"Gentle..."

How many times does a parent speak this word to an older child when his new little brother is born?  I remember when my 2 year old, Grey, came to the hospital to meet his newly born brother, Reese.  As I lifted Grey onto the hospital bed and rested Reese in his lap, I repeated the word “gentle…gentle.”  And the word held sway until the final pat, aimed almost intuitively for the weakest spot on Reese’s tender head, was landed.  Thwap! The meeting was officially over.  Grey eased himself off the bed and began playing with the new toy that we bought for him as consolation and distraction.  

As parents we call our kids to deal gently with a little brother’s frailty.  Gentleness is required if a larger, stronger brother is going to deal with the inherent weakness of his smaller sibling.  But little children are not the only ones that need to be reminded to “be gentle...gentle.”  
 
Humans are a much weaker and frailer than we want to acknowledge.  The longer we live, the better we adapt to these weaknesses.  Fashioning cover-ups and distractions to keep others from seeing these weaknesses.  We develop a great sense of humor to cover insecurity.  We drive ourselves to succeed at work when we feel relationally inept.  We hand off tasks that we are weak at to other more competent people.  In order to avoid shame, we cover up, we distract, we hand off.  So, why is it that if we know how desperately we seek to not have our weaknesses exposed, that when we see our spouse’s weakness, instead of covering it or treating it kindly, we treat it with harshness? 

There are fewer things more intimate and more emotionally arousing than being with another person in the moment of their weakness and shame.  It stirs up all of our own stuff. For some, it stirs Fear that “if my spouse is weak, he or she will not be able to take care of us or the business of life.”  For others it stirs Frustration or Confusion at the persistent nature of your loved one’s weakness and its resistance to healing  Shame and Contempt stir for others, with voices that say “This is not the man I married.  The person I married is capable, strong, and ‘better than this.’  And what does it say about me that I married such a weak individual?”  Helplessness overwhelms some when they see weakness in another.  When a husband comes to realize that there is nothing he can do to fix, heal, or undo his wife’s brokenness, a feeling of helplessness overwhelms, which brings on its own set of overwhelming emotions. These feelings (fear, frustration, shame, contempt and helplessness) can flood a spouse and disable him or her from responding with any kind of touch.

I remember playing basketball in high school, and one of my biggest struggles was shooting the ball when I was under any kind of pressure.  As the guard got closer, as the pressure increased, my ability to shoot the ball with any touch or finesse disappeared.  The fear of screwing up, the frustrating nature of the defense, the embarrassment I was beginning to feel, the sense that I was helpless against it…any and all of these would hit me, and inevitably, I “bricked” the shot.  No back spin.  All Arm.

In that moment when a player was feeling afraid, embarrassed, ticked off, or helpless, I can remember coaches and fathers telling their players and sons to “breathe…ease up...easy…” Though the word wasn’t used, they were speaking to their sons in that moment “Gentle…be gentle.” It is not over-compensating strength that is needed in that moment, but gentleness to make the play.  That word, “gentle,” is what every player needs to hear in that moment to help him breathe, settle in, and make the next play a good one.  And I think this word is what every spouse needs to hear in those moments where the next words and actions are going to count too.

Whether it’s in the midst of a basketball game, or a moment of seeing a spouse’s weakness, I think the same emotional dynamics are at play.  A husband sees his wife’s weakness, he understands that this moment is important and that his next actions and words are important, but he is flooded by some or all of the emotions above. He feels the pressure, he feels overwhelmed and… BRICK!!!  He speaks with unkindness, throws his arms up in frustration, or walks away not knowing what to do.

If we are going to be able to approach our spouse, or our children or friends, with gentle strength, we must face our own fear, shame, contempt, and helplessness so as not to be overwhelmed by them in the moment.  Eventually, as these powerful feelings are recognized and worked through, a person will no longer feel overwhelmed, disabled, or driven by them.  In those moments where a spouse’s weakness is exposed; in a moment of conflict; when the next words said or actions taken are going to be important, a husband can say to himself “gentle…easy…,” and then move toward his wife with tender strength.

