Caring for the Broken-hearted - Part 2
It's been a long time coming, but here is part two of the course I've been attending with the Brighton ACT ladies. My blog on the first part of the course can be found here.
This second session was quite reflective, involving us looking at our
own lives and our own weaknesses. I guess that's why I've postponed
writing it - it wasn't necessarily always comfortable and in some ways
left me feeling weirdly vulnerable. It's nice to revisit it with a bit
of distance now.
We began the session thinking of a time when we had felt helpless or out of control and how this made us feel or react. I am not good at being out of control and not knowing the outcome of situations. I find it immensely stressful, become overwhelmed, panicked, frustrated and lose perspective. I tend to withdraw, become quite tearful and depression rears its ugly head. However, you cannot stay in a crisis forever and for me, that's often where my friends intervene and help out. From childhood, we begin to learn how to cope with crisis be that through dependence on others, complete independence, distraction and other learnt strategies. We also rely on survival instincts. Overcoming crisis and difficult situations is often about a balance between positive and negative. The size of a crisis will also depend on how emotionally attached we are to the outcome. For example, my current "crisis" would be the loss of my teaching degree...that's fairly life altering and will therefore take me longer to overcome than the "crisis" that I broke a plate I liked. We all have holes and damage, no matter how good our upbringing was - however, no matter how damaged we are - we are ultimately a person, and not just a group of problems.
We use coping mechanisms as fillers for these holes that a crisis creates in our life. A coping mechanism is a way of quickly restoring an equilibrium in our life - common ones include food, chocolate, pleasure, control, shopping, work, money, power and relationships. Thinking towards the women we may come across in our various lines of work - we can't just take these coping mechanisms away. If you take someone's coping mechanisms away and leave them with nothing else, you leave them vulnerable and exposed and full of overwhelming "holes". So often, Christians just throw Jesus at situations- the phrase "hand it all over to Him" is used far to often without the recipient understanding Jesus or having any faith in the first place. Coping mechanisms/fillers can be mental, emotional, physical and behavioural - but overall, negative coping mechanisms lead to destructive behaviours. Our fillers can so often become idols in our life - even religion can be a filler! Some fillers have worse consequences than others but ultimately, a filler is a filler. How far down our list of coping mechanisms is turn to God and pray?
So far, the majority of the session had been quite inward focussed and as someone who has spent years engaging with negative coping mechanisms, it was tough going. I am all to aware that I am flawed and holed, I'm acutely aware that I use food as a coping mechanism - be that eating too much or not enough. It's so helpful to see that in myself though - how would I cope without my coping mechanisms? I wouldn't. Unless there was something else there in the place, helping to fill that hole in my life. Wendy emphasised that we are not to be condemned by our fillers, just as we are not to condemn those who come to us with negative coping mechanisms. Although it was tough going at times, I think it was really important that Wendy used part of the session to help us isolate and identify our own fillers and weaknesses.
We then looked at John 8: 1-11 which is the story of an adulterer being brought before Jesus to be stoned and Jesus turns to the pharisees and says "if any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her". We are not condemned! It's always interesting revisiting and picking apart well known Bible stories - but the main thing to be taken away here is simple. Jesus does not condemn us. He leaves the adulterer free of condemnation but with a choice to change. "Go no and leave your life of sin" is a choice, not a condition of forgiveness. We should aim to be like Jesus, we must not condemn someone's actions, but we can show them that they have a choice in how they move forward. We never find out how the woman finishes life, for all we know she may have gone back to being an adulterer and this may be true for our lives, we may never know how someone uses their second chance. What is important is that we are not condemning but we are offering a different choice.
The session the returned to focussing on our own fillers and the fact that actually - turning to chocolate can be just as negative as turning to heroin if the motive is emotional need. We need to be aware of our own fillers so as not to judge other peoples. We also need to be careful not to "preach" at people with regards to getting rid of negative coping mechanisms, we need to try and live it out in our own lives. Another phrase commonly thrown around in Christian settings is "love the sinner, hate the sin" but actually - Jesus loves the sinner. Full stop. There are no conditions and strings attached to his love, we don't have to become sinless before He can love us. He dealt with that on the cross, we already have His righteousness (perfection). We are all sinners saved by grace.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight" - Proverbs 3:5&6
We started the second half of the session considering both a positive and a negative experience pastorally and how these made us feel.
