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Source: Tom W. (Father) – Anger and Forgiveness – Part 3 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-w-father-anger-and-forgiveness-part-3-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:00:58
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I'd like to share with you, in a very personal way, how, for me, I got over this problem of giving power to other people's weaknesses. Because it was a religious experience. It was my coming to grips in my own heart with the meaning of Jesus. And you know, I want to share that with you, and maybe it would be help in your own lives. But what happened was that I didn't really understand the meaning of Jesus except in external terms and in teachings, but I had a hard time applying it to the person that was inside of me. And so, it was always a certain guilt of what it meant to be a Christian. That I really couldn't come to grips with the depth of the message and all of the deep meaning in the scriptures and all the deep meaning in the symbolism in the church. And I want to share with you how I did. You know, Jesus' life was filled with pain. Anyone that has ever read the scriptures has to be deeply impressed with how much Jesus suffered. He suffered a lot more than any other person I've ever met. And even in the beginning and the end of his life, he was born in a stable, he died on the cross. Some ways we can say his mission was a failure. He died as a failure. There weren't many people around. His apostles, one betrays him and one denies him. He came and he preached that the kingdom that he came to establish was within the hearts of each one of us, inside, and people wanted to make him an external king to drive the Romans out. The religious leaders, the power structure of his time, were his enemies. Good people, men of good intention, men that were obeying the law, but they were his enemy.
And one of the ways that is very touching for me in terms of the pain that Jesus was in was the story of the rich young man. That this guy came to Jesus and he said, how can I be the best human being I can be in my life? And Jesus says, keep the commandments. And the guy was a good man and he said, I keep the commandments. What more can I do to be the best person that I can be? And Jesus said, well, you know, to put it in context, that Jesus is a deeply human person. And that's what we have to have the idea, that Jesus was human. Jesus fell in love. Jesus could cry. Jesus got angry. He's all those things that we are. But Jesus saw this man and he had tremendous insight into the human heart.
And you know, for each one of us, if he were to meet each one of us, I'm sure that most human beings, most of us, there's only one thing in life that we have to let go of to become the best person that we can be. For most of us, it's one thing that we hang on to, that just prevents us from discovering our greatness from inside. And Jesus saw that for this man, it was riches, the material world. And he said, go sell what you have.
Give it to the poor and come follow me. And the man walked away sadly. I think of the sadness of the man, but I also can really be touched by the sadness that must have been in Jesus. He gave the invitation. He saw this great person and what he could be. And the man couldn't bring his freedom to choose it. The deep sadness that Jesus had in his life. But the issue is what did Jesus do with his pain? And this is what's crucial. Whether it was in the mountains or in the deserts or on the sea. Jesus is like us in all things but sin. Jesus always went to the father within. Whenever he was in pain, he went into his own aloneness to discover the father's love. We do it sometimes or rarely on occasion.
Jesus always did it. That's what made him divine. That he always went into his own aloneness to listen to the father's love. And you know, that's where Jesus discovered his mission. When he went into his aloneness, he discovered the tremendous amount of love that was in him. He discovered that this love had no conditions, that it was always there, that it would never, that God the father within us would never abandon us. That that love would be in us forever. And they discovered that was his mission. To come to preach that love that each of us have within us. And it's always there. Forgiveness is always within. That
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God loves us even in our sinfulness. Even when we wander to other gods, his love is in us. He never abandons us. And Jesus came and he preached it. But you know who he preached it to? He preached it to those who were broken. He preached it to the weak. He preached it to the lepers. What I call the modern day AIDS victims. The people that nobody else wants to touch. He preached it to the wino and the prostitute, the poor and the lame.
The people that had pain in their lives because they were open to hear it. The only people that didn't hear it were the people that thought they had the answers. The self-righteous. The people that thought they had everything together. The people that thought they were better than others. They couldn't hear it because they didn't have a need for it, because they weren't in touch with their own brokenness. You know I often wonder, I've wondered why we pray in the Mass as a Catholic. We pray for the Pope and we pray for the Bishop and we pray for the priests. I understand now, when Jesus says the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The people that we think are last, the broken, the failures, they shall be the first in his kingdom. The people that we think are first, the people that seem to be, have it all together, the prominent, the power, the first shall be last.
So the first really need prayers that they, that they really know their own brokenness. Because that's what it means to accept the meaning of Jesus in our life, that we get to God through brokenness. We get him through our weaknesses. We get it there through our failings, our shortcomings. That's where we discover how much we need that love inside of us. And you see that for me, when I came to grips with that, that it was my failures, my weaknesses that brought me to the sense of God's love in my life. That's when I understood the meaning of Jesus. And that's when I let God love my weaknesses. I let him love my shadow. I let him love all that part of me that I'm afraid to show you because I don't think you can love, but I know that God loves. And what happened is that I was able to bring all of my human weaknesses. I was able to bring it to God. And that's when I said that I was able to have no secrets from myself and no secrets from my God. There was nothing in my life that I couldn't look at and honestly face and honestly see because that's all of me God loved. And that was the key to being able to see others in their own human weakness, to be able to realize that, that people can be weak just like I can be weak. Faith in the meaning of Jesus in our life is a decision. You see, we have to, each of us in our own inner life and our own inner aloneness, we have to make a decision of what God we're going to believe in. And for many of us that have been raised in the old ways, the old thinking that we were, we, it was decided for us for the most part that we were going to have faith in a punishing God, a God that expected us to be perfect, a God that was distant when we were weak, a God that had to punish us for everything wrong that we did. That's many of us when we were very young, that's the God that we were exposed to and we were taught to believe in that God. But as we become adults, all of us have to make a decision of the God that we're going to believe in. It's a decision. It's not a feeling.
