Facing Everest - When the distance between you feels impossible.

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Inevitably, you and/or your partner will cause some degree of damage to your relationship. The ensuing injury will compromise the security and safety in your relationship and will need attention and healing.  To address undercurrents, conflict or a charged, emotional issue, there will need to be communication that furthers healing rather than adds damage. To have unguarded, honest and non-defensive communication, security and safety must be re-established in your relationship.  

Additionally, our words, tone and meaning come from deep places and the substance of that deeper place is buoyant.   In the deeper places reside our true thoughts, feelings and beliefs, many of them we aren’t always fully conscious of until they spill out, for better or worse, in our communication.  It's important to explore what is underneath our words if we hope to give Christ access to the parts of us that hurt others.

The question for any couple is, “How can we communicate when we feel hurt and talking makes it worse?  If feels impossible to open up.”   Consider setting up base camp.

Base Camp

Every year, hundreds of alpinists travel to Nepal to climb Mt. Everest.  A non-negotiable piece to their journey is setting up base camp at the base of Everest.  In base camp, they store supplies, confer with teammates, assess dangers and acclimatize in order to survive the oxygen starved death zone near the summit.  After weeks of preparations, first at home and then in camp, they take on the grueling, painful, death defying challenge of summiting Everest.  The crisis you are addressing (or averting) is your Everest and the work you have before you will require grit, will be painful and, at times, it will be terrifying.  Understandably, many turn back before the summit and before resolving conflict but, avoiding this relational climb will come at a great cost.  If you have read this far, chances are you are looking at the summit and realize there’s no way around this climb if you want to love well and have a chance to look like Christ to your loved ones and the world you have been planted in.  The initial, critical work before you, begins at home, in private and can't happen without essential preparations.

Before setting up base camp, privately:

  1. Pull away from distractions.

  2. Ask God to give sight where you are blind, freedom where you are captive and the courage to be honest about what lies within you.  

  3. Address what has happened (acknowledge the damage and fully experience the difficult emotions).

  4. Name and grieve unmet desires and longings in your relationship.

  5. Look for and lay down your pride and reach for humility.

  6. Acknowledge this is actually impossible and that you will need a humble dependence on Christ.

In base camp, you will:

  1. Establish support (your relationship with God, journaling, reading scripture, talking with a mentor and/or therapist and processing with a good friend or small group are a few.)

  2. Look for your part or responsibility (Abuse/Intimate Partner Violence is an exception and operates from a different set of rules).

    1. If your partner has admitted to an affair, a violation of trust or an abandonment of your vows, this may seem like a cruel suggestion.  Let’s clarify what is and is not your responsibility.  What is not your responsibility is:

      1. Your partners mistreatment

      2. Your partner's feelings

      3. Unavoidable mistakes

      4. Your partners choices

      5. Life circumstances that were no one's fault (illness, accidents, death, natural disasters, etc.)

Repairing a rift in a relationship requires healing where there is damage.  This is big and you might feel in over your head. Feeling at a loss can be a good place to set aside self-effort and depend on Christ.  With man this healing work is impossible but with God, this difficult and merciful work is possible.  Searching out where you are in the wrong is the grueling (and freeing) preparation before you.  We can only change ourselves.  Better said for the believer is we want redemptive transformation that heals and frees us rather than change that might be temporary and motivated by reasons that don’t last.  This is a divine work and the context is personal to each of us.  It is not possible to change another person.  Change that is redemptive and transforms is God’s work.  I may play a role in the context and I can desire change in another person but I cannot maneuver, control, pressure or demand it. 

If both people are searching for their part and coming to the other wanting to take full responsibility for what is theirs, you are ready to climb your Everest.  Your job is to look for your part even if all you can see is 5%.  Find your 5% and camp there.  Your base of operations will be the wedge of the pie that is your part, your responsibility.  This is where you return and this is where you regroup.  

If base camp has been established for each partner, when it is safe enough you may be invited to explore each other's camp.  She may feel safe enough to say,  "How else have I hurt you?" He may find the courage to ask about other ways he's let you down.  Anger, blame and resentment have a chance to be replaced with a tender, humble longing for restored relationship.

If each partner is committed to not blaming but taking responsibility for whatever they can and apologizing from the heart as many times as it takes, there's a chance the safety and security you need to communicate well will be re-established and the work of healing the damage and distance can begin.

After you name your part, like a beast, repair damage through healing apologies. Read on in Part 2 - Facing Everest - Healing Apologies.