Negative:
Confused, frustrated, judged, undermined, stupid, hurt, unvalued, not listened to, like assumptions had been made/conclusions jumped to, vulnerable, lack of understanding, expectations imposed, being there out of obligation rather than love, condemned.
Positive:
Love, not time limited, continuity, undivided attention, prayer, caring but objective, gaining a different perspective, non-judgmental, freedom to be honest, mutual - as appropriate, feeling safe, listened to, understood.
There is such a huge contrast between the two, and as women who are hoping to help and care for broken hearted women - it's important that we aim to replicate those positive pastoral experiences we have had.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." - Proverbs 13:12
Often, when in need of pastoral care we'll place our hope in a person, or a meeting and if this becomes a negative thing it can be hugely damaging to that hope we once had. If we can provide these positive pastoral experiences however, we can offer hope renewed and hope for a new life. The women we will come into contact with will have needs - we all do. One of our greatest needs is to be loved, not to be fixed, but to be loved. When we're working with these women, we need to find out what they'd like to address first - what we might view as their biggest problem might seem minute in comparison to something they view as their biggest problem. It's about them, not us. We also need to remember however that we are empowering them, not rescuing - what can we do for them, what do they need from us?
When you start filling someone up with love and kidness and hope, there becomes less and less space for the negative labels she was once consumed by (that we learned about during the first session). During the first session we covered a mannakin in negative labels. At this point in the second session we started to attach loving quotes over the top and as we did so some of the negative labels naturally fell off, it was a very powerful and touching image.
One of the other images that Wendy used was that of a butterfly. If you "help" a butterfly release itself from it's cocoon it will die. It is the action of fighting it's way out that gives the wings strength to fly to enable the butterfly to survive. Likewise, we are not there to "rescue" these women, we are there to provide them with what they need to rescue themselves. We can care for and support people but we cannot do it for them. This can be tiring and we have to ensure we are not dragged down ourselves.
It was a tough session, touching on things that I'm struggling with personally right now - but it was also helpful in many ways. I am a broken-hearted woman myself and in that I have the tools to help myself. It is only when we recognise our own weaknesses that we are then empowered to help and empower others. What I view as my weaknesses can so easily be used as my strengths.
The next session isn't for a few weeks but I'm excited to see what the second part holds.
TTFN x
We began the session thinking of a time when we had felt helpless or out of control and how this made us feel or react. I am not good at being out of control and not knowing the outcome of situations. I find it immensely stressful, become overwhelmed, panicked, frustrated and lose perspective. I tend to withdraw, become quite tearful and depression rears its ugly head. However, you cannot stay in a crisis forever and for me, that's often where my friends intervene and help out. From childhood, we begin to learn how to cope with crisis be that through dependence on others, complete independence, distraction and other learnt strategies. We also rely on survival instincts. Overcoming crisis and difficult situations is often about a balance between positive and negative. The size of a crisis will also depend on how emotionally attached we are to the outcome. For example, my current "crisis" would be the loss of my teaching degree...that's fairly life altering and will therefore take me longer to overcome than the "crisis" that I broke a plate I liked. We all have holes and damage, no matter how good our upbringing was - however, no matter how damaged we are - we are ultimately a person, and not just a group of problems.
We use coping mechanisms as fillers for these holes that a crisis creates in our life. A coping mechanism is a way of quickly restoring an equilibrium in our life - common ones include food, chocolate, pleasure, control, shopping, work, money, power and relationships. Thinking towards the women we may come across in our various lines of work - we can't just take these coping mechanisms away. If you take someone's coping mechanisms away and leave them with nothing else, you leave them vulnerable and exposed and full of overwhelming "holes". So often, Christians just throw Jesus at situations- the phrase "hand it all over to Him" is used far to often without the recipient understanding Jesus or having any faith in the first place. Coping mechanisms/fillers can be mental, emotional, physical and behavioural - but overall, negative coping mechanisms lead to destructive behaviours. Our fillers can so often become idols in our life - even religion can be a filler! Some fillers have worse consequences than others but ultimately, a filler is a filler. How far down our list of coping mechanisms is turn to God and pray?