Marriage and Mole Hills

As I was mowing my yard, for what I hope is the last time of the season, I couldn’t help but curse the devastation that has been wrought by the moles that have slowly and insidiously taken over.  Every time my mower bogged down on another pile of dirt, all I could think was “egh.  damn yard.  damn moles.”  At this point, I’m pretty sure that my family and I are living in the moles’ yard.  We’re the squatters.  They’re the ones that are here to stay.

Every time I mow, I think about how my yard has gotten to such a state.  When I noticed the first mole hill 3 years ago I was a new home owner, and had never really cared for a yard before. So, I plead ignorance for my lack of action taken that first year.  “Surely they can’t cause that much damage… surely they’ll leave on their own.”  Inexperience and naivete.  Season 2 was when I realized that I really should have done something the year before.  At that point, the single family that had made its home in my lawn had given birth to at least 3 families.  Now, I not only had the scars of the previous seasons activity, I had many more active villages of trails and mounds.  In frustration, I began to try to dispel the rodents. I would place the traps at what I thought were the active holes, only to come out morning after morning to unsprung traps, and a new set of trails a few feet away.  At this point, I couldn’t tell the difference between active trails and old scars.  After a few attempts, I quit. A sense of shame stirred up in me every time I pulled into my driveway to see the damage that my inaction had allowed.  This experience of shame doubled when memories of my dad, a former employee of TrueGreen lawn care, and his immaculate yard came to mind.  “egh…damn yard…damn moles.”  

Now, here we are at season 3. By this point, the moles have several cities connected by a complex set of roadways, a governing body, and an airport.  But, with newfound resolve, I began to try to drive the moles out of my yard.  (Consider this my apology to my neighbors if they end up housing some mole-refugees.)  I’ve seen some success, but about the time I drive one family from my yard, I find another one strongly embedded up against the house.  It would take $40 worth of repellant to drive that one family out of my yard, and my traps appear to be useless against them.  And, even if I spend the money, time and effort, I don’t know that I have the knowledge and expertise to see success.  Though I hate to say it, I may have to pay a professional to take care of the job that I cannot do myself.  But, that’s even more expensive and will cost me my pride as a strong, knowledgeable, suburban homeowner as well.  And so, hopelessness sets in.  “Damn moles.”

As I mowed around the mole hills, I found my thoughts going away from lawn care to marriage care.  I realized that the way I’ve dealt with the moles in my yard was an apt analogy for how many of us (myself included) deal with the difficulties and struggles in our marriages.  Inexperience keeps us from dealing with the issues early and head-on.  The seasonal nature of how we tackle the problems that rise up in our marriage:  moments of great intensity followed by seasons of resignation.  The emotional dynamics of hopelessness and shame leading to paralysis are similar as well. 

Consider the following example:  a newly married husband notices how his wife pulls away from him when he touches her, but has no clue as to why.  “Maybe she’s just getting used to this whole living together thing.  Maybe it’s just me.  Surely it will get better.”  His wife, on the other hand, noticed her husband’s tendency to spend a lot of time on the computer playing on-line video games even when they were dating.  “All guys play video games.  It was his way of connecting with friends.”  Unaddressed, the problems go underground.  Seasons pass.  The struggles remain.  But by now they have done more and more damage and caused increasing pain. Fearing the rejection from his wife, the husband has quit pursuing his wife physically.  With this physical withdrawal comes an emotional withdrawal.  Now, the husband has a “reason” to spend all of his time with his on-line community.  The couple now fights about her “frigidity” and his “game playing” but little progress is made on tackling the issues themselves. 

It is at this point that couples start doing something about the issues.  They read the books.  They go to the retreats. All are great things.  But there’s now so much pain built up, and old scars that mar the marriage, that it’s hard to find out where the active “problems” are to address at all.  This is where couples find themselves having the same “conversation” about the problem(s) over and over again; chasing mole trails, if you will.  Now shame kicks in and makes it even more difficult to love each other well.  The couple thinks, “My parents’ marriage was nothing like this…how could this have happened to us?”  Or, “This is just like my parents’ marriage and I swore I would never have a marriage like this.”  The battle between hope and despair rages.  “Can it ever be good (again)?  Is it worth the effort/pain/anger/sadness?”

