Author: barrykjackson

Fix You

Posted on by barrykjackson

Yes, I know this is ‘so last year’ and you are all well and truly over it…but perhaps I am not.

Okay, I am not.

So, indulge me for a minute or two, I’ll try to keep it brief. Judge me all you want, but I’ve never been embarrassed to say I am a fan of Coldplay. I am sure no one loves all their songs, but amongst their extensive catalogue is some real winners – in my humble opinion.

Clocks, Yellow, The Scientist roll of the tongue, then of course there is Fix You.

During that separation/divorce period I’ve written about plenty before, where life was all up the wahzoo, you tend to spend a lot of time alone, well I did, more than I was used to that’s for sure.

The nights were always the worst, the loneliest, the time when sleep was allusive, and the brain activity was at its most heightened. Music became a comforter, a way to fight the deafening silence, to vent, to help find words to attach to the raw emotions, and to help heal. During that time, Coldplay got some significant playtime, and in particular the song Fix You.

When I thought about my kids and the pain they were navigating, the questions they were left to face, the sense of abandonment they felt by people they thought were ‘our friends’. Whenever I thought about how they, who were innocent in all of this, were paying a price, I cried. Oh man, did I cry.

The lyrics of the song go –

“Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face, and I

Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face, and I

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you”

Tears streamed down my face as I listened to this song sitting in the driveway before putting on a brave face to head inside to my kids. Tears streamed down my face when I sat in my work office, and my home office, and on my daily walks as I listened to this song trying to process my life.

And for a long time, I thought I managed to conceal much of my tears, but I was naive. Kids are watching and interpreting everything, and without really knowing it, my kids started to connect to the song as well. Perhaps for a while whenever they heard it, they thought of me crying, they thought of my pain. But then in their own way they started to connect it to their pain as well.

The song connected us. An unsaid understanding that we were all experiencing elements of the pain that broken families bring, regardless of whose ‘fault’ it was. That despite the brave faces we tried to show the world around us, we were all crying & healing simultaneously.

Over time the song and the emotions attached to it subsided, and it became like a postcard on the fridge of a place we once lived in for a while.

Side note: I am reminded more and more that you can’t fix others if you don’t fix yourself. Who is responsible for dealing with our hurts and trauma, so we don’t inevitably project that onto the ones we love? We are.

Sooooo, Coldplay announce they are heading to NZ – Grace, Max and I venture to Auckland for a few days of good old fashioned quality time, and we did indeed have a great time together. Long story short we make our way to the gig, and from the start to the end it was so so so awesome. But the moment I will never forget was that moment when near the end of the concert, Coldplay began to play THE song.

As I stood in the crowd with my kids, the moment they start to play Fix You, tears once again streamed down my face, down Grace’s face, and while they didn’t quite fully escape Max’s eyes, the emotion was certainly there. However, now the tears fell for a different reason; now it wasn’t pain, sorrow, loss, shame, or grief that triggered the tears. While I think the emotion that I had connected to this song for so long just emerged, almost on cue without warning, this time the overriding feeling for me was joy.

Joy for how far I had come, joy for experiencing this moment live, joy for standing there with my kids. Joy for life, for healing, for change, for new beginnings, for loyal friends, for family, for love.

So cheers to Coldplay, to the power of music, and to love.

B.

The Gospel of Grace

Posted on by barrykjackson

On the 9th of April 2003 my daughter was born.

There are moments/memories that remain with you for life, like it was yesterday. For example, standing on the 200m starting line during the Sydney 2000 Olympics as Cathy Freeman ran, and won, the 400m final. The privilege to stand in that spot, the atmosphere in the stadium, the historical significance of it all, even when I reflect on it to this day I can feel the energy in my body respond like I was there again.

Weird to compare that with the birth of my daughter I guess, but my point being there are moments that just stay with you. That moment in Sydney would be one of them, but the birth of my daughter (and later my son) would trump them all. I remember it so vividly the moment she was born, the emotions, the look between her mother and I confirming her name, the walk to the hallway to hug my parents as I cried “Its a girl”.

Before she was born the scans couldn’t give us a definitive if it was going to be a boy or a girl, we had a boys name locked in, but we had a couple lined up if it was a girl and we couldn’t quite decide which one we liked the most. So we decided to wait till she was born before choosing, believing that when we see her we would just ‘know’. And well the moment she was born we looked at each other and nodded in a knowing agreement as her mother simply said, “Grace”. Yep Grace it was, and Grace it was meant to be.