It's not a childhood experience. And for me, becoming an adult was deciding to believe in a God of total forgiveness and total love. A God that when I fail or I'm weak, he's there to help me grow from it. A God that I carry around my memory of the past in new growth, not in bitter memories. That was my decision. And so the way I live that decision in faith is my inner life and my own aloneness, that when I fail, when my weaknesses come into my life, I am to grow from them. I am to forgive and to grow from them. And you see what happens if that's the way I treat myself. Then when somebody I love or somebody in my life, when their weaknesses intrude into my life, I'm not there to punish them. I'm not there to make it harder on them. I'm there to forgive them and to help them grow from it. You see what happens, and that's the model I want to use, is how we accept God into our life is how we treat ourselves. How we treat ourselves is how we treat others. And so by the ability of letting God love my own weaknesses gives me the inner power to be able to love other
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people's weaknesses. So when somebody injures me or hurts my feelings, my response is not to give them the silent treatment, not to play the martyr. My program, my spiritual program is to give them understanding and to help them grow from their human weaknesses. And so where does this model come from? This model comes from the person of Jesus. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Forgiving the good thief. He's come for the forgiveness of sins. That's where I've got my model basically, not from how I've generally been treated from others. Most human beings, when I'm weak, they want to punish me. And you know, now I understand it. They don't want to punish me out of bad will, but they're just doing the same thing to me that they do to themselves. They're revealing the God they believe in. And you know, as I reflect upon it, as I, as I reinforce this model in my life, who are the people that I felt most comfortable with? Who are the people that I felt the safest with? The people who are there and my weaknesses to help me grow from it. They're the people that have brought the bigger self out of me. They're the people that I can trust my weaknesses to. They're my friends, a person I can trust with my weaknesses. But you see, before I can give that gift to another, I have to be able to trust my own weaknesses to myself. And you know, that's really practical because there's so often in my life, being the compulsive person that I am, that I can get my life.
It can be going screwy. I can be over-promised, over-promising and under-producing, the fast feet, running, balancing plates. That happens in my life. But when the world's kind of crashing around me, am I easier on myself or harder on myself? Do I make it more, do I make myself more of a problem on me or do I make it easier on myself? You know, when I tell somebody, hey, why don't you try to make it easier for me? What do I do to myself? And that's crucial.
That's when we really get in touch with whether we can trust ourselves with our weaknesses. And you know, I can have examples. Recently, I had a wedding, a beautiful wedding in Santa Clara. A lot of prominent people, big church, a lot of music, a lot of flowers. It came to the end of the ceremony. And the couple's name was Mark and Julie. And there were bells, they were ringing bells. And suddenly when I told them to leave, I say, go forth, Mark and Gloria. You can imagine how I felt. You know, I can remember as I walked back to the sacristy, how I would have handled it in the old days. You know, I would have felt so ashamed.
I would have tried to hide the rest of the day. I would have felt so guilty. But you know what I did? That was my human weakness. I'm not perfect. I gave myself credit for doing a good job. Hey, I did the best I could. And you know, I went to the reception. I laughed with people. We joked about it. And you know, it really didn't matter. People complimented me on what a wonderful service it was. But you know, that's a case for me of making it easier for myself instead of harder. Recently, I was at a friend's house and it was late at night and I went to the hospital and he let me use his car. And I backed the car out and banged it into his other car. And you know, my first reaction, it was to look to see if nobody saw me because if nobody saw me, I didn't do it. But then, you know, I thought it's not the end of the world. You know, those things happen. It was an accident and I went and told them and went to the hospital and it was no big deal. I didn't carry that shame and that guilt into my day. I did it, but I made it easier on myself. And that's so crucial what we do inside. You know, that's, that, and you know, you can really get a good model on how you deal with yourself when you're in pain, when you're in trouble, how you handle yourself is what you're going to give away to other people. If you can make it easier on yourself in the midst of a lot of pain, you can make it easier for other people when they're in the midst of a lot of pain. It all comes from inside and it all depends upon the God you've chosen to believe in. Now, I would like to, especially in the context of what I'm talking about, I want to go into different relationships that really require definite healing, where the issues are much more difficult and where the problems are a lot heavier. I'm going to talk right now, if I can talk in this area, on the alcoholic In this area, on the alcoholic situation, since I do a lot of ministry to recovering alcoholics, and I want to talk about the issue of divorce, and the process of healing through divorce.