Please hear this encouragement:  It IS worth it.  But, if your dream of what marriage was meant to be, of what your marriage could be, is worth holding onto, it will require you to fight.  Whatever season of your marriage you are in, whether you are just noticing the mole hills and fearing that bringing it up would be making a mountain out of it, or if you are years down the road and have seen and felt the devastation these undealt with struggles have caused, it is worth fighting for your marriage.  I’m a huge advocate of addressing issues earlier rather than later.  In my practice, I have never seen proactivity or addressing something “too early” end a marriage, but I have seen inactivity and avoidance wreck havoc. 

Regardless of what season you are in, enlisting a community to fight with you is key. Hearing from friends that you are not the only couple that is struggling, that you are not “too far gone,” and that you are not alone is vital.  Unspoken shame keeps so many couples from seeking the help they need.  You are not alone.  As part of this community, you may consider enlisting a counselor to help you find the active issues and help you tend to the wounds and scars these struggles have wrought in your hearts.  But above all, please do not let another season pass before addressing the hurt, sadness, and hopelessness in your marriage.  Though there will be a cost to the fight, the possibilities of intimacy, joy, and peace are worth it. 

Raising Strong and Loving Boys

1.     Give boys permission to have an internal life, approval for the full range of human emotions, and help in developing an emotional vocabulary.

2.     Recognize and accept the high activity level of boys and give them safe boy places to express it.

3.     Talk to boys in their language- in a way that honors their pride and their masculinity.  Use them as consultants and problem solvers.

4.     Teach boys that emotional courage is courage, and that courage and empathy are the sources of real strength in life.

5.     Use discipline to build character and conscience, not enemies.

6.     Model a manhood of emotional attachment

7.     Teach boys that there are many ways to be a man.

Taken from Raising Cain, Kindlon & Thompson, 2000

A Lack of...

The words of this song reflect the heart of a man who seems unable to express his strength and passion to the one closest to him.  The song describes a loneliness that must be numbed to be endured, and the subsequent belief that he has little of value to offer others.  This song makes sense of why pornography, and other addictive substances/activities, are attractive, and why they “work.”  Whether this was the intention of the song or not, it’s made sense of the struggle and the struggler.

If you feel discouraged
When there's a lack of color here
Please don't worry lover
It's really bursting at the seams

From absorbing everything

The spectrums A to Z

Passion

This man knows that what he portrays, what others see in him, is a lack of life.  Others would think that there is little going on in his heart.  That little is stirring in his soul.  But it is just the opposite.  He takes in everything.  So much so that he is about to burst.  But this is the struggle.  Bursting is risky…vulnerable.  “What will others think of me if I burst?”  “My passion, my heart, has not been enjoyed, but it has been mocked…critiqued…ignored.”  When a man experiences this in his youth, he learns to not express the passion in his heart.  He keeps it to himself, because to offer it to another is to offer himself up to be hurt.

But, when a man cannot express this passion, or when he shuts it down to remain safe, a distance forms between him and others.  People who invite vulnerability and passion, while attractive to the struggling man, are also dangerous.  “This man/woman could cause me to burst…and I doubt they will be able to handle it if I do.  And I will be left alone in the end.  It’s not worth it.”  So, a great loneliness takes over the heart of the man.   But this loneliness can’t be endured for long without something to alleviate the pain.
 
All the girls in every girlie magazine
Can't make me feel any less alone

Loneliness
Deep loneliness is a taste of hell.  To feel unknown.  Unloved.  Unlovable.  The experience, when acknowledged by the struggler, is overwhelming.  To function with this pain, a numbing agent must be used.  This dynamic is at work in all forms of addiction, whether the struggler is numbing fear, anger, despair, or loneliness with alcohol, with eating, or with entertainment.  To numb loneliness, pornography “works” perfectly. As it distracts from, and anesthetizes, the pain, it is also gives a simulation of the thing longed for…intimacy…closeness…oneness.  Ultimately, as the song recognizes, it doesn’t work.  It is an illusion. But, for the moments when the man begins to fantasize, then begins to plan, and then carries out his plan, that lonely taste of hell is held at bay. 

