The Prodigal Addict at Christmas and Coming to Believe

In addition to my regular position, I have been working part-time in a psychiatric hospital's admission department for almost the past three years.  I do assessment interviews and then consult with a psychiatrist by phone whether or not the patient meets criteria to be admitted to the hospital.

I have interviewed hundreds of patients who are wanting to come in to "detox" off of either Alcohol or Heroin.  It is like I am watching a lot of people die and their families suffering.  It is my window to the world of suffering.

The Worlds of Addicts

I sometimes get a patient who has a blood alcohol level of .240 or higher who is beginning to go through detox symptoms already.  This person is drinking hard liquor such as Vodka or Whisky to the tune of one pint to one fifth daily.  The significance of this is that the person is three times the legal limit of blood alcohol and thoroughly drunk but the body is ironically saying it is dependent and craving more Alcohol to stop the detox symptoms.   There are people who die of alcohol poisoning (a BAL of 400 or higher) or other alcohol-related disorder because they have to drink more and more to feel drunk or to stop from going into detox and they go over the cliff of .400.

My experience of the Heroin addict is somewhat different and I have pieced together the average process.  From what I can tell this stuff is expensive and addicts have to engage in all manner of illegal activities to keep the money flowing to get the next hit.  Many started out with pain pills and when the pain pills run out, they moved to Heroin. They first snorted or smoked Heroin, but the vast majority of them go straight to injecting it for the full effect.  They need more and more of it because their body develops tolerance and they have to avoid detox.  I hear a statistic from time to time of how many people die of Heroin overdose in my home of Louisville, Kentucky USA, and I wonder how many of them I met?

The majority of Heroin addicts are homeless.  They are unable to hold down a job because being high or going through detox. They have stolen money, cherished items, and anything else that can be sold quickly from almost everyone in their healthy social network and estranged themselves from families and friends.  The drug has cost them everything.

I have met Heroin addicts who are good actors.  One guy I interviewed sounded and looked like he was going through detox and I got him accepted by a doctor and a bed in the hospital.  When he learned that his girlfriend was not being admitted, he immediately said he wanted to leave.  I saw him after the interview in the hallway and he looked normal as without detox symptoms.  It seems that Heroin addicts lose themselves in their slavery to the substance.

Heroin addicts tend to engage in a chaotically bond with other Heroin addicts and they collectively engage in a pursuit of the drug.  They hustle and prostitute themselves.  They shed their dignity for the next hit when necessary such as a lesbian prostituting herself to men.  They share drugs, needles and blood-borne pathogens such Hepatitis C with each other. They are traveling along the road to death.

From what I can tell, the average addict has at least one criminal charge.  Many of them have felonies that will disqualify them from getting many well-paying jobs and rental properties in which to rebuild lives and repay debts.

The addict wanting to be in recovery almost has to move heaven and earth to get back in a stable situation.  In most locations the resources are stretched to the limit.  Halfway houses have no room. The newly detoxed addict needs a lot more to maintain absence and sobriety than what it available. Furthermore, the family they would otherwise depend on for support will logically not trust them because of all the dishonesty and perfidy.  For the repeat patients I have interviewed more than one time,  I have not been surprised that they relapsed because it presents as their only option.

Somewhere in here I should mention Marijuana.  There are lot of proponents of legal marijuana.  I am not one of them, While it does not always have the severe symptoms of Heroin and Alcohol, I am seeing how it is distracting kids from school and parents from their kids.  It too causes problems.

The Family

We typically think about the family member of the addict more than the addict.  I occasionally have a family member come with an addicted person.  Most family members have been burned out or exploited by the addict to the degree that they have kicked the addict out and will refuse to the addict come home.

Many family members tend to be both mad and sad because of the addict.  The addict is not getting his or her act together.  The addict is not listening.  The addict keeps blowing it and the cycle repeats. Many family members still love the addict and the pain is real.

Parents of addicts struggle with guilt.  I have had older adult patients lament how their adult children messed up and ended up in jail.

Children of prodigal addicts are left with voids in that addicted fathers or mothers do not come around and do not call.  They are torn between anger and longing for a relationship with the parent. Many children hold out a hope that the missing mother or father will come and fulfill their emotional longing and emptiness.

