How Christians Can Confront A Problem Relationship

Danny Charles’ mother stood a mere five feet tall, yet to him she seemed a Goliath. Ever since he could remember, she was pushing him forward into the world of people, regardless of how shy and introverted he felt.

He recalled a scene from childhood.

Mother dragged me by the wrist downtown to the shoe store. I was about ten-years-old. “Mr. Hoffman,” she told the owner of the store in a high-pitched voice, “Get five pairs of shoes out here right this minute. Danny needs a new pair for his birthday party. Do you have any colors other than black?  Black is so dull!”

Mr. Hoffman hopped back and forth like a rabbit, opening so many shoeboxes it looked like Christmas. Wrapping paper and empty boxes were everywhere.

Other people came into the store, but they had to wait. “There’s the perfect pair,’ she exclaimed, pointing to a red pair of tie-up shoes. I cringed. I’d be the laughingstock of my school. My stomach swirled. “Don’t you just love them?” she asked without waiting for my reply. “Wrap them up in nice paper, Mr. Hoffman. Danny loves them!”

 

This forty-year-old man vividly remembered many such episodes. And he shared more:

It wasn’t just the shoe store. I felt invaded daily, my dignity tromped upon and my feelings disparaged. My chest often felt numb with tension and my stomach cramped with unexpressed anger. Anger was not allowed in our home, unless it was Mother’s anger.  She didn’t get angry just at home. The older I got, the more I noticed that Mom was loud, aggressive and outspoken everywhere, except when she wanted to make a good impression. Then she’d instantly change, becoming all smiles, sweetness and charm. Yet no one dared mention her anxiety and driving need to control everyone, especially me.

Danny Charles’ mother handled his adult life with the same antagonism and smothering nosiness. She opposed his vocation, took a strong stand against his marriage and contradicted whatever he believed in. In his thirties, he thought, I don’t know who I am.  My mother dominates my thoughts, feelings and actions. God help me!

Danny Charles learned in psychotherapy about the Self Compass and applied it vigorously to heal his personality. He took growth stretches into Assertion and Strength to find the courage to cut the psychological umbilical cord to his mother. He wanted Jesus Christ to be the center of his life.

He flourished in his new growth, and developed his career interests with passion. Danny Charles finally made his declaration of independence from his mother. He got her moodiness and negativity out of his core. For the first time, he lived life with freedom and joy, trusting the divine Spirit of Christ to guide him daily.

Then the strangest thing happened. He felt God calling him to return to his mother and help her. “No way!” he said to the still, small voice. “I can’t stand to have anything to do with Mom ever again!” But over months the gentle voice prevailed. “Danny,” the voice explained, “I’ve set you free to be your real self. You’ve learned how to stand on your own feet, handle vulnerability, assert yourself and love others. Now it’s time to love your mother.”

Reluctantly, Danny Charles made arrangements to spend several months living with his mother. She was now eighty-years-old, and her contrary ways had put off her other children and grandchildren. Her husband had died. She lived alone.

Their first months together were stormy. His mother wasn’t about to hear from her son what she had avoided hearing for a lifetime. He’d try to delicately bring into her awareness how her constant criticisms drove people away. She’d explode into tirades.

The fourth month Danny Charles had a reckoning with God. “Dear Lord, you sent me here to help Mom, but she’s only getting worse. I’m going crazy. I’ll stay one more week and then I’m leaving until she dies.”

Inner Voice of the Lord

A few days later Danny Charles and his mother took a trip together to a town sixty miles away. In the middle of the drive, the inner voice of the Lord prompted Danny Charles to go for broke. He took a breath and started speaking softly, but firmly. 

“Mom, I’ve got to say a few things and I’d appreciate it if you’d just listen.” He saw her set her jaw, stiffen her neck and glare straight ahead. “You were raised as a child piano prodigy and had your own radio show by the age of twelve. They called you ‘Queen of the Air.’

“By thirteen you played for two civic clubs in town. You were the most colorful and talented of your ten brothers and sisters. Everybody thought you were the center of the universe, including you. All your childhood confidence turned you into a sassy know-it-all. As an adult and a parent you believed that the world was at your command.

“At home, to get your way you threw temper tantrums and harangued for hours. And to the townspeople you put on smiles one minute and snap at them the next. I’ve been trying to have a two-way conversation with you my whole life, but it’s been impossible. You butt in, jump to conclusions, and get defensive to keep from hearing the truth about your own behavior.

“I just want to say there’s a better way. For whatever years you have left, you can choose to become a positive and caring woman who uses humor and affection instead of aggression and contrariness. I love you, but I know that if you don’t change soon, you’ll die without ever having had a single decent conversation with your own son.”

His mother sat in silence for the next ten minutes. Her face looked pale, her arms folded over her chest and her neck slightly bowed. Then she spoke in a quiet voice. “Danny Charles, every word you’ve said is true. I’ve never understood my life until just now. God has spoken to me through you.”