Grace means ‘Unmerited Favour‘, underserved or unearned approval. That which affords joy, pleasure, delight, loveliness, that which gives/shows mercy, goodwill and kindness.

The Gospel (which means ‘good news’) of Christianity is the news that God loves us. Full stop. Some will go on to say that God loves us despite our shortcomings, or our ‘sins’, but I think that can subtract from the original theological intent to a point – don’t hate on me.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now I’m found
Was blind, but now I see

John Newton

So often when we sing this song, we think its about us, but the focus is not on us being a ‘wretch’ but on the amazing grace that saved us. That grace that led one from darkness into the light, from brokenness and pain back to life. Being loved because you ‘are’, not for what you ‘do’ is the magic that brings change.

Donald Miller writes –

“God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.”

Blue Like Jazz

And Philip Yancey writes –

“I have barely tasted of grace myself, have rendered less than I have received, and am no wise an ‘“expert” on grace. These are, in fact, the very reasons that impel me to write. I want to know more, to understand more, to experience more grace.”

Whats So Amazing About Grace?

I think we could all say that we have shared it much less than we have received, and also that we are no experts on the matter. But in a world that’s dominant theme is performance and transaction, don’t we all want to experience more grace?

Compassion is nice, but it is not the same thing as grace. Compassion is a sense or feeling of pity, or sorrow, for someone and their misfortune or suffering. It is something emotive that moves our spirits and can impact our decisions. Compassion is beautiful and needed, but it is not grace. Grace in its purest form is favour regardless of whether or not you got yourself in the mess in the first place. Acts of compassion may help you up, but grace rightly understood should woo you into the light.

When I think about my daughter Grace, I think about how without even knowing it, she embodies the meaning of her name. She is sassy, and protective for sure, but I think that’s also what real grace can be. It looks to cover those it loves without excusing wrongs. But she is also quick to forgive, kind, a delight and a real joy. She is a walking billboard of the Good News.

To my daughter Grace, as I walked recently and reflected on life, where I have been and where I am now, as I reflected on family, and as I reflected on you this is what came to mind.

Your name is Grace, it was not a lucky dip, but a chosen name. It means something, it represents my heart towards you, and it is a gift you can share with the world as you journey through it. As you go about your life your name serves as a reminder to you, and an encouragement and blessing to others.

Remember that you are not the sum total of your mistakes or your achievements. Your value is in who you are, not in what you do. A side note – generally speaking when you know who you ‘are’, what you ‘do’ comes naturally.

May you remember you are favoured and approved of, may you remember you always have a place/ a home/ my arms/ to go where you can know that you are wanted, believed in, loved and valued. A place to re-centre and find your true north again if ever the chaos of the world causes you to lose your way. You don’t have to compete for my love, it is always there, a constant.

Personally I have found that with my faith in God over the years, but as I have journeyed through some dark days you have also unknowingly been that for me as well. When I felt like the world was against me, your love and belief in me reminded me so often of God’s grace. It encouraged me to continue to do the work to heal and grow, and helped ‘woo me into the light’.

So every time you see your name, write your name, or say your name, remember what it means – that quite simply there are people who delight in you for you. And as you learn to walk in that, may your life also be a blessing to others as you offer that same delight, sass, joy and favour to them as you have to me.

Being loved for who you are rather than for what you can offer is The Gospel of Grace. It’s not a transaction, it’s love.

The amazing thing about grace is that I didn’t have to change to be loved, I was loved and so I changed.

45

Posted on by barrykjackson

I am not where I wanted to be, where the young version of me dreamed I’d be at this stage of my life.

I’m fatter than I wanted to be, poorer than I imagined I’d be, not in the vocational position I dreamt about being in, and there are people I’m not as close to anymore as I’d have liked.

The reality is that while I imagined a future I wanted, I didn’t necessarily plan my life to ensure I moved in that direction, genetics aside, it’s not really anyone else’s fault that I am chubbier than I would have preferred, ha ha, that’s on me.

Yet, some things are out of our control, sometimes the choices of others create detours/roadblocks we were not expecting, or wanting. I’m not throwing stones either, because as my daughter and I often talk about, we are all living out our lives for the first time.

But reflecting on my forty fifth year around the sun, life has been good on many fronts, this reorientation thing creating forward movement again, day by day, is a really beautiful thing.

But interestingly yesterday I found myself shedding some tears once again as I reflected on what I perceived has been lost over the years, and in part, the pain it has also caused others I love. It came as a surprise to me, but I’ve learnt grief is healthy when processed, rather than buried.