…But I know it's too late
I should have given you a reason to stay

Nothing Enjoyable/Nothing to Offer

The end result of this disconnect from passion (truly, a disconnection from oneself) and numbing of pain, is a belief that takes hold of a man that he has nothing to offer of value to another.  So many of the men I have worked with feel as if all they have to offer their wives or their friends is brokenness and neediness.  “They stick around because they have to…because they feel bad for me…not because they love me.”  While his wife and friends may assure him, if they are so bold as to speak these deep fears out loud, that their love for him is real, the man struggles to believe it.  “Why!?  How?!”  While he longs to be loved deeply, he believes there is nothing in him that deserves it.  At this point, the man either redoubles his efforts to prove to those around him that he does have something to offer, or he goes the opposite direction and “lives up to” the belief he has about himself.

Either way, the distance and loneliness deepens.

Another Way

So, what is a man caught in this trap to do?  If trying harder to prove his worthiness doesn’t work, and becoming who he believes himself to be (a piece of…), what can he do?  Quit trying. 

Quit trying to prove that you are worthy of love because of what you can do, and allow another to come into contact with who you truly are and delight in you.  Offer what is most valuable: your heart.  The beginning point of this song is the disconnect between the passion that is stirring in a man’s heart and his ability to reveal that to others.  And this is where we begin with the men we work with in Ransomed Life.  “How did you learn that who you were is unlovable?  How did you find out that your passion isn’t right/good/manly?  How might you reconnect to that passion?”  And then, the next and most risky step, is offering that passion to others.  This is true intimacy.  At the heart of the man who struggles with pornography and other sexual addictions is the longing for connection, closeness, oneness, intimacy with others.  To feel deeply loved.  To be truly accepted.  When a man experiences this, pornography becomes a pale substitute, and loses its attraction and hold over him.   

Unintended Consequences and Covenant Eyes

"Should my wife be one of the people on my Covenant Eyes list?”  I’ve heard this question in a variety of settings from men dealing with their struggle against pornography, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about this issue. Covenant Eyes is a monitoring program that tracks all internet activity and compiles a list of websites visited and sends that list to whomever the user designates.  So, when a husband is asking the above question, he is essentially asking “should my wife be one of the people I designate to receive the list of websites I have visited.” While the intent behind asking a wife to join the battle in this way is often noble, there are a number of unintended consequences that spring from this decision.  What follows is a discussion of these unintended consequences, and their impact on the couple fighting against pornography.

Shame and Covenant Eyes

The first reason many men give to making their wife their sexual accountability partner is the hope that if the man knows beyond a doubt that his wife will know if he looks at porn, that this will be incentive enough to NOT do it.  “I would feel ashamed if my wife found out when I looked at porn, so, not wanting to feel ashamed will keep me from visiting a pornographic site.”  I have heard men take this approach one step further, and have actually considered using their mothers as covenant eyes accountability partners, thinking that the shame of a mother’s discovery would be so intense that they couldn’t possibly fall to temptation knowing that their mother would find out. 

At the heart of this approach, however, is a fatal underestimating of the power of shame and a misunderstanding of shame’s place in our lives. The thought goes: “Feeling shame/embarrassment is horrible.  I don’t want to feel horrible.  So, I will threaten myself with the potential for feeling horrible shame, and this will keep me from looking at porn.” This approach assumes that the experience of shame can be domesticated and used as an incentive (or tool) to battle sin.  The truth is, that Shame is a destroyer and cannot be tamed.  In fact, it may be the most powerful weapon that The Enemy has against the follower of Christ. And, if this course of behavior is followed, the tool becomes the master. 

Shame is a consequence of the Fall.  It is not “natural” to a man, but an unnatural consequence of man’s fall from Grace.  When Adam hid from God, because he was ashamed, God did not use this shame to teach a lesson.  He did not shine a heavenly spotlight on his nakedness and say “See, this is what it feels like when you sin and get found out.”   He did not exploit his shame, he covered it; He fought against it. For a man to feed shame, and bank on it as something useful, is to give the Fall lasting dominion in one’s life.  It says “I am beyond the power of grace and the Holy Spirit, the only hope I have is in the power of shame to restrain me.”  And once one begins to appeal to this power, shame eventually ceases to act as an incentive, and begins to take hold as an identity.

Once this shame-based, "beyond the strength of grace," identity takes hold, it actually becomes harder for a man to fight against this sin.  When a man does succumb to the temptation to look at porn, after enlisting his wife as his Covenant Eyes accountability partner, he can begin to think “I’m so ‘sick’ that I don’t even care if my wife knows what I’ve seen.”  The next time the temptation arises to look at pornography, this thought then begins to fight against him saying “Well, you’ve already proven how sick you are, you might as well go the whole way and look at porn again,” increasing the likelihood of subsequent falls.

