• Immediacy – aware of the here and now
• Honesty and genuineness are crucial
• Readiness to address the issues
• Wonderings, questions – the client’s and mine
• Core beliefs, expectations, lies, assumptions that are held within
• Relationship with the client is foundational
• Extra-therapeutic factors – things outside of therapy do lead to change
• Fear of vulnerability – something important to work through
• Inner children – halted growth that happened in the past
• Attachment – it’s important to fill our relational voids
• Skin hunger – appropriate, healthy touch is necessary
• Metaphor and analogy – they help explain topics
• Positive aspects, strengths, resiliency – everything isn’t bad
• Journey with the client – change is a journey
• Influence of the past on the whole person – the past impacts today
• False self/poser  – parts of self that cover real self
• In our heart of hearts (at our core) we are good
• Experiences have a big impact on thoughts
• Attachment – Rogerian, EFT, Bowlby, Neufeld
• Trauma – EMDR, OEI
• Relationship – Rogerian, Gestalt, Group
• Thoughts – CBT, REBT
• Emotions – EFT
• Experiences – Gestalt, Phenomenology

In my counselling practice I see people from all walks of life, with all kinds of stories, hardship, and struggle. Sometimes my clients’ struggles wake me up to appreciate what I’ve got or what I’m taking for granted. While talking with one client whose marriage has ended, we reflected on what used to be present and isn’t anymore. Hearing this client share took me aback; actually it stung. As a husband I can complain or get lost in the ruts of selfishness and navel gazing and overlook the treasures I have. Put simply, I’m just not grateful. This client helped me refocus and see the little treasures I so often take for granted. I asked the client to share with me some reflections. Here’s what I was sent. She gave me permission to share it with you.

I miss the warmth of his body on a cool night, hearing him breathe.  The comfort was in the presence.  Believe me when I say that after a couple years with no ‘presence’, your heart aches.  When you get startled awake during the night, the room is dark, there are noises, your mind races; there used to be peace simply knowing you are not alone.

The phone call, text or email … now I look past the message or attitude I didn’t want to hear; I miss the gesture, the knowing that someone had me on their mind, even if just for a split second or to transfer grief.  They thought of me – that is the opposite of loneliness.  Now I really know what loneliness is.

Now I get to pick out every movie, every meal, I have the bed to myself, my time – they are all mine and I don’t have to share them with anyone – well, that’s how I used to think (and sometimes those things felt ok).  At the moment there is no choice, really… it’s all about me and I can get what I want – except presence from someone who intimately knows me.   A little tension doesn’t seem so bad anymore.

Now I have my success, my good times, my tears, all my feelings, my scary dreams, all to myself.  I never knew that even the bored, inattentive grunt I often received was attention.  It was better than the nothing I have now.  Maybe politicians aren’t so wrong when they say “any attention is good attention”.

Being alone was not my idea and sometimes it’s hard for me to acknowledge constructive lessons when I’m caught up with the bitterness of being ditched by my former mate or the sadness of a cold Saturday night when my friends are busy and I’m alone.  There is good however; I’ve learned in looking back to appreciate the small or unaccounted for tokens I used to receive with malice.  Now when someone bestows on me their simple presence or plain gesture, I say thank-you; I feel grateful.

This isn’t supposed to be a reflection of my loneliness; it is supposed to be a lesson for others to remember the little, tiny, insignificant, overlooked moments in your life, reflect on those things, be mindful of them and be present to them.  Make those teeny-tiny things larger than life in your mind – the same way you churn those grudges, churn the breath of your spouse, the warmth generated from the touch of a frustrated child; churn the simple thought that someone wanted YOU, for whatever reason – they wanted YOU!

Recently, I received an email from Ransomed Heart Ministries (http://ransomedheart.com). A ministry that has changed my life. The email linked me to their October 2010 Newsletter on “How Do You Relate?” After reading the newsletter, I could see that God was showing me something and trying hard to be very clear. Let me give you some context.