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Well, let me first of all talk about the process that happens with a husband and wife, in which the husband is an addictive personality, whether it be alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, whatever the long list of addictions happen to be, but he's a compulsive individual, and he gets caught up in this compulsive behavior. And I want to talk about his wife. Now they've been married for years and years, and the husband, as many a night, has come home late after being in the bars. He's lost jobs. He's been in accidents. He's treated her harshly. He's a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He's the type of person, at one moment you love him, and the next minute you hate him.
He's a good man, and the wife sees it, and she loves the goodness in him, and she's put up with it for years. But in the process of putting up for the years, she's built up a lot of anger inside, and that anger is turned to hate. She almost looks it in her face, in her eyes, as she's repressed her emotions. She's lived in a real prison, and she has it inside of her. Well, suddenly the man hits a bottom, and he goes out, and he seeks help. He goes to the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, or he goes to a rehabilitation hospital. Now he goes through his treatment, and maybe she gets some treatment in terms of a family wig. She understands the disease. She gets a lot of information.
And now the man comes back into the home, and he's no longer drinking. But they don't seem to be able to get along. There seems to be a lot of tension. There seems to be a lot of pressure. Well, this is what I want to talk about, is the really real healing process. Because what happens between an alcoholic personality and a spouse of an alcoholic, is the alcoholic, because he's done so many weak things, he's failed so much, he's built up a tremendous amount of guilt inside of him.
He has a long list in his black book. And the mate of the alcoholic has built up a long list of resentments and angers. And you see, we have a sick relationship. We have a relationship of one filled with guilt, and the other filled with anger. And oftentimes, they say that the person married to an alcoholic becomes sicker than the alcoholic. I remember my own case in growing up in an alcoholic home, is my dad would be out having a wonderful time, drinking until three in the morning, singing all the Irish tunes, having a wonderful experience, while my mother was home just grinding up inside, getting terribly angry and resentful.
And over the years, she buried many of them inside. Well, I want to talk about the process of healing, and both people have to go through this process. It's very important though, before I talk about this area, and I probably could apply this to almost any area that I've talked about or will talk about. But when I talk about perpetrator and victim, you know, there's a gray area. I've never met a person who's a pure victim. I even think of some of the things in my life that I'm not exactly proud of, situations and circumstances when I've really hurt people.
But as I reflect on them, it never was a situation where the person didn't set it up or do something to choose it for themselves. And that's one of the great dangers, for example, a spouse of an alcoholic, whether husband or wife, is they can feel inside that they are the complete victim. That it is totally, they are the ones that have been totally abused, that they are the ones that have suffered all the pain.
But the question is, you know, we ask, why did you ever marry him? When you were married him, did you ever think that when you get married, you'd change him? You know, all those elements of how we're conditioned, how our subconscious needs motivate us, or how we have personality deficiencies that we think the other will give us, or that there's a conditioning process in our lives, either internally or externally, that has set us up for this situation.
You know, people who think that they are the total victim, and they have that deep in themselves, are not dealing with their own human weakness. It can be very much a part of that property when I talk about the people of the lot, the people that can't own their human weakness. And so, when we talk about this, perpetrator and victim, we've got to be able to understand that both people are in the stance of needing to ask for forgiveness if there's ever a reunion.
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But I want to talk, first of all, about the alcoholic, whether it's the husband or wife. As part of the 12-step program, they have an inventory, where they have to go through a personal inventory of their lives and go through it with their sponsor or somebody that they choose, a clergyman. And then it talks about making amends in the 12 steps. Well, it's very important that the alcoholic makes a definite amends to his spouse.
And let's talk about what he has to do. After he's taken his inventory, which he gets a great knowledge of his human weakness and how his behavior has affected others, he must go in the sense of being able to be honest about it to his wife or to her husband. He must be able to honestly face the weaknesses, but he must go to that second step. He must really have a sense of how his pain, what his actions have caused the pain in his wife.
He's got to really feel the pain. He's got to feel what it was like to wait at home while he was out drinking and to be anxious and worried and upset. He's got to feel the pain of worry when you saw your husband in an accident or losing a job, all the financial insecurities, all the uncertainties. He's got to feel the pain of what it was like to live that day in and day out. Now, you know, most compulsive people or alcoholic people, they come from alcoholic families.
A lot of people. A lot of people. And he's got to remember how he felt as a child with his father or his mother and how it affected him inside. And then he's got to, with that sense of the pain that she has, he's got to be able to go to her and ask for forgiveness in a sense of knowing her pain and making a commitment to the best of his ability that he can grow from it. But now I think for a person in recovery, if they're working the honesty program, the rigorous honesty of the 12 steps, that's a definite part of the program.
But it's extremely important for the spouse of the alcoholic to be able to let go of her own or his own angers so a reunion can take place. And as I talked about in the model that I gave you, the spouse of the alcoholic has to be able to detach the angers, the hate that he or she may feel inside from the person. She's really got to feel them, whether it's necessary or right, however it is, but she's really got to own her pain.
