BP54
Do you know the song, What a Wonderful World? Written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss, it was first and famously recorded by Louis Armstrong. The lyrics refer to green trees, red roses, blue skies, white clouds, bright days, dark nights, pretty rainbows in the sky, friends who greet each other with handshakes that are saying, I love you, and babies who cry and grow and learn so much.
The refrain that follows describes this green, red, white, and blue reality we live in with the familiar words, what a wonderful world.
There are days I live the lyrics of What a Wonderful World and could hum this tune with a smile on my face. Other days, the words and notes sound airy-fairy and plastic, millions of miles away from the reality of this world. The dark nights overshadow the bright days on this terrestrial ball.
Yes, the trees might be green and the roses red and the skies blue and the clouds white. But these words are simply describing the outside world. What about the world inside of men and women? As a psychologist, I have been invited to live inside the inner world of people’s hearts. How can I lose myself in the beauty of a radiant sunset and forget the darkness of depression in Sam’s heart? Or Logan’s? Or Emily’s? Or Ben’s? Or Bekah’s?
No, it is not always a wonderful reality in the world far beyond the roses (and the marigolds we talked about last week). Some of the highly guarded vaults I have been allowed to approach and often to enter are dungeons inhabited by pain, suffering, and hopelessness—far from the wonderful world that Armstrong sings about.
I still remember the suffering people I served as a psychologist-in-training in LA . . .
Even though it is pushing thirty years ago now, I will never forget many of these individuals. They were people, after all, and people are the most important creature in the whole universe. Designed by God. Created by God. Loved by God even after the Tragic Fall. Redeemed by the blood of Jesus.
But oh, how far many of them had fallen away from their original purpose.
The fifth and final year of my graduate school program in clinical psychology consisted of a year-long internship in several different clinics in Los Angeles. It was the longest year of my life. Honestly, I could not wait for my internship to end. I met many interesting people who permitted me to access their hearts. But these hidden worlds were not wonderful. Far from it.
One day when I had some space in my clinic schedule, I was asked to assist at another clinic off the 210 freeway. It was there that I met Carlos.
I cannot remember why I was scheduled to meet with Carlos—possibly to administer a battery of psychological tests or to do an intake with him. Probably the latter. What I do recall clearly is that this thirty-something-year-old man was one of nine original siblings. Along with one older sister, he was the only one left alive.
Two of nine children had survived this wonderful world—and Carlos himself was struggling with an addiction to alcohol. He also was suicidal. A suicide attempt is how he got into the clinic system in the first place. Probably referred by some emergency department in a Kaiser Permanente hospital. Once again, I do not remember all the details, but I will cobble together his family history the best I can.
His parents were both addicts. His father was eventually sent to prison for murder and his mother spent time at Camarillo state hospital on several occasions. Physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse was burned into the Aguilar family dynamics for several generations with a searing brand that screamed, Chaos and Death.
Two of Carlos’ siblings suicided. Several others were killed by gang violence. One died from hepatorenal syndrome and another overdosed.
The death that seemed the most tragic to me among all the siblings was Carlos’ younger sister who was run over by a car on the street in front of the family home. She was three years old. Three years old! Who was watching little Maria? Obviously, no one. The parents were most likely passed out in the house.
How does a parent endure the loss of seven children?
How wonderful were the red roses in their world?
So here I was sitting across from Carlos who probably had one chance in a thousand to reach the age of 40. What would psychotropic meds and cognitive therapy do for this man who daily was being sucked deeper into addiction and death by the inexorable family gravity? I groaned internally for Carlos and his family. I cried inside. He seemed so lost. He was lost. He seemed so emotionally young. He was a boy inside.
I completed my hour and a half intake with Carlos and left the clinic on that hot spring day in LA. I never saw him again. I believe there is only a miniscule chance he is alive today. Unless . . . And what about his sister, the only sibling who had somehow made it to forty years old?
Only a miracle would save her.
And here is exactly my point in this blogpost—without the presence of God, no one genuinely escapes a fractured family system like the one Carlos had survived for three and a half decades. The family gravity is simply too strong. It pulls everyone down into the hell of self-destruction.
None of us have an ounce of hope to make it out of this world without the love of Jesus Christ. The overwhelming trajectory of this world is downward. The Second Law of Thermodynamics posits that everything that exists in this material reality is subject to a universal law of decay. In other words, everything eventually falls apart and disintegrates. Nothing material is eternal. It erodes.