Over the next two weeks, Anna changed so noticeably that all the family members could talk of little else. She showed some humility now, shared the limelight with others and listened while others spoke. Her old arrogance shifted into quiet confidence. Her aggression all but disappeared. Instead, she demonstrated good cheer and a wonderful ability to build people up. Whether through phone calls in person at family get-togethers, Anna could be counted on to say a hearty, “I love you and may the Lord bless you!”

The Self Compass

The story of Danny Charles and his mother Anna shows how anyone can change, even in fundamental ways, as long as they live.  

By accepting God’s grace and applying the principles of the Self Compass, you can find your way home to personality wholeness and balanced relationships with others and with God, who cares about your personality.

I know.  I’m Danny Charles.

Dan Montgomery

Christ's Compass for Couples

Jesus commands us to love others as we love ourselves (Mark 12:31). 

This is a tall order. How do you do that, especially when it comes to the daily complications of a couples relationship?

But Jesus doesn’t leave you hanging. He gives you clues by the way He lives his life as described in the Gospels. Clues to a healthy personality that help you relate to one another in Christlike ways, yet unique to you as a couple.

How can couples do this in the 21st century? Enter the Self Compass. Based both on Jesus’ personality and modern psychological research, the Self Compass steers couples toward man/woman intimacy. 

The Self Compass

The Self Compass helps reveal what Jesus' personality is like. In the Gospel accounts of his life on Earth, Jesus showed us the model of a perfect personality. Unlike the rest of us, Jesus was perfectly loving—a good friend to Peter and John. But he wasn’t loving all the time. Jesus balanced his Love with Assertion—by standing up against the Pharisees when he saw injustice and unfairness, for example. 

Jesus also revealed healthy Weakness—he was humble of heart, a servant who washed his disciples’ feet. He sweat blood, contemplating his crucifixion. Yet this vulnerability was balanced by Strength—to act according to his Father’s will and a confidence in his identity as the Son of man.

Love in balance with Assertion; Weakness in balance with Strength. Together they form Christ’s Self Compass. A Self Compass: a compass that contains Christ’s LAWS to act as your guide to a healthy and whole marriage.

What does Christ's Self Compass look like? 

Christ's Self Compass

Christ’s various names indicate the balance drawn from his own Self Compass. On the Love compass point, he is known as the Good Shepherd—tender, kind, and nurturing. On the Assertion compass point, he is the Lion of Judah found in the book of Revelation; Christ stands against injustice of every kind, and will judge the quick and dead based on their pursuit of righteousness or lack thereof. On the Weakness compass point, Jesus is the Lamb of God, who willingly laid down his life to redeem all who call upon him. And on the Strength compass point he is the Prince of Peace who died in weakness and was raised from the dead in strength and glory.

The Compass LAWS of a Christ-centered Marriage

Love and Assertion; Weakness and Strength. These are compass points that show the contrasting polarities in your personality. Love isn’t better than assertion, and strength isn’t better than weakness. Healthy people express both tender care and diplomatic assertion. They are competent and strong, yet humbly aware of their weakness. In a well-balanced marriage, couples maintain free and rhythmic access to all four compass points of their Self Compass.

Love is kindness. Thoughtfulness. Forgiveness. Tenderness. Compassion. Fondness. Faithfulness. Friendship. Sacrifice. In the development of healthy personality and relationships, Christ gave priority to loving one’s self, others, and God.

But no one remains loving all the time, nor is it healthy to do so. While love lets you stand with-and-for your partner, Assertion is required so as not to lose yourself.

 

Assertion gives you the courage to express your point of view or challenge what you perceive as unfair in your relationship. Diplomatic assertion preserves your individual differences as a couple and helps you develop the skill of negotiating for your reasonable rights. All couples experience bouts of anger or discontent, when your interests rub against the wishes of your spouse. But when you combine assertion in rhythm with caring, the diplomacy that results will help you reach successful conflict resolution.

Weakness reflects the human experience of uncertainty, vulnerability, and soul-searching. The weakness compass point helps a couple develop humility and empathy for one another. It allows the expression of disappointment, anxiety, depression, or helplessness.

Strength reflects the human need for competence and adequacy. Each partner needs to feel appreciated by the other; to be seen as worthy, capable; to be treated with dignity.

When a couple rhythmically modulates the compass points of Love with Assertion, and Weakness with Strength, their relationship develops the balancing grace of compass virtues: 

• Love brings forth charity. 
• Assertion yields courage. 
• Weakness fosters humility. 
• Strength develops esteem.

Jesus Christ

With the help of the Self Compass, you develop a whole and healthy marriage when you center your marriage in Jesus Christ and on His personality.

