A Year in the Wilderness

The picture I left you with in my last post shows the setting for my current wilderness experience.  If you recognize the picture, you may think that I’ve lost my marbles.  The picture is of Kaneohe Bay, a large coastal bay on the windward side of Oahu.  Life on a tropical island…wilderness experience…I don’t get it.  Trust me I understand the disconnect.

The move to a new church on Oahu came as a complete surprise to me.   If God had followed my timing, we would have stayed in Murrieta for at least one more year.  We would have gotten our son through High School, gotten him off to college, consolidated into an empty nest life and then get an appointment in the Hawaii District.  I had hoped, one day, to come and serve here.  Over the years that we’ve travelled and vacationed here I found a great affinity for the islands, the culture and the unique ways that I experienced God while I was here.  I felt a calling to be here.  Now here I am…yet it is not exactly how I would have planned. 

I’m here by myself.  Because we didn’t want to move our son for his Senior year, Sally stayed in Murrieta with him to enable him to finish school.  While several trips have been planned back and forth throughout the year, we have unlimited texting and mobile to mobile and certainly take advantage of the miracle that is Skype, its not the same as waking up each day in the same house.  The blessing in this arrangement is that we must be more intentional about our time together and the ways we communicate.  It has shined a light on the ways that we have taken each other for granted in our family relationship. This awareness has enabled us to claim a deeper love for and commitment to each other.

Spiritually and professionally I came here fatigued.  With all that had happened personally, spiritually and professionally in the last five years I was pretty worn out.  Even though I did have a sense of it, I was so caught up in the maelstrom that had become my life and ministry that I felt powerless to slow down.  I needed to change my sense of self, my approach to ministry and get a better understanding of what God is calling me to do.  I had travelled so far down the road I was on, I simply didn’t see how to make the changes I knew were necessary.  As is always the case, God knew.  I was given a choice. 

The choice involved risk.  The choice involved sacrifice.  While this opportunity was consistent with my heart’s desire, the timing sucked.  Just like the timing of going to Murrieta was not our timing, we struggled with the cost of saying “yes” to this call.  Would we trust God’s hand in this or not?  The short answer is:  we trusted.  I’m here…my family is on the mainland…God is still at work in all of it.  As has been witnessed to through the history of people of faith, God has abundantly poured out grace in our lives.  It hasn’t always been easy these last 6 months.  Because we have been willing to trust, to listen and to faithfully walk, the trend of our lives has been toward healing, redemption and transformation.

I will continue the story in future posts, but for now, I can say unequivocally that God’s hand goes all the way to the bottom of this move.  As difficult as it was to change ministry setting after 10 years and to leave the friends that had come to mean so much, I know why the time had come.  I know why I’m here.  I know what God is calling me to do here.  More importantly, I know more fully now than at anytime previously in my life who God is calling me to be.  The personal brokenness that got in the way of fulfilling that call is being healed.  A new day has dawned.

A Spiritual Reset

Needless to say, my pilgrimage with God was not on hiatus the last two years, even though my blog posts were.  Two years ago my personal life took an unexpected turn as the relationship with my father completely disintegrated.  I reached a crisis point with him as the truth about who he is became completely revealed.  I made the difficult but necessary decision that I could not tolerate his toxicity in my life and my family’s life.  I am reconciled to the fact that I may never see or speak with him again.  There is still grief and sadness in this decision even though I am at peace with it.  Through this grieving I realized that the only father I could count on was God.  As I reflected on the scope of my life, I could see God at work in a whole host of ways to sustain my life and faith.  There were many people in my life that served as a means of grace that prevented me from becoming the man who raised me.

Of all the parts of this saga, I had the most difficulty dealing with the truth of how much like my father I had become.  I was raised by a man with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  What this means is that my value to him was based solely on what I could do for him.  I grew up in an environment where my self worth was always conditional.  It was always his world and the rest of us simply lived in it.  In fact, a book that was referred to me by a friend speaks volumes about my upbringing...Why Is It Always About You?  This is a book written to help the families of narcissists make sense of how to live with somebody who has NPD.  By the grace of God I didn’t follow that path.  However, the effects of being raised in that environment couldn’t be avoided altogether.  The Narcissistic Shadow was cast across my life mostly in my relationship to my family.  I was far more like my father than I would have ever admitted when it came to my marriage and my parenting.  The Shadow was also cast across my ministry in times of conflict.  I would look to insulate myself in anyway I could rather than to face the prospect of making a decision that proved unpopular or would have put my standing within the community at risk.

It’s been a long two years.  There have been a good many peaks and valleys along this path.  I have had moments of clarity when I was able to choose differently, make amends and move forward.  I have also had moments when I felt as though I was beating my head against the wall.  I have known God’s grace in extraordinary and life giving ways.  By the healing that God has poured out in my life and relationships I have been able to reclaim my life.  I am continuing to peal away the layers of crap that have accumulated over the years.  I have a new image of what my life and ministry will look like in the years to come. 

One of the most enduring gifts that God has given me through this transition is the grace to know that my ministry has mattered, in spite of what I had come to discover about myself.  As grief stricken and angry as I was with myself because of the choices I had made, I could have easily looked at the last twenty-five years as a waste, forever tainted by the stain of narcissism.  I have reflected carefully over the ways that narcissism impacted my ministry in negative ways so that I might learn.  I have also been able to celebrate the ways that God’s grace was at work in me and through me to make a change in people’s lives as I have led them to deeper experiences and expressions of faith.  This balance has kept me on track through these last two years.

The whole story is of course more complex than a single post can afford, so I’ll need to unpack it more as time goes on, mostly because I’m still trying to get a handle on some of it.  In the meantime there have been other changes along the way; the most significant one will be in my next post.  Here’s a hint: