In my blog posting “Primary Relationships”, I looked at how God comes first, your spouse second and everyone else after that.  A reader asked some very important questions: the rest of the non-Baha’i world that is either atheist or agnostic seems to believe that familial relationships can be cultivated without God’s assistance. While I believe [...]

In my blog posting “Primary Relationships”, I looked at how God comes first, your spouse second and everyone else after that.  A reader asked some very important questions:

• the rest of the non-Baha’i world that is either atheist or agnostic seems to believe that familial relationships can be cultivated without God’s assistance.
• While I believe in a strong deference to God, it is difficult for me to accept that we can only know others through God.
• I am Bahá’í and marrying into a Baha’i family, but what about those who parent(s) are not Bahá’í, does this mean that they will necessarily be handicapped in their family closeness because one party is choosing not to look at it through God’s eyes?

There’s a lot to think about for each of these questions, and like everything in the Faith, there are no easy or simple answers.  As a result, I thought these questions deserved a blog posting all of its own.

First of all, the point I was trying to make in the previous posting, is that the easiest way to get closer to each other is to get closer to God.  Obviously this is easier if both parties believe in God and are willing to move towards Him!  As the diagram below shows, the relationship would be closer than if neither partner was moving closer to God, but not nearly as close as it could be.

The reason the Manifestations of God have come to earth is because mankind has turned away from God’s injunctions.  Everything is easier when we follow His guidance no matter in which religion it is found.   Many people think they can make their own decisions or do things their way, but without God as the uniting factor, it won’t work.  Shoghi Effendi tells us how the pendulum can swing from one extreme to another, and then back again:

These fashions are not permanent they are bound to change. Today the fad is a materialistic view of life and of the world. A day will soon come when it will become deeply religious and spiritual. In fact, we can discern the beginning of such a change in the writings of some of the most eminent souls and liberal minds. When the pendulum will start its full swing then we shall see all such eminent men turn again to God.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 211)

Today as our reader observed, our society is largely content to go through life without God.

All religions have some form of the “Golden Rule” which guides human relationships, and without it, we’re rudderless.  In the following quote we see the state of the world at the time of Baha’u'llah; and the effect His teachings have had on people:

In the nineteenth century strife and hostility prevailed among the people of the Orient. Apathy and ignorance characterized the nations. They were indeed gloomy and dark, negligent of God and under the subjection of the baser instincts and passions of mankind. The struggle for existence was intense and universal. At such a time as this Bahá’u'lláh appeared among them like a luminary in the heavens. He flooded the East with light. He proclaimed new principles and teachings. He laid a basis for new institutions which are the very spirit of modernism, the light of the world, the development of the body politic and eternal honor.

The souls who hearkened to these teachings among the various oriental nations immediately renounced the spirit of strife and hostility and began to associate in goodwill and fellowship. From extremes of animosity they attained the acme of love and brotherhood. They had been warring and quarreling; now they became loving and lived together in complete unity and agreement.

Among them today you will find no religious, political or patriotic prejudice; they are friendly, loving and associate in the greatest happiness. They have no part in the war and strife which take place in the East; their attitude toward all men is that of goodwill and loving-kindness. A standard of universal peace has been unfurled among them. The light of guidance has flooded their souls. It is light upon light, love upon love.

This is the education and training of Bahá’u'lláh. He has led these souls to this standard and given them teachings which ensure eternal illumination. Anyone who becomes well versed in His teachings will say, “Verily, I declare that these words constitute the illumination of humanity, that this is the everlasting honor, that these are heavenly precepts and the cause of never-ending life among men.  (Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 401)

As the effects of the Revelation of Baha’u'llah begin to permeate the consciousness of the world, we’ll see God put back into the equation. Without God in the equation, none of our relationships can be as strong as they could be; and in fact the glue that holds them together is not strong enough to hold.

But the love which sometimes exists between friends is not (true) love, because it is subject to transmutation; this is merely fascination. As the breeze blows, the slender trees yield. If the wind is in the East the tree leans to the West, and if the wind turns to the West the tree leans to the East. This kind of love is originated by the accidental conditions of life. This is not love, it is merely acquaintanceship; it is subject to change.   Today you will see two souls apparently in close friendship; tomorrow all this may be changed. Yesterday they were ready to die for one another, today they shun one another’s society! This is not love; it is the yielding of the hearts to the accidents of life. When that which has caused this “love” to exist passes, the love passes also; this is not in reality love. (‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Paris Talks, pp. 179-181)

In her diary, Juliet Thompson quotes ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as using this analogy:

Now associate with good people. You must try to associate with those who will do you good and who will be the cause of your being more awakened, and not with those who will make you negligent of God. For example, if one goes into a garden and associates with flowers, one will surely inhale the beautiful fragrance, but if one goes to a place where there are bad-scented plants, it is sure he will inhale an unpleasant odour. In short, I mean that you will try to be with those who are purified and sanctified souls. Man must always associate with those from whom he can get light, or be with those to whom he can give light. He must either receive or give instructions. Otherwise, being with people without these two intentions, he is spending his time for nothing, and, by so doing, he is neither gaining nor causing others to gain.  (The Diary of Juliet Thompson)

‘Abdu’l-Bahá further tells us the difference between associating with those who have God in their hearts:

True friends are even as skilled physicians, and the Teachings of God are as healing balm, a medicine for the conscience of man. They clear the head, so that a man can breathe them in and delight in their sweet fragrance. They waken those who sleep. They bring awareness to the unheeding, and a portion to the outcast, and to the hopeless, hope.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 23)

He further tells us:

When any souls grow to be true believers, they will attain a spiritual relationship with one another, and show forth a tenderness which is not of this world. They will, all of them, become elated from a draught of divine love, and that union of theirs, that connection, will also abide forever. Souls, that is, who will consign their own selves to oblivion, strip from themselves the defects of humankind, and unchain themselves from human bondage, will beyond any doubt be illumined with the heavenly splendours of oneness, and will all attain unto real union in the world that dieth not.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 84-85)

Without the love of God in our hearts, we will never be able to attain the standard the Faith sets before us for turning strangers into friends:

One of the teachings is that love and faithfulness must so prevail in the hearts that men may see the stranger as a friend, the sinner as an intimate fellow, may count enemies as allies, regard foes as loving comrades, call their executioner the giver of life, and consider the denier as a believer and the unbeliever as a faithful one — that is, men must behave in such a manner as may befit the believers, the faithful, the friend and the confidant. If this lamp may shine in a befitting manner in the assemblage of the world you will find that the regions will become fragrant and the world will become a delectable paradise, the surface of the earth will become an excellent garden, the world will become as one home, the different nations will become as one kind, and the peoples and nationalities of the East and West will become as one household. I hope such a day will come and such lights may dawn and such a Countenance may appear in the utmost beauty.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i Scriptures, p. 479)

Spiritual relationships endure through all the worlds of God:

Bodily relationships may pass; even two sisters may be inimical to each other, but the spiritual relationship is eternal, and brings about mutual love and service.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in London, p. 75)

Marriage should lead to a profound friendship of spirit, which will endure in the next world, where there is no sex, and no giving and taking in marriage; just the way we should establish with our parents, our children, our brothers and sisters and friends deep spiritual bond which will be ever-lasting, and not merely physical bonds of human relationship.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 206)

As we know from the short obligatory prayer, the purpose of every soul in this world is to know and worship God;

I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. (Baha’u'llah, Baha’i Prayers, p. 3)

When we say this prayer every day, and strive to implement it in our own lives, we can’t help but draw closer to God.

We also know that even after death, all souls continue to progress towards God.

And now concerning thy question regarding the soul of man and its survival after death. Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter. It will endure as long as the Kingdom of God, His sovereignty, His dominion and power will endure. It will manifest the signs of God and His attributes, and will reveal His loving kindness and bounty.  (Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 155-156)

Obviously there are many paths to God, and it’s even been said that “there are not atheists in foxholes”, meaning that when the tests get most severe, even an atheist will reach out to God.   God doesn’t distinguish between Bahá’í or non-Bahá’í.  Even when relationships are strained in this world, there is hope for closeness in the next world:

Are not all the people in that world the creatures of God? Therefore, in that world also they can make progress. As here they can receive light by their supplications, there also they can plead for forgiveness and receive light through entreaties and supplications. Thus as souls in this world, through the help of the supplications, the entreaties and the prayers of the holy ones, can acquire development, so is it the same after death. Through their own prayers and supplications they can also progress, more especially when they are the object of the intercession of the Holy Manifestations.  (Adib Taherzadeh, The Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 17)

Those of us who are Bahá’í know that spiritual relationships are stronger than blood relationships:

The friends should … draw closer to each other, knowing that they form one spiritual family, closer to each other, in the sight of God, than those united by ties of blood.  (From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, 8 May, 1948).

This doesn’t mean that we won’t see our non-Bahá’í loved ones in the next world.  Far from it, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells us:

A love that one may have entertained for any one will not be forgotten in the world of the Kingdom. (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá v1, p. 205-206)

When family members are focused on God, there is more likely to be unity in a family, which will have a positive effect on the whole family:

Note ye how easily, where unity existeth in a given family, the affairs of that family are conducted; what progress the members of that family make, how they prosper in the world. Their concerns are in order, they enjoy comfort and tranquility, they are secure, their position is assured, they come to be envied by all.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 278)

On a practical level, Baha’u'llah gives us some guidance on how we can do this:

If any differences arise amongst you, behold Me standing before your face, and overlook the faults of one another for My name’s sake and as a token of your love for My manifest and resplendent Cause.  (Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 315)

Forming friendships with those who think they can do it without God are to be avoided as a protection to ourselves:

Expect not that they who violate the ordinances of God will be trustworthy or sincere in the faith they profess. Avoid them, and preserve strict guard over thyself, lest their devices and mischief hurt thee. Turn away from them, and fix thy gaze upon God, thy Lord, the All-Glorious, the Most Bountiful. He that giveth up himself wholly to God, God shall, assuredly, be with him; and he that placeth his complete trust in God, God shall, verily, protect him from whatsoever may harm him, and shield him from the wickedness of every evil plotter.”
(Baha’u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 210)

A good test you can use is to ask yourself:  after I have contact with this person, is my faith strengthened or weakened? Is my commitment to the laws of God strengthened or weakened?

Then act accordingly.

When we take Baha’u'llah’s injunctions seriously and to seek the company of the righteous, we will draw closer to God; have more unified relationships; and ensure happiness in all the worlds of God.

 

I think that’s a good reason to put God at the core of all of our relationships.  What do you think?

 

Click here to read “Primary Relationships”

 

 

 

  Recently a reader wrote asking for suggestions of how to get closer to his mother and how to have his new found love accept him as a Baha’i.  This caused me to reflect on the nature of our primary relationships and how to get clear about them.  Hope my response to him helps you [...]

 

Recently a reader wrote asking for suggestions of how to get closer to his mother and how to have his new found love accept him as a Baha’i.  This caused me to reflect on the nature of our primary relationships and how to get clear about them.  Hope my response to him helps you too.

I wrote:

As a mother myself, your desire to be close to your mother warms my heart!

There are some clues on what you can do for her in this quote:

Also a father and mother endure the greatest troubles and hardships for their children; and often when the children have reached the age of maturity, the parents pass on to the other world. Rarely does it happen that a father and mother in this world see the reward of the care and trouble they have undergone for their children. Therefore, children, in return for this care and trouble, must show forth charity and beneficence, and must implore pardon and forgiveness for their parents. So you ought, in return for the love and kindness shown you by your father, to give to the poor for his sake, with greatest submission and humility implore pardon and remission of sins, and ask for the supreme mercy.  (Adib Taherzadeh, The Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 17)

From this quote we see that there are two concrete things you can do:

1. Implore pardon and forgiveness for her sins.  You can do it by remembering that:

It is seemly that the servant should, after each prayer, supplicate God to bestow mercy and forgiveness upon his parents. Thereupon God’s call will be raised: ‘Thousand upon thousand of what thou hast asked for thy parents shall be thy recompense!’ Blessed is he who remembereth his parents when communing with God.  (The Báb, Lights of Guidance, p. 230)

And you can use this prayer when praying for her:

O Lord! In this Most Great Dispensation Thou dost accept the intercession of children in behalf of their parents. This is one of the special infinite bestowals of this Dispensation. Therefore, O Thou kind Lord, accept the request of this Thy servant at the threshold of Thy singleness and submerge his father in the ocean of Thy grace, because this son hath arisen to render Thee service and is exerting effort at all times in the pathway of Thy love, Verily, Thou art the Giver, the Forgiver and the Kind!  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í Prayers, p. 64)

2. Give to the poor in her name

Click here for some good stories of generosity which might inspire you.

Other things you can do:

3. You can also thank God (and your mother) for giving birth to you:

It behooveth man, upon reaching the age of nineteen, to render thanksgiving for the day of his conception as an embryo. For had the embryo not existed, how could he have reached his present state? (The Báb, Selections from the Writings of the Báb, p. 89)

I don’t know how old you are, but it doesn’t matter, since there is no age in the spiritual world.

There are many wonderful prayers for forgiveness.  God’s forgiveness is boundless!  Hopefully you can find one that resonates with you:

Forgiveness

Forgiveness for Others

Forgiveness – from Man to God

Any one of these prayers would be good to study with a trusted friend, or even your Mother if she is open to it.

 

Having said that, I have 2 concerns about your desire to be closer to your mother than anyone else.

First:  Our primary relationship should always be towards God.

Advance always in the Kingdom of Bahá’u’lláh; occupy thy heart always by the mentioning of Bahá’u’lláh; take heed that only in your eyes is Bahá’u’lláh, in your heart is Bahá’u’lláh—in your inmost heart is Bahá’u’lláh!  (Bahá’í Scriptures, p. 501)

As it says in the short obligatory prayer:

I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee . . .  (Bahá’u'lláh, Short Obligatory Prayer, Baha’i Prayers, p. 3)

Remember the Bahá’í marriage vow:  “We will all, verily, abide by the will of God”.  Ultimately, this is our whole purpose in life.  To know God and to worship Him is all about abiding by His will.

It’s easy, when life throws us a curveball, to get distracted and forget how to know and worship God.  Ask yourself:

• Are you continuing to pray and read the Writings morning and night?
• Are you giving sacrificially to the fund?
• Is your Right of God up to date?
• Are you teaching the Faith and finding ways to be of service to others every day?

If you have weaknesses in any of these areas, there are veils between you and God that can be removed.  Focus all your attention on strengthening your relationship to God, and you WILL draw closer to both your mother and the love of your life.

I find this picture helps me remember:  If you and the other person are directed towards God, the distance between you will automatically be less.

 

 
When our primary focus is directed towards Him, He will take care of everything else in your life, as we see in the following quote!

I swear by God, should the traveller in the path of salvation and the seeker for the summits of righteousness attain to this supreme and lofty state, he will inhale the fragrance of the True One from remote distances and discern the brilliant morn of guidance from the Day-springs of all things. Every atom and object will direct him to the Beloved and the Desired One.

He will become so discerning that he will distinguish truth from falsehood as the sun from shadow. For example; if the breeze of truth should blow forth from the east of creation, he will surely inhale it in the west of emanation.

Likewise, he will distinguish all the signs of the True One—such as wonderful words, incomparable deeds, and brilliant actions—from the deeds, actions and traces of all else, just as the jeweller distinguishes the gem from the stone, and man the spring from autumn and heat from cold.

When the head of the soul is purified from the ailment (lit. cold) of the contingent and existent, it will unfailingly discover the fragrance of the Beloved from distant stations, arrive at the city of the assurance of His Highness the Beneficent, through the effect of this fragrance, and behold the wonders of the wisdom of His Highness the Most Holy, in that spiritual city.

It will detect the hidden knowledges from the forms of the leaves of the tree of that city, hear the glorification and praise of the Lord of Lords from its soil, with the outward and inward ears, and perceive the mysteries of “advent” and “return” with the outward eye.

What shall we mention of the signs, tokens, appearances and splendors ordained in that city, by the command of the King of Names and Attributes! It quencheth thirst without water, and increaseth the heat of the love of God without fire.

The ideal consummate wisdom is hidden in every plant, and a thousand nightingales of speech are in ecstasy and rapture upon every rose branch. The mystery of the fire of Moses is revealed in its wonderful tulips, and the breath of the Holy Spirit of Jesus emanates from its fragrances of holiness.

It bestows wealth without gold and grants immortality without death. A paradise is concealed in every leaf, and a hundred thousand wisdoms are treasured in every one of its chambers.

