Baggage Unclaimed

So I think I know how you're going to answer this question.

Do you think you know everything about me? That's the problem. Okay, let's see if I'm right. How would you say you process pain?

My honest answer would be I avoid pain. I don't like the process. Is that what you're thinking?

Yeah. What does that mean? How do you pursue the relationships that matter most? I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson.

And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. I hate talking about it. And I probably bug you because I'm like, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it.

Yeah. And again, I can blame my past. I can blame my parents, you know, who got divorced and went and drank it away.

And I learned sort of to run from pain and problems. And I know what you're thinking. You need help. And I do. I'm really excited about our guest today.

Yeah. Who do we have here? Ron Hutchcraft is with us today. And he's written a book called Hope When Your Heart is Breaking. And the subtitle is Finding God's Presence in Your Pain. Ron, welcome to Family Life Today. Thank you.

She's really excited you're here. I have some bad news for you. You can't run from your pain. It'll always run faster than you do. It will outrun you.

See, this is why I'm excited. We've already talked to Ron about his story of losing your wife, Karen, after being married 50 years. At the age of six. Don't forget that part.

That's right. But you had to learn how to process that pain. And I love that you started journaling. I love that as a result of that journal, you've written a book about it.

And then we've also talked about how do we deal with this pain in our marriage? Ron is an author. You're on the radio that so many of us have heard us. It's called A Word With You. People say they like it because they can turn it off.

And they don't have to look at me. How many books have you written? I haven't counted. There are seven or eight, probably.

Most of them are coloring books. No, they're not. No, they're not. No, no, no. And you are an incredible author, speaker. You have a heart for missions. I'm a dad.

You're evangelist. I'm a grandfather. Oh, I like that.

Yeah, you got three kids and nine grandchildren. Yeah. That's our baseball team. I like that.

We don't have any bullpen. That's all you need. Yeah, that's right.

In your book about finding hope, and I love your term, we've already talked about defiant hope, buoyant hope that just even when it's pushed down, it still pops above the surface. You talk a whole section in there about how our past can sort of poison our present if we don't handle it correctly. So here's the question. Walk us through.

How? Because we all live with this. We all struggle with the past like it's in the past, but it isn't.

It's still hampering us in the very present. And we all know it's going to be in our future as well if we don't deal with it correctly. And let me just say, every person listening has something in their past that has been painful. We may not talk about it. Maybe we've never shared it, but we all have wounds. And so I'm so appreciative that you bring it out into the open, Ron, that you say it's good to bring it out because God wants to heal us.

So what choices can we make about our past? Well, I kind of like that he starts with we face it. You guys have probably seen what I call the mystery bag at the airport, that when you go to claim your luggage, if yours happens to be one of the last ones, there's always a mystery bag that nobody claims. It's always there.

It doesn't matter what flight you're on. You're right. It just keeps going around. And so you just keep seeing, you're just standing there watching it come around again. That's how it is with a broken past that we have not faced is we are watching the same dumb baggage go by again.

And it is ours, actually. Or it's like a movie you hate, but you keep showing. You're like, oh, I hate this movie. I hate this part, but I think I'll rewind it.

What? So your past, sadly, and no doubt there's somebody listening today and it's so common and it's so normal and natural. It's not that we're something bad about us, but something bad has happened to you or maybe you did something, you know, it might be something done to you or by you either way. But it's a dark thing from your past.

And the illusion is that if I don't think about it, if I don't face it, I'll be past it. I was working with our high school football team and our son was over. He was 12 years old playing this little game of football and he came over and he didn't cry. He was a tough junior high boy and he was holding his arm. It was, I mean, you could see it was bone sticking. I knew it was really bad. And he was in agony. We got over to the emergency room and the doctor came and he was in excruciating pain.

It was being set because it was multiple breaks. And it was one of those times where as a parent, you're like, oh, I wish I could trade places, sort of. But, you know, let's say Doug had said, no, no, no, no, dad, no, no, no, no. Let's not go to the hospital. I don't want to go through all that. Okay. All right. Well, we'll just leave it broken.

Okay. Now, today he can't play the guitar, which he does now. He does great praise and worship music. He wouldn't be playing the guitar because he didn't want to go through the pain of getting it fixed.