Witness how much money and resources we expend on maintaining things with paint, new road surfaces, medical procedures, even plastic surgery. If energy is not exerted to temporarily reverse the natural process of decay, all things will disintegrate. All things will disintegrate anyway in the end.
Many point to the Second Law of Thermodynamics as strong evidence against evolution which argues that the natural world is evolving upward instead of deteriorating downward. But science knows that if left to themselves, all natural systems like chemical compounds eventually degrade into simpler materials as opposed to becoming more complex. The natural direction of things in this universe is increasing disorder. Complex and ordered systems become simpler and more disorderly with time.
So, what am I saying about a family system like the one Carlos grew up in? They are prone to (spiritual) disintegration like everything else in our reality. Only something from outside the natural universe can reverse the downward trend of such a material/spiritual system. What is that reversal factor? Jesus Christ. He is the only One who can invade a family system and imbue it with the miracle of the new birth/new creation/new self which transforms the hearts of men and women from the inside out.
The effects of such a miracle along with its far-reaching impact (love, forgiveness, hope, peace, joy, an awareness of eternal life with Jesus) will linger for generations after it occurs in a family–even if subsequent generations do not follow in the footsteps of their antecedent and become children of the Designer.
A truly wonderful life in this world and in the next is attainable only through a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe. It is common sense that the Designer and Maker will know how we function best in this world. So, draw near to Him and see what He has for your life.
**
I met Lila at a different clinic on the north side of LA. She had been assigned to meet with me as an ongoing client. She was the mother of four children. One of them was named Taylor. He had died only weeks before I met Lila. His death, in fact, occasioned her visit to the clinic.
Lila cried throughout our first session. At times she wept so hard that her whole body shook. It took me a while to understand what she was saying, but finally I heard a message I hated to hear.
A month earlier, her emaciated, HIV-infected son, Taylor, became very ill. It was clear he did not have long to live. It was decided that he should live out his last days in his mother’s house where she would administer pain meds as needed to reduce her son’s intense suffering. These pain killers were delivered by Lila via hypodermic needles.
One day Taylor’s pain was so intense that he asked his mother for an injection three hours earlier than recommended by the medical plan. Lila initially resisted, but when her son began to weep and beg for the premature bump of meds, the tortured mother who hated to see her son suffer finally complied against her better judgment. How could she say no to his cries for relief?
Several hours later, Taylor’s breathing became shallow, then ragged. Shortly, he died in his mother’s arms from an apparent medication overdose.
When I met Lila, it soon became apparent to me that my job was not only to help her work through grief at the loss of her son but even more so to address the crushing belief that she had killed him.
Over the next several months, we did good work together and the distraught mother healed considerably. When the day came for us to say goodbye, she presented me with a beautiful ceramic mug she had made. To this day, it is a valued possession of mine. Her initials are on the bottom in beautiful cursive: LS.
I will never forget Lila or her son, Taylor, even though I never met him.
**
The first night I met thirteen-year-old Ricardo and his mother at the clinic, they were both terrified. The mother especially was distraught and in full panic mode. I will never forget how she was perspiring profusely, and her eyes were wide with fear. Her older son who was in a gang had threatened earlier that day that he was going to show up at the clinic and “blow away” both her and his younger brother.
I passed this information on to the clinic director, and she immediately locked the door of the clinic. Only four of us were in the building that night including Ricardo and his mother. Fortunately, the older son never showed up to carry out his threat and our initial session went off without any interruptions.
Ten months later when my internship was over, this mother and son were two of the many people I hated to leave. Tears were shed at our last meeting. I still have the farewell card they gave me. (And no, I’m not a hoarder, ha!)
**
Another counseling situation with a mother (who was very pretty and pleasant on the outside) and her two sons did not go so well. Okay, the first few months went smoothly with notable progress in the boys’ behavior at home. Then, during an individual session with the two sons, I discovered that their mother was frequently abusing them both verbally and physically.
After our session that day, one of the sons reported to his mother that I was going to be speaking with her about her unhealthy treatment of her boys.
In classic borderline style, I, who had been an amazing therapist in the mother’s eyes prior to that moment, was now suddenly all bad. The next morning, my clinic director received a phone call from this mother filing some vague complaint against me and insisting that I be fired from my position.
After briefly interviewing me, the director told me that such complaints were not unusual when BPD parents perceived that they were being identified as the bad parent. If they felt devalued or shamed by someone, they would devalue or shame the messenger who had shed light on their badness.