Those who earnestly endeavor in the way of God, after severance from all else, will become so attached to that city that they will not abandon it for an instant. They will hear conclusive proofs from the hyacinth of that assembly and will receive clear arguments from the beauty of the rose and the melody of the nightingale.

This city is renewed and adorned every one thousand years, more or less. Therefore, O my friends, we must make an efforts to attain to that city and remove the veils of glory, through divine favors and lordly compassion, so that we may sacrifice the withered soul in the path of the New Beloved, and show forth a hundred thousand supplications and humiliations in order to be favored with that attainment.  (Bahá’í Scriptures, p. 51-52)

Second:  you mention having a “new found love”.  If you marry, the two of you will be creating a divinely-created institution; a fortress for well-being and salvation with someone who will be with you through all the worlds of God.

The Lord, peerless is He, hath made woman and man to abide with each other in the closest companionship, and to be even as a single soul. They are two helpmates, two intimate friends, who should be concerned about the welfare of each other.  If they live thus, they will pass through this world with perfect contentment, bliss, and peace of heart, and become the object of Divine grace and favour in the Kingdom of heaven . . . Strive, then, to abide, heart and soul, with each other as two doves in the nest, for this is to be blessed in both worlds.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 122)

You notice there is no room for your mother in this nest!

Although your Mother will always be the person who gave you birth, and you will have contact with her in the next world, she will not be with you in the fortress you create with your wife, so the relationship with your wife should come second to your relationship to God.

And know thou for a certainty, that in the divine worlds, the spiritual beloved ones (believers) will recognize each other, and will seek union (with each other), but a spiritual union. Likewise, a love that one may have entertained for any one will not be forgotten in the world of the Kingdom.  (‘Abdul-Bahá, Tablets of ‘Abdul-Bahá, V1, p. 205)

When two people, husband and wife for instance, have been completely united in this life their souls being as one soul, then after one of them has passed away, this union of heart and soul would remain unbroken. (Abdu’l-Bahá, Abdu’l-Bahá in London, p. 75)

Here is a quote which shows that your marriage should take priority over everything else:

In considering the problems that you and your wife are experiencing, the House of Justice points out that the unity of your family should take priority over any other consideration. (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453)

And that marriage takes work:

The House of Justice feels it most essential for your husband and you to understand that marriage can be a source of well-being, conveying a sense of security and spiritual happiness. However, it is not something that just happens. For marriage to become a haven of contentment it requires the cooperation of the marriage partners themselves, and the assistance of their families.  (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453)

If the person you marry is not a Bahá’í, you may have to limit your participation in Bahá’í activities in order to maintain unity in your family:

A Bahá’í who is married to a non-Bahá’í may well have to limit his activities to same degree in order to maintain the unity of his family. (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 86)

Lastly, here’s a prayer which can assist you to be the person God wants you to be:

I beg Thee to forgive me, O my Lord, for every mention but the mention of Thee, and for every praise but the praise of Thee, and for every delight but delight in Thy nearness, and for every pleasure but the pleasure of communion with Thee, and for every joy but the joy of Thy love and of Thy good-pleasure, and for all things pertaining unto me which bear no relationship unto Thee, O Thou Who art the Lord of lords, He Who provideth the means and unlocketh the doors.
(The Báb, Bahá’í Prayers, p. 79)

Say it, and study it for clues about how to orient your life, and it will surely help you!

How has this helped you understand relationships better?  Post your comments here:

 

 

 

 

I was recently contacted by a couple who had a chance to go on a 3-day visit to the Bahá’í World Centre.  Neither had been on pilgrimage before, and considered this the next best thing.  The husband wanted to go, and the wife did not.  They were at a stalemate and wondered if I could [...]

I was recently contacted by a couple who had a chance to go on a 3-day visit to the Bahá’í World Centre.  Neither had been on pilgrimage before, and considered this the next best thing.  The husband wanted to go, and the wife did not.  They were at a stalemate and wondered if I could help.  What follows are some ideas that we explored together.

When you go on pilgrimage, or for a three-day visit, you’re going to the most sacred spot on earth to have the most sacred experience of your life.  Your goal is for your soul to connect with your Beloved.  It’s an intensely personal experience, so in some ways it might be better not go as a couple, so that you can totally, totally be focused on your own experience without having to worry about your spouse.  You may be giving him a real gift to let him go by himself.

Although family members are allowed to go on pilgrimage and many do go as a family, I’ve never seen anything in the Writings to suggest you should go with them.  I think if Baha’u'llah meant for couples to do it together He would’ve said so.  Instead He said it is required for men but not for women, so to my mind, pilgrimages are not meant to be taken together for the purpose of strengthening the marriage.

The Lord hath ordained that those of you who are able shall make pilgrimage to the sacred House, and from this He hath exempted women as a mercy on His part. He, of a truth, is the All-Bountiful, the Most Generous.  (Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 29)

If you don’t go, there’s another way of looking at it:  instead of worrying that you are giving something up by letting him go alone, there’s a quote that says the greatest of all pilgrimages is to relieve the sorrow laden heart.  In that context your sacrifice itself is the greatest of all pilgrimages.

Remember the saying: ‘Of all pilgrimages the greatest is to relieve the sorrow-laden heart.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 92)

Whether or not to go with a family member is a decision that everyone has to make themselves.

What has been your experience?  Post your comments here:

 

 

 

 

  Musical Selection:  Karen singing – please click on title:  Special One I feel privileged that you invited me here today to tell my story. I hope that what I have to say will have some meaning for you so that you may not have to take the same path yourselves! This is my truth [...]

 

Musical Selection:  Karen singing – please click on title:  Special One

I feel privileged that you invited me here today to tell my story. I hope that what I have to say will have some meaning for you so that you may not have to take the same path yourselves! This is my truth as I see it. Others may have a different perspective. I have changed people’s names out of respect for their privacy.

I can honestly say that the vast majority of my earliest memories are good ones. There was always something fun happening – Christmas dinners at grandma’s house, family parties with cousins to play with, and lots of music and laughter. My dad was the life of the party – he was always horsing around doing something funny and all the kids loved him. He could play his mandolin and tell jokes all night. My family was musical, so my sister and I were encouraged from an early age to pick up an instrument and join in. We didn’t have a ton of money, but enough to have a little cottage on a lake with an old boat and a couple of snowmobiles. We kids made mud pies and played hide and seek and made forts in the woods, tied toboggans up behind the snowmobiles, skated on the lake, and had cookouts. While the adults partied, the kids got to run until we dropped. I remember falling asleep under a pile of coats at various hunt camps while the fiddles sawed away in the next room and the floor bounced with the stomping. What did we care if the neighbours thought we were hillbillies? It was fun! The troubling thing is that there are big chunks of time I can’t account for. I just don’t remember. And it’s not because I’m getting old! I feel like my mind has blocked out something very troubling.

During the week we had a pretty normal, quiet family life. Both my parents had good jobs and worked full-time. But on the weekends there were parties – parties at our house, parties at my cousins’ houses, parties at my parent’s friends’ houses, and always there was booze. One night my dad’s cousin got so drunk they had to tie him to the birch tree so he could stand up to play the fiddle. They had to carry the neighbour into his boat so his wife, who had been drinking herself, and had never driven a boat, could drive home to their cottage on an island across the lake. I remember several mornings getting up  to find dad asleep in the truck with his feet stuck out the window – he had had driven us home in the middle of the night but was too drunk to walk into the house and go to bed. Sometimes if he had been out by himself, we would find him in the morning halfway out the cottage road, passed out in the truck, blocking the way for any of the neighbours who might want to get in or out. It all seemed funny at the time, and I didn’t think it was out of the ordinary. It’s just the way it was for us.

There was also drama and tragedy – when I was 7 my cousin, Greg, whose cottage was next door, died in a boating accident. He and his buddy, Roy, from two doors down, had been playing chicken in his little boat at night with no lights. Roy sustained serious head injuries from which he never fully recovered. They didn’t find Greg’s body until several days later. The police said alcohol was involved. They were 16. One day my dad was racing his skidoo down the lake in icy conditions after a cookout where the adults had been drinking. He caught a piece of crust and rolled his sled end over end I don’t know how many times. He spent the next two weeks in bed. One spring day our close friend and neighbour put his snowmobile through the ice right in front of our house. Luckily, he got out. It seemed he was always having mishaps, and he was usually drunk. Then there was the day my dad nearly died when his chainsaw jumped out of the log he was cutting and slashed his throat, barely missing his jugular vein. He had been drinking.

As the years passed, there were increasingly more arguments and fights. I remember intervening one winter night during a particularly bad incident between mom and dad. He had his hands around her neck and had her backed into the tub. I thought he would kill her and the only way I could think to get him off her was to punch him in the balls. When he turned on me, I ran into the bush in my sock feet and once I knew I was safe I puked behind a tree. I remember being so scared I didn’t even notice how cold my feet were. I was 14. In another incident years later, mom had left dad to come and stay at my house but she decided to give him another chance. When we arrived at the cottage on Friday night, he was really drunk and started getting violent. We tried to leave, but by the time we got in the car, dad was standing in the middle of the only road out of the place with a gun firmly held across his chest, trying to stop me from driving away with mom. In that moment of terror I had to choose between running my father over with my car, or standing the chance of one or both of us getting shot. He made the decision for me; as he stepped around to my mother’s side of the car I gunned it and ducked, waiting for the shot. I remember the car screaming and red lining in first gear at 40 mph because it had a standard transmission and I was so scared I had forgotten to shift gears. The cops refused to go and arrest him that night because they said it was too dangerous. They confiscated his guns the next day. I had very disturbing violent nightmares for a long time after that in which I was bashing his head in with a rock. Even after all that, incredibly, mom went back to him. At the time I couldn’t understand why. The day my grandma died in 1988, he was at it again. This time the cops warned mom to get away. She showed up at my house. I had to lie about her whereabouts at the funeral to protect her safety.

THAT’S WHAT IT FINALLY TOOK TO BREAK OUT OF THE DENIAL AND REALIZE MY FATHER WAS AN ALCOHOLIC.

I was always pretty outgoing and I had friends, but I was not one of the popular girls in high school. I had skipped a grade so I was younger than my classmates and I was a “late bloomer” with a fall birthday. I turned 14 in the first semester of Grade 10, and I didn’t start to develop physically until well into my high school years. I was a really good student and I guess somewhere along the line I figured out that it was safer to get good marks and stay out of the way. I adopted the role of the super-responsible kid, perfectionistic, with a hyper-awareness of other’s feelings and needs, putting pressure on myself to overachieve, and somehow feeling like I was never good enough. I spent long hours in my bedroom doing assignments, but music was my life. I was in 3 bands and practiced sometimes 2 or 3 hours a night. I played several instruments, and I thought I was pretty good!

I started dating Frank at 17. I went to Ottawa to go to university and he came along to attend college there. He was smart and handsome, he came from a well-established, upstanding family, and it didn’t hurt that he had a nice car! His father was a well known and respected politician. WE WERE IN LOVE AND WE THOUGHT WE HAD THE WORLD BY THE TAIL. We got married when I was 19.

Looking back, I was interested in everything he did but he was NOT interested in the things that were important to me; we ate the foods that HE liked, we listened to the music that HE liked, we did the things that HE wanted to do. I had always wanted to travel, but he was afraid to fly, so we didn’t. At the time it seemed far easier to do things his way than to deal with the conflict that would be created by my asserting my needs or desires. You see, I had no idea what HEALTHY BOUNDARIES were. So, a little bit at a time, I sold out, and every time I did, I would get a little bit hurt and a little bit angry, and each time I gave away a little piece of myself. It happened so gradually, and over such a long period of time, that I hardly noticed it was happening. It’s like that story about the frog and the pot of water- if you drop a frog into a pot of hot water, he will jump out. He might get burned, but he will survive and probably stay away from the pot! But if you drop a frog into a pot of cold water and turn up the heat so gradually that he hardly notices the change, he will stay in the pot until he dies. Eventually we stopped hanging around with MY friends, I stopped playing music, I did almost all of the chores – piece by piece, without my realizing it, my identity became eroded and I seemed to disappear. If something went well, he took the credit for it, even if it was my doing. But, when something went wrong, it was ALWAYS my fault. He would twist stories around until it was so confusing I began to doubt my own memory. It was crazy making! He had expectations in the bedroom and I was made to feel it was MY shortcoming if I failed to meet them. I just kept trying to please him, but nothing ever seemed to be enough.

It wasn’t all bad. We had some fun times. We went snowmobiling in the winter and went to his family’s cottage in the summer. We visited regularly with both our families. We both had successful careers, mine in teaching and his in construction. We set goals, had a nice house, and were saving money for retirement. But in 1989 my world shifted, as if I was standing on a rug and someone pulled it out from under me. We had gone to his brother and sister-in-law’s house to give a birthday gift to our oldest niece, but instead of a celebration, there was a confrontation. Their daughters had just accused Frank of molesting them – the older one years before when she was little, before I even knew him. The younger one, who was by now 15, accused him molesting her just two years before IN OUR KITCHEN WHILE EVERYONE ELSE WAS JUST OUTSIDE, WITHIN SIGHT!!! It must have happened in a matter of seconds, a few minutes at the most! I remember thinking during the confrontation, “this happens in the movies – this doesn’t happen TO ME!” and realizing that my whole first 7 years of marriage were based on a lie. Here was the man I loved, admitting to molesting the older girl years before, but he never did admit to molesting the younger one. I can’t begin to describe the shock and confusion I felt! It was the first time I ever really thought about leaving him, but I was so CODEPENDENT by that time that I couldn’t imagine being on my own. My FEAR kept me trapped. For several months I had a hard time eating or sleeping, but eventually with some therapy I settled enough to decide to stay – we went on to have two great boys who were born in the early nineties, but it seemed like we were dancing around in a circle. Tension would build up, we would fight, then make up, and for a while things would seem to be OK, then tension would build again, over and over. And every time there was another fight, the issue of his molesting his nieces would come up – I could never get over that.

Little did I know it was going to get worse!

One day in the mid nineties, when having internet in the house was a relatively new thing, he asked me to look for a calculator in his brief case and in the bottom I found a picture of a naked little girl – Asian, maybe 10 or 12 yrs old –that he had printed off the computer. I was shocked and I confronted him. I thought about his nieces, and of course there was yet another fight. I destroyed the picture and he assured me that he had just been curious. He apologized and promised it had never happened before and it would never happen again. I was in DENIAL. I loved him. I wanted so desperately for everything to be OK. I stayed.

We were both workaholics. Things were getting so rotten between us that we both felt good when we worked. I had become a perfectionist control freak – because my relationship seemed like it was out of control. It takes a huge amount of energy to try and control everything in your life – especially when it is uncontrollable! To survive emotionally I stayed in my head and pushed down the feelings, at all cost. By that time, I was teaching full time, racing home every night with a briefcase full of lessons to plan and papers to mark in time to pick up the kids from daycare at 6 pm. I had two little boys under the age of 8 who were active with swimming lessons, soccer, Cub Scouts, etc. Frank was away a lot of the time working out of town, but when he wasn’t away, on weekends and evenings we would work on another new house for ourselves and move just about every year. We had a very good lifestyle in terms of material things, but I was miserable, exhausted, and empty inside. It seemed like every time we started fighting again, we would go and buy something new like a truck or a new snowmobile or a 4 wheeler, and for a little while it made us feel a bit better, but the feeling never lasted. I kept trying harder to make him happy but it was impossible, and I was so out of touch with myself that I had no idea what it would take to make me happy.

On Easter weekend in 2000 I had a very sudden life-threatening health crisis that ended up being the catalyst I needed to start making some positive changes in my life. Looking back, I realize that I was completely burned out. It was a miracle that I was alive; most people don’t survive the diagnosis I was given. I was never religious, but that night for the first time in my life I prayed and meant it. I said, “God, if you’re even there, apparently the way I have been directing my life up to this point in time has not been working too well. If I am meant to die here tonight, then my crying and fussing about it isn’t going to change anything, SOOOOOOOO here I am – you can take it from here, just please, if I am meant to live, show me what I am supposed to do!” I’m not suggesting you should believe what I believe; I am just saying that’s what I did, because that’s all I had left to do. After a week in intensive care, I went home to recuperate, but I had to stop working. It was the first time I really started to wonder why I was here on the planet. On the outside everything looked great – nice house, good career, two great kids – but there was nothing left inside. I felt like a completely vacant empty shell.  I started going back to therapy, but this time I was really ready to do the work and find out what was going on. One of the many valuable things I learned in therapy is that the difficulties that we face in our major relationships reflect back to us unresolved issues of our own. Over time and with help, I began to really look at things in a new perspective.