He didn't want to face it. Doug, it will hurt so much more to leave it broken than to go through the pain of getting it fixed. When Dave and I went to seminary, we started taking classes in our second year of how to help counsel people. I thought, oh, this is going to be great.

We'll learn to help people. I didn't know that we were going to get into our own baggage. And so I'll never forget as we were working through things, my own sexual abuse came to the surface. And I thought it was no big deal, hadn't really thought about it in years and years, hadn't cried about it. And suddenly I found myself crying every single night. That was your postponed grief. I didn't know that had a name for it. But the grief was there all the time.

Exactly. It was just morphing and coming out and being acted out in different ways. And I had no idea, like, why am I crying? And I remember Dave, who avoids it, and he was wanting to fix me. He was so sad to see me crying every night. I remember him saying, but it's in the past. And I said, I feel like it just happened yesterday, right now.

Because you were just dealing with it. Yeah. Yeah.

You said previously you have to grieve your grieving. Yeah. And a lot of us skip it. Yep. And we think we handled it. We just... Ignored it.

And a lot of us think as Christians, that's how we can do it, as God gives us. Go away. It's your kryptonite. It'll keep bringing you down. You can't be Supergirl until you deal with the kryptonite. But that baggage? Yeah. I started dealing with it, started dealing with it. I thought, oh, good, I'm done. And then I'd find that bag coming around again.

And I thought, oh, Lord, you are so gracious that you didn't give it to me all at once. Yeah. Because now I'm ready to heal the next phase. Well, it does hurt to face it. It just hurts more not to. It won't come out necessarily in a form you can immediately recognize, but you're hurting people.

I'm locked up inside. It's like a toxic waste dump that just is continued. Oh, thanks, Ron. No, no, we've all got it.

We do. And we're radiating out this damaging stuff from a source that needs to be dealt with. Yes. And your first step is the courageous step. It's the hope step because the one of denying it and burying it has been causing you pain and hurt all your life. You didn't even know it, you know, for just your example, Ann, you didn't. You said, oh, what problem? Right. Oh, it was coming out in all kinds of ways. And so people who you love who had nothing to do with hurting you were getting hurt by it. Exactly. Indirectly.

Mm hmm. Whether you need a counselor, a pastor, whatever it is, first start with God. The Bible says to pour out your heart before the Lord. Pour out means, OK, I'm going to empty it all. God isn't going to go, you what?

Yeah. There's nothing you can tell him he doesn't know. You say, then why pray? You don't pray to inform God. You can't inform omniscient, all knowing God about anything.

I love what you said. You said the only way to be free of the ugliness in the closet is to drag it into the light. And then you quote First John one, five through seven. God is light.

You beat me to it. Ah, in him there is no darkness at all. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus, his son purifies us from all sin.

I'll tell you this, hurt and the feelings and the brokenness that comes from it are like a vampire. They thrive in the dark. They can't stand the light. Only in the light do you have a chance of being healed. And those verses, when it says God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, what is it he is in the light? No darkness.

Where is the hurt of my past, whether inflicted on me or by me? Where is in the dark? I have it in the dark. In the closet. I have it in a dark closet. Fine, it will thrive, it will grow, it will poison until you do drag it, kicking and screaming, out into the light. God, that visual.

Can't you see just dragging it? And I'll tell you what. Jesus said, I'm in the light.

I am here. When you get that out here, don't be afraid because I'll be here with you. Now it's out in the open. It's kind of like surgery. I mean, you know, you've got to open up the place and that's painful. Well, we don't know.

Usually we're knocked out, but it's got hurt later too. There's some scars, but the cancer's gone now, you know, took some surgery to do it. So if you will face it with Jesus, this is a great thing. He's there with you standing saying, we're going to face this together. So you face it.

That's the first step. Hey, and before you go to fix it, which I think is your next step, I would say to the husband or wife whose spouse has said, we've got something we need to face from our past or from my past. That means you have to face something. I'm looking at the husband right now saying, don't do what I did and said, oh no, we're good.

