In t-minus 1 week, I will start my counseling practicum orientation. This is a quantum leap. And one for which I will never be ready until I am in the air with His everlasting arms beneath me. The momentum is building--like a bottle of coke that has hit the ground, I am all fizzed up with an overflow quite imminent. Step back, kids--this one will spew. I just hope what comes out is beautiful, healing, living water.
I have been struck as of late with the incoherence of my story. It's not that the details of my life are incoherent--it's that I have not taken the time to put the pieces together and interpret what God has done in my life on a grand scale. No more of this "what's your testimony?", to which I respond by looking around confusedly and mumbling something unintelligible about being 6 and asking Jesus into my heart.
There is so much more.
I am starting to see that what I learned about reality started with my family, my school, my church. And this is something that most anyone can relate to. What we understand about the world we learn from our parents and other authority figures, our little unformed minds dependent on them to establish the structure and parameters for our existence. This realization is foundational to the work that I am going into. The abuse experienced by the women and children I will be working with has become their reality, so natural for them that they do not understand that it is a deviation from the good and true standard that God has ordained, that flows from His very character. Their mistreatment has trained them to believe that they have little value; they are useless; there is no one who will protect them; they are at fault for what is done to them. They are faced with the contradiction--they have no control and yet deserve all the blame. This is deception, the birthplace of confusion, which I am coming to see as the devil's playground. Through confusion, Satan can tie us up in webs that carry us in multiple directions and leave us powerless to move. These women are confused and cannot see clearly enough to name the mistreatment for what it is--abuse.
The realization of truth charts the pathway to freedom.
It is plain for many people to see the damage abuse causes (though not everyone). What I want to bring out now is an even more unrecognizable reality---neglect. This is a reality that is easily overlooked because it is an act of omission. I mean, how can one recognize what is not done? Committed acts are tangible and observable. There is a more direct cause and effect associated with committed acts. The reason I am talking about this is because I am starting to see a pattern---a pattern that has been carried through generations. There are two sides of the coin---abuse and neglect---and both involve the absence of love. The relationships bereft of love will either be marked by harmful words and gestures or the lack of words and gestures.
And here is where I see my story and the stories of others similar to me. I have come from a Christian family. I love my parents and know they love me. I have attended both Christian school and church for most of my life. But if I look back on my childhood, I have many questions to ask myself. How did I go to church and Christian school and yet struggle through things like depression, loneliness, and isolation? Why did I feel so lost and alone? My parents were busy working people. They were there for me as much as they knew how to be. They gave me more than they had been given, that's for sure. They did not have very many friends; thus, we did not have people over to our house. Church and school were similar--there were adults in my life, but their involvement only went so far. Due to the lack, I developed a deep inner world that was full of activity but deprived of reality. I had everything on the surface I could have asked for and yet hungered within my soul for deep guidance and intimacy.
I see the virus of neglect has been transferred from families and schools and churches to the individuals that inhabit these microcosms. My childhood world was free of abuse but carried some aspects of neglect (albeit small compared to many others). And I'm not laying this charge on my parents or school or church. I am laying it on the Christian culture as a whole (while it is true of secular culture too, I can hardly expect otherwise and have no right to speak thus to the culture that does not claim otherwise). I believe my parents and others faced it too. We should never forget that the lack of love and goodness is just as potentially harmful as the acts done in opposition to love and goodness.
The biggest point I want to make is: No one exists in a vacuum. Where love and goodness are not being sown, there is ground that will be used for something---be it unwanted weeds in the form of selfishness or waywardness. But be sure of it--there is no fallow ground. There is no neutral territory. Those who are not vessels of light, truth, goodness, LOVE will be vessels of the vices that stand in opposition to them.
In childhood, I had some good seeds planted and God was faithful to grow those. We need to take seriously the seeds we are sowing into the lives of children and those around us. Just because we are not sowing bad seeds in their lives does not mean that we are not having an effect. There needs to be a mind shift---we need to see that our Christian life does not show itself in our avoidance of the bad but our embrace of the good. For that is where Christ's influence so powerfully challenges the reality of abuse and neglect. Which is love. Love that is free of evil and full of goodness.
May we be filled to the full and overflowing.
About to spew,
Ashellen