“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

While the time between moments of grief grows further and further apart, and the waves less and less turbulent, I recognise that not all tears are an evil, in fact sometimes tears are a good indicator I’m on track.

Buried tears create resentment and bitterness and the potential for a victim mindset, but tears that are allowed to flow and reflected on, and tears that are acknowledged for what they are, can bring healing.

Counting your blessings reminds you of where the value in life is really found. Rarely when people count their blessings do they start with material things, often they start with people they love, and the people they know love them in return.

At the 45 mark, I’m most grateful for my people. Those who leant in when I tried to push them away cos of my own pain, those who laugh with me, those who challenge me, those who defend me, those who dream with me, and believe in me. There is something about having people in your world who just like to hang out with you, and you with them…..I’m pretty sure that’s called friendship actually.

Yesterday I cried tears of grief, but today I cried tears of gladness.

Movement

Posted on by barrykjackson

A theologian by the name of Walter Bruggeman speaks about the Biblical pattern of personal and corporate growth in the three stages of Orientation – Disorientation – Reorientation.

Everyone loves it when life is bliss and going according to our own plans, but how often throughout Scripture we see that it is in the disorientation stage where God is seen to be wanting to use something, or show something to us that will illuminate [such a great word] areas within ourselves that need healing/correcting; a mindset rewiring of sorts.

The saying goes that the Israelites spent 40 years wandering around the desert, not because the Promised Land wasn’t ready for them, but because they weren’t ready for the Promised Land. They needed to get ‘Egypt’ out of them before they unwittingly took parts of the old with them into the new. In the same way, periods of disorientation, while uncomfortable, help us to grieve the old while preparing us for the new.

In our lives we may find ourselves in any one of the three stages simultaneously. For example, in our family life we may feel like we are in a place of orientation – things are good, as expected and going well, there is a sense of peace and harmony. While in other areas of our lives, say business and vocation, we may find ourselves in a place of disorientation, where there is upheaval through a job loss or a redundancy, no pathways forward, or no sense of meaning/purpose in our work.

While unusual to experience disorientation in all three key areas of our lives at the same time – the three key areas being faith, family, vocation – it does happen. It happened to me.

Generally speaking, if your faith is solid and your family life is healthy then you will process disorientation in your vocation easier and faster, because while you are experiencing crisis in one area the two other key areas are solid enough to keep you grounded with a sense of forward movement. Likewise with any other combination of the three.

But when it’s all three – when your faith, family and vocation are all linked together and there is significant upheaval, then the sense of disorientation will take its time as essentially you feel life grind to a holt until you grieve and learn to reestablish your foundations.

I used to think the Israelites were idiots for staying in the wilderness for so long….but if it takes one person a significant time to journey along the path of healing, and to a new way of thinking/understanding, imagine that process for a whole village/nation.

Why I am writing about all of this? A few weeks back at church I realised I wasn’t as tense as I normally am. The church journey over the last year has been difficult for me as I have shared already…and because of that it’s easy to feel resentment towards the ‘whole’ when grieving the loss of a ‘part’.

Anyway, so I’m in church and feeling relaxed, feeling present, feeling peace about being there, and I was reminded of the three stages.

Orientation | Disorientation | Reorientation

Knowing I’ve been sitting in this disorientation space for a while, I had the overwhelming sense/realisation that I was now moving into reorientation. Life was no longer about what I have ‘lost’, where I ‘used to be’, or what I am ‘not’, neither did the future feel foggy, unclear, or unsafe.

When you are in a place of disorientation you need tangible hope. You need to be able to imagine/dream of a better day, you need a vision of the ‘good life’ that is still possible ahead to keep you moving.

The hope that must be spoken is hope rooted in the assurance that God does not quit even when the evidence warrants his quitting.

Walter Brueggemann

If you can’t speak or see that hope, get people around you who can. I will be forever grateful for the hope givers in my life.

Jeremiah, faithful to Moses, understood what numb people will never know, that only grievers can experience their experiences and move on.

Walter Brueggemann

If you don’t have hope, you will numb yourself to the pain and remain stuck where you are. Hope allows people to grieve and to feel, to acknowledge the reality of their experiences so they can then wholeheartedly move on.

Hope helps people to see that the wilderness is not the final destination, so rather than fight against it, they become present to it. They journey through the pain rather than resigning themselves to it.

How do you know you are no longer in disorientation and now moving into reorientation? Peace. A sense of contentment, the reemergence of joy and the lessening of angst and pain through forgiveness.

When the joy of where you are at, and the excitement of what is before you fills your life more than grief did. When you realise your thoughts are directed towards that end, you realise that the direction of your life has shifted.

