‘What if…’. So why can’t I stop? 

Cause curse. 

Curse in my life had become a curse on my life.

I preferred sleep. I wanted rest. I love peace.

Stop the Regret-A-Whirl, I wanna get off. Bring the floor back up to my feet, please, so I can get off this wall.

Sleep, rest, and peace eluded me more than I liked, which only piled on an anxiety about being some kind of failure, so I cursed myself for not being able to stop. Which made me believe more lies. Which confirmed that feeling of failure.  

One particular lie had always topped my list, especially in those months after the groundless firing. My battle with it had been more difficult and more damaging than all battle with all the rest, together:

I must be some sort of high-functioning, half-______.” 

I dare not even put the actual accusation in writing. 

But from the inside––and some of you will know this––“believing a lie”is a poor description of what is actually going on in our heads. 

Sure, with some things, we’re aware it’s a lie. We can face the mirror and prepare ourselves to face the day. You might need to be a certain age to say this exact phrase, but we self-coach with some version of a daily, “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it, people like me.” It does the trick. 

But other things are way more insidious. In fact, we’ve been convinced: It’s not a lie, something’s wrong with me. It doesn’t feel anything like believing a lie. Not on the inside, for we think what we’ve actually done is accept an unfortunate, but unshakeable, truth. We are self-aware! And making the best of things. We swallow the shame and move forward.

Or so we believe. 

More than once through tears I’d asked my wife, “Why has no one in my entire life loved me enough to shoot straight with me on this [and tell me I’m defective]?”

Yup, trauma.

I couldn’t see that at the time, though; instead I was battling to integrate and make sense of the messages of my trauma. 

Because IF this is a lie, wouldn’t more evidence to the contrary be forthcoming? 

When it isn’t, we believe it’s the truth. And if we ever want to get over whatever hump we’re stuck on, the sooner we admit that the better. 

Except I’d been trying that for a long, long time. 

Why wasn’t it working? 

Simple. It wasn’t the truth. 

It was curse. 

And one does not rid oneself of curse by integrating it.

One rids oneself of curse by replacing it with blessing. 

On that Saturday––with the perfect storm of my friends’ story and a podcast––I knew: Time to take the bull by the horns, Dann, and get help. Replace curse with blessing. 

Via texts and calls, I gathered a trusted community. A group of seven to bear witness with me.

Tammy led our ritual. (My simple definition of ritual is just some kind of solemn ceremony which includes bodily, sensory actions.) Together, sitting in a circle, we would take on these curses that I had been unable to shake alone. 

I named that first and biggest lie. The first person wrote it on a slip of paper.

I imagined I’d probably make it all the way ‘round the circle and give everyone something to write. 

It wasn’t long and a number of them were crying.

They knew me, but they hadn’t known this about me.

Even I hadn’t consciously known all of these lies. They began to tumble from me.

Dann deserved this treatment.

So-and-so truly knows and understands Dann. They were wise to do this.

Dann is not wise, he’s blind. Dann does not understand. 

Dann’s kids deserve the trauma they have undergone (and still are)––that’s how bad Dann was.

When I was done, there’d been enough lies for every person to have filled out three slips.

Then Tammy had me start over at the very beginning.

First person, first lie. I read it aloud, then listened to the group in unison:

“This is a lie; this is not the truth.” 

Burn the paper. Hear the noise. Watch the smoke. Smell it. Hug the person who’d written it.

Next I was instructed to declare the opposite of the words I’d written and just watched burn. Tell the truth.

Some were easy:

Hell no, Dann’s kids did not deserve this. Doesn’t matter what he did. (Indeed, “Heaven, yes” could have been chosen by any number of people during our family’s hellish journey.)

Others required a deep breath. And trust in my present community that they could see clearer than I could:

Dann is beloved and wanted.

One at a time. Round and round the circle.  

On my second go-round, after burning a slip Tammy had written, I got My Bonus Gift. 

