This blog post is bought to you buy Graeme’s recently released book: The Guilt Busters
As a boy I read books about brave and resourceful animals like Black Beauty, a magnificent horse that endured great cruelty at the hands of rough and callous men; and White Ears a dingo that outwitted his hunters; and Lassie Come Home who endured great hardship to find her way back to the family who loved her. It was not only my interest in animals that was fed by these books but my belief that the world was essentially a dangerous place and the only survivors would be those who took on the ‘baddies’ and won. My love for animals has endured but my view of the world being a dangerous place has changed somewhat.
In my adult years the heroes in my books ceased to be dogs and horses and became people, but like the animals, what made them my heroes was their remarkable resilience in the face of enormous difficulty. Then, in my life as a Pastor and a Counsellor I unexpectedly began meeting such people, not in the pages of books but in the church fellowship’s I served in and in counselling sessions. People who refused to see themselves as victims of the ‘baddies’, who fought their way back to health against horrific odds. People of enormous courage and resilience. Now in my older life I am deeply humbled by those I met and am still meeting and who had and continue to have a life changing influence on my life.
I met Marjorie when I was a 20-year-old Pastor in my first appointment. She and her husband, a retired minister visited the town where I lived and subsequently, Julia, then my fiancé, and I heard her story. While still a teenager Marjorie struggled with mental illness which eventually meant that she spent large slabs of her adult life right up into her fifties in Psychiatric Hospitals. At the tender age of 20, I was horrified by her stories of incarceration, primitive psychiatric treatment, frequent abuse, constant loneliness and debilitating fear. These stories were made more difficult to believe, as I looked at this peaceful and confident elderly lady who told them.
In her fifties she had an experience which she described as spiritual. It was like God came to her in one of the darkest moments in her life, and she was overcome with a sense of being loved and being healed. Shortly afterward she was discharged from the hospital and never again suffered a psychiatric episode. As wonderful as that was, her story was just beginning. She quickly came to believe that she had been healed in order to help others.
Miraculously she became the owner of a large house in a beautiful bush setting and she opened it as a place where people with mental health issues came to find love, rest and restoration. One of her first clients was a clergyman, who in his lifetime of ministry as a missionary, had lost his first wife to an accident and his second wife to illness and now in his sixties was emotionally burnt out. She nursed him back to health, they later married and together they carried on the ministry that she had begun. Even after his recovery, tragedy continued as he dealt with his sons unexpected death. Julia and I got to know them well and spent some lovely times staying in their home.
Marjorie and hundreds of others we have met who refused to give up, despite the tragedy of their lives are my heroes. I cannot even begin to understand the courage it takes to live with anxiety, depression and even psychosis, often sidelined by the rest of the community, but always believing that there will be better days.
What I love about Marjorie’s story is that because she always credited God with her amazing recovery, she gave the rest of her life to giving to other sufferers what she had received from Him. Unconditional love and acceptance. It seems to me that a Christ follower is someone who has been so impacted by the purity and power of the love of God they see in Jesus, that they have a transformational experience that changes the way they see themselves and indeed the whole world. There is only one thing in the world that is as life changing as being a recipient of God’s love. Being a reflector of that love to others.
I love the concept of being a reflector, like the moon, that illuminates the earth around us in the middle of the night. The moon has no capacity to generate light, but because it is in the right place at the right time to catch the light beams of the sun it reflects that light to the earth. That is what we Christians are meant to be. People who are in the right place at the right time to receive the full impact of God’s unconditional love and then reflect it to others.
God Bless
Graeme
To learn more about Graeme’s book The Guilt Busters and start on your path to healing, visit the shop.