She's got to know the pain that she's been in for years, the pain that she feels now inside of her. And when she really owns it and she's detached herself from him, then she can reattach to him and see him in a new way, not as the object of her hate, but as a human being with a disease, with a man struggling, with weaknesses. And then when they come together, they have this sense of their own human honesty, their own human weakness, and being able to communicate and listen to each other without an agenda and come together.
But both people have to work their inner program, both people have to do their homework before they can ever get together. And then I think that what has to happen is there's got to be honesty, and hopefully this will open up, where maybe the spouse of the alcoholic, what would they call the disease of codependency, where she has tried to save him, she has controlled him, all the damage that she caused in him, and maybe the angers that have built up in him, that they need to go through that process together.
Now, a point that can be made is that the children of an alcoholic family, we talk about a family disease, have all been affected, and you know, the mom and dad, in terms of going through this process with them, this process of healing, you just have to apply to some of the things I've already said. But I'd like to stress here, coming from an alcoholic home, you know, my parents can feel so guilty, you know, my dad for so long saw me take off where he left off, my sister.
You know, my dad can feel so guilty that because he was an alcoholic, that he caused it in his children. And my mom can feel so bad that she was so preoccupied with my father, that she wasn't able to give the care to the family that she would have liked to.
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You know, they can feel, God, we were so inadequate, and they can carry those guilts around. But you know, the amazing thing is, I look at my own family and other recovering families, I look at the whole disease of alcoholism and how it affected us as a tremendous blessing. Because you see, we were real. My dad's halo was exposed, that it wasn't there. I saw my mom and her weaknesses. You know, all of us, we're a close family because we've been through so much together. Our lives are much more than the car we have.
In fact, for me, just an example is, I don't think that I'm much of a materialist. You probably look at the clothes I wear and how I dress and that to know it. Material things don't mean that much to me. And you know, one of the reasons why that's true is my dad was a man who started out as a floor boy. He came from a poor family, and he worked up to own the fourth largest furniture company in the United States.
And we know we moved from house to house, and the house always got bigger, and the car got better. But as a kid, as I grew up in my family, the more we had, the less we had. Because the more I saw the problems and the struggles within the family. And I knew that no matter how nice the house was, or how many things we had, or how good the food was, it never took the problems away. That's been a tremendous lesson in my life. And I see our own family, as we're growing, that we're dealing with a lot of these issues. And it's bringing us closer together. We're communicating and sharing our experiences with each other because we have so much to share.
So in the reality, in the long journey of life, the events may have been very, very painful. But it's been a gift to each one of us in our own journey. It's given us a great ability to discover who we are and what life is about and what love is about. And I don't think that if I didn't have that pain, if I didn't have the experience of the youth, I'd ever have discovered some of the greatest gifts that I've discovered in my life.
You know, now I'd like to talk about probably the situation that I've run into as a priest and as a human being that needs the most healing of hate. And that is the hate that follows a divorce. Because you see, what happens is, when they initially fall in love, they're in love. And they think they've met a God. Each person believes they've met the person in their life that will solve all their problems. I've met my Savior. And we're going to settle down and we're going to have a family and we're going to live happily ever after.
And then the deep hurts and the problems, if there's no process of dealing with human weakness, comes into the relationship. We discover we married a human being with weaknesses and if we can't handle that and grow from it, that love begins to have more and more of a quality of hate in it. It becomes a love-hate relationship. And if there's no healing of the hate, the hate can start dominating the love.
And so what happens is that we're getting many more problems in the relationship than benefits. And it gets way more and more and more on the side of problems. Until we get to the situation that we have to get out of it. That it's destroying us and it's destroying the other person. And so when it happens usually, in many cases, especially on the ugly divorces that I see so many today, getting the lawyers in it and all the battles over custody and control of their material goods, that it just is a very much of a process that really creates and intensifies hate.
And I've known people that have carried that hate to their grave. I've known people that have never gotten over it in their life. It's destroyed their life. I want to say some things about divorce. And especially as a Catholic priest, the talking about that situation. Because you know I came from a church in which a lot of people, they've come to me and they've thought that because they're divorced they can't go to the Eucharist anymore. That it's a sin to get divorced. It's never been a sin to get divorced in the church. The only thing that the church's laws is about is remarrying and going to the Eucharist.
But a lot of times in our world today, and I think we see the healthiness coming in the modern generation, a healthier evolution of being a person in the previous generation. Because sometimes we tend to look at everything around us and we just see a mess. We don't see the seeds of hope. But you know in many ways, I see young people, they might be going to counseling, they might be going to therapists, they might be dealing with their issues. But I see the young people today, the young married couples, the young adults, a lot more concerned about the person they're becoming.
A lot more concerned about the person they're becoming. They're not so wrapped up in their careers, or they're not so wrapped up in the external world,
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but they, they wanna grow. They're asking a lot more serious questions than the previous generation. They're expecting more out of life. Oh, there's all the yuppies, there's all the externalism, but there's another thread of hope that's coming to our generation. And I also see, even in a situation of divorce, a ray of hope. I think it's a lot healthier for a person to decide to get out of a sick relationship than stay in it because of their parents' sake, or because of the parents, or because it's the easiest thing to do. I think it's healthier to get out of something that's sick if it can't get well than to stay in it. And I've known so many in the older generation that have just learned to adjust to each other, to stay out of each other's way, to avoid each other as much as possible, but to keep the marriage appearance so that everybody thinks it's fine. I think it's a lot healthier dealing with the reality, just like I think it's a lot healthier for children to grow up from a broken home than in a broken home, where they're always receiving what the parents are doing to each other, always the victims of the unhealthy relationship. And that's the point that I want to make as we go along, how important this healing process is. And for no other reason than after a divorce, it's important, if it isn't for your own inner peace, which I think is extremely important for it's important for your children. It's one of the greatest gifts that you can give them.
Also, if you look at it this way, when we're talking about gifts to our children, you know that old truth that I've talked about that life is difficult? And I mentioned the thing is, you know, are we going to teach kids that you got to grow from the struggles of life? Are we going to teach them to escape into comfort zones? You know what we're going to teach them is not so much what we say, but how we live. And it's really important to teach our kids to honestly face the issues of our life, to really grow from them and to realize the difficulties involved. You know, we're going to teach our children a lot more about what life is really about by getting out of a sick relationship that can't get well than to stay in it and pretend like it's going well to our children. You know, one of those things that the children can never see us fight or the children, what we're going to, we got to make sure the children don't know how bad it is.
So we're teaching the children to be dishonest. We're teaching them not to face the real issues of their own life. And so it's important that children understand and the reality of the world that they're going to have to have their journey in. And so, you know what happens? And that's so true. And it's unfortunate. You know, I don't want to be in the point that I'm advocating divorce and I don't want to be at the point where I'm not advocating counseling.
I think that a couple, they've made a commitment to each other and that commitment they made is a commitment to do everything in their power to make it work, to do everything they can. But it takes two to make it work. It takes the willingness on both people's parts. And oftentimes when one neglects it or the other, they can grow apart. But you know, you get to a point in a relationship when you've done everything you can, you've tried everything to make it work, and it just isn't working. And it's getting to the point that I'm getting to the point of destroying myself and the other person. So I'm talking, when I talk about the divorce, I'm talking about a hopeless situation, at least. And we can only make decisions with fallible judgment.
None of us have absolute answers. We've just got to know in our hearts that we've tried our best and it just is not, it's not going to work. That's what I'm talking about. But you know, what happens in a lot of times is that it isn't so much that it couldn't have worked. It's that people have taken, have put it off too long. They've been dishonest. They realized that there were real problems in their marriage, but they never faced them. They were too afraid of the other person's reaction or what would happen. And that's controlled their motivation. Oftentimes the husband will become involved in his work or the children or the wife involved with their children. And they, when they're around people, they got to have a lot of people around them.
So they don't have to face each other. They're afraid of just the two of them being together because they don't want to deal with the issues. They keep lowering their expectations of what they want in a marriage until eventually they have no expectations. And that's just like a cancer. It destroys whatever possibility they have to make it. That's why so many people,
[00:35:00]
when they come for counseling, it's too late. The damage has already been done. And sometimes it's impossible to rebuild. You know what it takes? And that's why, that's why, you know, you can understand why so many divorces happen is in our culture, we're conditioned to look for the right person. We're not really conditioned to understand our own freedom. We expect other people to do it for us. And so we don't know, I've never understood that love is work. And so instead of escaping, we should have been learning about communication. We should have been putting efforts. We should have been reading, learning, and doing all those things that is going to make the relationship work. Love is work. But you notice, notice how much with couples, how little time and attention they give to their own communication. They give, they give to building up their own skills of growing together. Where is it in the priority in a marriage? And you know, so many other things become so much more important. Why does that happen? I don't think it isn't because it isn't a priority, but people are afraid of the results because you know, when you're in a situation with another human person, so different than when we're dealing with ourselves, we're placing our vulnerability, we're placing our results in terms of another person's hands, and we're definitely afraid of that. And you see what happens is the more we, that fear controls our lives, the more we feed it, the more it takes over in our lives. So now let me give you a little scenario of the divorce process. So we have the marriage that goes on the rocks and the problems build up and that love, as I talk about, there becomes more and more hate in the relationship.
And maybe there's a possibility of an affair that happens. Other, other relationships that just breaks to a bottom. And then what happens is the husband, he moves out and he moves to a dinky little apartment that he can barely pay for. And his wife's living in the big house with all the children and he's there resenting it. And she's angry at him because he had an affair with his secretary. And then they start now, they all both go get a lawyer and they get it. Each one is a battle to get the most expensive because we all know if you can pay the money, you get a good lawyer and he's going to get the best settlement. And so they go through this long process in the courts that drags, it seems over months. And there's a lot of terrible things that are said, things that, that really go to the core of a human being that you could hardly imagine yourself saying it to the person that one day you promised that you would be committed to love forever. And then finally there's the settlement and there's the large, the money that's given for the support of the family. And you got to remember the kids are going through all this process.
And there's the judgment that's made, the custody arrangement, the lawyers get rich, and then the two people are stuck there. Okay, each of them feeling in their heart the victim. Each of them probably has felt that it was the other person's fault because that's our national, natural reaction. Not only does each person feel that it's their fault, that they're the victim, but there's a deep sense of guilt inside because it failed, it didn't work.
There they are. What's going to happen to them in their lives? Now, I want to talk for two reasons. I want to say that this hailing of hate is important. For first of all, for each person's own well-being as a human being. It's never been a healthy reality for anyone to walk around with hate for anyone. It's a very destructive force and it will influence all of our relationships, especially our relationships with our children. And secondly, I think it's very important for the children that we can give them at least civility and even friendship maybe down the road because we're going to have to make decisions about the children, the schools they go to, different values, religious decisions about religion, all kinds of issues that's got to be made. Now, what happens so often, unless there's a process, both people would rather be miserable and be right than bring any sort of positive influence into the relationship.
They'd rather be miserable and right even with all the destructive force to themselves, the other person, and their children. I think it's one of the most insane positions a person
[00:40:01]
can ever get himself into. It's a corner which is absolute misery and so many people live in that and they almost enjoy their misery. Now, I'm not talking about the person who is the martyr because the person who has decided to be a martyr in life, they're living in luxury. They're living in their own kingdom. They couldn't be happier because the more miserable it is, the more happy they are. But I'm talking about fairly two normal human beings, absolute in misery and preferring it to ever admitting they're wrong because that's the prerequisite to being able to change, is the honesty to say it's not who's right that's important.
And you know something, and again what I talked about before, I've never known a marriage situation that failed when it was completely one person's fault. A lot of times it's both people's fault or it's really something that they never should have gotten married in the first place, that they didn't know each other. They were two different people. They weren't people that had enough in common. There's a lot of reasons, but the reasons are much bigger than ever saying it was one person's fault. And so it's a very important thing if there's ever a reconciliation to get over that need that I have to be right, that if I can't let that go.
So if you're in that situation, if you find yourself that you have been in a divorce and you have not the ability to make a reconciliation, I really suggest that you pray to God for the willingness to be open to being wrong, that you don't have to be right. You aren't the complete victim. You see, we've got to understand that human pride problem. And you know, it's amazing. The closer we've been to people, the harder it is to come about for reconciliation. Because you know, it's almost that we once gave trust and somehow we feel down deep that we were betrayed. And so it's very hard to give ourselves again, a sense of trust with that person. And because of that, it makes it really difficult, especially if we've been really close to someone to let go of our pride. So it often becomes the case of who goes first in an effort of reconciliation. And you know what that is very often, it is the person who cares more about themselves. Because as I've talked about, to heal that hate that's in us, if we really do that, the primary reason why we do that is for our own well-being, our own personal growth.
And I also think this, you see, so often we haven't taken our Christianity seriously. It's more a series of practices. It's going to church, it's devotion, but it isn't a way of life. And that whole thing when I talked about earlier, about accepting our human weaknesses, you see, the more a person accepts their own weaknesses and is honest to themselves, the more they will understand how human weakness can be in another person and how it can intrude in a relationship. That frees a person to be able to bring reconciliation. But if a person has no clue to their own weaknesses and no honesty, they'll never be able to see the weaknesses in another person or the weaknesses in the relationship, they'll just feel the victim. And so what I'm saying is, if you have a hard time really considering the forgiving process, the healing of hate in your life, it might be because you haven't ever taken your Christianity seriously.
And so it might mean that you better start asking yourself whether you really are a Christian or whether you even want to be one. Because this is a good concrete issue. You know, just ask yourself, what would Jesus do if he got into marriage and got a divorce? Would he be bitter? Would he be filled with hate? How would he act? And then you can get an awful good clue of where God is calling you. I'd like you just in the process, in kind of some methodology that I've used in another tape series, of a way to get into yourself and get yourself ready for this process. The first is the honesty in your own aloneness. When you really face your marriage, to be really honest about yourself and about the other person.