I still remember the intensity of the shame this mother projected into me. Rarely have I felt so bad. My stomach was in knots for the rest of that day. Even after the clinic director continued to reassure me for days after the complaint, I felt that I had done something terribly wrong. If this is how bad I felt, I wondered how bad the mother had felt when she felt threatened by my imminent confrontation of her abusive behaviors.
Oh, the power of guilt and shame when you do not have the grace of God to forgive it! I wonder to this day how those two boys turned out after growing up with such an annihilating mother who would erase anyone who stepped on her landmines of shame. External beauty often belies internal brokenness.
At the same clinic, I was asked to do some psychological testing with a six-year-old boy, Jacob, who was acting out in school. After he attempted to throw a small plastic chair out the window and ran around the room for ten minutes with frenetic energy, I finally talked him into sitting down and completing the first part of the paper and pencil test.
After five minutes of testing, Jacob abruptly began to rip up the test materials. I did not stop him as I had learned enough in grad school to know that every behavior was communicating something. I just needed to listen hard enough to know what he was saying.
My diminutive client continued to shred the paper until he had reduced it to a hundred small pieces. Gathering them all into his cupped hands, he then stood on his chair and dumped the paper onto my head saying, “The garbage goes in the garbage can.”
In that moment, I realized that this defenseless boy was accustomed to being the garbage can in a home where his dad often screamed at him and blew marijuana smoke into his mouth and nose. But with me, finally, someone else could be the garbage can. He did not have to be the bad one for a change. A bigger, stronger person could receive and contain his badness.
In that little exchange, I saw the gospel: Jesus bore our sin, so we did not have to carry the suffocating badness of shame and accusation. But He went beyond that: He also gave us His righteousness so we might be seen as perfect in the eyes of the Father.
How amazing is the good news of Jesus Christ for sinners who feel so bad that they must blame others for their badness who then become their sin-bearer.
As was often the case when I did psychological testing, I only met with Jacob once. He was sent back to his chaotic family environment undoubtedly to have his father pour more abuse and shame into him. My only hope today is that the Holy Spirit touched Jacob’s heart during our brief encounter in a way that God would later use to open his heart to divine love.
**
I will never forget Raul, the fifth grader from Norwalk. He told me a story that has been forever branded on the frontal lobes of my brain, as one individual used to say. Through tears—which one does not always see from a boy who grew up in the hood—Raul recounted to me how his older brother went to meet a hot chica in a neighboring town one summer night. Raul’s brother wasn’t sure that the young woman would show up since he had only met her once, but show up she did—fatefully.
She got out of the van but so did seven homies from a rival gang with bandannas on their heads and malice in their eyes. They quickly surrounded Raul’s brother and began to viciously stab him with their blades. It was a revenge killing—an eye for an eye.
When it was all over, they dumped his body with its seventy-eight puncture wounds into an adjacent dumpster.
What kind of nightmares does a ten-year-old child have every night when he relives the memory of his brother’s brutal gang slaying? What kind of wonderful life did Raul’s older brother experience when the trees were green, and the roses were red and the skies were blue and he was bleeding out?
I could speak of so many other clients I worked with just during that one-year window including Michelle, a transgender-identified woman whose mother had repeatedly inserted his small foot into her vagina and perpetrated other sexual acts beginning when he was two years old.
I also remember Joanne, a lesbian-identified woman, who was wearing the incongruous combination of dresses and boots every time I saw her. Her parents had divorced when she was young, and her father had won custody of Joanne and her sister.
The twisted father had intercourse repeatedly with his daughters until they were sixteen.
Then there was William, a depressed and somewhat psychotic man whose grandmother frequently tied him to the footboard of the bed when he was a child and then beat him with a belt and other objects. I still remember the session when I attempted to recover some of his childhood memories. My optimistic goal was to raise his repressed memories into consciousness so he could work through them with a view toward relieving some of his psychosis.
According to plan, William recovered memories from the darkest recesses of his unconsciousness like a small submarine recovers items from a shipwreck in the deepest ocean trench.
The older man suddenly began to violently pummel the chair next to me with his cane. I was in no danger. I knew who he was beating–his grandmother. He pounded the chair for a long time with savage intensity. Finally, with dust floating in the air, he stopped.
Later that same day—not according to plan—William was hospitalized in the mental health unit and remained there for several weeks. I did not see him again for several months. When he finally did return to see me, he reported that after that intense deep dive session with me, his head had felt like it was “full of sand” and he soon decompensated into uncontrollable paranoia.