Since before Thanksgiving, I’d oft repeated out loud a conclusion I’d reached in counseling: “I think my body is telling me I need A Really Big Cry. Something purging, cathartic, body-wracking… And move on from there.” 

I wasn’t going to force it, but I was constantly on the lookout for it, because tears get triggered by the funniest things, sometimes, don’t they? Yet along with anticipation came fear that it would come at the wrong time. I wasn’t afraid of crying in front of anyone, for who cares? It’s human. But I was, I decided, totally not up for uncontrollable sobbing in front of a big room full of people, for instance. That kind of situation where everyone can hear the blubbering? But has to crane their neck to figure out where it’s coming from…?

I wasn’t cool with that. 

But weeks and months went by, and though my tear ducts made a number of modest efforts, nothing ultimately satisfying ever really materialized.

Now, standing in front of Tammy, it was here, unlooked for.

The group just waited. Tammy just held me.

When it had passed, I completed my third and final round. 

“This is a lie; this is not the truth.” Burn. Hear. Watch. Smell. Hug. Tell the truth. Repeat.

I finally sat down.

Slow breaths. 

“I think I feel good,” I cautiously reported. I knew I wouldn’t really know until I got some distance.

But sure enough, the next day, driving around, I had two distinct realizations:

Oh! Today is the third anniversary of Day 0. The Day That Started Everything. That’s crazy.

And:

I feel something… What is that feeling? Lemme think for a sec, this is familiar… Oh, my word!! 

I feel like… MYSELF.

It had actually taken time and effort to identify it. How faint the familiarity had been.

I have not fully felt like my own self in three years?! What the…

Tell your stories, people. Your stories of pain, trauma, church hurt, all of it.

My replacing curse with blessing was a great, great day for me, and I feel grateful and relieved over how it all went. It has lasted. Your story has been different, and your healing may come different. I tell my story simply so that it may stand on its own for what it is. Yours is yours. You don’t need my ritual, you need…well, decide in your community what you need. Because at the bottom of it all, we’re the same. Image bearers seeking to live more fully into our own agency, voice, and value. Silence… advantages the status quo and usually the wrong people. Speak. Pull back the curtain on your trauma, and do not do it alone. 

Displace curse. 

Replace it with blessing. 

God be with you. 

How I came to farewell my denomination of 40 years. Or, How do we know that’s God’s voice?

Does God speak things to you? Even without having touched on this topic with each of them, I’d wager I have friends at every point along that spectrum. 

Some who might say, “Dude (people my age are, after all, GenXers), if you think God is specifically speaking to you outside of the Bible, welcome to heresy.”

Others who talk about hearing God about as clearly and specifically as one could possibly imagine and certainly beyond what most experience.

You might reside at one of those ends or somewhere in between. I’m not today writing to convince you of anything. 

As a college student thirty years ago, I discovered that spectrum along with the fact that some people seemed to have “more” of God than I did. So I wanted it––Him––too. [It’d be immaterial for my purposes here to get into what I think was good or bad about all that was going on there; for now the point is just the story.]

One night, in a long session of earnest seeking and prayer, God spoke. He told me something about my future. Something good that was going to happen to me. And the reason I was being told ahead of time was so that I wouldn’t struggle with pride when it happened. 

Sure enough, the next day, it happened. 

Just not to me. It happened for somebody else.

Not purposely and certainly not knowingly, I’d stepped out in true faith and sincerely believed something my God had told me all while imagining the entire thing. 

At least I’d been smart enough (“you mean faithless enough” the Enemy would long taunt) to keep one foot in reality and make a pre-arrangement with God:

“IF…if for some reason this doesn’t come true? And it turns out this wasn’t You? I’ll meet you THERE where I sit on THAT marble ledge to wait for the cafeteria to open. And we are going to deal.” 

I was sitting. And we dealt. 