Try to get underneath the skin of the other person. Try to get underneath the skin of the other person and see what it would be like to live with your human weaknesses, the ways that you have affected them, see that you weren't just a saint to live with, try to put yourself in the other person's position, suppose you were married to yourself, get into your own weaknesses, know them, and then kind of understand how your human weaknesses, what are the consequences in other people, what are the effects of these weaknesses,
[00:45:21]
that's being real honest, how capable are you of being that honest, so what you're doing is you're taking the focus off the other person and beginning to bring that focus on yourself, that's where you got to bring that healing process of God's forgiveness, this is where it has to happen, and maybe that's the point I should be making in this issue, is maybe what we have to do before we go to the other person, is we have to be able to go to God as each of us understands Him, and bring the real person that we are, and ask forgiveness for our own weaknesses, you know we have to have repentance before we can have forgiveness, we've got to have honesty about who we are before we can ever ask God to forgive our own weaknesses, and just ask yourself, you know a way of looking at this, is do you know where your weaknesses were in the relationship, or do you know the other person's weaknesses more than your own, and that'll be a good clue to tell you in your own journey with the other person, what was dominating your behavior more, an understanding of your own weaknesses, or a preoccupation with the other person's weaknesses, and maybe just that own little clue can give you an insight of maybe why from your part, from your point of view, it didn't work.
Secondly, I'd like you to reflect and think that your life is a journey, and when you talk about it as a journey, that nothing should be wasted, think of the energy, the time together, the effort of your life that you spent together, now it's really important that you grow together, you know, not everybody you love you can be married with, you can really love somebody, but if you ever got together in a marriage it wouldn't work, but if you put all that time and all that energy into the friendship, why isn't it possible for that person to be one of the people you choose to share your journey with, you know, it could be part of a growing process.
And then the third thing I'd like you to do after you have been honest with yourself to your God, and you've asking forgiveness for your own weaknesses, you're aware of them and how they have affected your partner, then you're aware that life is a journey, and that all this experience is part of a growing process. Then the third thing is kind of reflect back to your golden moments, the times you spent with this person, when you felt maybe better than you've ever felt around anybody else, you married the person, there must have been reason, experiences, think of the real lights when you really felt the love, the growing together, just think practically, try to, in your imagination, try to see the places, the times, the people around, the smells, the tastes, the sights, all those experiences, bring them into your imagination, make them alive for you, use your imagination as a positive force to bring you to reconciliation, and try to relive those moments, because just remember how many of the bad memories that have gone over and you've played in your head over and over again, so you can see them so well, start playing some good memories, start seeing the person at their best instead of their worst, start seeing the times when they were really thoughtful of you, and really caring and forgiving, to prepare yourself for reconciliation, get in touch with those golden moments, appreciate them, appreciate the positiveness of the person.
And the fourth reality in preparation is remembering you don't have control of results and you can't control other people, you have to understand that in your heart, you can't control results, so the important thing, you've got to reflect that this is a gift that you're doing for yourself more than you're doing for the other person, you're not doing it so the other person will respond your way. Otherwise, it's just a form of control, you're doing it because you're giving it as a gift to yourself, so remember now, that even if it doesn't work, you can have the self-satisfaction to know in your heart that you tried your best, and that's a tremendous gift that you give yourself.
Now, let's make the presumption that each of the people has a certain willingness to bring about a healing. Now remember, we're not talking about the two people remarrying, that may happen and God bless it if it does happen, and you know, one of the tests that you can always tell, at least I've indicated, that I found in marriage situations, when one or other walks out of the situation and they find that it's such a relief,
[00:50:17]
to be away from the burden of the marriage, there's no way you're ever going to get that person back again, because they feel so liberated and free, but they would still like to have at least a civil relation with the person that they used to be married to. Now, let's presume that the two of them want to build towards at least a civil relation and possibly some friendship in their lives, especially if children are involved, that each does this now, and they come together and both of them are willing to admit that there was their own weaknesses that caused the breakup of the marriage.
Now, we're presuming that people have this positive attitude. Each one of them, in preparing to get together, goes through their own process of being both the victim and the perpetrator, since that's the truth, both people in the marriage are both a victim and a perpetrator, if we speak of human weakness. Now, when I go through the process of the victim, I must first of all detach my former partner from my obsession. I must concentrate not on his weaknesses, but how his weaknesses have affected me inside, the pain that I have.
I must really get in touch with the pain that caused me to live with him or to live with her, how I felt, really feel it, know it, own it, and then when I get in touch with that pain and I've owned it and I know it, then I come back to my former spouse and I see him as a human being with all of his weaknesses. I see him maybe with a drinking problem or I see him with different dishonesties he's never faced in his life. I see him as a person maybe trying his best, but not knowing how.
Okay, I do that. Each person does that, so they really get both, when they're the victim, they feel both the pain that they have inside and they see the other person as a human being, not the object of their hate, but as a human being with their weaknesses. Now, each person as a perpetrator, they first of all have to have a perception of their own weaknesses and hopefully they've done that and when I talked about when they go into their own aloneness, they've got to know what were their chief weaknesses in the relationship.
And you know something, even as a, you cannot be a growing human being. You cannot be an alive person unless you're aware of your weaknesses. You know, it would be, it would tell us a lot about our human journey. If, in the honesty of our hearts, if we have never learned or we've never known our own human weaknesses, it would say a lot about our personal honesty. And so, just come to grips now, a perception of what were my chief weaknesses in the relationship.