I also remember Wendy, a teenager from an evangelical Christian family who came to me because her brain was doing strange things. When I asked her to draw a picture of what was going on, she proceeded to create a picture of many little men building a thick wall in a corner of her brain so they could protect the rest of her brain from the bad memories on the other side of the wall. I still have this picture in my possession.
In later drawings, she showed me that her brain was divided into many small compartments each one containing a different personality. To this day, even though I remain a bit skeptical about the full validity of the diagnosis, I recall Wendy as my most pronounced case of Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder).
The diagnosis seemed to fit her symptoms especially as she went on to tell me—when she was able to speak–about vague memories she had of puppies being sacrificed, of lots of blood, and of people dressed in black robes. It was because of Wendy that I attended several police seminars relating to documented cases of Satanic Ritual Abuse in the LA area. Much of what I learned was downright creepy.
I also remember Nadine who had been repeatedly abused sexually in her grandparents’ backyard when she was a teenager. During the terrifying episodes of abuse, she would stare at the electric meter that was connected to the house and dissociate. She went far away into distant fields of flowers where she could escape her body and run free and untroubled.
Nadine’s body did a strange things years after the abuse that was very protective but could also be problematic: whenever someone touched her on the arm or hand or leg or wherever, that portion of her body would instantly go numb and she could feel no sensation on her skin.
I could also speak of the client I saw three times a week who needed to maintain connection so badly that she would often page me (yes, that was back in the day) three or four times a day; or the older schizophrenic women from a nearby Baptist church who showed me her little black book (it actually was a sizable notebook) with hundreds of slang words for sexual acts; or the man I worked with briefly who had been arrested for masturbating in his car with the assistance of his gear shifter; or the young woman who threw up in my office just as terrifying somatic memories from her childhood were vomited out of her memory.
I met all these people in LA during my graduate school training–all but one during my internship year. No wonder I brought pictures of my kids to work in my briefcase so I could look at them to encourage me as I went through those long days with those hurting people. I have often wondered how much energy I had left for my wife and kids when I got back home each evening after work.
I pray, Jesus, that most days I was a good enough husband and dad.
So, what is the point of reciting these memories of clients from back in LA almost three decades ago?
If I went to LA with any optimism about what a wonderful world this is, I came back five years later knowing that such optimism was unsupported by the darkness I witnessed in the world around me. I do not believe I became jaded, just realistic. People are broken and need help, some more obviously than others.
Since then, I have had many thoughts about the brokenness of humanity and the darkness of this world. I have considered the many people who are so lost they do not even know their identity; that are so emotionally young that they have little ability to regulate their emotions; that have been so terribly fractured by the juggernaut of sin (the sin of others and their own sin) that they seem to have no choice but to pass dysfunction and evil onto the generation after them.
As a psychologist, I have discovered over the years that clinical psychology can be a significant source of knowledge about human personalities, how they function, and even what is pathological about them. I have also observed what little power therapy offers to correct the deeper dysfunctions in the human personality.
Yes, psychology/psychiatry offers the power of suggestion, cognitive restructuring, the altering of neural pathways in the brain, problem solving, DBT skills, hearing what the physical body is saying, healing of PTSD through EMDR, and even helpful relief offered by psychotropic medications.
Above all, therapy offers presence, the aspect of counseling that I believe is the most powerful ingredient in the whole process. How often have we seen research that suggests that the specific modality of therapy is not as critical as the caring presence of another person who listens and emotionally holds the client—possibly even loves them.
We were created by a God of presence who calls Himself Immanuel—God with us.
But where does the power for change in therapy come from? I remember when I first read about TA—transactional analysis–way back in the 70s when I was in college. I found the theory very intriguing, but I came away with one primary question: where does the power come from to produce change in the human heart? Does it from positive thinking or exorcizing shame? Social services? Gang prevention programs like the one I worked with in LA? Neuroscience? Cognitive restructuring? Medications?
These all might impact the body and the mind, but what about the heart and the soul? Of course, if you believe that the physical is all there is, then focusing on the brain and the rest of the body is the only channel you will use to address the human animal. But if you believe there is also a soul in each man and woman, then you have a whole new ballgame on your hands.
Sometimes it seems to me that psychology can move the furniture around inside the brain and change the wall hangings to sayings like You cannot erase thoughts, but you can replace them. Maybe psychology can even open closed closet doors and work through repressed memories. Do not get me wrong, all these things can be very helpful for the broken human being.