During this time, I discovered that our beloved babysitter/housekeeper had forged my signature on several cheques to the tune of almost $2000.00. She and her husband had been like adopted grandparents for our boys. I felt so betrayed! I also found out that Frank had been having an ongoing affair with one of my friends. Others in the community, including my best friend, knew about it but no one told me. I felt double betrayed! He showed me humility and convinced me of his sincerity when he apologized, and promised it had never happened before and it would never happen again. I was in DENIAL. I loved him. I wanted desperately for it to be OK. I stayed. And I got more counselling to try and help me deal with this latest crisis. Then, on the day the World Trade Centre was attacked, Sept 11, 2001, my own twin towers fell, so to speak. Our computer in our home office had broken and I had a technician come to the house to fix it. As I sat beside him, he opened files with dozens of pornographic pictures of children. I was mortified, shocked, and embarrassed to have such images in my home and furious that my little boys could have inadvertently opened one of those files. There was yet another fight, this time in which I threatened to get rid of the computer, and once again, Frank apologized and promised never to do it again. By now we both realized he had a problem. He also began to get therapy, which was enough to keep me hanging on. After all, I loved him and I wanted desperately for everything to be OK! In therapy, he began to analyze his sexual addiction and discovered that, although he could not remember anything, he had most likely been molested as a child. Now, realizing that I was married to a sex addict, and knowing that major relationships are reflective of my own issues, I began to look at my own childhood and suspect that I, too, had been molested. I had absolutely no memories of anything happening, but I also learned that as a coping mechanism, during traumatic incidents, the brain can literally block out all memory of the incidents. These are called REPRESSED memories. They help you to function on a day to day basis and go on with your life. The body remembers, though, and it stores unexpressed anger and grief in its cells. All kinds of studies have shown that there is a very real mind-body connection. When you accumulate years of toxic emotional stress your body responds in a very real way. If you don’t clear it, eventually it can lead to chronic illness or disease. When you clear that stress, your body is free to respond with good health and vitality. It’s like sweeping dirt under the carpet, or throwing your garbage into the basement – it keeps building up and building up until one day you get to a point where you just have to do some housecleaning. My body had told me the year before that it was time to do some housecleaning, but I still only partially listened. I was gradually working through my issues and becoming more aware, to be sure, but I was staying in a relationship that was becoming increasingly more toxic.

By then my father was a raging alcoholic – the town drunk who I kept at arm’s length. I felt guilty if I didn’t see him from time to time, but I felt shame and sadness when I did see him, because of the way he was living his life. My dad died of cancer in 2002 but something shifted between us in the last few weeks of his life. As he was coming to terms with the fact that he was dying I saw an authenticity in him I had never seen before. I stopped being quite so angry and start feeling some compassion for him. A few days before he died, I told him that I had forgiven him. He responded, “Well, wonders never cease”. The day he died, I sat by his bed and I held his hand as he passed. After he was gone I mourned the loss not so much of the man but of the relationship I always wished we could have had and now never would. Strangely, I feel closer to my father now than I ever did when he was alive.

I was still married, but our situation was becoming increasingly toxic. By now I had left my teaching career for good to work full time building big waterfront houses with Frank. I was in charge of site administration, hiring subcontractors, payroll and accounting, purchasing materials, AND I worked on site doing things like painting (sometimes on scaffolding or ladders 24 feet high), insulation, shovelling gravel, carrying lumber, picking up garbage, and helping the carpenters with framing. I enjoyed the physical work, and quite frankly, I enjoyed taking the men on the job by surprise with strength and ability that they did not expect to see in a woman.  Even though we were making far more money than I could ever have made teaching, Frank constantly belittled my contribution to our business and accused me more than once of being lazy and not wanting to work, because I had left my teaching career after that health crisis. Frank had stopped going to therapy, probably because he realized that once again, the latest crisis had been averted and I was back on the hook. I still loved him, but I suppose by this time I really had lost most of the respect I had had for him. I tried to see the hurt little boy and the sensitive man buried deep down inside all those layers of anger, and I waited for him to fulfill the potential that I saw in him. I would get glimpses of him every now and then when he had to show humility to avert another crisis. I knew he had an addiction, but by now I was so expert at covering up for him that I didn’t even realize that I was doing it. I understand now that what I was doing was ENABLING him to continue to act out his addiction. So why did I keep staying after all the crises and the grief? Maybe it was LOVE, but more likely it was FEAR and CODEPENDENCE. Living with “the devil you know” somehow seemed less frightening than stepping into the unknown. Even though I was doing most of the work to run the household, I couldn’t imagine being alone – I felt like I was only ½ of a circle – if you took away the other half I would be incomplete and unable to cope.

I had started to play music again. Just a little at first, but over time it became a bigger and bigger part of my life, because I realized that it was an important part of me that I had given up all those years before, and I wanted it back because it made me feel good. We started going to music festivals and despite the fact that we had a lot of fun camping with our new musical friends, Frank often made it clear that he didn’t like my playing music. You see, I was having fun and feeling good. It wasn’t for him or about him, and he was jealous. I often told him that I wished for his sake that he could find something in his life that he could feel as passionately about as I felt towards playing music, but he never really showed interest in anything outside his work. By the time I started a band and began to play semi-professionally, he would come to some festivals with me, but it was a favour to me that I could never really repay; he would make my life absolutely miserable, and often my band would have to rally around me when I would show up backstage before a show in tears. I would try to attend to his needs – did he have a drink? Was he hungry? Did he have someone to talk to? Was he happy? If he didn’t come, I found out later that he would say things to my children like “Your mother doesn’t want to be here with you. Her music is more important to her.” In 2006 he came to one of the larger festivals with me. I made especially sure to give him extra attention, as he often accused me of ignoring him when I was playing music. We had had a great day together, and ended the evening with a jam session with friends around a campfire. I had been super vigilant to see that he was having a good time. When it was time to go to bed, I put my instrument away and wondered why he hadn’t come into the trailer with me. I went back out to find him necking with a young woman half his age. I rubbed my eyes to make sure. I had had a few drinks over the course of the evening, but I was definitely not drunk. I locked myself in the trailer and started angrily packing up while he got a security guard to come and knock on the door and tell me I had been seeing things. We drove home in silence, and he slept in the spare bedroom that week, but I allowed him to come back because the next weekend we were expecting company and I still wasn’t ready for the truth to come out to our friends. You see, I was still trying to push down the feelings, smooth things over, and make everything appear normal when in fact we were in yet another crisis. I went back for more counselling to help me try and deal with this latest incident, but I was still enabling him to continue in his addiction.

By November 2007, 18 1/2 years after I had first seriously considered leaving, I had finally and truly had enough and was looking for a way out. Although he had never raised a hand to me, I was exhausted from the ongoing emotional abuse and drama, and I had long since lost my respect for Frank. I had threatened for years to leave and had never followed through, so why would he believe me now? But this time it was different. I had been faithful to Frank through all those years, but now I had met someone at a music conference in Nashville that I was very attracted to. I told Frank about it and he actually encouraged me to be with him, thinking it might be some kind of sexual game. But I was not playing any kind of game. I began talking to this man on the phone and I was falling head over heels in love. I told Frank up front that I intended to pursue my relationship with this man, and that I intended to leave – this time for real. That was when things began to get dangerous.

I was still living in the matrimonial home, and I had told my boys, teenagers of 15 and 13 by now, that I was planning on leaving, but that I was hoping to hold out until after Christmas. I couldn’t possibly tell them all the things that had led up to my decision – I felt they were too young to know about such adult problems, and I still wanted them to have some respect for their father even if he no longer had it from me. Of course, they were confused and angry with me. I had tried so hard all those years to cover up the problems between their father and me that they really hadn’t known how bad it was, but now that “the cat was out of the bag”, so to speak, it was impossible to hide the fighting and the arguments. It got so bad that a couple of weeks before Christmas, my younger son pulled me aside and said, “Mom, why don’t we just go?”, but I was determined to hang on until after Christmas, if at all possible. My older son decided to live with his dad, which broke my heart, because his dad really had not been there for them. He was away so much when they were growing up, and when he was home he was usually either too busy working, too angry, or too tired to interact with them. It was that heartbreak that inspired my very first song.

Musical Selection:  Karen singing – please click on title: I won’t Give Up On You

Things were escalating to the point where I was sleeping with my coat and boots and purse by my side because I feared that things might get really nasty and I would have to get out in the night. I locked the bedroom door because by this point I was afraid of Frank, and he would pick the lock just to show me that he could. I got my own cell phone and opened a new personal email account. He later admitted that he had been stalking me; I would come out of the grocery store or the bank and there he was, waiting. He was checking my odometer, obtaining my cell phone statements, and attempting to hack into my email account. He froze the bank accounts and cancelled the credit cards. He would tell me private information about the band’s business – it made everyone uncomfortable to the point that they considered calling the police. I started going to the local women’s shelter for counselling. They gave me strategies for staying safe, and information on community resources, but most importantly, they reassured me that I was not crazy! Then one night, while I slept, he broke into the bedroom and began to sexually assault me. He had imagined that I had been talking to this new man while he was out of town, which I wasn’t, but by the time he got home at 2 am he was beside himself with rage. He must have snapped out of his fury long enough to realize what was happening, because I was able to fight him off, but that was the last straw. On Boxing Day I drove away from my beautiful waterfront home to go and live in the basement of my mother’s house. And although I was an emotional wreck, I was finally free, and I never looked back.

Shortly after I left, Frank went into a residential treatment programme where he could get help with his sex addiction issues. I hope he benefited from his time there, but I suspect his motivation for going was to lure me back into the relationship as he had done so many times before. Within a few weeks of my leaving he was dating a woman from Oregon who he had met on an online dating site.

It’s funny how you learn how very little value your “stuff” has when you drive away from it in a situation like that. You think you are attached to your “stuff”, so you fight for it, and you mourn the loss of it, but in the end, it’s just “stuff”. By the time I got ½ of our “stuff” back in the settlement a year later, I didn’t even want it any more. I had something far more precious – PEACE. And I was finally starting to find MYSELF.

I want to make it clear that neither my dad nor my ex-husband were monsters! I loved them both. Dad was an easy going and fun-loving guy. He was the kind of guy who would help a stranger on the side of the road. And Frank had many good qualities, or I would never have married him! He was a good provider and a perfect choice for showing me what I needed to know about myself. And every time he put up a hurdle for me, I jumped higher. It made me stronger and more independent in the long run. The point is that ADDICTION MAKES GOOD PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS, and addiction and abuse are insidious; they creep up on you very slowly and quietly. You often don’t notice it’s happening until it’s too late. I have a friend who was a cop. She says, based on her observations, where domestic violence is concerned, escalation is inevitable. In other words, if he hit you once, it is very likely that he WILL hit you again, even if he’s really sorry and he says he won’t. There was one piece of advice she always gave to girls and women who were dealing domestic violence – “keep your girlfriends!” You need a support system and a sounding board. I wish I had known this.

I don’t any longer blame people for the things I have experienced – that would be staying stuck in victimhood. After all, how could my parents have possibly taught me about healthy boundaries when they didn’t have any themselves? Instead I prefer to think of life like a big theatre production – we all have our parts to play. We just don’t realize that we are in a play until we step back and take a look at the big picture. Our parents were also unconsciously playing their roles, and so were their parents, and so on and so on. Addiction and abuse don’t just start up out of the blue. More likely they are patterns of behaviour that have been handed down for many, many generations. If you look at it that way, there’s no one left to blame. The question is; what are YOU going to do about it? You can stay angry and play the martyr or the victim, but that just gives your power away. You can try to stay drunk or high, and make it seem to go away for a little while, but that’s all it is – a little while, then it comes back with a fury, and I don’t need to tell you the long term effect that will have on your life. CLEARLY IT DOESN’T WORK!  Both of those choices almost guarantee that you will pass the abuse on down to the next generation. Or, you can step up to the plate, as I have done, and begin to do the healing work necessary and make the changes that could potentially break the chain for future generations. It’s not easy – sometimes it hurts like HELL, and it can be downright ugly what you expose when you have an honest look inside. But I guarantee you it’ll be worth it!

My sister tried to cope by drowning her problems in alcohol and prescription pills. She has had ongoing health issues and she has struggled with addiction off and on for over 20 years. I learned that giving her money to help with the latest crisis only enabled her to continue drinking. NOT giving her money made me feel terribly guilty because she was suffering so much, and had very real problems. I love her because she is a gentle soul and she is my sister, but I still haven’t really figured out how to handle my relationship with her, so mostly I try to keep my distance, and that’s a real shame because we could have been such good friends! But I also try hard not to judge – it could’ve easily been me. It will be up to her to make the changes she needs to make to overcome her addiction and improve her life. I have told her that when she makes those changes, I will be there for her, but I also have to come to terms with the possibility that she may never make them.

My mom and I are now as close as we have ever been. I understand a whole lot better now what she went through and why she made the choices she did, because I ended up going through much the same thing.

As for the man I started dating, well, it’s been 4 years now, and we still love each other, but I think we both realize that our lives are going in different directions. I will always be grateful to him for helping me find the strength to leave an extremely toxic situation, and I will always cherish the time we had together, but I was not in an emotionally healthy place to begin a new relationship at the time. Was it what is called a “rebound relationship”? In retrospect, the answer is probably yes, although I did not see it at the time. No matter what the future does or does not hold for us, I’m OK, and I think that’s the main thing.

I have to take responsibility for the part I played in the drama of my life. I understand now that, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I contributed to my situation by NOT maintaining healthy boundaries; every time I gave in for the sake of not angering Frank, I gave him a little more power over me. He didn’t take it – I gave it away. And every time I covered up for him, I took away an opportunity for him to take responsibility for his own behaviour. When I began to understand this, the first person I had to forgive was myself! I couldn’t possibly know then what the consequences of my choices would eventually be. And for that matter, in retrospect, I couldn’t possibly expect to be able to make decisions at 19 that were still valid at 49. People change! When I learned to forgive myself, then by extension I realized I needed to forgive my parents – they didn’t know any better what they were doing than I did. They were just trying to figure it out and survive the best they could. How could I expect them to be perfect when I wasn’t perfect myself? My ancestors were too busy trying to put food on the table and keep the house warm – they did not live in a culture of growing self-awareness that we can choose to take advantage of today. After generations of addiction and abuse, I have the privilege and responsibility of attempting to break the chain. It’s like we’ve all been sleepwalking, but now it’s time to wake up!!!!

Abuse can happen to ANYONE. It crosses all boundaries – economic, religious, age, gender. I was a well educated person with a good career and decent financial resources and it still happened to me! Remember: violence can take many forms – it doesn’t have to be physical. Pain in and of itself is not a bad thing. It teaches us to pay attention. When you stub your toe, for example, you pay full attention to that part of you – you rub it, maybe get some ice, but you take care of it until the pain goes away. The same can be true of emotional pain – it’s there to tell us that we’ve been hurt, but we need to learn to pay attention to it and not just ignore it. Learning these skills doesn’t mean you won’t ever feel pain again – life happens! Sometimes people do things that hurt. It’s a process I expect to be working on for a long time. I didn’t learn these behaviours over night, and it may take a while to unlearn them. BUT I have learned to honour my feelings, to listen to the messages I get from my gut and my heart, not just the thoughts in my head.

I feel so fortunate and grateful – for the good things that have happened to me in my life, AND for the insights and the strength I have gained from the challenges I have had to overcome. I not only survived, but I developed a greater level of self-awareness, and I am thriving now more than ever before. The funny thing about forgiveness is that you might think it’s for the benefit of the person you are forgiving, and surely they DO benefit from it, but more importantly it benefits the person who is doing the forgiving. When you release all that anger and righteousness, it’s like a huge weight being lifted off your spirit, and for the first time, maybe ever, you are truly free to discover who you really are. That’s what I’m doing now. I have found my own personal way to do my spiritual housecleaning with a combination of exercise, spending time in nature, writing and performing music, counselling, reading spiritual and self-help books, and lots of introspection (some might call it prayer or meditation). Others will find different ways to do their personal work. I’m 49 years old now and I am just getting to know Karen, and I really like the person she is becoming. I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out, but I have huge hope for my future! And because of the work I am doing, I have a great deal of hope that my children will not have to repeat the pattern.

My sincere wish for you is that you do whatever it takes to stay connected to your source, realize how beautiful and perfect you are, draw on your amazing inner strength, and discover and celebrate your wonderful gifts, and in doing so, show by example that others can too, no matter what blows life has dealt them.

 Musical Selection:  Karen singing – please click on title: Now I Fly

 

By a reader of this blog who wishes to remain anonymous A marriage is a relationship of mutuality, respect, commitment, and all of the other qualities described in the Writings. Any couple will have their ups and downs and tests, and are meant to help each other grow. Certainly there must be a spirit of [...]

