Called JM tonight and had chance to really reach out with God’s heart for him and really feel a lighter burden for the moment. Took a moment for chit chat about how things are for us just so the lead in would seem more natural. when I asked him how he was doing he admitted pretty quickly that things weren’t going that well. Slowly he started sharing how hard it’s been to feel unity with Jen. It was going well over the summer and then issues came up again over their church and everything seemed to go sideways again. I can see that their vulnerable beginnings at unity and trust are under great fire and must be upheld in prayer.
Then he said that it’s hard for him to call family and talk about it cause he doesn’t want to unload such negative stuff. I asked him pretty bluntly, “why is it hard to call your family Jon-Marc?” At that point he started sobbing and choking out the words, “because I feel like my marriage is failing. It’s been so hard for so long…and I don’t know what to do about it.” Before he got more than 5 words out I began sobbing too and I’m sure he was hearing me to. It seems that whatever efforts he is trying to make to seek God and initiate spiritual leadership or direction are resisted, assuredly because there is so little trust between them. Even his desire to remain engaged in worship leading is called into question because it seems hypocritical…and yet it’s the very thing he needs to connect with God and find solace for his soul. Of course Jen carries such hurt and betrayal by Jon-Marc that it feels too hard to support him when she is dying inside. He mentioned that they seem to continually bring out the worst in each other.
I was able to review some of the reflections about boarding school that God seems to be bringing to my attention, the conversation recently with mom and dad, my regrets over not standing against my classmates in Jon-Marc’s defense, my sorrow over needing to find my own way without guidance and not really being proud of my choices. I cried again as I told him my conviction that as the youngest it would have been hardest on him…that already he had a lot to overcome in his sense of being cherished and loved. I told him that I felt he needed to know that God felt grief over what he had to go through and so did I…that he needs permission to grieve himself over things that have affected his sense of value and worth, right from the womb. It wasn’t right and wasn’t God’s intent for him. We both sobbed some more…grown men falling to pieces like children. But it feels right.
He said that everything rang true for him and several things were coming to mind that validated it even as I spoke but the reason it would have been hard for him to come to the conclusion that there were was anything wrong with that experience was that it was so much a part of him that it would feel like admitting that there was something intrinsically wrong with him. And boarding school became an experience of significant value to him.
I talked about the need to feel God’s protective love and grief for him so he didn’t see God sitting in critical judgment over him in his mistakes with this marriage. He needs to allow this for himself if he will be able to start healing from the real fears and insecurities that assault him. He acknowledged that he has always found it impossible to withhold argument or defensiveness when he feels misunderstood. I felt that it was not so much a need to be understood as it was to prove that he was worth hearing, worth loving, and worth cherishing. I told him how precious he is as a person and son of God…that I really believe that although I thank God for the gifts he has given me in creativity, I think the call that God has on Jon-Marc will have much more far reaching impact in the kingdom of God than what my own life will achieve. Of all us children it was about Jon-Marc’s life that God spoke a sense of promise to our mother. Again, I cried as i spoke to him the incredible value of his life.
Lord, I trust you will continue to draw out of Jon-Marc the story that needs to be reviewed and understood from the standpoint of your great compassion and cherishing love of a child that didn’t receive these things at his most vulnerable time, the very commencement of life. It is not needlessly digging through the closet of the past in attempt to find old bones that don’t exist but a true re-viewing of a life from a perspective that is not easily found in our human relationships…from God’s perspective