As of late, I have been noticing a consistent theme that has been surfacing in my life and in my observation of the Christian community: there is a drought of authentic love flowing between the people in the pews, and people are thirsty, sometimes dehydrated from lack of this love. I hear stories of people who are desperate for someone to care about them, to really care, to get in their mess with them and walk with them, to journey with them, not just give them advice or coach them from the sidelines. People are hungry for a love that enters the situation. We long for an incarnational love. We long for Jesus. I am not trying to step on toes here or wag a finger. I’m just sharing an observation that I’ve noticed in myself and that might go beyond me. It’s simply an invitation to examine (a) how we have been loving others and (b) the impact we have on others.

This is where the newsletter comes in. I thought about just making a link to the newsletter and letting you read it on your own (I will do that at the end), but I wanted to highlight some of the sections that spoke to me.

Eldredge observes:

“The way we relate to others speaks volumes about our character, our motives, our basic life ambitions. In other words, it reveals the kind of person we are”

That struck me right off. Having character and good intention is important to me and not until recently have I been coming to realize that how I love people is the most prominent way my character is seen. If I want to be like Jesus or be called Christian, I have to ask myself how am I loving others. Jesus said that the world would recognize us by how we loved each other. What a patient, loving God we have, who practices what He preaches when He gently exposes this to me, instead of shaming me or rubbing my face in my imperfection.

Eldredge continues (the next passage is a few paragraphs from the newsletter I’ve stuck together, a bit longer, but stay with it)…

“Here’s another way to get at this – is learning to love the thing that grabs your priorities on any given day? Not me. I have my “to do” list, and learning to love isn’t even on it. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it’s true. I have to be reminded that this whole story is about love. Then I go, Oh yeah. I do believe that. It’s just not what I’m after on a daily basis. Which is my point about our daily motives….I love Chesterton on this. He says it’s why the family and the church is so key to God’s program, because you can pick your friends, you can pick your colleagues, but you sort of get thrown into a family and it is there you begin your training in learning to love. Then you become part of the church and encounter all sorts of people who rub you the wrong way, and thus your training continues….You and I have a way we relate to others. It was formed out of our childhood, mostly, and it weaves together what we do to avoid rejection, and what we do to get a little praise. Dan never speaks up because he’s afraid he’ll say something stupid; Susan can’t shut up because she’s desperate to be liked. Matt talks about his job because he’s trying to impress you and Jan refuses to talk about what she does for fear of embarrassment. Amy dresses really nice because she wants to be noticed and Susan ‘dresses down’ because she fears the attention of men. On and on it goes….And none of it is motivated by love. It’s motivated by all sorts of other things, like fear, compulsion, narcissism, pride and mostly self-protection. But not love….That is why the way we relate to others is high on God’s list for the transformation of our character. It opens up a door to a whole world of joy and integrity and discovering we can live a very powerful life wherever we are. We have a style of relating, it’s motivated by all sorts of things that aren’t so pretty, but God wants to free us of all that and help us learn to relate like he does. Wow. How hopeful….Think of what a relief it would be if the people who bug you most deeply told you they had enrolled in a class showing them how the way they relate is driving people nuts. Now, think of the joy the people you live and work with will feel when they hear you have. (That class, by the way, is Christianity.)”

We need community. We need to re-examine our intentions and impact, re-learn and re-member how to love each other. I think that is what God is up to as of late in my life. Actually, I think that’s what He’s been up to all along. Isn’t that the whole point of Christianity – love?

(To read the whole newsletter, please click here and then scroll down a little to find the link “2010 October” next to “How Do You Relate?”

Among the many things that we need in life, one of the most foundational, possibly the most important is relationship. We need a family, a community to journey with, to love us, to challenge us, to pick us up. Lots of people have different ideas of what community means. Some parts of it include donuts and coffee after Church. Other parts include helping out someone in need. But I think that there is another level of community that is desperately needed and scarce. John Eldredge makes a great point about community:

“Going to church with hundreds of other people to sit and hear a sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That’s why most folks prefer it. Because community will. It will reveal where you have yet to become holy, right at the very moment you are so keenly aware of how they have yet to become holy. It will bring you close and you will be seen and you will be known and therein lies the power and therein lies the danger” (Waking the Dead, p. 197).