As best I can remember, it took rather some time for shock to wear off and devastation to sink in. Hours, perhaps days, but the real effects were long-term. My newfound conviction that God’s voice must be out of my reach devastated my ability to engage the topic for the following five years. For fully ten years, it handicapped me significantly. Not until fifteen years after the fact––the difference between age 20 and age 35––could I honestly say that I no longer experienced its effects when talking or praying about hearing His voice. Fifteen more years are now passed, and well, it’s finally an old, almost humorous story overwritten by many others and hardly thought of. 

_____________

Earlier this year I watched a video put out by the president of the denomination I’ve worked in for two decades and otherwise been a part of for four. He announced a celebratory demolition event at the denomination’s new national office property. 

And the Lord said to my spirit: “You’re going to be at that.” 

That’s odd. Really? I wonder why? That’s like… (checking map) 9 hours away.

But I pretty quickly jumped to Ohhh… hey! I’ll bet I could do that on the motorcycle! Might set a new record for myself…yes! I am going to run this by Tammy. 

And I began to plan my trip, operating out of a sort of a learned default that obeying even when not sure of the reasons is almost always preferable to skipping out because of doubts. I’d come a long way in 30 years. That old college-days wound was such a non-factor by now that it failed to cross my mind even in instances like this.

I did think a lot about the possible whys for such a trip, however, and while I really couldn’t say much for sure, what I began to say out loud to my wife and a few friends was, 

“I think… I’m going to say good-bye to my denomination.” 

Now while that wasn’t exactly a super logical statement, it was also not completely disconnected from a few certain things on the horizon that could have been construed as clouds. Six months earlier, I had filed an official complaint/report about a leader. There was a mediation process of sorts under way. There’d been an inquiry. But in no way did any of those present like some demise of the relationship was imminent. Perhaps some end lay beyond a bend in the road I could not see? I had no real ideas, but even if such an end was months off, I could easily appreciate how a loss like that would be best grieved properly.

Three days after the president’s video released, my denominational employment was terminated. Do we actually need reminders that His sovereignty is not limited by bends in the road? As if. 

But I wouldn’t experience the shock of the news for seven further days until the notice arrived via FedEx. No warning, hint, or discussion had preceded it. It contained one sentence of rationale. Nothing further has ever been added to that.

Clearly there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than I’d been privy to.

Suddenly, my good-bye trip had become über-pertinent.

A few asked why on earth I would consider even bothering with the situation any more––surely I was not still driving up there? But I figured that if the best I’d come up with was that this was good-bye, how could getting that irrevocably confirmed do anything but confirm my trip as well? 

I had to go. Fortunately, I did not take my motorcycle. (If you liked that sentence, take a moment to savor it, maybe print it out and stash it away, because you will never see it again.) I wasn’t in a good place, and driving a car was all I was going to be able to handle. The growing realizations about what people up the ladder must be believing about me… things that had never been explained to me… had left me the night before begging God for sleep for the fourth night in a row. 

Thankfully enough sleep came that by morning I felt I was okay to drive. IF the Psalms were playing. Anything else or nothing over the speakers left me rocking and jittery. But praise God, by Psalm 70 I had stabilized, and then had a car to myself for wonderful, wide hours of phone conversations. That night, at a childhood friend’s house, I slept in an unknown bed with an unknown pillow in a strange room of a strange house better than I’d slept in a week. Finally, tackling the final couple driving hours the next morning, I was back on the road to being myself again. 

_____________

At breakfast I was met by friends driving down just to be with me. When we arrived at the event together, I held back with hat, sunglasses, and covid mask, desperate to stay anonymous. While at the same time fighting to stave off wild imaginings about God engineering deliverance from our nightmare by sending some rescuer with more power than those who’d come against us. Foolishness.

I was there to say good-bye and nothing else. I took my moment alone in front of the demolition fence and reflected on my entire professional life. And felt nothing. Disappointing? Perhaps, but hardly surprising seeing as how I was standing in a parking lot I’d never been in looking at a building I’d never entered.

No catharsis, no tears, no word from above, no sense about the future, no anger, no self-pity. Silence.