Otherwise, resident alcoholic parents are stale potato chips.  They are drunk, hungover or emotionally unavailable.  The alcohol parent raises a scapegoat, comedian, lost child, and wonder child who all survive the situation.

Surviving Christmas: Coming to Believe

The pain of addiction can be amplified at the holidays.  As our society has the ideal that all of family is supposed to together at Christmas.  While many of us will have to deal with a drunk family member, the absent, addicted family member is the spoiler for many of us.

Some of us who very angry have unequivocally resolved that we will not miss them.  Some of us still have a tender spot for the addicted family member because we still see the good in them and have good memories with them.   There will possibly be arguments when family talk about the prodigal addict.  

The addict is symbolic of the need for Christmas.  The world in and of itself is lacking serenity and is powerless over sin and it has become unmanageable.  The question is will people come to believe that a Power greater than all us could restore us to sanity?

The religious icons of Christmas are everywhere, but do people believe?  The baby in the manger grew up eventually, had, and still has the power to make a way for people to have peace, salvation, and serenity.  

Even though some of us may have our holidays marred by the existence of a prodigal addict, there is still peace and joy that can be felt at Christmas. The power of the babe in the manger seems to be made most real in our weakness because we cannot do it on our own.  

Oh Joy.

When the downstairs cat and the battery alarm on my pager woke me up at 3 am this morning,  I went back to bed with the ear buds in listening to my local news and information station.  The news was on and the lead story was that this was the two year anniversary of the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.   Oh joy.

Hold it.  Today is the Sunday of Joy in Advent.  What a bizarre coincidence.

Along with loneliness, Joy has been another one of those strange curiosities of mine for the past few years.  The term does hold a number of personal traumas including my mean late aunt, Joy, whose most common statement to me was "Hush."

There is the suggestion that even if you do not feel like rocking around the Christmas tree, or decking the halls, there can still be joy.  The Christmas spirit of the secular carols does not necessarily fill the emptiness.

Nevertheless, Joy is a foreign concept to many of us in the driven 21st century.  Many of us are busy and chasing many objectives and goals and do not necessarily reflect on joy.  We tend to reflect on happiness, which is not the same as Joy.  Joy is an attitude and happiness is a feeling.

Feelings do rise and fall.  We can be happy some moments and depressed, sad, or mad at other moments.

Many people are just not happy and have good reason to be unhappy due to tragedy, disappointment, abuse, and pain.   Furthermore, despite all of the material wealth and achievement, people are still not happy and asking "Is this all there is?"  They do not have joy.

I have concluded for the moment that as an attitude,  Joy has a close association with Gratitude.
With joy there is some sense of fulfillment in the moment even in the midst of bleakness.

Joy is stronger some moments than others.  It depends on the moment and what is happening.  Joy can be overwhelming to the point of tears, and it can be enough to keep someone who is feeling hopeless from entertaining or following through on suicide.

Joy is highly existential.  What may be joy for me may not necessarily be joy for you. A person who is overwhelmed in pain and grief is not necessarily going to appreciate someone else's joy.

Joy is an individual responsibility.  It is a choice.  We can dwell on our issues, problems, and trials,
but Joy does require us to reflect on what we have and what could be worse.

The spiritual joy of the message of Christmas is that there is forgiveness and salvation. Christmas calls us to look at our spiritual condition and offers us the opportunity of joy despite how bad we feel about ourselves and our sinful condition.

There are still no easy answers about why a young man with mental illness decided to kill his mother and then massacre a group of innocent first-graders, some school staff, and then himself.  Pondering it makes me want to hug my kids right now, and I am feeling gratitude that my wife and I have children and that God has kept them safe.

However, today, I can have joy because God loved me first to send the baby to the manger, grow up to die on the cross in order to save me from my sin and give me eternal life.

The Shiny Seeming Shallow: The Pressure of Christmas

I have made this statement a number of times about how the holiday season is like a Hurricane.   I am sure I have overused this simile a few other times in the past three years of this blog.  

