Every time I venture out to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child and try to purchase a gift for someone I love, I am stumped.

What do I buy that will somehow declare the birth of the Son of God?

I don’t have the where-with-all for a gift that marks the birth of a King.

Besides, every time I begin to shop in honor of Baby Jesus, I get images of Him being whipped unmercifully upon a cross.

Blood spurts derail my shopping. I resist the thoughts but they will not go away.

Before I can do much looking around the malls Jesus jumps out of the crib. He’s fully adult, almost running, sometimes dancing, celebrating on the streets and I can hardly keep up. He’s healing people left, right, and center. He’s getting into all kinds of trouble.

I am lost. I am out of control. No, he’s out of control.

He goes to the wrong places. He loves the seedy parts of town. He goes where I have never been before. He mixes with the rejected. He storms City Hall and insults merciless leaders. He is outspoken, scathing to those who are unfair in their business practices. He doesn’t care about rank, stature, or wealth but detests double standards, addresses them at every encounter.

I want to grab him, shove him back in the crib where he was safe, where we were all safer.

When I thought he would stop in at a church or two – perhaps a cathedral built in his honor – he’s off in a smoky bar with washed out losers. He’s talking politics like I have never heard. He’s hot on fairness, justice, mercy, truth. I tell him not to mix politics and religion and blush with the absurdity of it all.

If he would just stay in one place like a baby should is all I can think.

It’s not long before I am in a jostle with the crowds. It’s not the kind of popularity I was expecting.

Prostitutes love him. Drunks defend him. The poorest of the poor, the marginalized, the rejected, are out in their masses. He dances in the streets with street children and people he has just met. Young men and women, piercings and tattoos all over their bodies, circle him celebrate like long lost friends. Then, ignoring ordinances, he feeds the applauding masses.

Now what do I buy?

Clearly, anything I spend, if I am really out to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child, has to be grand. Yet modest. His birth was modest: a shed, a feeding trough. Secrecy. Shame. Danger. Poverty dictated the details for this dramatic night. I cannot spend much. Yet, it was the greatest night Earth had ever seen. Angels sighed! The order of everything disturbed by Love’s intervention.

I tell him he’s ruining things, that he is too quick to befriend the wrong people, but his mind is elsewhere. I beg him to befriend religious leaders, a pastor or two, but he will not listen.

Then, they are up in arms against him.

All but a few want him gone. He’s a hindrance to tourism. He’s a threat to peace and he’s accused him of not attending church!

Next, he looks crucifixion in the eye.

If only he would remain a baby.

It is so much easier to shop for a baby.

Your sadness is a necessary part of what has occurred within your marriage. Experience it to the full. Cry a lot. Vent freely. You will know when you are ready to take up your life (without him) and begin to plan for your fulfilling future.

While a man-less future seems impossible right now, legions of women have lived full and complete lives following failed marriages. You can probably do it, too.

It is more likely that you, rather than he, will find future fulfillment. Infidelity seldom leads to lasting peace of mind.

“You wrote that successful mothering does end. I feel that I am doing a great job with my 15 year old son. I adore my son, however, I am beginning to ‘let go.’ I am excited about his future and the role that I play in his becoming an independent young man who will leave us to spread his wings. However, I also have a younger son with severe autism. I also feel that I am doing a great job with him but this young man will not be spreading his wings. I am worried about his future and I am not sure that my mothering will end. We don’t have the facilities in South Africa to accommodate my son I really don’t think it is going to be possible to work myself out of this job. Do you have any advice for me?”

Call me. I'd love to help.

Your letter moved me deeply.

It shows once again that there are always exceptions to general measures of emotional and family wellness.

Your letter also reveals the diversity and the beauty seen in families.

As your younger son grows up, and as you develop the support and community you need for your own support, you will all train each other and strengthen each other for the difficult and beautiful road ahead.

Dangerous relationships are easier to endure than address. It is not surprising that the murder of a wife, an ex-wife or lover usually takes everyone by surprise. Secrecy, cover-up and denial are the hallmarks of these toxic binds.

I believe some women could use a set of criteria to evaluate whether they are involved with a man capable of committing a violent crime against them. Accurate or not, my list could help a woman escape a potentially abusive relationship, or at least eradicate the virus before it destroys her.

Men capable of killing a “loved” one often leave a trail of early indicators, like rose petals around an open grave, before they commit a horrible crime.

Perhaps someone’s life will be saved because this list, incomplete as it is, will assist someone toward getting appropriate help:

1. He tells you how to dress and insists you obey his wishes in this regard. If you resist he becomes irrationally hurt or angry. You are beyond choosing what you wear because your dress is his domain.

2. He checks up on you for “your own good.” He wants to know where you are, what you are doing and whom you are with. Time unaccounted becomes an accusation. You find yourself explaining or hiding everything, to avoid the laborious conflicts that inevitably ensue.

3. Any move toward independence on your part is rewritten as betrayal. His response is anger.

4. He tells you when you are happy, and rewrites what you feel if you dare say you are unhappy. He tries to keep you from your family, suggesting they are not good for you.