And then we move from perception to feeling. Okay, now, how, what are the consequences of these weaknesses? And the best way of getting in touch with that pain is take those weaknesses and remember when somebody did those weaknesses to you. Say, for example, that my weaknesses were thoughtlessness, that I was always preoccupied with work and didn't spend any energy on the person I loved, that I was constantly working and always expected them to be there but never nurtured the relationship.
Well, I got to remember, what did I feel like when somebody I loved was totally wrapped up in their work and didn't pay attention or nurture my needs? How did I feel? Get in touch with that pain. Know what the pain that you inflicted on the other. And the best way is to feel it inside when somebody did it to you. Recall it and feel it and own it. And so now when you come together, you have a sense, both people have a sense of the other person's pain. And that humanness is what can be the miracle of bringing healing to the anger and the hate. And then each person asks for forgiveness but they really know what they're asking for forgiveness for and they know what the actions cause. Each of them know that. What is bonding them together is their sense of unity in human weakness.
And then they can talk about what type of a relationship would they like? How would they like to travel their journey? How much time were they going to give it? So each knows. At best, it could be a nice relationship. I've known many people that were married who got divorced who have good friendships today. In fact, I've had people tell me that we're much better friends today than when we were married. That's at best.
[00:55:04]
But at least it can be civil. At least they've gone through the process of forgiveness. They've healed that hatred inside of them so they can get on with their journey. And you know what will happen? All the growth, all that they've grown from in this experience, from this pain, they'll bring to all their other relationships. So while this could have been a very serious pain in their life and even they can call it a very serious mistake, it can be a great growing human experience. And as they grow as a person, they're going to bring it to all their other relationships.
Now, I'd like to talk about some specific issues that people have asked about as I've gone about giving missions and retreats. Different areas in their life where they've needed healing. And I'd like to talk about four right now that I've heard over and over again. The process of forgiving God, of forgiving institutions, whether it be forgiving the church or forgiving business operations, whether it be the fire department or the post office or the government or whatever it happens to be that we're associated with.
Forgiving someone who has committed suicide, somebody that we loved. And the issues of forgiving brothers and sisters or sibling relationships. These are four that people have asked for help. So I'd like to begin with, first of all, forgiving God. You know what happens, and I've seen it many, many times, is that a person will have a tragedy in their life. Maybe one of their young children will have suddenly and mysteriously died. Or there's been an accident and somebody they love has been killed. Or maybe their parent has died unexpectedly. And people have a reaction of anger at God.
They will come and they will tell you that they hate God. In fact, they'll demonstrate it by people who were very faithful in going to church and now suddenly will refrain from going to church. And so they have this experience in their life of needing a healing in their relationship with God. Now, first of all, it's very important where a lot of this comes from. A lot of this comes from people that have a notion of a God who pulls strings in this world. Who decides today that these people are going to die. That it was really God's fault that my son died because God decided that my son was to die.
It's almost like we use that when we say that, you know, when God calls us, we die. It's up to Him. Like He decides it. We even see that in terms of how we pray. And that's maybe a way of getting into understanding what I want to talk about. Our mom is ill. Seriously ill. And we pray to God that she gets well. And she doesn't get well. She dies. And we say, well, God didn't hear my prayers. It's almost the image that He wasn't listening or He was too busy taking care of somebody else.
Well, let's understand what we do when we pray the prayer or petition. At least this is my understanding. When I pray for my sick mother or I pray for my marriage or I pray for a friend of mine who's in trouble, I'm not praying that God takes care of them. Because it's my belief that God lives and works within everyone. That I don't have to tell God to love people. That that is who God is. It's almost like I need so much of, that He needs my prayers in order to do it. It's kind of, if I can give you an example that really, kind of a simple example, but we were, I was at a football game one time and we were playing our arch rival and we were down on the five yard line and it was third down and the game was in balance, just a few moments left in the clock.
And a lady turned to me and she says, pray to God that we win, pray to God that we win. And it suddenly dawned on me this picture that, that you got one side praying to God that they win and the other side praying to God that the other side wins. Now, is God going to determine how many are praying on one side versus the other and then He's going to let that team win? That's the kind of image that we have. But in reality, when we ask of God and we pray to God for our intentions, it's not that we're asking God to do something for us. It's really a prayer of our own faith in which we pray.
Care of Our Own Faith, In Which We Turn Over the Results to God, It's Really an Act of Faith Instead of an Act of Fear, It's Not Us Trying to Control God and How God Controls
[01:00:02]
Results, It's Really Giving the Results to God, of Really Trusting that Whatever Happens God is There to Help Us or the Other Person to Grow, That's the Key Element, It's an Act of Faith in God's Presence, It's Not Asking God to Do Something, So Prayer is a Real Act of Faith, and so when we have this notion of God, it's not like some Big Daddy in the Sky, Who's There to do all these things, you know, He's Deciding Everything and Doing Everything, but God at least in my understanding is a Power that Lives Within Us, a Source of Love that's There to Help Us Grow from Whatever Happens, so when we give God that kind of Power over Control, we're Misplacing our Power, God's Power is Really in the Process of Love, the Process of Growth from Within, so Events Happen to Us.