By a reader of this blog who wishes to remain anonymous

A marriage is a relationship of mutuality, respect, commitment, and all of the other qualities described in the Writings. Any couple will have their ups and downs and tests, and are meant to help each other grow. Certainly there must be a spirit of compassion and forgiveness—the willingness to not hold grudges, not respond in kind to insults, and not escalate things in order to “win.” In the context of mutual commitment and respect, they should both exercise forbearance. At the same time, there will be no progress unless there is clarity and communication about what is going on—what each person observes and feels. Thus, there is a need for frankness in helping each other grow up. With this spirit, the couple’s marriage can become a “fortress for well-being” for themselves and their community.

In contrast, an abusive relationship is not a marriage; it is a situation where one person is trying to destroy the other. Therefore, there is nothing to preserve. It is not and can never become a “fortress for well-being.” It is a cauldron for passing on trauma to the next generation. The first priority is for the victim to see the situation clearly, the second is to remove himself or herself from the situation, the third is to seek help. If both people have a willingness to work together to try to heal the abuser through therapy, spiritual guidance, and prayer, that is the very best next step. None of this implies that the “victim” is perfect. However, the individual and couple cannot effectively work on these normal problems until the dynamics change, because one of the traits of the abuser is to blame the victim and render them impotent.

If the abuser truly cares about preserving the marriage and is willing to undertake a personal journey of understanding with a trusted therapist, they can begin to examine the sources of the destructive feelings—the feelings of pain, fear, and powerlessness that most likely contribute to the rage. This comes under the definition of “consulting a trusted physician.” Clinical psychology has a lot to offer in terms of understanding the problem—and that is the first step. True healing must be a spiritual process, but that does not preclude the understanding of human behaviour that has been developed in the twentieth century. If the abuser does not wish to cooperate in understanding what is going on, refuses to engage in any kind of counseling or therapy, then there is no hope. In that case, it must be clearly understood that the abuser is not interested in a healthy relationship and has effectively ended the marriage. The victim should not be blamed for giving up on the marriage. There is none.

If there is no willingness to work toward understanding and healing, then the victim would best be advised to get on with her/his life and find a partner which whom they can build a Bahá’í marriage that can be a blessing to the world. There is no virtue in staying with a destructive person and dysfunctional situation. There is no benefit to the person or the world. When there are children, separation is more difficult, but here is where a supportive community is essential to working things out in a way that protects the children. Children should not grow up to think that abusive behaviour is normal and feel unprotected from its impacts. They may not be able to get away from a relationship with the abusive parent, but if they see the other parent name what is going on and say “Stop,” then they have the power of the truth. Alice Miller talks about how having one supportive adult in their life that speaks the truth about their situation can enable a child to endure all sorts of oppression and come out healthy.

I recommend that you obtain this book: The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond by Patricia Evans. I would love to discuss it and I wish I had read this forty years ago.

PERSONAL STORY

In my first marriage, to a very intelligent professional, I was essentially passive, easy-going, and timid in the face of intimidation. He was so bright and capable that I assumed he was always right. I didn’t know how to recognize and name bad behaviour! If I had stood up to these things from the beginning, the relationship might have been better in the long term. The other problem was that I was afraid of being alone. I clung to the security of the marriage because we had a good life—wilderness canoe trips, lots of friends, enough money, etc. In retrospect, I realize that he was not only cold and uncommunicative but had never been faithful to me, but something in me didn’t want to acknowledge the truth, let alone confront him.

After we had been together about five years, I saw the reality of it and went to a friend and asked if I could stay with her because I wanted to leave him. She talked me out of it!!! So, I didn’t have the courage to persist. I was only in my early thirties and had a life ahead of me. I could have had the opportunity to find a compatible partner and build a solid future. (My first husband had no interest in a spiritual life.)

After several years, we had a long awaited and much loved child. But when she was young, he told me that he had had a relationship with another woman and that he wished he could continue the relationship as well as the marriage. So I told him to forget it—and went on to be a single parent for the next twelve years. Luckily, he was a supportive father—although a cold personality

When the marriage ended, I was faced with a fork in the road. One side was the path of vengeance, the other of cooperation and respect. This was the biggest test of my life—to find the ability to mutually parent with him for the next twenty years and never speak disrespectfully about him to our daughter. My therapist was a spiritual person and her advice during that first critical time was to “detach” and “let God deal with them.” I felt myself consciously pulling back from the path of vengeance, thank God. That is the point where “forgiveness” was appropriate and necessary—the path was defined and one had to make it work as best possible.

Even so, my daughter tells me that I acted “too nice” with him. She thought I was a wimp in the face of his somewhat arrogant and cold behaviour toward me during our child-rearing period. In summary, there was virtue in carrying out our task as separated parents in an atmosphere of forgiveness rather than vengeance, but there was NO VIRTUE in having stayed with him against my better judgment in the early days. The foundation for a true marriage simply was not there. What I needed then was CLARITY and COURAGE. These also are virtues.

After writing all this, I am thinking that part of the preparation for Baha’i marriage should include descriptions of dysfunctional and destructive behaviour. One should become aware of such signs in choosing a partner, and after marriage, be able to realistically identify such attitudes and behaviours if they emerge—disrespect, dishonesty, lack of cooperation, lack of consultation, aggressive anger, intimidation, unfaithfulness, etc. If partners can name what they are seeing, the other person may learn something early on, rather than establishing a pattern.

I believe the Writings below encourage us to do just that–to trust our perceptions and speak the truth. Justice pervades life at all levels and we are always entitled to seek it. The quotes about the role of the institutions, it seems to me, are referring to more formal situations. But, there is much to be done on the individual and family level before taking these things to the institutions.

O SON OF SPIRIT!

The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.  (Baha’u'llah, the Arabic Hidden Words)

Truthfulness is the foundation of all the virtues of the world of humanity. Without truthfulness, progress and success in all of the worlds of God are impossible for a soul. When this holy attribute is established in man, all the divine qualities will also become realized.    (Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdu’l-Bahá v2, p. 459)

 

 

I was talking to someone the other day, about a problem she was having with her husband.  She felt that she was married to 2 different men, who she called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  You could tell that she loved Mr. Hyde very much, but when he switched into Dr. Jekyll she was afraid [...]

I was talking to someone the other day, about a problem she was having with her husband.  She felt that she was married to 2 different men, who she called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  You could tell that she loved Mr. Hyde very much, but when he switched into Dr. Jekyll she was afraid of him, and didn’t know what to do.

Her therapist was explaining the “cycle of abuse”, characterized by a predictable repetitious pattern of abuse, whether emotional, psychological or physical, with psychological abuse nearly always preceding and accompanying physical abuse.   We know that sustained periods of living in such a cycle may lead to learned helplessness and battered person syndrome.  So far, her marriage hadn’t reached this stage, and she had taken very creative steps to keep herself safe.  She was reaching the end of her resources, though, and wondered what she could do.

The abuse recovery model and the Bahá’í model can look very different.  On the one hand, both models agree that this is intolerable.  The Bahá’í Writings say:

Bahá’í men have the opportunity to demonstrate to the world around them a new approach to the relationship between the sexes, where aggression and the use of force are eliminated and replaced by cooperation and consultation. The Universal House of Justice has pointed out in response to questions addressed to it that, in a marriage relationship, neither husband nor wife should ever unjustly dominate the other, and that there are times when the husband and the wife should defer to the wishes of the other, if agreement cannot be reached through consultation; each couple should determine exactly under what circumstances such deference is to take place.  (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 24 January, 1993)

Where the Bahá’í Faith differs, relates to transformation:

As you know, the principle of the oneness of mankind is de­scribed in the Bahá’í Writings as the pivot round which all the Teach­ings of Bahá’u'lláh revolve. It has widespread implications which affect and remold all dimensions of human activity. It calls for a fundamental change in the manner in which people relate to each other, and the eradication of those age old practices which deny the intrinsic hu­man right of every individual to be treated with consideration and respect.  (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual, 24 January, 1993)

But what is the “fundamental change in the manner in which people relate to each other”?  It’s easy to identify virtues such as love and forgiveness, but the more difficult ones of patience, resignation and long-suffering are not on most therapists’ radar.

On the one hand, the Bahá’í Writings clearly say:

Hold thy husband dear and always show forth an amiable temper towards him, no matter how ill tempered he may be. Even if thy kindness maketh him more bitter, manifest thou more kindliness, more tenderness, be more loving and tolerate his cruel actions and ill-treatment.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Lights of Guidance, p. 226)

Now that you realize that your husband is ill, you should be able to reconcile yourself to the difficulties you have faced with him emotionally, and not take an unforgiving attitude, however much you may suffer.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 227)

We also know that when there is spousal abuse in the marriage, the feelings of one partner – maybe both – break. Those broken feelings destroy the trust and eat away at the foundations of the fortress.  If we look at abuse as a beast, this quote shows us what it does:

It is said, “The beast made war against these two witnesses” — that is to say, a spiritual war, meaning that the beast would act in entire opposition to the teachings, customs and institutions of these two witnesses, to such an extent that the virtues and perfections which were diffused by the power of those two witnesses among the peoples and tribes would be entirely dispelled, and the animal nature and carnal desires would conquer. Therefore, this beast making war against them would gain the victory — meaning that the darkness of error coming from this beast was to have ascendency over the horizons of the world, and kill those two witnesses — in other words, that it would destroy the spiritual life which they spread abroad in the midst of the nation, and entirely remove the divine laws and teachings, treading under foot the Religion of God. Nothing would thereafter remain but a lifeless body without spirit.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, p. 51)

This may be a rather confusing passage, but I think what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is saying is that when one partner acts in ways that are against the Bahá’í laws, the virtues possible in the marriage are dispelled, and the abuser’s lower nature kills the marriage and destroys the spiritual life of both, causing nothing to remain of the marriage but a “lifeless body without spirit”.

Can a marriage be saved if it’s a “lifeless body without spirit”?  Here is where the abuse model and the Bahá’í Faith differ.  The abuse model would say “no” and “get out now for your own sanity.”  And it would be right.

The Bahá’í Faith would say that when the emotional abuse in a marriage gets to be intolerable, you have 2 choices:  start a year of patience, during which time your spouse can work on his/her anger issues so that you can trust him/her again (or vice versa); or stay in the marriage and work on developing the virtues which will help you in the next world.

Obviously this decision will be between the individual and God and between the two partners, but here are some quotes to consider for both decisions.

On the one hand, the Bahá’í Writings say:

It is a great pity that two believers, united in this glorious Cause, and blessed with a family, should not be able to live together really harmoniously, and he feels you should take constructive action and not allow the situation to get worse. When the shadow of separation hangs over a husband and wife they should leave no stone unturned in their effort to avert its becoming a reality.  He urges you both to devote more of your time to teaching the Cause and to pray together that Bahá’u'lláh may give you a real and lasting love for each other.  (Shoghi Effendi, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 451)

But what if one partner wants to obey the spirit of this injunction and the other one doesn’t?  Is it possible for the marriage to continue?  The answer is yes.  The only grounds for divorce in the Bahá’í Faith is irreconcilable antipathy, so as long as that point hasn’t been reached, there is still hope.

I was in that situation in my own marriage – I was willing to do everything in my power to avoid divorce, and my husband didn’t see anything wrong in the marriage.  I tried everything in my power to save it.  At the end, I knew that there was one thing I needed to hear, to help me stay, and when every therapist I consulted recommended divorce, I slipped into hopelessness and despair, and called it irreconcilable antipathy.  I carefully studied the meanings of antipathy:

1.  a natural, basic, or habitual repugnance; aversion.

2. an instinctive contrariety or opposition in feeling.

3. an object of natural aversion or habitual dislike.

The situation certainly felt irreconcilable to me, and I certainly had an aversion in his presence.  When a Bahá’í I trusted suggested that it might be God’s will for me to divorce, I finally consulted the Local Spiritual Assembly for a year of patience, and the marriage ultimately ended in divorce.  Years later, I heard the one thing that might have kept me in my marriage.  It was the idea that marriage is like the seasons.  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá describes it well:

At one time it is the season of spring; at another it is the season of autumn; and again it is the season of summer or the season of winter.  In the spring there are the clouds which send down the precious rain, the musk-scented breezes and life-giving zephyrs; the air is perfectly temperate, the rain falls, the sun shines, the fecundating wind wafts the clouds, the world is renewed, and the breath of life appears in plants, in animals and in men. Earthly beings pass from one condition to another. All things are clothed in new garments, and the black earth is covered with herbage; mountains and plains are adorned with verdure; trees bear leaves and blossoms; gardens bring forth flowers and fragrant herbs. The world becomes another world, and it attains to a life-giving spirit. The earth was a lifeless body; it finds a new spirit, and produces endless beauty, grace and freshness. Thus the spring is the cause of new life and infuses a new spirit.  Afterward comes the summer, when the heat increases, and growth and development attain their greatest power. The energy of life in the vegetable kingdom reaches to the degree of perfection, the fruit appears, and the time of harvest ripens; a seed has become a sheaf, and the food is stored for winter. Afterward comes tumultuous autumn when unwholesome and sterile winds blow; it is the season of sickness, when all things are withered, and the balmy air is vitiated. The breezes of spring are changed to autumn winds; the fertile green trees have become withered and bare; flowers and fragrant herbs fade away; the beautiful garden becomes a dustheap. Following this comes the season of winter, with cold and tempests. It snows, rains, hails, storms, thunders and lightens, freezes and congeals; all plants die, and animals languish and are wretched.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, p. 73-74)

This is where my marriage ended.  It was clearly winter and everything was dead and lifeless.  I don’t think I’m alone here!  Who wants to stay in such a cold and bleak environment, when it looks like there is no hope?  Most of us (myself included), forget that:

When this state is reached, again a new life-giving spring returns, and the cycle is renewed. The season of spring with its hosts of freshness and beauty spreads its tent on the plains and mountains with great pomp and magnificence. A second time the form of the creatures is renewed, and the creation of beings begins afresh; bodies grow and develop, the plains and wildernesses become green and fertile, trees bring forth blossoms, and the spring of last year returns in the utmost fullness and glory. Such is, and such ought to be, the cycle and succession of existence. Such is the cycle and revolution of the material world.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, p. 73-74)

Another thing to remember is that the transition from winter to spring is also very ugly – as the snow melts and everything becomes muddy, it’s hard to remember that new life is soon to come.

I think that staying in a marriage through this time helps us develop many virtues, including:

Patience:

Were it not for calamity, how would the sun of Thy patience shine, O Light of the worlds?  Lament not because of the wicked. Thou wert created to bear and endure, O Patience of the worlds.  (Bahá’u'lláh, Fire Tablet, Baha’i Prayers, p. 217)

He, verily, rewardeth beyond measure them that endure with patience.  (Baha’u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, p. 71)

I think what Baha’u'llah is telling us here is that he created us to “bear and endure” and when we endure whatever life throws at us with patience, our rewards will be immense.  Short-term pain for long-term gain!

‘Abdu’l-Bahá understands how difficult it might be for some of us to have patience, particularly when we’ve been raised with poor role models ourselves:

For example, you see that children born from a weak and feeble father and mother will naturally have a feeble constitution and weak nerves; they will be afflicted, and will have neither patience, nor endurance, nor resolution, nor perseverance, and will be hasty; for the children inherit the weakness and debility of their parents.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i World Faith, p. 319)

This isn’t a justification for not having patience, but a way to be patient with ourselves when we haven’t been patient in the past, and something to overcome now that we know it.