5. He tells you when you are hungry and what you like to eat. He says he knows you better than you know yourself. He gets angry if you dare disagree.

6. He is jealous of your friendships, even those that predate him and those that are over.

7. Keeping peace is second nature to you. Ironically, the peace seldom lasts because he jumps on the smallest issues, magnifying them into major breaches of trust.

8. His highs are very high and his lows very low. It seems as if your response to him is inordinately powerful in changing or determining his mood.

9. He pouts easily. He manipulates truth so you are taken by surprise. He plays “hurt puppy” if you’re not happy, thereby making your emotions his business. He expects you to always be glad to see him and to drop whatever you are doing to focus on him.

10. He demands his own way and has an inordinate perception of his own importance. He shows off his “power” by threatening to “talk to the manager,” when he is not given the service he thinks he deserves. He becomes irrationally angry at the smallest of inconveniences. He accuses you of “taking sides” if you suggest he is being unreasonable.

11. He lives on the edge of “white hot” anger, becoming very angry with children, animals, and anyone or anything that doesn’t obey him. He hides this anger from people outside the “inner circle” and his mood quickly changes if an “outsider” appears so that his anger is kept secret.

12. He removes your car keys or your purse to restrict your movements and then denies doing so.

13. In the early days of the relationship you felt like you were on a fast ride on an unpredictable roller coaster. Everything was too much, too soon, but you did not know how to say it. Any comment about wanting to “slow down” on your part was ignored. You felt invisible, as if you were just along for his ride.

14. If you work, he accuses you of having an affair with a man at work – especially if that man has innocently told him that you’re a good employee/colleague to work with or know. Any praise whatever of you – from anyone, really – is twisted into suspicion and jealousy. (Added by friend Jenny Lowen, Harpenden, UK)

For such men, winning is everything — losing control is not an option, even for those whom they proclaim to love the most.

80,000 online views

Of course you are going to fall apart, and mourn the loss of the future you thought you’d have.

You will feel like death itself and even welcome your own.

Then, when your mind somewhat clears, you’ll wonder what really occurred. You will question what you might have done to cause the marriage breakdown and wonder what you might have done to save it.

Then you will bargain with God, your husband, even your children, or with anyone who will listen as you urgently try to get things back to normal, and get yourself back into his heart, head, and bed.

And, when things somewhat settle, and you’ve gotten some rest, and you emerge from the initial impact of what has occurred, you will see that this is not about you, or what you did or did not do. You will see there that there is no real power in bargaining with him, or real value in your becoming whatever you think he’d prefer you to be.

You will see that, quite apart from whatever he decides to do, there is great power and value in picking up your life, one emotion at a time, and doing what is best for yourself and your children.

(November 2006)

Tell me your story. I am listening:

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Rod in about 1962!

Do all you can to stay out of the middle, to allow your brother and father to have to face each other, and increase your tolerance for your father’s pain. While this might sound hard or uncaring, nothing will change for your family while everyone is doing what everyone has always done The healthiest person in the family usually holds important keys for beginning transformational processes, and it can’t happen without the willingness to upset the applecart, and sometimes, even watch it crash.

While ANYONE but your brother assumes responsibility for your brother, he will continue to use behavior that has worked for him in the past – and something must be working if he keeps repeating it.

It is important for you to see that you are not responsible for either of these grown men in your life. You are responsible to each, but not for each – understanding the difference will make a world of difference for you and even potentially for your father and your brother.

I like the metaphor – but there are three ships: yours, his, and the marriage. Bail out your own ship (work on yourself), let him worry about his (don’t try and rescue him) and the marriage ship will take care of itself (which does not men it will survive). Until you love yourself more than you love him you will all go down.

One morning, and I am not completely sure what compelled me to do it on this particular morning, I made my way to the Japanese Gardens she loved and chose a spot I considered beautiful and held the box to my chest and waited to begin this sacred task.

Surprising myself, a little like a child playing in beach sand, I sprinkled her dust gently into the wind and felt none of the expected terror. Rather, I was reminded of the talcum powder she so liberally used in the steamy bathroom of runny mirrors, slippery floors, and twisted towels. I could even smell it.

Sandy remains powdered my hands and fell easily through my fingers to the buffalo grass around my feet.

Then I threw the drab box and its wrapping into a bin attached to a nearby tree and broke into a steady jog toward my car and cried all the way home. The closer I got the more my chest heaved, my body rocked and my throat clogged with phlegm, so I stopped at a firebreak in the sugar cane fields to vomit.

Spreading mother’s ashes was easier than I thought. I should have done it sooner.

But I will assume you, an adult who has endured a significant loss, are understandably reaching out for love and affection.

Three things:

1. You are not betraying the deceased.
2. You and your faith tradition decide on when is acceptable to you to have sex (it is not up to anyone else).
3. You will take into account that sexual behavior is never purely recreational.

It is impossible to do something so profoundly intimate with your body that doesn’t also impact every other aspect of your emotional and spiritual life.