     

Passive Honesty and Covenant Eyes

The backhanded slap of reality brings about the second reason that many men give for making their wives their covenant eyes accountability partners.  Most men have been in the fight long enough to know that on those occasions that he has looked at pornography, he has often not been able to muster the courage to go to his wife to confess his sin.  So, he thinks, “Covenant Eyes will force me to be honest about my sin with my wife.  I know I’m going to want to hide or lie, and this will allow her to cut off my escape routes.”

The intent behind this is often noble:  “I know I am a sinner, prone to lie and hide.  I don’t want to be able to do that.  I don’t want to be that man.  I want to be an honest man”  But the way it ends up playing out in reality actually stunts a man’s relational/emotional/spiritual development.  In his heart, he wants to be an honest man, but what using Covenant Eyes in this way promotes is a passive honesty, rather than the active honesty of the adult child of God.

Here’s what I mean: “Passive Honesty” is the honesty that comes when one’s sin is exposed by another.  When a wife discovers her husband’s sin through this 3^rd party, she must now go to him to tell him that she knows and ask/demand that he deal with his sin.  While there may be defense and protest, ultimately there is no way to escape the reality of the situation.  The sites that were visited are there in black and white.  He cannot lie about it and get away with it, so he confesses.  It is honesty.  But it is passive because the man, who knew he had sinned, did not go to his wife first and tell her that he had done so.  He merely waited to be confronted with it, and then confessed.

Active Honesty, on the other hand, is recognizing the hurt one has caused, the unkindness done, the sin committed, and confessing it to the offended party whether that person knew of the sin or not.  Whether this is in the realm of sexual addiction or in the every day, relational sins we commit against each other, active honesty and seeking forgiveness is what we are called to.  Active Honesty is risky.  It confronts us with the possibility of unforgiveness and broken relationship.  “How will the other person respond when he finds out what I did/said/thought about him?  Can they forgive me for telling another friend about their marital problems?  Will he still be my friend if I tell him that I’m jealous of his latest promotion?  Will she leave if I tell her that I screwed up again?”  However, Active Honesty is also a man’s greatest hope in rebuilding a relationship that is suffering from the brokenness of known and unknown sin. 

Spousal Dread and Covenant Eyes

What emotions would fly across a wife’s heart when she opens her e-mail at the end of long night wondering if she will find out that her husband has fallen again to the temptation to look at pornography?  The hope of hearing from a dear friend about the joys and trials of work, motherhood, or friendship dashed against the rocks of the discovery of betrayal.  How long can a wife continue to encounter this before she begins to dread opening her e-mail?  And how many experiences of this kind of dread will it take before she begins to resent the husband who is asking her to deal with this dread on a nightly basis? 

For a wife, hearing of a husband’s interaction with pornography is a traumatic experience.  For a wife to discover such a thing not from the mouth of the one she loves and who loves her, but from a faceless, presenceless computer program can do nothing but intensify this trauma.  What does someone long for when she experience trauma (when she discovers betrayal)?  Comfort.  Presence.  Assurance.  Repentance.  To discover a betrayal in the absence of the one who has committed his life to her is to leave the wife with no comfort and no reminder of the love she has for her spouse or the love he has for her.  She is not hearing the news from a saddened and remorseful husband, she is discovering it alone…with no physical comfort, no spoken repentance, and no reminder of the man who committed his heart and body to her.  She is left utterly alone in her dread, and is defenseless against the powerlessness and shame that would seek to consumer her at that moment.   

The wife is now put in the position of wondering “What should I do with this information?”  She hopes that her husband will come forward on his own, and confess his sin to her.  But what happens if his own shame, fear, and anger overwhelm him and he does not?  Does she go to him to confront him with his sin?  This can quickly turn the spousal relationship into one of mother and son, deepening the divide between the lovers.  Does she wait for him to confess?  Resentment and distrust then build with every minute, hour, day that passes without his confession.  The wife is put in a double-bind, and is ultimately left without comfort for her pain, and oftentimes loses the opportunity to feel all she may want/need to feel, as she must now figure out the best way to deal with the situation. 