For those of you who have lived in areas where there are typhoons, tropical cyclones, or hurricanes (all the same thing) you have warning that it is coming.  Your job is to prepare for the storm to make sure you have everything you need to survive what could be the worst.   People make small talk in lines about the latest hurricane forecast and where it may or may not be making landfall.  The talk is all over the local and regional media.  The local weather forecasters are the people everyone listens to.   Some people may get a hurricane tracking chart and plot the points of where the storm is heading.   By the time the hurricane has hit landfall, you have your hurricane kit prepared and you are ready and locked in your house or maybe at a hurricane shelter.

I felt like it was like hurricane preparation when I went to my local Walmart on Thanksgiving night and people were all lined up to get specials that were being rationed out.   Far more people are in the mall from the day after Thanksgiving until December 24.  Everyone is under a deadline to get in everything.   

There will be extra events to go to and things to make. There will be expectations to do things.   As an adult with adolescent children, these are on top of what I usually do all ready.  It is tiring getting ready for the hurricane . . . I mean Christmas.

The church used to keep sole track of Christmas, the economy in most western nations has taken over. 

As a result of the economic exploitation of Christmas, the Christmas season starts at Halloween.  We have an intense environment that intensifies further at the holidays much like an artificial hurricane.  

I have to say that the advertisers at Christmas time really know how to work their motivational techniques to get us out and buy.  The music is loud, the images are vivid, the smells are strong, and the lights are shiny. The urge is to get out there because there is not much time.  You must go and get stuff to make that day magical and special with all of those relatives who you are going to have a great time with!  

 Here in the United States patriotism has been blended with consumerism. It is your patriotic duty to get out and buy merchandise because your retail sector needs you.   The media will take economic temperatures and report the stories as a subtle commercial to get out and buy whatever.  Some consumers will either feel motivation or guilt because they have not done their share in holding the economy up.

(record scratch).

It is interesting how guilt at Christmas can be about not buying enough stuff versus your sins.  The real message of what Christmas is about has got lost in many cases.  It less about reflecting on our lostness and our need for salvation than it is about getting out and buying stuff.  My eternal destiny is not based on what I buy for my kids this Christmas. The shiny seems shallow. 

The center of Christmas is about the one who brought us and still brings us peace and forgiveness.  The toys get broken, the Christmas lights break, decorations get worn out and the Christmas cookies get stale, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8) New International Version.

Guilt and Toxic Shame--Challenges and Roadblocks to Peace at Advent and Christmas

I continue to reflect on peace this week and the thought came to guilt and shame.

I do read the Bible daily, and I admit the idea hit me at 5:20 this morning when my cycle through the Psalms stopped at Psalm 51.  For those of you who are familiar with the Bible, Psalm 51 is attributed as King David's confession after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and a few other peccadilloes and then was confronted by Nathan the Prophet.  He asks God to create in him a clean heart and to forgive his sins and states his realization that the proper sacrifice is a contrite heart. 

Over the years I have worked with many patients who struggle with guilt and toxic shame.  Like loneliness, it has been a curiosity to me.  They came to me and my program for relief.  Both guilt and shame can torture someone and keep them from feeling a sense of peace inside. 

Forms of Anxiety. 

Guilt and toxic shame are are both emotions.  I have decided that they are both forms of anxiety.  

To me guilt is a strong form of anxiety that motivates a person to apologize and make amends for what he or she did wrong or perceived to have done wrong.  The powerful physical and emotional strain is not relieved until something is resolved. 

As greatly influenced by John Bradshaw toxic shame is a similar feeling that just says you are bad.  It feels like guilt, but it is not guilt.  In Bradshaw's framework it tends to be the base of addiction.   Much of John Bradshaw's work is about shame and healing shame. He is worth reading at if your interest is piqued. 

In my experience the difference between guilt and shame is being able to identify the source of the feeling.  With guilt one can readily identify the sin or crime.  With shame, one cannot identify a specific wrong whether it be a sin or infraction.  

In my experience most people with shame take responsibility for bad outcomes or think a lot of would-have's, should-have's, and could-have's.  I have seen older adults especially feel shame for the way adult children have turned out. I have seen adults feel shame for not speaking up when they were being physically or sexually abused as children.  