Long Suffering:

The concept of “long suffering” is not one that is currently popular in our society, or in the abuse recovery field, so here are some quotes you might not have seen:

Bahá’u'lláh has clearly said in His Tablets that if you have an enemy, consider him not as an enemy. Do not simply be long-suffering; nay, rather, love him. Your treatment of him should be that which is becoming to lovers. Do not even say that he is your enemy. Do not see any enemies. Though he be your murderer, see no enemy. Look upon him with the eye of friendship.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 267)

If you’re looking for a role model of long-suffering you might want to read about the life of Bahiyyih Khanum.  The Universal House of Justice tells us:

Her meekness, her unassuming nature, the purity of her soul, the sensitivity of her heart, the calmness of her demeanour, her patience and long-suffering in trials, and above all, her unshakeable faith, her tenderness and love, and the spirit of self-renunciation which she evinced throughout her blessed life, are outstanding characteristics that we can well emulate.  (Universal House of Justice, Messages 1963 to 1986, p. 557)

Here’s a prayer you can say to help acquire the virtues of patience and long-suffering:

I beseech Thee, O my Lord, by the sighs of Thy lovers throughout the world, and by their lamentation in their remoteness from the court of Thy presence, and by the blood that hath been shed for love of Thee, and by the hearts that have melted in Thy path, to protect Thy loved ones from the cruelty of such as have remained unaware of the mysteries of Thy Name, the Unconstrained. Assist them, O my Lord, by Thy power that hath prevailed over all things, and aid them to be patient and long-suffering.   Thou art the All-Powerful, the Almighty, the All-Bountiful. No God is there but Thee, the Generous, the Lord of grace abounding.  (Baha’u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 35-36)

Tolerance:

Be mindful that you do not consider him as an enemy and simply tolerate him, for that is but stratagem and hypocrisy. To consider a man your enemy and love him is hypocrisy. This is not becoming of any soul. You must behold him as a friend. You must treat him well. This is right.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 267)

Resignation:

Resignation is another virtue which is not very popular in today’s society but helps strengthen marriages.  Here are some quotes you may not have seen:

Such hath been the patience, the calm, the resignation and contentment of this people that they have become the exponents of justice, and so great hath been their forbearance, that they have suffered themselves to be killed rather than kill, and this notwithstanding that these whom the world hath wronged have endured tribulations the like of which the history of the world hath never recorded, nor the eyes of any nation witnessed. What is it that could have induced them to reconcile themselves to these grievous trials, and to refuse to put forth a hand to repel them? What could have caused such resignation and serenity? The true cause is to be found in the ban which the Pen of Glory hath, day and night, chosen to impose, and in Our assumption of the reins of authority, through the power and might of Him Who is the Lord of all mankind.  (Baha’u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 74-75)

They that yearn for the abode of the Beloved, they that circle round the sanctuary of the Desired One, are not apprehensive of trials and adversities, nor do they flee away from that which is ordained by God. They receive their portion from the ocean of resignation and drink their fill from the soft-flowing stream of His mercy. They would not surrender the good-pleasure of the Friend in exchange for the kingdom of both worlds, nor would they barter that which the Well-Beloved hath decreed in return for dominion over the realms of the infinite. They would eagerly drink the venom of woe as if it were the water of life and would drain deadly poison to its bitter dregs just as a sweet and life-giving draught. In the arid wastes of desolation they are stirred with enthusiasm through the remembrance of the Friend, and in the dreary wilds of adversity they are eager and impatient to offer themselves as a sacrifice. Unhesitatingly have they renounced their lives and directed their steps towards the abode of the Best Beloved. They have closed their eyes to the world and fixed their gaze upon the beauteous countenance of the Friend, cherishing no desire but the presence of the loved One and seeking no attainment save reunion with Him. They fly with the feathers of trust in God and soar with the wings of adherence unto His Will. In their estimation a blood-shedding blade is more desirable than finest silk and a piercing dart more acceptable than mother’s milk.  (Baha’u'llah, Fire and Light, p. 11)

The abuse recovery model suggests that there is something wrong with spouses who fall back into love, forgiveness and mercy, after every one of their husband’s outbursts, as though it was part of the problem.  Unfortunately this is where they differ from the standards of the Faith.  Here are some quotes which might help you think of it differently:

All these purified hearts and sanctified souls hastened with perfect resignation to the call of destiny. During occasions of complaint, nothing proceeded from them except thanksgiving, and in time of affliction, only submission was visible. It is an evident fact how much hatred, animosity and enmity the people of the earth entertained toward these companions, for they considered tormenting and oppressing these holy ideal countenances conducive to prosperity, salvation and everlasting success and gain . . . Notwithstanding all their sufferings and injuries, they became the objects of the curses of the people and the subject of censure by all the servants. It seemed as if patience originated in the world of existence from their self-restraint, and faithfulness appeared in the regions of the earth from their actions.  (Compilations, Baha’i Scriptures, p. 61)

This suggests that no matter what happens to us, we need to be resigned and not complain; we need to thank God and submit to His decree; we need to realize that if we can acquire these virtues, it will lead to prosperity, salvation and everlasting gain.

The following quote gives us some practical tools we can use:

Those, however, who have been trained and educated in the school of God, even when coming to such a pass, are resignation itself, and to the brutal aggressor they are as the living waters of Heaven. They are rivers of pure mercy and peace. Though powerful and well able to defend themselves, they never raise a hand to strike, nor do they open their lips to protest. They confront the others’ taunts and curses with prayers that God will forgive them, and their reply to the wounds of bullet and sword is to offer milk and honey. They kiss the murderer’s hand; as intoxicated lovers, they drain the martyr’s cup.  (Compilations, Bahiyyih Khanum, p. 165)

They give us a standard to work towards:

They that yearn for the abode of the Beloved, they that circle round the sanctuary of the Desired One, are not apprehensive of trials and adversities, nor do they flee away from that which is ordained by God. They receive their portion from the ocean of resignation and drink their fill from the soft-flowing stream of His mercy. They would not surrender the good-pleasure of the Friend in exchange for the kingdom of both worlds, nor would they barter that which the Well-Beloved hath decreed in return for dominion over the realms of the infinite. They would eagerly drink the venom of woe as if it were the water of life and would drain deadly poison to its bitter dregs just as a sweet and life-giving draught. In the arid wastes of desolation they are stirred with enthusiasm through the remembrance of the Friend, and in the dreary wilds of adversity they are eager and impatient to offer themselves as a sacrifice. Unhesitatingly have they renounced their lives and directed their steps towards the abode of the Best Beloved. They have closed their eyes to the world and fixed their gaze upon the beauteous countenance of the Friend, cherishing no desire but the presence of the loved One and seeking no attainment save reunion with Him. They fly with the feathers of trust in God, and soar with the wings of adherence unto His Will. In their estimation a blood-shedding blade is more desirable than finest silk and a piercing dart more acceptable than mother’s milk.  (Baha’u'llah, Fire and Light, p. 11)

This is a tough standard, indeed!  It suggests even if your life is being poisoned by someone’s behaviour; even if your marriage is desolate; even if the abuse hurts as much as a piercing dart, God still wants us to change our attitude to one of resignation, offering up our pain as a sacrifice, and looking to God for mercy.

Even in moments of catastrophe, we are to attain patience, resignation and submission:

O ye Cohorts of God! In the moment of catastrophe, find ye patience, resignation and submission.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdu’l-Bahá v1, p. 45)

God wants us to be patient, and to not complain about our suffering.

Blessed are the steadfastly enduring, they that are patient under ills and hardships, who lament not over anything that befalleth them, and who tread the path of resignation.  (Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 129)

We are to submit ourselves without complaining, so that others won’t even know that anything is wrong:

However, relying upon God, we conducted ourselves with the utmost patience and submission, resignation and calmness; so much that if one did not know anything about these matters, he would have thought that we were in perfect ease of soul, enjoying the tranquility of heart mind, and were engaged in happiness and felicity.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdu’l-Bahá v1, p. 45)

He wants us to detach ourselves from others, to resign ourselves to whatever happens without talking about our pain; without exalting ourselves over the person who is hurting us.

That seeker must, at all times, put his trust in God, must renounce the peoples of the earth, must detach himself from the world of dust, and cleave unto Him Who is the Lord of Lords. He must never seek to exalt himself above any one, must wash away from the tablet of his heart every trace of pride and vain-glory, must cling unto patience and resignation, observe silence and refrain from idle talk.  (Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 264-265)

He wants us to thank Him for our tests, and submit ourselves to them.

All these stainless hearts and sanctified souls have, with absolute resignation, responded to the summons of His decree. Instead of complaining, they rendered thanks unto God, and amidst the darkness of their anguish they revealed naught but radiant acquiescence to His will.  (Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 234)

His purpose in all of this is for us to acquire a saintly character, adorned with holy and goodly deeds.

The purpose of the one true God in manifesting Himself is to summon all mankind to . . . resignation and submissiveness to the Will of God, to forbearance and kindliness . . . His object is to array every man with the mantle of a saintly character, and to adorn him with the ornament of holy and goodly deeds.  (Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 298)

He promises that if we learn how to trust His decrees, no one’s bad behaviour will ever depress his spirits, his inner life will be revived and the pain will entirely subside.

In truth were man to attain the stage of certitude in his spiritual development, no affliction could ever depress his spirits, though he would undoubtedly be influenced by reason of his human susceptibilities. Nevertheless, man’s inner being will be so revived by the breeze of divinely-ordained woes and trials that the dust of wailing and lamentation will entirely subside and the light of submissive resignation unto His Will shall shine forth like unto a radiant morn.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Fire and Light, p. 25)

Look at the lives of the martyrs for inspiration.  Many of them died at the hands of their oppressors, and accepted death willingly.  That’s the spirit we are called to attain:

In physical strength and fortitude one of these Bahá’ís could have withstood many of their enemies, but they accepted martyrdom in the spirit of complete resignation and nonresistance. Many of them died, crying out, “O Lord! Forgive them; they know not what they do. If they knew, they would not commit this wrong.” In the throes of martyrdom they willingly offered all they possessed in this life.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 384)

Again we see Bahiyyih Khanum as a role model for resignation:

That heavenly being [Bahiyyih Khanum] displayed throughout her life such evidence of glory and dignity, such manifestations of majesty and greatness, such a degree of patience and resignation as bewildered the minds and souls. In the midst of trials her radiant face bore the likeness of a sweet rose and in moments of sore tribulation she was resplendent as a brilliant candle.  (Compilations, Bahiyyih Khanum, p. 84)

Here’s an affirmation you can use to help strengthen your resignation:

Thine is the command at all times, O Thou Who art the Lord of all names; and mine is resignation and willing submission to Thy will, O Creator of the heavens!  (Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 95)

The standards set by the Faith are very high, but so are the rewards:

They that yearn for the abode of the Beloved, they that circle round the sanctuary of the Desired One, are not apprehensive of trials and adversities, nor do they flee away from that which is ordained by God. They receive their portion from the ocean of resignation and drink their fill from the soft-flowing stream of His mercy. They would not surrender the good-pleasure of the Friend in exchange for the kingdom of both worlds, nor would they barter that which the Well-Beloved hath decreed in return for dominion over the realms of the infinite. They would eagerly drink the venom of woe as if it were the water of life and would drain deadly poison to its bitter dregs just as a sweet and life-giving draught. In the arid wastes of desolation they are stirred with enthusiasm through the remembrance of the Friend, and in the dreary wilds of adversity they are eager and impatient to offer themselves as a sacrifice. Unhesitatingly have they renounced their lives and directed their steps towards the abode of the Best Beloved. They have closed their eyes to the world and fixed their gaze upon the beauteous countenance of the Friend, cherishing no desire but the presence of the loved One and seeking no attainment save reunion with Him. They fly with the feathers of trust in God. and soar with the wings of adherence unto His Will. In their estimation a blood-shedding blade is more desirable than finest silk and a piercing dart more acceptable than mother’s milk.  (Baha’u'llah, Fire and Light, p. 11)

In order to preserve a marriage to Dr. Jekyll, so that it lasts through all the worlds of God, the virtues needed the most (in addition to love and forgiveness) might include patience, resignation and long-suffering.

On the other hand, the Bahá’í Writings also say:

If a Bahá’í woman suffers abuse or is subjected to rape by her husband, she has the right to turn to the assembly for assistance and counsel, or to seek legal protection.  Such an abuse would gravely jeopardize the continuation of the marriage, and could well lead to a condition of irreconcilable antipathy.  (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 24 January, 1993)

At present the prevailing method, within the Australian community, of treating domestic violence, is to advise the couple to sepa­rate and to seek treatment from professional counseling services. It is suggested that Assemblies follow this method of treating domestic violence also. If, alternatively, the couple is counseled to remain to­gether to try and reconcile their differences, there can be no guarantee that the violence will not recur, in which case the Assembly could appear, inadvertently, to be condoning it. If the couple separate, how­ever, the role of the Assembly can then become that of providing an independent forum within which the couple can come together and try to resolve their differences.  (National Spiritual Assembly of Australia’s Policy Regarding Domestic Violence, From Australian Bahá’í Bulletin, July 1990.)

Perhaps it’s time for a year of patience.  The purpose of it is to:

During the year the couple have the responsibility of attempting to reconcile their difference, and the Assembly has the duty to help them and encourage them. (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 390)

Unfortunately most couples enter into it too late – when they have no intention of working on the marriage or the issues which led up to it falling apart.

Conclusion:

As we know, there are many seeming contradictions in the Writings. Examining them can lead to greater depth of insight and the understanding that reality is complex; some of these statements refer to different kinds of situations, or must be applied in combination. The juxtaposition of these seeming contradictions prevents us from turning the Writings into a “cookbook” with a simple recipe for every situation. These contradictions force us to engage our own minds and exercise judgment.

This quote says it nicely:

The personal transformation required for true equality will undoubtedly be difficult for men and women alike. Both must relinquish all attachment to guilt and blame and courageously assume responsibility for their own part in transforming the societies in which they live.  (Baha’i International Community, 1995 Sept 13, Role of Religion in Promoting Advancement of Women)

I’m not sure it’s the individual’s job to look for justice in a marriage, as these quotes suggest:

It should be realized that there is a distinction drawn in the Faith between the attitudes which should characterize individuals in their relationship to other people, namely, loving forgiveness, forbearance, and concern with one’s own sins, not the sins of others, and those attitudes which should be shown by the Spiritual Assemblies, whose duty is to administer the law of God with Justice.  (Universal House of Justice, Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1968-1973, p. 110)

Love is the standard which must govern the conduct of one believer towards another. The administrative order does not change this, but unfortunately sometimes the friends confuse the two, and try to be a whole spiritual assembly,  –  with the discipline and justice and impartiality that body must show,  –  to each other, instead of being forgiving, loving and patient to each other as individuals.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 403)

The greatest need it seems everywhere inside the Cause is to impress upon the friends the need for love among them. There is a tendency to mix up the functions of the Administration and try to apply it in individual relationships, which is abortive, because the Assembly is a nascent House of Justice and is supposed to administer, according to the Teachings, the affairs of the Community. But individuals towards each other are governed by love, unity, forgiveness and a sin-covering eye. Once the friends grasp this they will get along much better, but they keep playing Spiritual Assembly to each other and expect the Assembly to behave like an individual.  (Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian, p. 41-42)

Is there hope for this marriage?  I think there is.  As Shoghi Effendi said:

Marriage problems are often very involved and subtle, and we Bahá’ís, being enlightened and progressive people, should not hesitate, if it seems necessary or desirable, to turn to science for help in such matters. If you and your husband talked over your problems — together or separately — with a good physician you might find that you can cure your own husband, or at least try to do so. (Shoghi Effendi, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 451)

By studying, understanding and applying the guidance in this posting, I think there’s hope!  What do you think?  Post your comments here:

 

 

 

 

 

  When most people marry, they hope it will be “till death do us part”, (if you’re Christian) or “through all the worlds of God” (if you’re Bahá’í). Bahá’í marriage is the commitment of the two parties one to the other, and their mutual attachment of mind and heart . . . Their purpose must [...]

 

When most people marry, they hope it will be “till death do us part”, (if you’re Christian) or “through all the worlds of God” (if you’re Bahá’í).

Bahá’í marriage is the commitment of the two parties one to the other, and their mutual attachment of mind and heart . . . Their purpose must be this: to become loving companions and comrades and at one with each other for time and eternity.   (Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 118)

In our current society, the statistics for divorce are shocking!  Some studies suggest that 50% of all marriages end in divorce; about one in four as a result of abuse of some kind, typically infidelity or physical or mental cruelty.

So what can we do to turn this around?  The Writings of the Bahá’í Faith offer a number of “checks and balances” to prevent it from happening.

Recognize that it is a “Divine Institution”:  A Bahá’í marriage is not a legally binding covenant, but a divine institution with a sacred purpose to have children.

The Bahá’í Teachings do not only encourage marital life, considering it the natural and normal way of existence for every sane, healthy and socially-conscious and responsible person, but raise marriage to the status of a Divine institution, its chief and sacred purpose being the perpetuation of the human race — which is the very flower of the entire creation — and its elevation to the true station destined for it by God.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 281)

As an institution, it’s on par with other Bahá’í institutions such as:

• Institution of the Guardianship (Shoghi Effendi)
• Administrative institutions, both elected (Universal House of Justice, National and Local Spiritual Assemblies, Bahá’í Councils) and appointed (Hands of the Cause, counsellors, auxiliary board members and their assistants)
• Mashriqu’l-Adhkar (or houses of worship), described as “one of the most vital institutions in the world”
• War (a satanic institution)
• The covenant as an institution
• Charitable and philanthropic institutions
• Temples of learning and scientific institutions
• Parliaments
• The Bahá’í Fund and Huqúqu’lláh (the Right of God)
• Archives
• 19 Day Feast
• National Convention
• Summer Schools

Why is this important?  Because your marriage is one more refuge for a distraught populace; one more link in the oneness of mankind and one more servant, ministering to the needs of an ailing world!