So What…

Considering these unintended consequences, my answer to the question above is “No, I do not think a husband should enlist his wife in the battle against pornography by making her a Covenant Eyes accountability partner.”  So, is there a place for Covenant Eyes in the battle against pornography?  I still have mixed feelings about it.  I think that there could be a place for it as an intermediate step, but I don’t think it has much place as a long-term tool. If active honesty with a friend or with a spouse is impossible for a man at a certain point during the struggle, Covenant Eyes may be a helpful tool in the hands of a trusted friend, but if the struggler isn’t moving from passive honesty to active honesty, he must ask himself “why?”. The deeper question I would have for the man is this:  What is making active honesty with your friends and spouse impossible?  Overall, though Covenant Eyes could be a helpful tool for parents monitoring a child’s internet usage, I think the same unintended consequences for men are possible even when the accountability partner is a friend and not a spouse.  In general, it’s just hard for a man to feel and, thus, act like a man when he is caught or his sin is exposed by another.

If you are a man that struggles to be actively honest with your spouse and friends, or if you experience the paralyzing effects of shame, working through these issues with a counselor may be a vital step in your recovery and rebuilding of the relationships in your life.  As I’ve worked with men in individual counseling as well as in group settings, I’ve seen shame diminish in men’s lives, I’ve seen their ability to be honest increase.  I've seen their relationships with their wives restored and deepened.  I’ve seen men who could see only brokenness and depravity in their hearts begin to see themselves as delighted in sons of God.  And I’ve seen men experience hope as they see God strengthen them in their fight against pornography. 

Poison and Wine and Passionate Love

“Your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine
You think your dreams are the same as mine...
Your hands can heal, your hands can bruise
I don’t have a choice, but I still choose you.


I don’t love you, but I always will.”


When we allow our hearts to long for what they were intended to long for, we would say that we long to be loved passionately and permanently.  We long for our spouse to speak words that both soothe and inflame our hearts.  We long for such oneness that our very dreams are shared by the other.  We hope that the ones we love would be a source of healing to us, and never waver in their whole-hearted commitment to us.  But living in a broken world with broken hearts, we do not experience the love we were made for.


Pain and anger build, and in the moment that we could speak peace, we spew venom.  When the opportunity comes to chase the dream we have held onto from younger days, we forsake our spouse to move headlong into it.  In the moments we long for tenderness and gentleness from our spouse, we are treated roughly.  And instead of wholehearted love, we secretly keep our options open.  We do not love the way we were intended to love.


But, while this song on the face may seem to speak about broken love, I think it also speaks of a deep and passionate love.  It is a love that is passionate not only for the other as he or she is, but a love that is passionate for our spouse as they were created to be.  Because we are sinners, we need another to speak words that reveal not only our belovedness, but our brokenness.  And while these words may feel like poison, they carry the potential to heal.  Because we are self-centered lovers, we need our spouse to remind us that the dreams we have for our lives may not be what God has called our partner to.  And while we may long to be constantly embraced by our spouse, there are moments when what we desperately need are the faithful wounds of a friend to bring us to repentance.


And this is the very love that Christ shows to the Church as His bride.  The more I listened to this song, the more I could imagine Jesus singing these words to his Church, as a passionately loving God and Groom.  God’s love is not dispassionate toward us, unmoved by our sin or glory, but is deeply affected by our movements toward Him and away from Him.   His words to us are not always intended to soothe, but to disrupt and lead us to seek healing.  His dreams for our lives are often drastically different than our own selfish and self-protective plans.  And while he does move towards us with gentleness, he can also come at us as an invader, an aggressor, to call us to contend with him and contend with our sin. 


So, if we were created to love and be loved passionately and permanently, why do we experience it so infrequently?  What is it that keeps a person from loving another in this way?  And how does a heart become so broken that it cannot accept or feel this kind of love from a spouse, or from God?  After living so long without it, one begins to wonder "is this kind of love even really possible?"  This song reminds me that such a love is possible.  By the grace and strength of God, it is possible for a wife to love a husband at his most sinful, most broken, moments.  It is possible for a husband to draw strength to hold to the vow he made to her to love her in sickness and health, for better or worse, until death parts them.  And it is possible for God to continually choose to draw near to his people even in the moments of their greatest betrayal.