But psychology can never tear the whole house down and replace it with a new structure. Yes, some of the old foundation remains, but there is a new temple in place.
As mentioned above, therapy does potentially offer the presence of another person. So, hopefully the patient can internalize a much healthier person than the dysfunctional ones of the past. But therapy can never offer power from outside oneself.
Yes, meds can alter brain chemistry, but they do not change the person from the inside out. Contrary to what some people believer, they do not heal the person. They just put the person in a better place to make cognitive changes. They grease the tracks, so to speak, but the person still must find a way to travel down the tracks.
So, where does the power for heart change and soul change come from? (Psychology is the study of the soul, after all, is it not?)
Unless we want to be limited to altered cognitions or changed neural pathways or merely reducing the influence of symptomatology, we need a power from beyond us. Where does that come from? From the One who made us.
Jesus is the One who changes our hard hearts of stone into flesh and gives us a rebirth that transforms us at the level of our spirits—not just our brains—and makes us into new creations. Then, after that early work of transforming our internal nature, He changes us from one degree of glory to another through a process I call spiritual metamorphosis (see 2 Corinthians 3:18ff).
God does not change us from a bad, dysfunctional caterpillar into a good, healthier caterpillar. Spiritually, Jesus transforms our very nature from the caterpillar into a butterfly—He places a totally different nature within us. Yes, we still deal with the old nature of the caterpillar, but God has placed within us a new self that daily fights against that old self until the day we shed the butterfly wings and mount up with the wings of an eagle and fly home to be with Him.
Bottom line: don’t settle for less. The enemy wants you to settle for being a worm, but God wants to restore you to your original glory. A war is raging, so the going will be difficult.
The journey for followers of Jesus is to appropriate the new nature that already lives within us. We have already been transformed into new creations, jars of clay in which God Himself dwells. Now we need to access the power of that new creation within us day by day. We need to practice becoming who we already are in Jesus.
The practicing is a lifetime adventure. But for those who persist in practicing, they will eventually become spiritual giants. Yes, they will grow weak and old in their physical bodies, but spiritually, they will keep growing into strong spiritual warriors of truth and love and light—7 feet tall and 300 pounds of pure muscle. Weak on the outside. Warriors on the inside.
Will you appropriate the power that is already within you through the Holy Spirit? Psychology and therapy cannot provide this power because it is spiritually attained. It goes far beyond body and brain into a dimension beyond sight.
The Holy Spirit of God lives within you. Your heart has been turned from stone to flesh. You have the mind of Christ. You already stand perfect before the Father, but Jesus is sanctifying you daily. You have power to destroy spiritual strongholds. You will live forever in the presence of the Creator of all things.
So, grow. Appropriate the spiritual power of God that comes from outside of your limited being but is living inside of you in the person of the Spirit. As you grow in relationship with Jesus, you access that power, and it grows more brightly within you.
The journey of becoming is not easy. Sometimes transformation in Christ seems so elusive. God seems so far away. Change seems slow and sometimes downright impossible. Shame is so present, and grace is so far away. Sometimes family gravity will pull you down and keep you earthbound as the caterpillar and prevent you from mounting up with wings like an eagle.
Never give up. If the Spirit of God is living inside of you, you are already a warrior. You have already been metamorphosized into the new being. Every day, now, you are being transformed into the image of Jesus from one degree of glory to another. It is a minute by minute battle.
Appropriate the insights of psychology and the presence of another person through therapy. But do not settle for only that. Initial radical change and ongoing growth both require a spiritual power beyond the material world. It was Jesus Himself who said, I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing ~ John 15:5
Appropriating and abiding sound a lot like the same practice. We will speak more about these concepts in future blogposts.
Growth and life is all about Presence and the power found in a person, the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He came for you. He will never leave you. Even when you walk through the valleys that are dark with depression and death, you will not walk alone.
So, the bad news is that we are all broken by sin. But the good news—which has the final word–is that Jesus came to begin a major rebuilding process within us that one day will result in us being fully restored. God’s amazing grace is available to all of us including Carlos, Wendy, Lila, William, Jacob, Raul, Nadine, and Joanne.
We need to believe, receive, and practice presence until His Presence becomes permanent within us.
Are we living in a wonderful world? No, we are not. Not yet. But we who know the Father, His Son, and His Spirit will sing, Oh, what a wonderful God.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Might God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace ~ Isaiah 9:6
And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant ~ Matthew 21:14,15