Many people are torn up by toxic shame.  It seems to be why many people are working 12-step programs to stay sober, stay away from addictive behavior, and to maintain healthy boundaries.  A big focus of the 12-step programs is Serenity. Which of course is another word for peace. 

What Should We Do?

The average person cannot hold onto guilt for a long time.  It can poison a life to the marrow of one's bones. The person who is feeling guilty about a specific issue needs to do the best possible to confess, apologize and make or speak amends. Guilt is a good emotion in that it helps us adhere to our moral codes, whether it be the Bible or something else. 

The person who is dealing with toxic shame may need to get some professional help or go to a 12-step group such as Alanon.  Getting clear on deciding how to deal with it is a bit more complicated than can be discussed here. 

Concluding Thoughts: Bringing it Back to Christmas and Advent

Understanding the significance of Jesus's coming to earth in terms of our Peace and Toxic shame is another one of those moments of letting the baby get out of the manager. As foretold by the Prophet Isaiah  . .

There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance,
    nothing to attract us to him.
3 He was despised and rejected—
    a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
    He was despised, and we did not care.

4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
    it was our sorrows[a] that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
    a punishment for his own sins!
5 But he was pierced for our rebellion,
    crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
    He was whipped so we could be healed.
6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
    We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him
    the sins of us all.

7 He was oppressed and treated harshly,
    yet he never said a word.
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.
    And as a sheep is silent before the shearers,
    he did not open his mouth.
8 Unjustly condemned,
    he was led away.[b]
No one cared that he died without descendants,
    that his life was cut short in midstream.[c]
But he was struck down
    for the rebellion of my people.
9 He had done no wrong
    and had never deceived anyone.
But he was buried like a criminal;
    he was put in a rich man’s grave.

10 But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him

    and cause him grief.  (Isaiah 52 2b-10a New Living Translation)

Christmas reminds us that this sacrifice is a gift that was and is still offered to us today.  God knows our hurt, pain and our regrets.  He knows that some of us struggle with what is going on inside of us.  He still loves us and that love is both symbolized and substantiated by the babe in the manger. 

That love is the forgiveness of our sins and the offering of salvation. If you have questions please post them as a comment, I will be happy to answer them future. 

Loneliness--a Lack of Peace

Because there tends to be so much focus on loneliness at the holidays, it has been something of a strange interest to me for the past several years.  I have found loneliness to be the absence of peace when one is alone.

We can be alone, but not necessarily lonely. In fact there are times when we have the need to be away from others and be alone. There are other times when we are alone and are indifferent to being alone.

I figure that being alone follows a continuum.

Need to be with people                     No need                         Need to be away from people
Loneliness------------------------------------Alone--------------------------------------------Privacy
Emptiness-------------------------------------Peace--------------------------------------------Satiation

It is not necessarily a perfect continuum, but loneliness signifies that there is a need.

Some of us are introverts who like our puzzles and stamp collections. Others are extroverts that like going to parties and dancing.  Nevertheless, I agree with Rick Springfield that "We all need the human touch."

We all need connection, identification with others, and belonging. For many of us the lack of human touch will eventually get to us.

Otherwise we seem more likely to feel lonely when we are in pain and need the attention of other people.  Some of the pain may come from engaging in negative thinking or dwelling on some pain of the past and so we may need the assurance of acceptance from others people that we are okay.  We need the connection all the more when we are in pain and not getting the assurance and comfort from others makes the loneliness worse.

I do feel with the trauma survivor who is caught in a double bind of wanting human connection but afraid to trust others. The survivor tends to feel empty but is too scared to seek fulfillment.

Strangely, many trauma survivors are defiantly proud in their pain.  They are hurting inside but they are not going to admit it. They spend their energies in building up defenses as they are not going to get hurt again.

However, survivors can develop thick walls around a void.  They can forget why they have such thick walls.  The tough facade can eventually be destructive and weigh a person down.

There can be a sense of relief when one lets go of the facade and admit we are lonely. It is a sense of liberation that we can admit that we are human like everyone else.

It takes a lot of courage to admit that one is lonely.  It is a confession of weakness. It is a surrender to the reality that you are not the invincible person that you have been posing to be.  It is an admission that you like all other human beings on planet earth have needs, but it is often the first step towards peace.