That's just, it's going to hurt more later. Face it. Our whole half of the human race is like, that's us guys. Man, we are the people who are like, what problem? Don't we have a wonderful marriage? Sometimes it's the wife too. It's just whoever doesn't like facing pain. Denial.

There we go. One of the greatest things Dave did for me is he read the book by Dan Allender, The Wounded Heart. And when he read it, I remember him saying, I get it now. And just those words were so healing for my soul. It made me feel like, oh, I'm not crazy. Like you understand me now.

And that was such a sweet gift. And again, I would just highlight with somebody that you love, that loves you, has said, I think you need to face something. It could be in the past, but usually it is in the past. It takes courage, especially if you're an avoider denier like me. My son said, Dad, I think there's some things you should face.

At 63 years old, I go see a counselor. And my first session with him as he lays out my whole life on this board. And it was it was really well, it was very good. He just at the end said, here's your homework. I go, OK.

He goes, write this down. This is what you got to answer for me before you come back next week. I'm like, OK, what is it? What are you running from? I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm not running from anything. He goes, look at your life here.

Look at what I've just drawn up for. You've got all these different jobs. You've been running from something your whole life. And, you know, the thing is that he's smiling. I could tell he already knows.

You know, but I don't even see it. And of course, as I looked at that, I'm starting to see what my wife has seen, my kids have seen. I've sort of run from, as he said, my whole life. And even at this age, it's like I can start new.

So your family doesn't know why it's like this. They're just getting the radiation from the toxic dump inside of you. That's exactly what it was. Yeah. And so they're suffering from it. They're feeling it. They know you've got to deal with something. They don't know what it is.

You're the only one on this planet that can reveal what that is. So you gotta face it. The longer you've been denying it, the deeper it's buried. But buried is not gone.

That's the illusion. It's toxic. And then we're into already now the step of saying, OK, what do I need to do to fix what's broken inside of me? And now you're with a counselor, so that is a very good step. Even to be able to talk to some of the people, in this case, maybe your spouse who's been hurt by it or who's been affected by it, and to say, I'm just beginning to understand this, but there's been something that happened to me you don't even know about that happened a long time ago. I haven't really dealt with it, and it's hurting me and it's hurting you.

And it's just come out in different ways. And I don't even understand it all yet, but I need to ask you to please pray for me. This is really going to be hard, but at least I'm acknowledging that it's there. And that's my first step. Here's the steps I'm taking to try to get somebody else to walk me through it who's walked through this kind of thing with other people, has some experience with it, who's not me, who can be objective about it, and I need your help.

I need your help to, when I'm doing it wrong, tell me, please be my mirror, but please be gentle because this is really hard for me. My response to that, if anyone would come up to me and share that, my first response is, I want to give you grace because of how you approach it, and I think most people would give us grace. The fear that keeps us from fixing it and going there is that we're afraid that we'll be rejected. But when it's put out there like that, I think grace will be offered.

I need your help. Forgive me. Those are healing words in any relationship. We talked about facing it and fixing it, but you need to, in many cases, forgive it. That's big.

Forgiving may seem unthinkable to you because assuming that what happened to you was unthinkable, was terrible, was inexcusable, how do you forgive that? Well, let me tell you what the alternative is. We used to do this dumb thing at church picnics, excuse me. We used to do these three-legged races. Did you ever do one of those where you tie your leg to something?

It doesn't matter if you're a gold medal Olympian, you're going to look like a klutz running tied to somebody else. You can't get up to speed when you're tied to somebody else. Unforgiveness is tying you to the very person to be the last one you'd want to run with. That hurt her in your life is now controlling your life.

Sell them a day that goes by you're not affected by them because until you forgive, you're tied to them. And to forgive is not to excuse, to forgive is not to deny that what happened to you was horrendous. It is a choice to say, instead of treating you like you have treated me, I'm going to treat you like Jesus treated me. It's a choice that says forgive, Colossians 3, 13, as the Lord forgave you. Oh boy, now we're into new territory. This is not forgive on any human basis.

This has become now we're in the Jesus zone now. How did he forgive you? Because you deserved it.

Because you were so nice to him. No, we said this about love and marriage. Lord, I don't have it, but I know that you died for them. You died for their sin.