Overcoming Heartbreak You've Locked Away

I learned years ago that what is the most personal is also the most universal. By disclosing to another human being our deepest secrets, we tell the story of humankind, sing the song of the ancients, and create the poetry of the soul. In baring the darkness within us, we find light, and companionship.

Why is it, then, that there is such a powerful pull to lock our secrets in some cold inner vault and throw away the key? How is it that some things we most need to share end up in solitary confinement, living and dying within our consciousness alone?

But the practice of disclosing your self (strengths and weaknesses, talents and foibles, achievements and mortifications) is what prepares you to go deeper than usual with the one you love, the partner in whom you seek a heart-to-heart reciprocity. You learn that together you can transcend life’s painful episodes—past and present; those humiliating events that might have conquered you but for your redemptive sharing.

Ride Into Hell

My most humiliating experience began during a winter day of after-school sledding. Cheeks flushed against the cold and trembling with excitement, I stand in line with three other boys who wait their turn to dive through the air, land on sleds, and race to the bottom of the snow-packed hill. My turn comes up and I giggle uncontrollably when body and sled unite for another wild ride.

I gather myself at hill’s bottom in preparation for the trek back up, when I see five boys forming a curtain of bodies around me. Jimmy, a sixth-grade classmate, emerges from the circle, hands gyrating in boxer fashion. Is he playing some kind of joke?

Just then a fist whips out and connects solidly with my eye. Three blows follow hard after. I dizzily try to find him in my vision, but he is dancing around. The street itself looks tilted, like I’m in an elevator in an earthquake. More hammer blows sting my cheeks, nose, and chin.

The next half dozen blows I neither see nor hear, and wouldn’t even know about had not bystanders later told me. Mercifully, blackness swallows me like a snake swallowing a fish. 

When I come to, the world looks red. Two neighborhood friends have heaved shoulders under each of my arms and are dragging me home. My body feels foreign and out of joint. It’s not the physical pain, primarily, that feels so alien, but the humiliation of having not defended myself, the horror of having no answer to Jimmy’s evil assault.

A Real and Present Liberation

Here is what I’m driving at: it is precisely through retelling and reliving our stories that our isolation, and the evil embedded in our memories, is overcome. Every transparent disclosure cleanses and dresses old wounds until such time as we are substantially healed. Healing requires transcending fear and shame, and recovering our lost dignities.

Are you wondering if perhaps I cut off the Jimmy story prematurely?

Yes, you’re right. So if you are prepared to listen, I will tell you about Delta.          

That night Mom uses scissors to snip off my undershirt, to avoid pulling it over the cuts on my face. Dad retires to his den, grumbling about having a son who can’t hold his own in a fight.

I crawl into bed, my mind playing mental movies of flashing lights, falling bodies, derisive sniggers, and banging blows. I curl into a ball, cringing. A consoling image vies with the ghostly collage until it comes into focus. It is my girlfriend Delta’s face. 

Delta is my fledgling attempt at having a girlfriend, my fifth and sixth grade flame. We talk at night on the phone and sometimes hold hands during recess. She has a ponytail, blue eyes, and a smile that tickles my insides.

Though I don’t want to go to school tomorrow wearing my raccoon black eyes and purple bruises, I will go. Delta will help me through this terrible pain. She will know that I am actually quite courageous; it’s just that nobody ever taught me how to fistfight. I drift into a restless sleep, grasping the image of her warm hug.

The next morning at school I arrive late. The whole class, even the teacher, leer at my puffed-out face. I scrunch down in my seat low enough to become invisible. An eternity later the buzzer sounds. Everyone tears out of the room for the playground. I stay behind waiting for Delta to come running down the hallway to find me.

After five minutes, I peep out and the hall is empty. Another five minutes and the buzzer sounds. The first boy into the room, Terry, runs up to me breathless, and blurts, “Delta thinks you’re a coward. She’s broken up with you. She doesn’t want you to call her anymore.”

I learned enough at that moment to write a small book. The topic? A dozen reasons for never loving someone because it only leads to heartbreak. Not that I was intellectually aware of what I learned. This was a different kind of learning: the way a dog learns about cars by being run over. I unconsciously decided that genuine intimacy isn’t worth the pain; that relating superficially is the safest way to proceed.

But let me say what you know from your own life experience. While there are plenty of heartbreaks inherent in living and loving, they are most effectively overcome by baring the heart and cleansing the soul, by disclosing your pain to a trusted person whose gracious understanding brings you back to social solidarity.

Over the years I’ve risked sharing my inner life many times, and have many times received healing and encouragement. If this weren’t true, I’d be writing a post called, “How to Avoid Pain in One Easy Lesson: Clam Up.” I want to support you in your search for inner healing. I want to say:  

“Whatever pain you’ve secretly endured, 

go ahead and share it, so that you can keep 

finding the courage to love again.”