So far, the majority of the session had been quite inward focussed and as someone who has spent years engaging with negative coping mechanisms, it was tough going. I am all to aware that I am flawed and holed, I'm acutely aware that I use food as a coping mechanism - be that eating too much or not enough. It's so helpful to see that in myself though - how would I cope without my coping mechanisms? I wouldn't. Unless there was something else there in the place, helping to fill that hole in my life. Wendy emphasised that we are not to be condemned by our fillers, just as we are not to condemn those who come to us with negative coping mechanisms. Although it was tough going at times, I think it was really important that Wendy used part of the session to help us isolate and identify our own fillers and weaknesses.
We then looked at John 8: 1-11 which is the story of an adulterer being brought before Jesus to be stoned and Jesus turns to the pharisees and says "if any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her". We are not condemned! It's always interesting revisiting and picking apart well known Bible stories - but the main thing to be taken away here is simple. Jesus does not condemn us. He leaves the adulterer free of condemnation but with a choice to change. "Go no and leave your life of sin" is a choice, not a condition of forgiveness. We should aim to be like Jesus, we must not condemn someone's actions, but we can show them that they have a choice in how they move forward. We never find out how the woman finishes life, for all we know she may have gone back to being an adulterer and this may be true for our lives, we may never know how someone uses their second chance. What is important is that we are not condemning but we are offering a different choice.
The session the returned to focussing on our own fillers and the fact that actually - turning to chocolate can be just as negative as turning to heroin if the motive is emotional need. We need to be aware of our own fillers so as not to judge other peoples. We also need to be careful not to "preach" at people with regards to getting rid of negative coping mechanisms, we need to try and live it out in our own lives. Another phrase commonly thrown around in Christian settings is "love the sinner, hate the sin" but actually - Jesus loves the sinner. Full stop. There are no conditions and strings attached to his love, we don't have to become sinless before He can love us. He dealt with that on the cross, we already have His righteousness (perfection). We are all sinners saved by grace.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight" - Proverbs 3:5&6
We started the second half of the session considering both a positive and a negative experience pastorally and how these made us feel.
Negative:
Confused, frustrated, judged, undermined, stupid, hurt, unvalued, not listened to, like assumptions had been made/conclusions jumped to, vulnerable, lack of understanding, expectations imposed, being there out of obligation rather than love, condemned.
Positive:
Love, not time limited, continuity, undivided attention, prayer, caring but objective, gaining a different perspective, non-judgmental, freedom to be honest, mutual - as appropriate, feeling safe, listened to, understood.
There is such a huge contrast between the two, and as women who are hoping to help and care for broken hearted women - it's important that we aim to replicate those positive pastoral experiences we have had.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." - Proverbs 13:12
Often, when in need of pastoral care we'll place our hope in a person, or a meeting and if this becomes a negative thing it can be hugely damaging to that hope we once had. If we can provide these positive pastoral experiences however, we can offer hope renewed and hope for a new life. The women we will come into contact with will have needs - we all do. One of our greatest needs is to be loved, not to be fixed, but to be loved. When we're working with these women, we need to find out what they'd like to address first - what we might view as their biggest problem might seem minute in comparison to something they view as their biggest problem. It's about them, not us. We also need to remember however that we are empowering them, not rescuing - what can we do for them, what do they need from us?
When you start filling someone up with love and kidness and hope, there becomes less and less space for the negative labels she was once consumed by (that we learned about during the first session). During the first session we covered a mannakin in negative labels. At this point in the second session we started to attach loving quotes over the top and as we did so some of the negative labels naturally fell off, it was a very powerful and touching image.
One of the other images that Wendy used was that of a butterfly. If you "help" a butterfly release itself from it's cocoon it will die. It is the action of fighting it's way out that gives the wings strength to fly to enable the butterfly to survive. Likewise, we are not there to "rescue" these women, we are there to provide them with what they need to rescue themselves. We can care for and support people but we cannot do it for them. This can be tiring and we have to ensure we are not dragged down ourselves.
It was a tough session, touching on things that I'm struggling with personally right now - but it was also helpful in many ways. I am a broken-hearted woman myself and in that I have the tools to help myself. It is only when we recognise our own weaknesses that we are then empowered to help and empower others. What I view as my weaknesses can so easily be used as my strengths.
The next session isn't for a few weeks but I'm excited to see what the second part holds.
TTFN x
Comments
Post a Comment