“Well, it was really nice seeing you, Dann. We’re so glad we came to eat breakfast with you. We’re going to take off, now. You?”

“Actually, you guys go ahead. I’m going to find a spot at the edge of the parking lot for one more listen in case I’m still going to hear why He sent me up here. Thank you guys so much for coming. I will remember it for the rest of my life.”

I walked to the back of the parking lot and headed to a light pole where it looked like maybe I could sit down. 

Even before I’d gotten to it, He started in:

What if it wasn’t Me who told you to drive up here? What if it was just your imagination?

Yeah, and? I replied.

Oh, my. 

Apparently 2021 is irrelevant even in 2021, then?

Thirty years back, now, sitting there in my mind, even as my physical body is sitting here in the present. I already know his next question––and simultaneously my next answer.

How would you be?

I’d be fine. I’d be… totally fine…

BOOM.

See how far you’ve come? You’ve grown to absolutely know My voice. Along with knowing that it doesn’t matter about reaching 100% certainty about every thing every time, as that is not to be expected. It threatens nothing.

_____________

It truly did not matter to me if “You’re going to be at that” had turned out to be me––though I didn’t believe that––instead of Him. Without thinking much about it, I’d just acted anyway, allowing Him to direct from there. Neither my own faith/worthiness or his faithfulness/worthiness were connected to it like they had so very much been in my youthful episode. So what if I’d gotten this one wrong? I’d done the best I could with the spiritual discernment I possess at this time, and I did what I thought was obeying. If it turned out not to be? Okay, fine.  

The King had just reminded me that I have obeyed his voice over and over again in the fifteen years since my great wound concerning it healed over. Not to mention those times in the previous 15 where I’d stumbled through learning to navigate intimacy and abiding while still unresolved. 

And here, now––during the trials of 2021––I have yet to tell most people some of the ways He has at times spoken. Some of the most spectacular ways of my entire life. 

He has seen me. He knows it all. 

And He cares so much for me that he brought me nine hours from home to say something totally off topic that He declared was the topic. To sit me on a piece of hot concrete that would symbolize a piece of cold marble from thirty years earlier and grant one final healing touch to an old wound I hadn’t even realized could still use it. 

He hadn’t abandoned me then or ever. And isn’t it something how even our failures become integral pieces of how He fashions us into the child He is making us? Every part of me…100% redeemable.

I’d have driven nine hundred hours to be given a message like that.

I looked up and saw my car across the emptying parking lot. 

It was time to go home. 

My Future Favorite Holiday

You know adoption is hard when your day’s held a couple hours of human excrement clean-up and it’s not even in the running for the worst part of your day. 

The poop had nothing to do with our family, by the way. Goodness, all parents have had plenty of experience with that stuff, so it’s hardly news. But this cleanup was outside our home at one of our refugee complexes, brought on by someone upstream flushing something so egregious that total pipe blockage downstream was the result. 

The problem came to our attention only after raw sewage had gurgled for days right up out of our tubs, sinks, and toilets. The toilets were the grossest, as bowls would jam to the brim with solids then keep slow-flowin’ right out to the four walls and beyond. 

Today we cleaned it up. 

Cheerfully, much of it had dried so completely that a plastic hand scraper did the worst of the job just swimmingly. Unfortunately, one tub had a dripping faucet keeping its stool pie moist. Whereas the dry cleanup was like scraping at a cow patty, this tub was more like scooping out a layer of not-yet-set Jello-O.

But the very most nauseating part of my day was encountering the few turds that were not just turd in substance, but turd in shape. I must say that the sight of them (the perpetual sinus trouble that keeps me from smelling much most days was an especial blessing today) just about sent my stomach over the edge. 

But how funny to take note my mental self-talk: “Hang in there, guy. Steady now…I’ve got it: just imagine it’s child’s poop. That’ll be better. Some kid upstairs. Hey, what if it was even a kid you’ve just adopted—you’d be able to ‘love’ and ‘embrace’ this for them…”

Indeed I would. 