The Pursuit of Peace

Today is the Sunday of Peace in Advent.   When thinking about peace it is hard to miss that the world has its usual share of violence, discord and unrest.

Without getting too political, most of the violence, discord, and unrest in this world tends to be macro in nature.  The causes and solutions are typically bigger than any one person.  The solutions also tend to have complicated and compound consequences.  One solution may cause other problems.

Furthermore, as a mental health professional, I think that I have met a number of patients and colleagues who will never achieve peace.  They are incapable of achieving it and would not know it if it bit them on the posterior.

What this means is that the peace that we can achieve typically is within ourselves versus outside of ourselves.  Peace is tranquility, calmness, the absence of turmoil.  Peace within ourselves is our responsibility.

I am inclined to think that inner peace is a pursuit because there will always be something to challenge it.  There will be new aggressors and haters whose paths we will cross. There will be new situations that provoke some level of anxiety from earth-shaking to mere inconveniences.

The methods and and practices we use to practice peace may not always work or work as well as we think they should.  We may have to identify something new.

This week, I plan to reflect on peace in a number of ways.   I think that the average person wants it, but some have problems identifying and doing what it takes to get it.

For now, I wish you peace and I hope you find it if you do not have it.  

Worry and Hope

I have reflected about hope this week because it was the Sunday/week of hope on the Advent calendar.  

I have been mindful of the grief and loss side of the coin.  Today I am mindful of a particular person whom I know who shall remain nameless.  When I worked with that person, she would constantly say “I hope.”  She would also say “I hope you’re right.”   She did accept any answers or reassurances.   She was frustrating to deal with because she would not shut up but would keep babbling on about her worries.

I came to appreciate this person as a chronic worrier and a control freak.  Since the time I stopped working with her I have been reminded of her chronic worrying and her tendency to say “I hope.”  I have came away with a personal challenge to myself: Do you really hope, or are you just worried?

As a mental health professional I tell my clients and patients that worry is a form of anxiety that occurs when we dwell on matters that are out of our hands and that we do not control.  I frequently quote Wayne Dyer’s famous statement that it makes no sense to worry about things you do not control. 

Despite all advice to the contrary people still worry and will continue to worry.  Many worry to have something to do. Many worry because they cannot sit still and be still.  Many people do not accept their limits as human beings and so they worry in the belief that they should be doing something.  Worry as a habit is a reality of human existence.

I am inclined to believe that worry is related to the amount of risk we are taking in a situation.   If we are taking a big risk, we will tend to worry more.

There are a number of worries at the holidays.  Will our relatives behave?  Will that particular relative not get drunk and offend others?  Will we get our holiday shopping done? Will we make our connecting flight in Chicago?  Some of the worries are silly and some are serious.

A consideration here is that worry is that as a form of anxiety stimulates the production of Adrenalin.  The Adrenalin does not let us relax or go to sleep.  It makes our muscles tense and may give us headaches and stomachaches.  We feel all the more stressed.

Worry is typically a present behavior focused on the present or future.  However, many of us worry about the past. We can dwell on abuse, unfortunate events and mistakes. We can become absorbed by those past events and distress ourselves into panic.  We can generate a delusion of hope that the past will be different.   I imagine that Aaron Beck had a heyday with this in his development of Cognitive Theory.

So, we can be worrying and say we hope, but are we truly hoping?  Or are we just covering up the fact we are worrying?   Worry can be a dead end if not just a waste of time.  Worry can make us an annoyance and irritation to those around us.

We cannot stop others from worrying and we cannot keep them from worrying.  Worry is their choice.  However, chances are many of us will hear criticism couched in the statement “I’m worried about you because . . .”    The “because” is typically something that is something the worrier cannot control but wants to use to control you.   Telling the worrier that you are sorry that they are worrying, but not feeling guilty over their worrying is a coping skill.  In the end we can only stop our own worry and do our own hoping.

True hope seems to be a perspective that calls us to compartmentalize and either act in the world or commit inside of ourselves to surrender to our limitations and to focus our minds on what is real and what is necessary.    There will always be conditions and events outside of our control, whether they be someone else’s responsibility or an event that was in the past or present. 