If you could say, Father, forgive them about the people who drove nails in your hands and feet. Could you give me the ability to forgive them and release both of us? I'm tied to them. They're tied to me by unforgiveness. And I've seen this happen with many, many people and it frees them. Whether the other person changes or not, you are free. Ron, talk to us about how did you talk to your kids or help your kids and grandchildren process their grief after your wife died?

How do you go about that? I think it's, of course, very important that we help them try to put into words or if nothing else, draw pictures of how they feel or write it if they're more of a writer than a talker. But, you know, honey, I really want to encourage you to do this. I want you to write down your feelings about Grandma. And then would you, if you'd let me, I'd love to read it or maybe you could read it to me.

Better if they read it to you because they'd hear themselves verbalizing it. And how you felt when you heard that she had died. Help them do what we said you should do, which is to externalize it, to give sorrow expression in some form or another. Secondly, to describe what she's experiencing right now. Do you know all the songs we sing to Jesus in church? She's singing them to Jesus right now.

She's with him personally. Help them see what she's experiencing and to celebrate that as well. Thirdly is to tell stories of their life. You know, I find that our grandchildren, when we start to tell stories about us when we were young, or, you know, their parents or grandparents, they're like, yeah, tell me more. You know, they want to hear our stories. Because the problem is that we tend to get all totally obsessed and focused with the last days of their life. Stop reliving the end of their life.

Let's start reliving their life life. And start to tell stories. There's comfort in rehearsing stories.

I keep thinking of stories about Karen that I knew that I like, I never told them. Just a few days ago, I thought of like, I don't think they ever knew that. And they love to hear, there's healing in that.

That's good to know, because when someone has passed, you don't know like, oh, if I tell a story about them, will that just conjure up more pain? Well, it may actually help them grieve. If they cry, don't say, I shouldn't have done that. No, you should have.

It probably means you should have. Because guess what? With the tears, they're getting it out instead of burying it inside. And then I think, again, to focus them on Jesus and just to say, do you know that because of what Jesus did on that Easter morning, we celebrate it every year at Easter, what Jesus did on that Easter morning, realize this is not the end of our relationship. Focus them on the fact that this is just an interruption in our relationship. It's not the end of it.

It's an interruption. We'll be back together. When you think of the past poisoning the present, you walk this through, face it, fix it. You know, I'm a preacher, so I love alliteration, you know, face it, fix it, forgive.

It's a disease, Dave, the alliteration. I mean, again, my brain works that way so I can remember you end up free. I know I have a story. Do you have a story where you've had to do that with someone or something in your life? Can I tell somebody else's story?

I just think it illustrates that, you know, we work a lot with Native American young people and in many cases, there's a lot to forgive. Cindy was betrayed by the only man she ever trusted, which was her mother's, she never knew her dad really, and she was assaulted by her mother's boyfriend. And when she talked to her mother about it, her mother said, I'm sure it's your fault because her mother didn't want to lose this guy. So she chose the man over her daughter. Cindy turned into a gang member.

She turned into a drug user, a drug dealer. Actually, one night, had the gun to her head, and that's when God intervened. And Cindy literally that night gave her heart to Jesus, the Jesus that her grandmother had told her about a long time ago. Well, Cindy had harbored tremendous hate toward the man who had betrayed her. She had hopes finally of a father figure, and he's the one who abused and used her. She also harbored great resentment toward her mother because her mother had not stood with her daughter, left her alone with this pain. So she'd buried the pain for years, turned into anger and all kinds of hurting other people, literally physically hurting them. We had a retreat one time, and I remember sitting with Cindy, it seemed like for a couple hours, and she said, I'm having to face the fact that I really do hate this man. She was calling it what it is, and she said, I really, I don't have much love for my mother. And that was the beginning of a process. It was not, and that night, and they lived happily ever after. But over a period of time, she began to realize how much God had forgiven her for.

Now we realize the poison that had come out. I can't tell you the number of people she was hurting because she had been hurt. And she's passing it on, being very generous with that hurt, as many of us are. And she went and had a conversation with her mother. And to make a very long story short, that caused her mother to start to consider Cindy's Jesus.