There is a sense of forward movement again. And it is invigorating.

‘Stuck’

Posted on by barrykjackson

This is probably the fifth blog I’ve started since I last posted…the rest are still sitting in my drafts – a bunch of ideas conceived but not yet birthed.

The reality is that I recently found myself in a place someone told me I’d be in about four years ago. At the time I remember the feedback/advice/perspective stinging a little, but my positivity and peace making characteristics kicked in and I suppressed that idea down to an off the cuff statement rather than wise intuition.

“Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.”

Henry Cloud

I have never really felt stuck before, but it wasn’t until recently that I was ready to move forward but felt for reasons outside of myself I couldn’t.

Divorce is shit. It’s rarely easy, straightforward, or nice, and no one’s hands are ever fully clean. That’s not an admission of guilt, but the realisation that whenever relationship’s break down, we all have something to own. I’ve mentioned this before in previous posts I’m sure; but I’m thankful for two good mentors and transformative counseling which helped guide me for the first two years after my separation. During that period I focused on me – on correcting some things, healing some things, forgiving some things, on trying to be a good dad, on serving the community I loved as best I could, and on ‘trusting the process’. But at some point you have to move again, not just for your own sake, but also for the sake of the ones you love. Once the divorce was offical I felt it was my time, so I started to think future again, to dream again, and imagine what could be.

Those who don’t share the journey don’t value the progress.

So I found myself starting to push ahead, and found others holding me back. Each time I stepped forward, those who had not journeyed with me created waves that rocked the boat, creating uncertainty. That uncertainty effected everyone else in the boat, it made others weary.

Truth is, time becomes everyone’s friend when it’s on their side. There is much that could be said about why intentional community matters, and why spacial community doesn’t work. People who don’t journey with you perceive you to be where they last encountered you, either their last memory or lasting impression, good or bad, its the jail cell or platform they hold you to.

So there I was. Stuck between what was and what is. Stuck between what people say about you and who you actually are. Stuck between old and new. Between the mistakes you made and the change you embraced. Stuck between creation and re-creation. Stuck between what seems like yesterday while simultaneously feeling like your living in tomorrow. Stuck.

The reality for me is that my journey meant that I became less idealistic about how things were meant to be; where once I saw black and white I now see so much grey. Once life seemed straight forward, now I know it’s no where close to straight forward. Even more than that, it’s been helpful to learn that a straight forward life is a concept which appears far from an Hebraic understanding. In a number of ways failure is not in the mistakes, it’s in the refusal to learn from them.

When it comes to faith, family, work, and friends, I cling to the things I believe are the essentials, to the things that matter the most. It’s become less about being right, less fear about being wrong, and more confidence about being real.

Mele is my ambassador of quan. She fights for me because she knows me more than any other human on the planet, well before we ‘announced’ to the world we were in a relationship we journeyed together in private a path of honesty and vulnerability that was at times humbling and brutal, but now I know she sees me, and because she sees me and knows me, she demands that I don’t simply sit in my ‘stuckness’. No one else has done that for me like she has. And perhaps if it wasn’t for her I’d still be unknowingly stuck.

Others have witnessed me being stuck, others have empathised for me, but no one has got lovingly angry at me, and at others, for allowing myself to stay in it.

The riddle and insight of biblical faith is the awareness that only anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy, and only embraced endings permit new beginnings.

Walter Bruggeman

So I find myself in the place I was told I’d be in four years ago. That the time would come where I would be ready to move forward but some people wouldn’t know how to accept that. Familiarity by proximity rather than relationship tends to do that. So in order to not stay stuck I would need to ‘move away’, I would need to end some things.

Ending my job nearly a year ago now, and with it a number of dreams, then moving on from my community has been harder than imagined, and I imagined it was going to be hard! It has felt so isolating and lonely at times, but I know that no grief comes without its tears. And so now the tears have been shed, the sorrow expressed, I sit in a place where my tomorrow is still uncertain in many ways. But like emerging from a dark tunnel, where the light before you is so bright it hides what is beyond it, I find comfort in both the light itself and the understanding that seeing beyond the light is unnecessary.

I don’t feel ‘free’, but I don’t feel stuck. I still feel lonely at times, but I don’t feel alone. I feel like I’m living in the present.

What matters is one’s orientation towards the light. Trajectory and posture are more important than externally perceived proximity.

Focus on that and I believe the rest will take care of itself.

“You’ve gone into my future to prepare the way, and in kindness you follow behind me to spare me from the harm of my past.”

Psalms 139:5 TPT