Christmas does invite us to look at our spiritual hope.  The layers of tradition have a way of covering up the invitation by decking the halls and ringing bells and talking about Santa.    The tradition and the nostalgia can amount to nothing and loses significance as time goes by.  Even the crèche or nativity scene loses significance if we are not reminded that we cannot save ourselves from our own sin.  We have hope out of the realization of our need of God’s grace and interaction in our lives.  

The Pain is Real, so Hopefully also the Hope: Remembering Doug

I am still thinking about hope.  I am also thinking about my classmate from high school who died last week.   Death happens any day and any time.   As we get older we tend to know more and more people who die.  Depending on your view of Eschatology we are all going to die unless raptured directly by God (we may get to that).

Nevertheless, I had not seen Doug since 1984. We had our conversation in the middle of a country road.  I was running on a hot summer day and he was driving by.  He stopped and backed up in his Chevrolet Chevette, and we briefly talked about what we were doing and where we were going in life.

From what I remember of Doug as a high school student I was pleasantly and thankfully surprised learn from the Facebook posts about him contained information that he was a man of faith before he had died.  When he thanked all of us for our birthday wishes a few weeks back on Facebook he also had thanked God. 

Despite my poor witness as an adolescent, God can still work.

While I had not seen Doug since 1984 and had never met any of his kids, I can only imagine the pain and numbness they might be feeling this week.   Their father is gone.    I can only imagine the intensity of nothingness or numbness that the shock of a loved one’s sudden death brings.  It is very real but also very unreal.  Hope is typically the last thought on the mind.

When it comes to grief and loss I think that we do not think about hope until after some of the shock has gone and we are feeling the anger and depression.  For the people in these stages of grief, hope in Christmas can be a spiritual under-current that flows against the empty bright lights and the trite and platitudinous Christmas music playing in the background.  The hope we find in Advent and Christmas allows us to cry and express our feelings.  It hopefully allows us to reach out to God despite our lack of understanding of why things happened, and that we will move on and we will see less painful days. 

Christmas can be a very spiritual, heady time for the thoughtful one.  Underneath the Christmas tree and Santa Claus façade is the message of what the babe in the manger came to bring—hope in that there is the forgiveness of our sins and the hope of life of life after death. 

Christmas points to the biggest miracle ever accomplished and our need for hope and faith.  The baby whose birth we celebrate only lived 33 years.   He did not perpetually stay in that manger.   He died and rose again and according to the Bible sits at the right hand of God the Father. 

People doubted it then and they doubt it now, but Christmas also asks the rhetorical question that St. Paul/The Apostle Paul asked King Agrippa in Acts 26: 8 Why does it seem incredible to you that God should raise the dead?  (New Jerusalem Bible).

When we talk about God and death and hope, it does not sit well with many people who are empiricists or skeptics.  There is a cliff where factual analysis takes us.  At the end of the cliff there is the emotional and spiritual void that no rationalization is going to fill.   We cannot know it all and we cannot figure it all out and so we have to have some kind of non-empirical answer for what is happening.   We are in an emotional wilderness without direction or bearing and where we are just surviving and that is where hope and faith comes in even in the midst of tough emotions.   

No easy way to conclude this, but even with my intellectual discussion, I recognize that from the physician to the scholar to the factory worker we are all simple people.  Real pain does not exactly let you do fancy things. We all must do simple things to get through the pain.   We have to admit our humanity.  We pray and we cry.  If we do the best we can and make it through then we did okay. 

Considering Hope and our Powerlessness at the Holidays

When I think about the word “hope,” I think about how casually it is used.   We hope for this and we hope for that. We hope for many things.

Hope is not a rational topic.  It is not about facts.  It is about feeling. 

Hope is probably best an attitude that we have or do not have.

I suppose that with some semantic finagling it could be “operationalized” in a quantitative variable for a psychological or sociological study, but it is not a tangible or measurable concept in and of itself.   It does not seem to support logical positivism where truth is only everything that is quantifiable or measurable.

Hope tends to arise out of a need. We either are hopeful or hopeless when we have a need.   The need can be small or the need can make us feel distraught.