Because Cindy said, I'm talking to you like this because of what Jesus has done for me and asked me to do. At this point, basically, Cindy's mother, sisters, now we'll all be in heaven with her because of her courageous and painful choice to forgive the unforgivable. I can think of so many people who finally are free inside because that chain that has chained them to that person, that unforgiveness chain, whether that person ever responds or not. And by the way, she did also forgive this same man, you know, and that's still a work in progress. But forgiveness leads to freedom. And you can be defined your whole life by the hurt you've experienced in your past. But don't blame that hurt, as horrendous as it may have been and real as it may have been, don't blame that for your misery and your unhappiness and your depression.

Realize it's because you haven't faced it, haven't taken steps to get it fixed, haven't forgiven it. And so, again, it's our choice. Yeah, I was going to say, you're looking right now at a free man who had to walk that journey with my dad. And one of the greatest gifts that I gave my family is a legacy, is freedom and forgiveness. And I'm not saying I can control what my sons do, but they could have been handed a legacy of bitterness. But because I've done what you said, it's changed my legacy.

And I'm looking at a listener right now saying, what kind of legacy are you going to leave? You have a choice. And it's a hard choice.

But God meets you right there in the middle of that choice. And he resurrects a dead, cold, hardened heart and replaces it. It's a heart transplant you called in your book.

And he does that. And that isn't just a heart transplant for you. It's a heart transplant that will change your legacy. Thanks, Ron, for being with us. My pleasure and my blessing.

Thank you. Someone has said, when Satan reminds you of your past, remind him of his future. That's the promise of the gospel, that our past, our sins, our regret, our guilt is covered by the blood of Christ. And that our hope is in him. Our hope for the future is found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Dave and Ann Wilson have been talking today to Ron Hutchcraft. Ron has written a book called Hope When Your Heart is Breaking, Finding God's Presence in Your Pain. We're making that book available this week to Family Life Today listeners who can help us extend the reach of Family Life through your donations. Family Life Today is a listener-supported ministry. We would not be here today if it wasn't for fellow listeners like you who have made this conversation possible through their support of this ministry.

Some of them are monthly legacy partners. Others will donate from time to time. They have provided this program for you and for others today. We're asking you to consider paying it forward, asking you to help other listeners benefit from what Family Life will be doing in the days ahead. When you make a donation online or call to donate, you can request a copy of Ron Hutchcraft's book, Hope When Your Heart is Breaking. Pass that on to someone you know who is in a season of grief or read it yourself and find the comfort and hope you're looking for in its pages. You can donate to Family Life Today online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call to donate at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, be sure to ask for your copy of Hope When Your Heart is Breaking when you get in touch with us. The website once more is familylifetoday.com, or call to donate at 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. David Robbins, who is the president of Family Life, has been here with us as we've been listening to Dave and Ann and their conversation with Ron Hutchcraft. And David, you heard Ron speak years ago when you were just beginning on staff with crew and what he shared had a profound impact in your life, right?

That's right. I'm listening today and hearing Ron and just going, man, we always need to be seeking out mentors in our lives. People that have walked seasons that have gone before us, because as I was walking into a new season in full-time ministry, I remember going to this huge conference and Ron speaking and him just laying out the need in Luke 15 to go after the one and how Jesus celebrates when one person is lost and is found.

And it just captured my heart then. It's why I continue to be captured by the vision of reaching one home at a time. And I'm sitting here listening to Ron today as he's walked through another chapter that I haven't had to directly walk through, but yet seasons of loss do come in and out of our lives. And I'm just hearing this man going, this is why all of us need to ask people around us, be an initiator to people around you that have walked through seasons of life and stayed close to Jesus.

I've loved hearing these three days and I'm motivated to keep entering in with people in my community who've gone through similar things and can keep pointing me to Jesus as I keep walking through life. All of us need mentors. And part of our hope is that family life today is helping to mentor you as a husband, as a father, as a mom, as a wife. And all of us can pour out into the lives of others as mentors as well.

So that's a good word, David. Thank you for that. Now, I hope you can be with us again tomorrow. Jonathan Pacluta is going to be joining us. He was here last week talking about dating in the 21st century and how things have changed from back when I was dating Mary Ann years ago. We'll hear more from Jonathan tomorrow. Hope you can tune in for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.