Every institution of this Divinely created Order is one more refuge for a distraught populace; every soul illumined by the light of the sacred Message is one more link in the oneness of mankind, one more servant ministering to the needs of an ailing world.  (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 327)

If we truly understand the sacred nature and purpose, we would approach marriage differently.

Chastity before marriage:  While Bahá’í marriage is both physical and spiritual, the primary goal is for each person to improve the spiritual life of the other, so they can enjoy everlasting unity through all the worlds of God:

The true marriage of Bahá’ís is this, that husband and wife should be united both physically and spiritually, that they may ever improve the spiritual life of each other, and may enjoy everlasting unity throughout all the worlds of God. This is Bahá’í marriage.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 118)

For this reason, the standard is very high, the punishments are severe and the rewards are very great:

Chastity should be strictly practised by both sexes, not only because it is in itself highly commendable ethically, but also due to its being the only way to a happy and successful marital life . . . and whoso violates this rule will not only be responsible to God, but will incur the necessary punishment from society.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 344-345)

Chastity is “the only way to a happy and successful marital life”.  Without it, the marriage is doomed from the start.

If you feel pressured into having sex, keep this advice in mind:

Expect not that they who violate the ordinances of God will be trustworthy or sincere in the faith they profess. Avoid them, and preserve strict guard over thyself, lest their devices and mischief hurt thee. Turn away from them, and fix thy gaze upon God, thy Lord, the All-Glorious, the Most Bountiful.   (Baha’u'llah, The Proclamation of Baha’u'llah, p. 47)

Assess each other’s character:  Since there is a correlation between growing up in an abusive home to growing up to become an abuser, part of your assessment should be to examine the intergenerational cycles of violence in your partner’s family.  See how they treat their parents, siblings, and co-workers.

Bahá’í marriage is union and cordial affection between the two parties. They must, however, exercise the utmost care and become acquainted with each other’s character.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í Prayers, p. 103)

Parental Consent is required in order to insure unity in the family.  Parents can often see fatal flaws in a budding relationship better than those who are “in lust”.

As for the question regarding marriage under the Law of God: first thou must choose one who is pleasing to thee, and then the matter is subject to the consent of father and mother.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 118)

Payment of a Dowry:  Although this is not incumbent on the Bahá’ís in the west yet, it’s still a law in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, and should be considered as a way to help women escape abusive situations, since it provides her with a “nest egg” of her own.

No marriage may be contracted without payment of a dowry . . . to be paid by the bridegroom to the bride. It is fixed at 19 mithqals of pure gold for city-dwellers, and 19 mithqals of silver for village-dwellers (see note 94) . . . The law of Bahá’u'lláh . . . converts the dowry into a symbolic act whereby the bridegroom presents a gift of a certain limited value to the bride . . . The purpose is to promote the comfort of all, and to bring about concord and union among the people.  (Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 209)

Bahá’í Marriage Vow:  Both partners in a marriage are required to repeat the same verse:

For men: “We will all, verily, abide by the Will of God.” For women: “We will all, verily, abide by the Will of God.”  (Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 105)

This is not just a verse to be said at the time of marriage, but a prescription for living.  It reminds both partners to always turn to God first, before making any decision or before consulting with each other.  This verse creates a bond which becomes a covenant for the marriage:

This eternal bond should be made secure by a firm covenant, and the intention should be to foster harmony, fellowship and unity and to attain everlasting life.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í Prayers, p. 103)

 The Bahá’í Standard of Marriage:  The Bahá’í Writings are full of wonderful descriptions about the ideal to strive towards; the rewards for doing so; and the punishments for not.  This is a great assistance to couples, who can use it to come back to with every interaction and every decision they make together.  This is one of my favorites:

The Lord, peerless is He, hath made woman and man to abide with each other in the closest companionship, and to be even as a single soul. They are two helpmates, two intimate friends, who should be concerned about the welfare of each other.  If they live thus, they will pass through this world with perfect contentment, bliss, and peace of heart, and become the object of divine grace and favour in the Kingdom of heaven. But if they do other than this, they will live out their lives in great bitterness, longing at every moment for death, and will be shamefaced in the heavenly realm.  Strive, then, to abide, heart and soul, with each other as two doves in the nest, for this is to be blessed in both worlds. (Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 122)

Baha’u'llah refers to marriage as a fortress for well-being and salvation:

Bahá’u'lláh, in one of His Tablets, states that God, in establishing this law, has made marriage “a fortress for well-being and salvation”.  (Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 205)

A condition of this fortress is that you are no longer two separate people, but one:

Now you two are no longer two, but one. Bahá’u'lláh’s wish is that all men be of one mind and consider themselves of one great household, that the mind of mankind be not divided against itself.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Abdu’l-Bahá in London, p. 78)

Have you ever taken a string and tried to break it?  It can break fairly easily with enough pressure, but if you take the strings and braid them into rope, it’s a lot harder.  Everything a couple says and does needs to be mindful of their place in the fortress, with the intention of building it up and making it stronger.  If you are busy building, you won’t have time to tear it down.

Another analogy used for marriages is this:

In this glorious [Bahá’í] Cause the life of a married couple should resemble the life of the angels in heaven—a life full of joy and spiritual delight, a life of unity and concord, a friendship both mental and physical. (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Compilation of Compilations, Vol. I, p. 397)

Before a couple even marries, they should be discussing these quotes as a part of getting to know each other’s character.  If they are not willing to adhere to these standards, it’s better to look for someone who will.  We often think that our love will change the other person, but it’s much more likely that the “red flags” you notice when you’re going out together, will stay with the person throughout the marriage.

Understanding the importance of its Spiritual Nature:  Many people agree to marry based on a mutual physical attraction to each other, which, while important, is not the most important.

Bahá’u'lláh has urged marriage upon all people as the natural and rightful way of life. He has also, however, placed strong emphasis on its spiritual nature, which, while in no way precluding a normal physical life, is the most essential aspect of marriage. That two people should live their lives in love and harmony is of far greater importance than that they should be consumed with passion for each other. The one is a great rock of strength on which to learn in time of need; the other a purely temporary thing which may at any time die out.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 378-379)

Confidentiality:  So much damage in a marriage is done by gossip and backbiting.  If an injured party “dumps” their frustration on someone else, venting their trouble and frustration, it causes alienation and estrangement, which compounds the problems.

If any soul speak ill of an absent one, the only result will clearly be this: he will dampen the zeal of the friends and tend to make them indifferent. For backbiting is divisive, it is the leading cause among the friends of a disposition to withdraw. (‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Selections From The Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, pp. 230-231)

While it is possible to discuss problems without naming names;

You ask in your letter for guidance on the implications of the prohibitions on backbiting and more specifically whether, in moments of anger or depression, the believer is permitted to turn to his friends to unburden his soul and discuss his problem in human relations. Normally, it is possible to describe the situation surrounding a problem and seek help and advice in resolving it, without necessarily mentioning names. The individual believer should seek to do this, whether he is consulting a friend, Bahá’í or non-Bahá’í, or whether the friend is consulting him.  (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 90)

It’s also important to keep certain matters confidential:

Every institution in the Faith has certain matters which it considers should be kept confidential, and any member who is privy to such confidential information is obliged to preserve the confidentiality within the institution where he learned it. Such matters, however, are but a small portion of the business of any Bahá’í institution. Most subjects dealt with are of common interest and can be discussed openly with anyone. Where no confidentiality is involved the institutions must strive to avoid the stifling atmosphere of secrecy; on the other hand, every believer mist know that he can confide a personal problem to an institution of the Faith, with the assurance that knowledge of the matter will remain confidential.  (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 334)

Understanding the cycles:  Sometimes I find quotes like this confusing:

Hold thy husband dear and always show forth an amiable temper towards him, no matter how ill tempered he may be. Even if thy kindness maketh him more bitter, manifest thou more kindliness, more tenderness, be more loving and tolerate his cruel actions and ill-treatment.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Lights of Guidance, p. 226)

They make me think that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wants us to stay in abusive situations.  During my year of waiting, I was looking for a reason to stay in my marriage, beyond the fact that divorce is discouraged in the Writings.  I knew that there was one thing I needed to hear, and I didn’t hear it till many years later.  It was the concept that marriages go through cycles, just like the seasons.  Most people in difficult spots in their marriage are in the middle of winter; and assume it will always stay like that, forgetting that winter is followed by spring.  If I was able to understand this, I would have been able to hold on.

Before the coming of the spring, the earth looks as if dead and lifeless, but when it appears, all the world seems to spring into life and brightness  – into a new existence of beauty and joy. All nature is clad in fresh green, the grass springs up, the leaves bud, and the trees are covered with blossoms. But the spring passes, and then comes the summer, in which the promise of the spring is fulfilled; the spring blossoms ripen into fruit, and the fields are covered with yellow grain; the result of the new life of the spring is manifested. Then comes the autumn, in which the life of the spring and summer begins slowly to fade, and finally winter comes round, and the life of the earth seems to be completely extinct — dead. (Compilations, Baha’i Prayers 9, p. 57)

Behaviour inside the Marriage:  We are given specific guidance on how to treat our spouses:

As to thy respected husband: it is incumbent upon thee to treat him with great kindness, to consider his wishes and be conciliatory with him at all times, till he seeth that because thou hast directed thyself toward the Kingdom of God, thy tenderness for him and thy love for God have but increased, as well as thy concern for his wishes under all conditions.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Selected Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 122)

Putting God between you and your spouse:

If any differences arise amongst you, behold Me standing before your face, and overlook the faults of one another for My name’s sake and as a token of your love for My manifest and resplendent Cause.  (Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 315)

Using ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as a role model:

He feels you should by all means show your husband the greatest love and sympathy; if we are ever in any doubts as to how we should conduct ourselves as Bahá’ís we should think of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and study His life and ask ourselves what would He have done, for He is our perfect example in every way. And you know how tender He was, and how His affection and kindness shone like sunlight on everyone. “Your husband and your child have a right to your love, and give you a wonderful opportunity of demonstrating your faith in the Cause.” “Also you should pray to Bahá’u'lláh to help unite you with your husband and make your home a true and happy home.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 226)

Consultation:

Bahá’u'lláh also stressed the importance of consultation. We should not think this worthwhile method of seeking solutions is confined to the administrative institutions of the Cause. Family consultation employing full and frank discussion, and animated by awareness of the need for moderation and balance, can be the panacea for domestic conflict. Wives should not attempt to dominate their husbands, nor husbands their wives.  (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453) You have asked, however, for specific rules of conduct to govern the relationships of husbands and wives . . . If, God forbid, they fail to agree, and their disagreement leads to estrangement, they should seek counsel from those they trust and in whose sincerity and sound judgement they have confidence, in order to preserve and strengthen their ties as a united family.  (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 456)

The House of Justice feels it most essential for your husband and you to understand that marriage can be a source of well-being, conveying a sense of security and spiritual happiness. However, it is not something that just happens. For marriage to become a haven of contentment it requires the cooperation of the marriage partners themselves, and the assistance of their families. You mention your concern over your eldest daughter. It is suggested that you include her and perhaps your younger children in family consultations. As Bahá’ís we understand the importance of the consultative process and we should not feel it is to be used only by the Spiritual Assemblies.    (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453)

Noting that you and your husband have consulted about your family problems with your Spiritual Assembly but did not receive any advice, and also discussed your situation with a family counsellor without success, the House of Justice feels it most essential for your husband and you to understand that marriage can be a source of well-being, conveying a sense of security and spiritual happiness. However, it is not something that just happens. For marriage to become a haven of contentment it requires the cooperation of the marriage partners themselves, and the assistance of their families. You mention your concern over your eldest daughter. It is suggested that you include her and perhaps your younger children in family consultations. As Bahá’ís we understand the importance of the consultative process and we should not feel it is to be used only by the Spiritual Assemblies.    (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453)

Consulting with Assemblies:

The believers should learn to turn more often to their Assemblies for advice and help and at an earlier date, and the Assemblies, on the other hand, should act with more vigilance and a greater sense of community responsibility towards every situation.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 80)

If a Bahá’í woman suffers abuse or is subjected to rape by her husband, she has the right to turn to the assembly for assistance and counsel, or to seek legal protection.  Such an abuse would gravely jeopardize the continuation of the marriage, and could well lead to a condition of irreconcilable antipathy.  (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 24 January, 1993)

Consulting with the Universal House of Justice:

It’s very easy for Bahá’ís who need clarification from the highest level of authority in the Faith, to contact the Universal House of Justice directly, and many Baha’is take great comfort in hearing their response.  You can write to them for advice or to ask for prayers to be said on your behalf at the Shrines, at PO Box 155 Haifa, Israel 31001 Israel or email them at:  secretariat@bwc.org

Consulting Marriage Counsellors:

The House of Justice is pleased to learn from your letter that both you and your husband are receiving professional therapy, in addition to the counselling you are receiving from your Local Spiritual Assembly.  (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 22 July, 1987)

 Balancing service with strengthening your home life:

In considering the problems that you and your wife are experiencing, the House of Justice points out that the unity of your family should take priority over any other consideration. Bahá’u'lláh came to bring unity to the world, and a fundamental unity is that of the family. Therefore, we must believe that the Faith is intended to strengthen the family, not weaken it. For example, service to the Cause should not produce neglect of the family. It is important for you to arrange your time so that your family life is harmonious and your household receives the attention it requires.  (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453)

Surely Shoghi Effendi would like to see you and the other friends give their whole time and energy to the Cause, for we are in great need for competent workers, but the home is an institution that Bahá’u'lláh has come to strengthen and not to weaken. Many unfortunate things have happened in Bahá’í homes just for neglecting this point. Serve the Cause but also remember your duties towards your home. It is for you to find the balance and see that neither makes you neglect the other. We would have many more husbands in the Cause were the wives more thoughtful and moderate in their Bahá’í activities.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 220)

Year of Waiting:  Baha’u'llah has given us a wonderful tool for taking a “time out” from your marriage to work on the issues that could lead to divorce.  It’s a safety valve, which, when used in a timely fashion, could give an abusive partner time away to work on the issues contributing to being abusive; and the spouse to work on their co-dependent issues.

The Spiritual Assembly should always be concerned that the believers in its community are being deepened in their understanding of the Bahá’í concept of marriage, especially the young people, so that the very thought of divorce will be abhorrent to them . . . its first thought and action should be to reconcile the couple and to ensure that they know the Bahá’í teachings on the matter. God willing, the Assembly will be successful and no year of waiting need be started . . . During the year the couple have the responsibility of attempting to reconcile their difference, and the Assembly has the duty to help them and encourage them. (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 390)

It always seems a pity that most couples go to their Assemblies to ask for a year of waiting when they’ve already decided to divorce, instead of using the time to sincerely work on the issues that led to this point.

Divorce:  While divorce is highly discouraged in the Faith, it is allowable only if one or both partners reach a stage of “irreconcilable antipathy”.  This could happen in cases of abuse:

If a Bahá’í woman suffers abuse or is subjected to rape by her husband, she has the right to turn to the assembly for assistance and counsel, or to seek legal protection.  Such an abuse would gravely jeopardize the continuation of the marriage, and could well lead to a condition of irreconcilable antipathy.  (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 24 January, 1993)

 Conclusion:

When there is spousal abuse in the marriage, the feelings of one partner – maybe both – break. Those broken feelings eat away at the foundation of the fortress.  Once you’re in a marriage it’s much more difficult to get out, so it’s important to make sure that all of these tools are in place before going ahead with a marriage.   Being truthful with yourself about problems in any of these areas is a key.

Can you think of any others?  Do you have a story to contribute?  Post your comments here:

 

I had a call the other day from a woman whose 32 year old daughter had moved away from the family home for the first time, a year or two before.  Her daughter had accused the mother of being too controlling (calling and texting her several times a day, telling her what she should do).  [...]

I had a call the other day from a woman whose 32 year old daughter had moved away from the family home for the first time, a year or two before.  Her daughter had accused the mother of being too controlling (calling and texting her several times a day, telling her what she should do).  She was making life choices the mother disagreed with, and she wondered if I would “straighten her daughter out” for her!  She’d paid for counselling for the daughter several times before and the daughter had quit because it wasn’t working for her.  She hoped that this time it would be different because I was a Bahá’í!  No, no, no, and no!

The first thing she had to realize is that while parents have a great responsibility for the education of their children . . .