                                                                                                             

Hope implies that we are powerless. In our powerlessness we are dependent on someone or something else to meet the need.  If we are not dependent on someone or something, then we are waiting to see how events shake out.

We are typically in some form of suspense when we have hope. We are caught between what we need and waiting to see what is going to happen.

The emotional backlash of such a need can be so overwhelming and consuming that having hope is unlikely to be initial response to the need. Hope may not be even the second or third thought in such occasions.  The initial emotional responses in cases of hope are probably more likely to be numbness, despair, or desperation.

I remember when my wife was having surgery to remove a brain tumor deep in the brain nine years ago.  I was numb and in suspense for several days between the time that the neurosurgeon said that the tumor needed to be removed and when I saw him after the surgery to get his report that the surgery was successful.  I was numb and focused on making the most of each day because the worst could happen.  After the fact it was very meaningful that a Jewish man named Kal told me that he was praying for me because he saw my plight—he did not want me to be a widower with two young children.  I was not exactly thinking about hope in the weight that December 2005 day, but looking back I think I had it.  

We all have multiple hopes dashed. We have family members who have disappointed us. We have people who have abused us. Many of us have had addicted family members who have stolen from us and crossed our boundaries. Many of us have had parents abandon us for any number of reasons. We have friends who have not followed through on their promises. We have been victims of office politics. The list could go on, but I am inclined to believe that many people who have had multiple hopes dashed become either agnostic or atheistic because they have to come up with some answer to resolve why all the bad stuff has happened and I don’t blame them.

  

As we reflect on ourselves, we may focus on our inadequacies and failures. We may dwell on how others do things better. .  We may review our regrets and replay how we would have done something differently.  Many of us wish we would have said I love you to someone who died. When we get into pity parties we can feel despair in short bursts.

In many ways, this is what the message of hope is addressing.  Despite how bad things are outside of us and inside of us, hope came down at Christmas.  Despite how bad we feel about ourselves, there is grace, the unmerited favor that God offers that started out as a baby in a manger. 

Many may struggle with God in light of all the pain experienced. Christmas does not always have to be about Decking the Halls and Jingle Bells.  It is a good time to think  deep thoughts and evaluate whether we have hope.   

Too Busy for Hope at the Holidays?

I debated whether or not I was going to write this blog again this holiday season.  I had a due date of December 1 to get my manuscript into my publisher. I had just finished my turning in my manuscript to my publisher on November 28 and I have been feeling brain dead and burned out.   Having a book contract with a reputable publisher is amazing, but it monopolized my life.

Then wham . . . it was the first Sunday of Advent again on November 30 where the hope candle of the Advent wreath was lit at church. The sermon was about hope.  It was about the hope of the world to be found in Jesus Christ . . . at least that was what I came away with when I left the sanctuary.

I came to realize, my mind was just too busy.  My mind was just too focused on problems and things to do.  Since July 1 when I had signed the contract I was busy with work and writing.  I had been a driven individual.  I was just too busy to think about hope.

I think I have been a driven individual most of my life.  Either I have the compulsive trait inherited from my mother or I have been out to prove myself.   

Many of us who live in the average metropolitan area likely have some pressure to be driven.  We commute to work either on crowded ring road highways or we cram ourselves into mass transit vehicles.  We go to work pushing ourselves to keep up a fast pace to be productive.   Many of us live paycheck to paycheck seeking to maximize what we can do with the money.   

For those of us who are already driven, the holiday season only seems to intensify the driven-ness.  There are events added to the schedule, there are extra food items to make and gifts to buy and the house has to be cleaned.   There is not much time and place for hope.

Well, for me there was a call for at least to take a breath and reflect.  With my social commentary, is Christmas about making sure everyone gets the perfect present or is it about celebrating faith?  Is Christmas about Santa Claus or is it reflecting on us as broken individuals needing the gift of God sacrificing his only son to save us from our sins?  Of course, if you do not identify with the Christian faith, the significance of Jesus Christ may be in question.

Well, with the need for a breath, I have thought not just twice but three times about writing the blog again this year.  However, 1976 page views tell me that the blog has been meaningful or encouraging to someone—maybe it has helped given some hope.

Feel free to review the other entries for subjects of interest to you.  Feel free to comment. I hope that you too can find hope.