If My Earlier Blog Touched You

A couple of days ago, I came online to shut down my blogs.

Lo and behold, I came across an email from someone who was reading my earlier blog, and wanted to connect with me. Apparently, the blog had really touched him.

I think I will keep both blogs open. I am not sure if I will write more in this "Next Chapter" blog, but I'll keep it open as an option.

If you're here because my earlier blog has touched you and you would like to connect with me, feel free to go to my profile and send me an email.

You can call me TCM.

Along This Road

Once in a long while, something really significant steps onto our paths.

We can give it a cursory acknowledgement or a passing respectful nod. Why, we can even shed a tear to commemorate its presence.

But rarely do we let it soak in deeply enough to disentangle the fabric and tapestry of who we have come to be. Rarely do we allow ourselves to be so affected that the very essence of who we are evaporates, never to return.

Something really significant has stepped onto my path.

If I were truly genuine, if I held to my highest standard of integrity, I would allow it to embrace me.

But I fear.

I fear for the destruction of what I have begun to build for myself: a small castle of respectability.

I fear that if I allowed it to embrace me, I would be subsumed. I would become a tiny little particle of something so much greater than I could ever fathom.

I would cease to be.

Dare I let it embrace me?

Dare I not?

Feel The Shame, It's Good For You

He told me some really awesome things today. Awesome may not be the right word. Deeply-poignant. Breath-arresting.

It was about shame.

Shame is an inhibitory response. It slows you down, takes you away from the negative stimulation. It's like death.

We don't like this. We fight it with defenses. We withdraw, avoid, attack other, or attack self.

Nicolosi talked about the Gray Zone: "It is a defense mechanism from feeling the pain of the shame that preceded it, which if fully felt will lead back to grief... the vitality affect of true grief."

1. We sense shame about ourselves

2. We employ a defense mechanism against the shame, e.g. the gray zone

3. Finally, we move out of the gray zone by going into homosexual enactment

Shame. It is prevalent. We should not defend ourselves from feeling it. We should allow ourselves to feel it fully so that we can experience the "vitality affect of true grief."

He never connected what he talked about--shame, that is--to true grief. But I think the Holy Spirit did.

When we can finally connect with our shame, our BROKENNESS, therein lies our healing. Because He loved us so much, He bore our shame on the cross and nullified it.

The Next Five Weeks

The next five weeks will be a time of testing for me.

I have felt God telling me that it is time to journey into manhood in a kingly way (reference: The Way of the Wild At Heart).

The next five weeks will be a time to exercise staying close to God so that I can continue to (1) master my temper and remain calm and objective, (2) be very disciplined and productive, and (3) avoid sexual temptations.

The only way this can be done is that I stay very, very close to God at all times. To practice God's presence.



Five weeks.

Anxiety and Sexual Release

I'm not an expert on violent crimes, but the image of someone in pain does not turn me on as it does the rapist. Anger does not propel me to want to torture someone else sexually. I can't imagine having an orgasm when I am angry.

Anxiety, on the other hand, is turning out to be a consistent pathway towards a strong felt-need to have sexual release. Anxiety, combined with not having had much sexual release, turns my groin into a time bomb.

tick... tick... tick...

I remember in school when I used to write tests that I was going to flunk. I could bring myself to an orgasm within minutes before the class bell rang and I had to hand up the test. The emotional tension combined with a bit of physical pressure worked like a charm every time.

Last week, the prospect of meeting someone I didn't want to meet caused me to objectify him sexually. I fought the urge and didn't succumb to that temptation. Upon meeting him, the entire "attraction" dissipated. I don't have the slightest desire to fantasize about him sexually now. Looking back, I realize that I was afraid of him at some deeper level, and that anxious feeling wanted to be addressed through sexual release.

Now, I'm grappling with serious work deadlines. This entire morning has been fraught with desires to masturbate, to fantasize (even about women), to look at porn.

This is clearly a sexual dysfunction.

Anxiety is anxiety. The years of getting tension-relief through masturbation have created in me unhealthy, dysfunctional, unholy pathways.

Scripture tells me not to lust sexually (Matthew 5:28). It also tells me to cast all my anxiety on Him because He cares for me (1 Peter 5:7). Put these two ideas together and the solution is obvious.

I cast all my cares upon You
I lay all of my burdens down at Your feet
And anytime I don't know what to do
I will cast all my cares upon You

Fathering My Son, Fathering My Self

Tonight at dinner, son was emotionally dysregulated and started striking out at one of his older cousins after the cousin nudged him. They were twice his age and he, being an impressionable young boy, wanted so much to be accepted by them. After continually being teased and taunted by them over dinner, he lost it.

Son is sensitive like me. I remember so clearly wanting to be like the older boys, but only finding myself bullied by them, ganged-up against, jeered at, made fun of. At some point in time, I turned towards girls and identified with them instead.

That is not going to happen to son. I will not allow it to happen. He will be affirmed in his maleness. He will be given every chance to know and be proud that he is a boy in the image of the man whom he looks up to: Me. His father.

I intervened in the situation. It was very hard. The boy who taunted and nudged son was the child of my abusive (now dead) brother. I had to pay attention to soothing my own inner boysoul while at the same time father both kids who physically and emotionally looked and felt like my elder brother and I did at that age.

I made them apologize to each other. Son was too emotionally upset to apologize. I asked his cousin, who being much older, offered a good apology. (Whew!) When son refused to apologize, I offered a threat of punishment in addition to a delayed apology. He finally apologized but was still deeply upset.

Then, I took him home where I talked to him privately, helping him to identify his feelings and what to do in the future when older boys whom he wants to play with are mean to him. After that, we spent the rest of the night reading a book together in bed.

Son fell asleep on my bed. As I picked him up and carried him to his room, he said aloud in his dream: "...that's because I have the best dad in the whole wide world!"

:thought-pause:

Although I'm still a little shaken from the episode, knowing that I can make a difference for my son in a way that my father never did for me makes me feel a little more healed somewhere deep inside.

2010

2010 is the year where I embrace Godly humility in a way that I have never understood before.

I feel God may be telling me that humility is a very important aspect of manhood, but I'm not sure yet quite how those two ideas are connected to each other.

Mulling over this: Jesus' entire ministry is based on humility.

⁵Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
⁶Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
⁷but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
(Philippians 2)

...

Reading The Way of the Wild Heart: A Map for the Masculine Journey. May put up thoughts as I read through it.