In this New Cycle, education and training are recorded in the Book of God as obligatory and not voluntary. That is, it is enjoined upon the father and mother, as a duty, to strive with all effort to train the daughter and the son, to nurse them from the breast of knowledge and to rear them in the bosom of sciences and arts. (Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i World Faith, p. 398-399)

It’s the only place in the Writings I can find which actually refers to God as a “stern Lord”:

Should they neglect this matter, they shall be held responsible and worthy of reproach in the presence of the stern Lord.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i World Faith, p. 398-399)

With that being said, the parents’ role is finished once the child reaches the age of 15.

Up to the age of 15 years, children are under the direction of their parents.  (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 154)

From that point on, the child is responsible to God for the choices they make.

The importance of attaining spiritual maturity at the age of fifteen is that it marks that point in life at which the believer takes firmly into his own hands the responsibility for his spiritual destiny. (Universal House of Justice, Messages of the Universal House of Justice, 426.2)

We might think that our 15 year old child is not mature enough to assume this responsibility, but Shoghi Effendi tells us:

It matters not whether they mature later in one country than in another. The command of Bahá’u'lláh is universal, irrespective of any variance in the age of maturity in different countries and among different peoples.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 233)

The House of Justice gives further guidance:

As important as it is for parents to exercise their moral authority in assisting the youth not to make unwise decisions, it is also incumbent on the parents as Bahá’ís to give due consideration to the significance of the spiritual impact of the Faith upon the youth and recognize that the youth must have some latitude to respond to the stirring of their hearts and souls, since they, beginning at the age of 15, must assume serious spiritual obligations and duties and are themselves alone ultimately responsible to God for the progress of their own souls. The capacity for mature thinking on the part of youth differs from one to the other and according to age; some attain this ability earlier than others; for some it is delayed. Parents are generally in a position to judge these matters more accurately than others and must consider them in their attempt to guide the youth in their families, but the parents must strive to do so in such a way as not to stifle their children’s sense of spiritual responsibility.  (The Universal House of Justice, 1992 Oct 28, Manner of Appealing to Youth)

There’s only one parental role after the age of 15, and that’s of giving consent to marriage.

It hath been laid down in the Bayan that marriage is dependent upon the consent of both parties.  Desiring to establish love, unity and harmony amidst Our servants, We have conditioned it, once the couple’s wish is known, upon the permission of their parents, lest enmity and rancour should arise amongst them.  (Bahá’u'lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas, p. 42)

Even then, the parent can’t interfere until the formal request for consent is given.

As to the question of marriage, according to the law of God: First you must select one, and then it depends on the consent of the father and mother. Before your selection they have no right of interference.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i World Faith, p. 372)

The second thing she needed to realize is that the tension between parents and children is often the catalyst the adult-child needs to break free and start their own lives.  Hopefully, they will continue to make good choices after they leave home; but if the parent is too controlling, the adult-child needs to push back in order to assume their autonomy.  Sometimes this can take the form of acting out – the pendulum of behavior swings from one extreme to another, before coming back to centre, several years later.  It’s an important part of our spiritual growth, as the House explains, so we don’t need to be alarmed by it:

A titanic, a spiritual struggle, unparalleled in its magnitude yet unspeakably glorious in its ultimate consequences, is being waged as a result of these opposing tendencies, in this age of transition through which the organized community of the followers of Bahá’u'lláh and mankind as a whole are passing.  (The Universal House of Justice, Messages 1963 to 1986, p. 193)

We need to understand that:

Many will be the setbacks, the shocks and the disturbances, which the commotions of a convulsive age must produce; yet no force, however violent and world-wide in its range and catastrophic in its immediate consequences, can either halt these processes or deflect their appointed course. (Shoghi Effendi, Chronology of Major Letters of the Guardian)

And take comfort in the fact that it’s a privilege to guard them:

How great, then, the privilege, and how staggering the responsibility, of those who are destined to guard over them and to bring them eventually to full fruition.  (Shoghi Effendi, Chronology of Major Letters of the Guardian)

And the only way we can do it, is to focus on our own development, and align ourselves with the Will of God:

Nothing short of utter, of continuous consecration to His Will and Purpose can enable them to fulfil their high destiny.  (Shoghi Effendi, Chronology of Major Letters of the Guardian)

However, this can be a heartbreaking time for a parent, especially a Bahá’í parent, if we see our children doing things so far removed from the Teachings.  But there is absolutely nothing we can do except pray for them, imploring God to intercede and to protect them from violent tests.  Here is a prayer we can say:

O Lord! Make this youth radiant, and confer Thy bounty upon this poor creature. Bestow upon him knowledge, grant him added strength at the break of every morn and guard him within the shelter of Thy protection so that he may be freed from error, may devote himself to the service of Thy Cause, may guide the wayward, lead the hapless, free the captives and awaken the heedless, that all may be blessed with Thy remembrance and praise. Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i Prayers, p. 37-38)

And then we have to be patient!  This is a time in our lives when we develop patience and long-suffering!  Reading books about the Greatest Holy Leaf might be helpful, since she was a real role model for a life of long-suffering!

The vesture that best befits us in this world is the vesture of patience and submission, and the most meritorious of all deeds is to commit our affairs into His hands and to surrender ourselves to His Will. Therefore, it behoves that leaf to take fast hold on the handle of resignation and radiant acquiescence and to strictly adhere to the cord of patience and long-suffering.  (Bahiyyih Khanum, p. 97)

We must struggle with such promptings from within, setting our sights on the lofty example set by the Greatest Holy Leaf who, throughout a life replete with severe tests, chose not to take offence at the actions or lack of actions of other souls and, with full and radiant heart, continued to bestow on them love and encouragement.  (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 25 October, 1994)

Everything happens in its own proper time.

There is one season to harrow the ground, another season to scatter the seeds, still another season to irrigate the fields and still an­other to harvest the crop. We must attend to these various kinds of activities in their proper seasons in order to become successful.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Consultation, p. 7.)

I met a second-generation Bahá’í man at a conference one time.  He was in his late 60’s.  He told me that when he left home, he broke all the Bahá’í laws.  He became an alcoholic, drug dealer, gambler and sex-addict.  He spent over 40 years breaking his mother’s heart before he finally “hit bottom”.  But he had his Bahá’í background to come back to.  When he finally got clean and sober, he turned back to Baha’u'llah, and of course, was forgiven his sins, and he became an active Bahá’í from that point forward.

This isn’t an uncommon phenomenon.  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells us:

A father and mother endure the greatest troubles and hardships for their children; and often when the children have reached the age of maturity, the parents pass on to the other world. Rarely does it happen that a father and mother in this world see the reward of the care and trouble they have undergone for their children.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i World Faith, p. 329)

The problem is compounded when children grow up in a culture different from their parents (due to immigration or pioneering).  These children assimilate the values of the new culture and in fact become “a new race”.  In these cases, parents must have a hundred times more consideration of the needs of their children, as Shoghi Effendi tells us:

It is difficult for the friends always to remember that in matter[s] where race enters, a hundred times more consideration and wisdom in handling situations is necessary than when an issue is not complicated by this factor.  (Shoghi Effendi, Pupil of the Eye, p. 87).

As the following quote suggests, the age of maturity is highly significant:

The significance of the age of maturity, however, goes far beyond the fulfilment of responsibilities. The following extract from a Tablet of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá links the attainment of maturity with the deepening of one’s understanding and comprehension of the realities of life, and the enhancement of one’s very capacity for understanding:

Know thou that before maturity man liveth from day to day and comprehendeth only such matters as are superficial and outwardly obvious. However, when he cometh of age he understandeth the realities of things and the inner truths. Indeed, in his comprehension, his feelings, his deductions and his discoveries, every day of his life after maturity is equal to a year before it.  (Universal House of Justice, Messages of the Universal House of Justice, 426.3-3a)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have a “rite of passage” for our children at age 15?  When we formally pass off the baton of responsibility?

I wanted to create a “baton passing” activity for my son when he turned 15.  During his childhood, whenever he questioned the laws, or the way I interpreted them in my parenting, I told him that it was my job to make the decisions till he reached 15 and after that it was his job.  He took that comment seriously, and at age 15 he not only rejected my idea of doing something formal, he also refused to sign his card.  I knew that he hadn’t connected to Baha’u'llah on his own, no matter how erudite and convincing his consultations were, so I couldn’t have accepted his card even if he had signed it.  His reason was that he wasn’t ready to obey the laws.  He didn’t necessarily intend to break them, but he knew he wasn’t ready to be bound by them either.  And over time, he did go astray, further from the Faith than this mother would have wanted for him.  And of course, I blamed myself (it’s always the mother’s fault, right?!)

In accepting the membership card, the youth affirms his belief in Bahá’u'lláh. It is important to emphasize that a Bahá’í child is not compelled to become a Bahá’í and is free to leave the Faith at any time. “If any Bahá’í finds that he does not believe in the Faith,” the Universal House of Justice has stated, “he is free to leave it . . . , and no stigma at all attaches to such an action.”  (Universal House of Justice, NSA USA – Developing Distinctive Baha’i Communities)

I had to accept that the choices our children make, are not a reflection of bad parenting.  Remember that most of Baha’u'llah’s and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s children became Covenant Breakers!

Baha’u'llah had 14 children:  at least 7 of whom became Covenant Breakers. (See God Passes By, chapter 15.)

Of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 9 children, only 4 daughters survived to adulthood and three of them became covenant breakers. (Moojan Momen, Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit:  Chapter 31 of Some Answered Questions, p. 285)

And even they were assured that God would forgive them if they repented.

It is important to note that should a Covenant-breaker recognize his mistakes, become conscious of his transgressions against the Cause of God and find the urge to repent, the Centre of the Cause, when satisfied he is sincerely repentant, will forgive his past deeds and restore his credibility and status as a Bahá’í in good standing in the community.  (Adib Taherzadeh, The Child of the Covenant, p. 240)

Another thing I told this mother was that her job was to detach from her daughter’s life and focus all of her energy on her own spiritual development.

Each of us is responsible for one life only, and that is our own. Each of us is immeasurably far from being ‘perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect’ and the task of perfecting our own life and character is one that requires all our attention, our will- power and energy.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 92)

I told her about the importance of turning her attention away from what her daughter was doing wrong, and concentrating all of her energy on “plowing her own field”:

If we allow our attention and energy to be taken up in efforts to keep others right and remedy their faults, we are wasting precious time. We are like ploughmen each of whom has his team to manage and his plough to direct, and in order to keep his furrow straight he must keep his eye on his goal and concentrate on his own task. If he looks to this side and that to see how Tom and Harry are getting on and to criticize their ploughing, then his own furrow will assuredly become crooked.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 92)

Finally I reminded her that her daughter would eventually marry and go through all the worlds of God with their husbands, so she should likewise focus her energy on her relationship with her husband, so that he too will be with her, through all the worlds of God.

In a true Bahá’í marriage the two parties must become fully united both spiritually and physically, so that they may attain eternal union throughout all the worlds of God, and improve the spiritual life of each other.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i World Faith, p. 372)

I ended the session with walking her through the 5 Steps of Prayer for Solving Problems, which focused on the question:  What can I do to focus on my own problems instead of my daughter’s?  You can find the 5 Steps of Prayer at:  http://susangammage.com/thebahaiprayers/quotepage.php?Prayers%2F5+Steps+for+Solving+Problems

While she was meditating on this question, I recited a prayer revealed by Baha’u’llah in Arabic for Jinab-i-Samandar (Shaykh Kazim Samandar), the father of the Hand of the Cause of God Tarazu’llah Samandari, to assist him in making a difficult decision.  If you find yourself in need of this prayer, you might want to use it too.

In regard to his affairs, let him repeat nineteen times:

O my God!  Thou seest me detached from everything save Thee, clinging to Thee, to guide me in my doings in that which benefits me for the Glory of Thy Cause and the Loftiness of the state of Thy servants.

Let him then reflect upon the matter and undertake whatever cometh to mind. This vehement opposition … will indeed give way to supreme prosperity.  (source unknown)

It isn’t easy to let our children go.  Certainly nothing in my life prepared me for the wrenching away of my son, but the rewards of detachment are great:

Could ye apprehend with what wonders of My munificence and bounty I have willed to entrust your souls, ye would, of a truth, rid yourselves of attachment to all created things, and would gain a true knowledge of your own selves — a knowledge which is the same as the comprehension of Mine own Being. Ye would find yourselves independent of all else but Me, and would perceive, with your inner and outer eye, and as manifest as the revelation of My effulgent Name, the seas of My loving-kindness and bounty moving within you.   (Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 326-327)

I ask God that it may become realized, and day by day, thou mayest walk more and more in the path of the Kingdom, in order that thou mayest be freed from the strangers and friends, be disengaged from attachment to the material world and be attached wholly to the divine Kingdom. At that time thou wilt behold the lights of the most great gift.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdu’l-Bahá v3, p. 545)

I’d like to end with a prayer to help detach from your children:

O my God, my Lord and my Master! I have detached myself from my kindred and have sought through Thee to become independent of all that dwell on earth and ever ready to receive that which is praiseworthy in Thy sight. Bestow on me such good as will make me independent of aught else but Thee, and grant me an ampler share of Thy boundless favors. Verily, Thou art the Lord of grace abounding.  (The Báb, Baha’i Prayers, p. 21)

 

What has helped you let go of your children?  Post your comments here:

 

 

 

 

 

I had an email from a loyal reader to this blog, who asked:  I have a daughter who is supposed to marry [someone from another religion] and initially she discussed having two marriage services as is done when there are two religions involved. Now she sent her uncle to tell us that she has dropped [...]

I had an email from a loyal reader to this blog, who asked:

 I have a daughter who is supposed to marry [someone from another religion] and initially she discussed having two marriage services as is done when there are two religions involved. Now she sent her uncle to tell us that she has dropped being a Bahá’í and she has been avoiding to come to our house though it is in the same city. Obviously we are distressed. I have tried to call her and invite her, but she keeps saying when she finds time, she will come.  What do you suggest?

I replied:

It seems to me there are several issues at play here.  One is your love for your daughter and the pain of her betrayal.  Instead of consulting with you directly, she sent her uncle, and now she avoids you entirely.  I’m sure it’s because of this pain it causes, that Baha’u'llah has told us:

 Nothing whatsoever can, in this Day, inflict a greater harm upon this Cause than . . . estrangement . . . among the loved ones of God.  (Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p.

Much though you want to remove the estrangement, you can’t do it by yourself.  It’s important for you to understand what part of this is your test and what belongs to others.  In Alcoholics Anonymous, they say this prayer, which I think is relevant to you:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

It’s important to keep in mind that there are several forces at play here:

1. Your relationship with God:  As much as you love your daughter, this has to be your primary relationship.  Concentrate your energies on strengthening this bond.

The best way to do this is to realize that God’s plans are always better than ours, so even though we think we know what might be best in this situation, God knows best.

Can humanity conceive a plan and policy better and superior to that of God? It is certain that no matter how capable man may be in origination of plan and organization of purpose, his efforts will be inadequate when compared with the divine plan and purpose; for the policy of God is perfect. Therefore, we must follow the will and plan of God.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 127)

What can you do to trust Him?  Remember the Bahá’í marriage vow:  “We will all, verily, abide by the will of God”.  I don’t know if you had a Bahá’í marriage or not, but ultimately, this is our whole purpose in life.  To know God and to worship Him is all about abiding by His will.

It’s easy, when life throws us a curveball, to get distracted and forget how to know and worship God.  Ask yourself:  are you continuing to pray and read the Writings morning and night?  Are you giving sacrificially to the fund?  Is your Right of God up to date?  Are you teaching the Faith and finding ways to be of service to others every day?

If you have weaknesses in any of these areas, there are veils between you and God that can be removed.  Focus all your attention on strengthening your relationship to God, and the pain of your daughter’s betrayal will lessen.

2.  Your relationship with your husband:  You didn’t mention if he is still part of your life, but if he is, your relationship to him has to come before your relationship with your daughter.

The House of Justice feels it most essential for your husband and you to understand that marriage can be a source of well-being, conveying a sense of security and spiritual happiness. However, it is not something that just happens. For marriage to become a haven of contentment it requires the cooperation of the marriage partners themselves, and the assistance of their families.  (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453)

In considering the problems that you and your wife are experiencing, the House of Justice points out that the unity of your family should take priority over any other consideration. Bahá’u'lláh came to bring unity to the world, and a fundamental unity is that of the family. Therefore, we must believe that the Faith is intended to strengthen the family, not weaken it. (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453)

You will be with him through all the worlds of God, whereas your daughter will go through all the worlds of God with her husband.