Embracing the stinky feet, poopy messes, greasy hair, or poor hygiene of a child of your own is a normal part of parenthood. Whether or not you can stomach the like from a friend’s kid or teen is another matter. What about a total stranger? Sometimes it might be revolting and we can’t help it. Even after that stranger is your adopted child. I’ve been surprised at how long into our relationship with our own adopted teenager these reactions can rise up in me. Yet I move to embrace him all the same, because he, too, truly is our own. It’s nobody’s fault we all missed the cute years together. It just leaves big holes.   

Anyway, neither scraping the dry nor scooping the wet excrement of multitudinous strangers was the hardest part of my day. That was reserved for the hour and a half before bed with my adopted son. Yet another tantrum. Oddly enough, it was his tantrum the night before that had sent me out the door for the poop cleanup escapade in the first place, distractedly searching for some kind of pick-me-up from my weary morning-after discouragement. And, I will have to say, it pretty much worked. Amazing the value that self-sacrifice can sometimes bring us, touching spots within that aren’t so easily reached by other methods, perhaps. 

But tonight: more violence. More screaming. More punching. More “I don’t care!s” and “Hurt me! Break my arm! You don’t care about me!” All over something practically meaningless. Refusal to give way. To simply obey. And all kinds of breakage, as usual. He guards and organizes so carefully for weeks, only to throw and smash and destroy so much so quickly. 

And this particular requirement of self-sacrifice the past three years I’ve often grown sick of offering, frankly. I’ve processed it and blogged it and prayed it and shared it and gotten up to move forward again…more times than I could possibly tally. This being the third tantrum this week, and that not being his normal any more, it hit me, suddenly…

Of course. It’s Christmas. 

What with his great and many improvements all the rest of this year, I’d almost forgotten how much I’d grown to hate Christmas the last two. Well, not hate Christmas, but hate missing it. Hate that what was always the most nostalgic, truly wonderful time of the year for me had become a season to dread. At one point or another we dreaded any and every holiday, even weekends, but Christmas was easily the the hardest to kiss good-bye. 

But Christmas remains just too hard for him. Too exciting. Too much anticipation. Too many days of waiting. Countdowns are brutal for him, and we cannot shield him from all of them. Christmas is part of the culture and part of our family. And so counting down the 12 days of Christmas became mainly nostalgia for the years when that was actually fun. 

But my point in writing today is not to complain, but rather encourage. Many have brought home a kid(s) from a difficult place. You are not alone. Up ahead…our valleys widen. Others fight on near you, even if most of us never hear of one another. 

Together, this Christmas season especially, let us embrace Hope. And push away the wishing. “I wish my life were different. I wish people knew how hard this was. I wish folks would pity us for all we continue to lose all these weeks/months/years later. I wish people would stop commiserating with stories of their normal children. I wish people would stop lobbing ridiculous solutions at our misery.” 

Christmas celebrates the coming of the Baby. A coming which grants us far greater and far more than wishes. His coming gives us hope. And only hope will carry us through pain, suffering, or loss. Pain, suffering, and loss all lay in store for the Baby, too, yet His birth announcement was an announcement of hope. Hope for us. “For unto you has been born this day, a Savior”!

Hope is possible in my valleys because of the Baby who came to die for me willingly. And He causes me to reconsider my burdens and lay them aside, also willingly, one more time, shouting, “Yes! I’ll follow. I’ll do what you ask. I’ll sacrifice anything.” 

I’ll even lay down the joys of my formerly favorite holiday filled with childhood nostalgia and wonder. 

Because of Him, my adoption became reality. I’m safe and sound in my Forever Family, and the Baby paid the price. Shall I not be willing to pay whatever price necessary to ensure my son’s place in his earthly forever family? 

Christmas will be good again, I know. 

[Update: while my quickly-thought-of original title, “My Formerly Favorite Holiday,” is not horrible, it struck me a day or so later that it conveyed a bit of that “wishful thinking” I was trying to move away from. This current one far better conveys hope.]