In my life as a man, husband, father, brother, son, and in my work as a counsellor, I see the desperate need for community. Not just coffee and donut community but the exposing, holy, powerful kind of community. We have a nature as human beings and that means we need certain things to thrive. Like a car needs oil to function well, we need relationship, we need community. I invite us to reflect on what is holding us back from all the levels and intimacies and riches of community that laughs together until it hurts and loves one another until it hurts and beyond. I invite us to notice the desperate hunger people have for love, acceptance, security, Jesus and to open ourselves to Him so we can be His face and heart in our communities.

It happens far too often, even without us noticing. All of a sudden we are in a fog or even worse, spinning out of control. For some of us the fog and tail-spin seem worse than others. For some of us, we have convinced ourselves we are fine because we believe that our hearts were meant to live in a London fog. Either way, there are times that we just can’t seem to make sense of things and we are desperate for something, anything that will help us out of the fog. Finding perspective and keeping it can be so difficult. It’s like in the haste or stress of life we put down the keys to our heart and then we forget where we put them. Then we need the keys, we can’t find them, and we are stuck. Having one of those clapper things for our heart would be really handy.

There are some basic dynamics, actions, truths that for the most part help the fog stay away. They are not necessarily easy, but are effective. They might require us to change some small pieces of our lives or actually stop for 5-10 minutes and examine what’s going on in our hearts and lives. So here is a list of ideas from John Eldredge (from a talk he gave called “How Not to Lose Heart”) and some of my own.

• Stay in objective truth – don’t consciously participate in or “consume” (emotionally, spiritually, relationally) things that aren’t true. We are made for truth and the truth sets us free.
• Silence with God – hard to get used to, but so necessary.
• Solitude with God
• Time with no busyness
• Prayer
• Fasting
• Sacraments
• Beauty – nature is probably the best
• Laughter and joy
• Music
• Removal of parasites and counterfeits – anything that is sucking the life right out of you
• Exercise
• Community

There it is. Okay, I have to be honest, as I wrote the list, I felt like I heard some people (maybe more than a few) say, “well that would be great if I had time” or “I don’t feel like doing that” or “I don’t like any of those things.” I encourage you to do some things for your heart that are good even if they don’t feel good at first. As Pope Benedict said, “you are not made for comfort, you were made for greatness.” This doesn’t mean that all these life giving things are going to feel bad forever. It just exposes that we need practice making some decisions to get our heart used to what it really needs. If our heart is used to junk food, just like our stomachs, it’s hard to start eating vegetables. But if we don’t give our bodies what it needs, things start breaking down. The same is true with our hearts, but for some reason we miss it or maybe we ignore it.

I invite you to try it out. Do an experiment on yourself. Pick a few from the list (prayer, silence, fasting, Sacraments are the most effective) and spend time doing/engaging in them every day for two weeks. Yeah, two weeks. Don’t think about doing this for the rest of your life. Just two weeks and see how it goes. I did this two years ago and called it my “human experiment.” It powerfully changed my life. I didn’t tell my wife what I was doing and during those two weeks, she pleasantly asked me what was going on, in a good way. I wasn’t doing anything directly for her, I was just engaging in life giving things everyday. She noticed. Now, two years later, I am still doing the things I chose for my experiment. When I don’t engage in life-giving things, I feel lifeless, and I’m different. So different my wife and kids can really tell. I’m not who I want to be, nor who I was made to be.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He wants us to be fully alive. Really. It’s not just a nice theory or a good churchy thing to say. It’s the truth. I invite you to give Him and the Holy Spirit room to move in your life and the opportunity to clear the fog. Without limiting or disrespecting God and His grace, I think Jesus is in some way the clapper and the key for our heart. “Clap on…”