The War is Over

"You're looking at a dead man." That's what I told a group of women I spoke to yesterday. I went on to tell them that mine had been a slow, creeping death that began 10 years ago. But first, some context.

I spent this past weekend at a 3-day spiritual retreat, oddly enough, a women's spiritual retreat. It's based on the Catholic Cursillo movement & model. I was there because I was asked to be one of the ministers ("spiritual directors") for the weekend. My connection to this movement began 23 years ago and over the years it has been a part of my spiritual journey, sometimes a very important part of that journey, other times not so much.

The theme of the weekend was, "Faith-Hope-Love...From Beginning to the End." I approached the weekend knowing I needed a bit of all 3. Actually, I needed a ton of all 3. I have learned over the years that I can speak to groups and usually have something worthwhile to say no matter how empty I may be personally. This weekend, however, I knew I could not just be a casual observer, standing outside of the circle. If I was going to be there, I knew I needed to be fully there and that whatever hopes I had that the retreat participants would experience something positive and helpful, I needed to have the same hopes for myself.

In addition to serving communion and being available for conversation, I was also asked to give a couple of talks on the weekend, both of which focused on grace. Since metaphor is one of the ways I seem to best be able to understand deeper things, I approached my first talk on grace with a metaphor drawn from a Keith Urban show my wife and I attended in February of this year. Many of Keith's fans bring hand-written/painted signs to his shows (I didn't bring a sign in case you're wondering) with all sorts of messages on them, ranging from telling him how far they traveled to see him to requests for Keith to marry them (those are probably Nicole Kidman's favorites).

During the show Keith grabbed a spotlight and looked around the crowd at the various signs. One young lady's sign was, "Keith, I need a hug." He brought her on stage, gave her a hug, then sat her down and sang a song to her. It was quite a moment for that young lady. It was also a moment where I realized I'd been given a metaphor I would use at some point. In this case, it ended up being for this weekend.

At the close of my first talk on grace, I told the ladies about the Keith Urban show and the young lady's sign. I then asked them to go with the metaphorical flow and imagine what would be on their sign should the Almighty shine a light on them during the weekend. I asked them to be honest about what was on their sign instead of thinking about what they should have on it. Later that evening some of the folks who were there serving the attendees used a similar metaphor, a bit of a before and after approach, with signs that described previously difficult/hurtful/damaging events, and then a much more hopeful message on the flip side describing their lives now.

This had quite an impact on everyone in the room, including me. We spent a few minutes in silence after being asked to consider what message we would like to have on our metaphorical sign as opposed to the one that was there currently. I knew I needed a new message, a new reality on the sign of my life and I asked the Almighty to help me discover just what that message and reality could be. After a minute or two, the words, "the war is over" flashed across my mind. I knew I had my answer.

Which takes me back to the first sentence of this post and 10 years of slow death. It was 10 years ago that a series of personal attacks began coming my way. No one person or group generated the attacks and they didn't come in a constant stream. Instead, there would be a wave of shots taken at my reputation, who I am as a person, etc., then things would die down, only to see another similar wave come at me (and my family) again, always unexpected, always vicious. The only consistent thread about the attacks was this: they were all initiated and delivered by Christians.

I'm a Christian, have been for a long time, so we're talking about being attacked by people who occupy the same faith space as me, who are supposed to be my "brothers and sisters." It was only a handful of people driving the attacks, but they had pretty wide-ranging impact. Over time I became crippled by the accusations, the half-truths, the outright lies. As I said to the ladies yesterday, you get the hell beaten out of you long enough, you begin to die. That is what began happening to me.

I withdrew, went deep within myself, built some huge, thick walls and told everyone but my wife, daughter, and a few close friends to stay away. Far away. And I began to hate. First, I just hated the acts perpetrated against me. Then I began to hate the perpetrators. Then I began to hate the fact that the perpetrators were Christians. Then I began to hate Christians in general.

As I told the ladies yesterday, you spend enough time hating Christians, you'll eventually end up hating God. This was true for me. Mine was not this constant, seething hatred. Instead, it was sort of an ebb and flow thing, sometimes rising to the surface, but mainly just a deep, quiet thing, something I tried to hide from everyone, including myself. Most times I thought if I ignored it it would go away. It doesn't work like that, at least it didn't for me. To let it (the hatred) just lay undisturbed meant I may not be nurturing it, but I wasn't trying to kill it either.

So instead it slowly killed me. And it started a war inside me. Although it was pretty much a silent war, it was a war nonetheless. My enemies in this war were those who hurt me and the God who let them. Actually, there was one other enemy- me. I hated myself for letting it all happen to me, for not seeing it coming, for not preventing it, for putting myself and my family in a vulnerable position. I hated myself for not being able to get over it. I hated myself for letting it matter as much as it did.

I realized a long time ago that no apologies were coming, no one responsible for the pain had any intention of making it right. But I held on to my hurt, anger and hatred anyway. And the war raged. I made sure that it did.

Until Friday night. When those words, "the war is over" flashed through my mind, I knew that more than anything what I wanted on my metaphorical sign was that message, that reality. And I suddenly realized that not only did I want that reality, I had the power to create it. Then. There. So then and there, I ended the war inside me. I set free the only prisoner of war I had captured this whole time...me.

Yesterday I shared this story with the ladies at the retreat. I even showed them a sign I'd made that had the words, "The War Is Over" written on it. I don't know for sure, but maybe they saw a dead man come back to life right in front of them.

It's nice to breathe free air again.