When two people, husband and wife for instance, have been completely united in this life their souls being as one soul, then after one of them has passed away, this union of heart and soul would remain unbroken. (Abdu’l-Bahá, Abdu’l-Bahá in London, p. 75)

If you concentrate on what you can do to bring unity to your marriage, you will have less time to feel the pain of your daughter’s decision.

3. Your relationship with your daughter:  Much though it causes you suffering, you are powerless to make her talk to you when she’s determined not to.  The best you can do is to pray for her, love her, support her, respect her decisions and be there for her when she’s ready to come back.  This is the best way to prevent estrangement from taking root.

Where love, respect and courtesy are genuinely and mutually expressed, estrangement finds no accommodation and problems become soluble challenges.  (The Universal House of Justice, 1994 May 19, response to US NSA)

You can ask to consult with her, but it will have to be when she’s ready.

Bahá’u'lláh also stressed the importance of consultation. We should not think this worthwhile method of seeking solutions is confined to the administrative institutions of the Cause. Family consultation employing full and frank discussion, and animated by awareness of the need for moderation and balance, can be the panacea for domestic conflict. (Universal House of Justice, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 453)

When you do consult together, let these principles guide your discussion:

The prime requisites for them that take counsel together are purity of motive, radiance of spirit, detachment from all else save God, attraction to His Divine Fragrances, humility and lowliness amongst His loved ones, patience and long-suffering in difficulties and servitude to His exalted Threshold.  Should they be graciously aided to acquire these attributes, victory from the unseen Kingdom of Bahá shall be vouchsafed to them.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i Administration, p. 21-22)

4. Your relationship with your future son-in-law:  There is nothing you can do for him either.

You didn’t mention why your daughter stopped being a Bahá’í, but my hunch is that it might have been because her fiancé:

• didn’t want 2 marriage services?
• wanted the children raised as Catholic?
• didn’t want to commit to the Bahá’í marriage vow?

If her fiancé is the one behind your daughter’s decision to withdraw from the Faith, it will be easy to make him the scapegoat: blame him and gossip about him to others.  Both of these will destroy any future relationship you might have with him.  Hard as it will be for you, your job is to forgive him, and develop a level of insight which sees him captive to his lower nature.

As a devoted believer you are urged to strive to develop forgiveness in your heart toward your parents who have abused you in so disgraceful a manner, and to attain a level of insight which sees them as captives of their lower nature, whose actions can only lead them deeper into unhappiness and separation from God.   By this means, you can liberate yourself from the anger to which you refer in your letter, and foster your own spiritual development.  (The Universal House of Justice, 1985 Dec 02, Child Abuse, Psychology and Knowledge of Self)

5. The extended family’s relationship with the new couple:  This situation will be their test, but you can help them by being an example and role model:

The people of the world are carefully watching the Bahá’ís today, and minutely observing them. The believers must make every effort, and take the utmost care to ward off and remove any feelings of estrangement.  (Compilations, Bahiyyih Khanum, p. 207)

Focus on finding positive things to say about the situation instead of negative.  This will be hard, but some that come to mind are:

• It’s good that my daughter is making decisions for herself.
• Even if she’s making the wrong decisions, that’s how she will grow.
• God has a plan for my daughter and her husband.  I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’s a good one.

6. Your daughter’s relationship with you:  This might be your hardest test, because you long for her to talk to you again and you want to help her plan her wedding.

It’s wonderful that she’s continuing to take your phone calls!  This is a positive sign!  You need to trust her when she says “when she has time, she will come”.  Because she has committed herself to creating the institution of marriage, she now has other obligations pulling at her time and energy.

A Bahá’í who is married to a non-Bahá’í may well have to limit his activities to same degree in order to maintain the unity of his family. (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 86)

Whereas she was your “little girl” for the past couple of decades, she isn’t any more.  This is one of the hardest and most painful parts of being a parent!  We long to give our children roots and wings, but when they take flight without us and leave us behind, it’s very painful.

Something to keep in mind is that our time on earth vanishes in a twinkling of an eye, and God has promised us that in the next world we’ll not only recognize our loved ones, but be able to have a relationship with them for all of eternity:

And know thou for a certainty, that in the divine worlds, the spiritual beloved ones (believers) will recognize each other, and will seek union (with each other), but a spiritual union. Likewise, a love that one may have entertained for any one will not be forgotten in the world of the Kingdom.  (‘Abdul-Bahá, Tablets of ‘Abdul-Bahá, V1, p. 205)

In the following quote, “Abdu’l-Bahá is providing comfort for a mother whose son has died, but I think His advice makes sense in your situation too:

O thou beloved maid-servant of God, although the loss of a son is indeed heart-breaking and beyond the limits of human endur­ance, yet one who knoweth and understandeth is assured that the son hath not been lost but, rather, hast stepped from this world into another, and she will find him in the divine realm. That reunion shall be for eternity, while in this world separation is inevitable and bringeth with it a burning grief. Therefore be thou not disconsolate, do not languish, do not sigh, neither wail nor weep; for agitation and mourn­ing deeply affect his soul in the divine realm.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 201)

‘Abdu’l-Bahá is reminding us that we will be reunited with our loved ones, even if they are lost to us through death (or marriage); that separation is inevitable and brings on grief (which you are certainly experiencing currently); and He’s asking us not to sigh or weep because your mourning affects her soul.  I think that would be true in this world too.  If, in your interactions with your daughter, you are continually reminding her that she’s making the wrong decision, and of how much her actions hurt her, you will only drive a wedge between the two of you.

As hard as it will be for you to be loving, forgiving and respectful when you’re hurting, it will do two things:

• It will keep the doors of communication open
• You will pass this test and grow spiritually

We’re told to use words as “mild as milk” when we’re talking to people about difficult situations:

Every word is endowed with a spirit, therefore the speaker or expounder should carefully deliver his words at the appropriate time and place, for the impression which each word maketh is clearly evident and perceptible. The Great Being saith: One word may be likened unto fire, another unto light, and the influence which both exert is manifest in the world. Therefore an enlightened man of wisdom should primarily speak with words as mild as milk, that the children of men may be nurtured and edified thereby and may attain the ultimate goal of human existence which is the station of true understanding and nobility. And likewise He saith: One word is like unto springtime causing the tender saplings of the rose-garden of knowledge to become verdant and flourishing, while another word is even as a deadly poison. It behoveth a prudent man of wisdom to speak with utmost leniency and forbearance so that the sweetness of his words may induce everyone to attain that which befitteth man’s station.  (Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 172-173)

I often find it helpful to put a picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá where I can see Him, when I’m talking to people and I want Divine Assistance.

If you seek immunity from the sway of the forces of the contingent world, hang the ‘Most Great Name’ in your dwelling, wear the ring of the ‘Most Great Name’ on your finger, place the picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in your home and always recite the prayers that I have written. Then you will behold the marvellous effect they produce. Those so-called force will prove but illusions and will be wiped out and exterminated.  (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Lights of Guidance, p. 520)

It reminds me that “Abdu’l-Bahá is here with me and willing to help; and it reminds me to:

Look at me, follow me, be as I am . . . (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i Scriptures, p. 503)

If you pray before you talk to your daughter, asking God to put the right words into your mouth, He will help.  I say the Tablet of Visitation for “Abdu’l-Bahá before difficult conversations, because He promises:

Whoso reciteth this prayer with lowliness and fervour will bring gladness and joy to the heart of this Servant; it will be even as meeting Him face to face.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 318)

When I say this prayer, I imagine bring Him into the meeting, so He can influence the discussion and move it to a spiritual plane.

I also often say the Long Healing Prayer, for the healing of painful relationships.  In it, we call on over 200 attributes of God.  I like to imagine that each attribute is a personality willing to bring a particular kind of help to the problem.  For example:

• The “Comforter” comes to heal your heart
• The “Best Lover” and “Friend” reminds you to put God as your primary relationship
• The “All-Forgiving” forgives her for withdrawing from the Faith; and for creating estrangement between the two of you; and it also forgives you for your part in the problem.
• The “Omniscient”, “Most Wise” and “All-Knowing One” remind you that God has a plan and can be trusted.
• The “Sustaining One” gets you through the pain, one day at a time, sustaining you in the spiritual world instead of letting you get trapped in the prison of self.
• The “Concealing One” conceals your sins and those of your daughter, so that you can keep them to yourself and prevent you from falling into gossip and backbiting.

. . . you get the idea!

I recommend that you sit down with a journal and write out all the names of God mentioned in this prayer, and see how each one can help bring peace to this situation.  It’s a very powerful meditation!

7. Your daughter’s relationship with her fiancé:  Because she is creating a fortress for well-being, her time and energy will naturally be spent in building up the institution of marriage.

The Lord, peerless is He, hath made woman and man to abide with each other in the closest companionship, and to be even as a single soul. They are two helpmates, two intimate friends, who should be concerned about the welfare of each other.  If they live thus, they will pass through this world with perfect contentment, bliss, and peace of heart, and become the object of Divine grace and favour in the Kingdom of heaven . . . Strive, then, to abide, heart and soul, with each other as two doves in the nest, for this is to be blessed in both worlds.  (Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 122)

As painful as it will be, you need to give her over to God, and to her new husband, so that she can build her fortress.  Do everything you can to support this fledgling union, and help her achieve unity with her husband, so that her marriage can flourish and last through all the worlds of God.

The second issue which is no doubt concerning you, is the issue of her resignation from the Faith.  The Writings tell us this happens for a number of reasons:

She might have needed more help and support than the Faith was able to give them:

If some of these isolated and inactive people gradually turn to other work than the Cause we should not always blame them — they probably needed more help, more stimulating more teaching and Bahá’í comradeship that they received.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 84)

She might have stopped developing her spiritual faculties and then couldn’t draw on the strength which the Faith has to offer (please don’t let this happen to you, or you won’t be able to help her at all!)

Many of those who drift away from the Cause do so for the reason that they had ceased to go on developing. They became complacent, or indifferent, and consequently ceased to draw the spiritual strength and vitality from the Cause which they should have.  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 113)

Perhaps she couldn’t pass the test given to her around the issue of marrying a non-Bahá’í, and perhaps bowed to pressure from her fiancé, or perhaps even chose a single ceremony in the misguided belief that it would bring unity to the marriage.

Sometimes, of course, people fail because of a test they just do not meet, and often our severest tests come from each other. (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 113)

Does she still believe in Baha’u'llah?  If so, she is still a Bahá’í.

To deny that one is a Bahá’í while one still believes in Bahá’u'lláh is not withdrawal, it is dissimulation of one’s faith, and Bahá’í laws does not countenance the dissimulation of a believer’s faith for the purpose of breaking the law. (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 57-58)

If a believer who did not like a particular law were to be permitted to leave the community to break the law, and then rejoin with impunity, this would make a mockery of the Law of God… It is abundantly clear from his letters that he has continually believed in Bahá’u'lláh, that he know the law that marriage is conditioned on the consent of parents, that he dissimulated his faith in order to be able to break this law with impunity. He must, therefore, be regarded as a Bahá’í without administrative rights… (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 57-58)

I’m sure this must be of great concern to you, as her mother!

Judging her, lecturing her, nagging her – none of it will work.  True Bahá’í consultation is a better choice.

The atmosphere within a Bahá’í family as within the community as a whole should express ‘the keynote of the Cause of God’ which, the beloved Guardian has stated, ‘is not dictatorial authority but humble fellowship, not arbitrary power, but the spirit of frank and loving consultation’.  (Universal House of Justice December 28, 1980)

I highly recommend you take the issue to her Assembly, and request that they meet with her.

Often the most effective means to assist those who are wavering in their faith or having severe difficulties is to invite them to meet with the Assembly, or to send a mature and deepened believer to meet with them and discuss the nature of their belief and any other pertinent questions. (Universal House of Justice, NSA-USA, Developing Distinctive Bahá’í Communities)

When someone resigns from the Faith, the National Spiritual Assembly contacts the Local Spiritual Assembly for comments and request for assistance, where possible:

The National Spiritual Assembly at times receives letters directly from persons expressing a desire to leave the Faith. If they recant their faith, the National Spiritual Assembly will honor the requests to withdraw from Bahá’í membership. Likewise, if the person states that they have joined another Faith, the National Spiritual Assembly will accept their withdrawal since their action indicates that they no longer believe in Bahá’u'lláh. If no reasons are given and the persons live within the jurisdiction of a Local Spiritual Assembly, the Assembly will be asked for its comments and possible assistance in resolving whatever problems may have prompted the request. (Universal House of Justice, NSA-USA, Developing Distinctive Bahá’í Communities)

I’m sorry you’re having this test, and hope that you now have some ideas on how to handle it spiritually.

To conclude, here is a prayer you can say in moments of grief over the situation:

Dispel my grief by Thy bounty and Thy generosity, O God, my God, and banish mine anguish through Thy sovereignty and Thy might. Thou seest me, O my God, with my face set towards Thee at a time when sorrows have compassed me on every side. I implore Thee, O Thou Who art the Lord of all being, and overshadowest all things visible and invisible, by Thy Name whereby Thou hast subdued the hearts and the souls of men, and by the billows of the Ocean of Thy mercy and the splendors of the Day-Star of Thy bounty, to number me with them whom nothing whatsoever hath deterred from setting their faces toward Thee, O Thou Lord of all names and Maker of the heavens!  Thou beholdest, O my Lord, the things which have befallen me in Thy days. I entreat Thee, by Him Who is the Day-Spring of Thy names and the Dawning-Place of Thine attributes, to ordain for me what will enable me to arise to serve Thee and to extol Thy virtues. Thou art, verily, the Almighty, the Most Powerful, Who art wont to answer the prayers of all men!  (Baha’u'llah, Prayers and Meditations by Baha’u'llah, p. 247)

 

by Susan Gammage, Baha’i Life Coach In my Bahá’í-inspired life coaching practice, the topic of divorce occasionally comes up.  The Bahá’í Writings teach: “We know that Bahá’u’lláh has very strongly frowned upon divorce; and it is really incumbent upon the Bahá’ís to make almost a superhuman effort not to allow a Bahá’í marriage to be [...]

by Susan Gammage, Baha’i Life Coach

In my Bahá’í-inspired life coaching practice, the topic of divorce occasionally comes up.  The Bahá’í Writings teach:

“We know that Bahá’u'lláh has very strongly frowned upon divorce; and it is really incumbent upon the Bahá’ís to make almost a superhuman effort not to allow a Bahá’í marriage to be dissolved.”  (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 227)

But the scariest quote to me has always been:

“. . . the partner who is the ’cause of divorce’ will ‘unquestionably’ become the ‘victim of formidable calamities’”.  (Universal House of Justice, Lights of Guidance, p. 390)

When my own marriage ended in divorce, I often asked myself if I was the cause, for certainly my life post-divorce has been fraught with tests.  I’ve just exchanged one set of tests for another.

Recently I’ve been reading “When Parents Hurt” by Joshua Coleman, and in the appendix at the end of the book, he writes an article from the perspective of one man to another, which speaks poignantly to the issues I’ve wrestled with (they aren’t so very different from my own perspective).  I’d like to copy it here for your enjoyment.  It’s reprinted with permission of the author.

When a Family Man Thinks Twice
Joshua Coleman, Ph.D.
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday Section, Father’s Day 2000

You get married. And at some point you don’t know if the marriage is going to work. And since it’s your first marriage, you feel discouraged and hopeless and start believing that your marriage looks nothing like the ones on TV or in US magazine. And you think how nice it would be to have a marriage like that, built on friendship, hiking, and an active sex life.

And since it’s a marriage with children, you don’t know what it feels like to be divorced with children, and figure it might not be that bad. It’s a tradeoff. And people say everything in life is a tradeoff, so there must be something worthwhile about tradeoffs.

And you start thinking about it after you leave the movie theater because your marriage once looked like the movie marriage, at least when you were  first dating. Or, maybe the movie is realistic, with lots of alienated, confused adults, but, even those movies feature somebody who’s falling in love, like the two teenagers in American Beauty. And so you compare your marriage to the teenagers in American Beauty and wonder how you got as far off the track as Kevin Spacey, and do you need to get a GTO and start smoking pot again to find yourself, even if you’re smart enough to datesomebody your own age instead of your daughter’s friend?

And maybe you realize that the same actors you’re comparing your marriage to on the screen, are having as much trouble in their marriages off the screen as you are having in yours, at home. And so you stop comparing yourself to their happy on screen marriages, and compare yourself to them as happy divorced actors who have their kids part-time and live in LA or New York or on their ranches in Montana.

And at the playground, watching your kids go down the slide with your wife, you end up sitting by a divorced father. And if you’ve never been divorced, you won’t see his loneliness as he stretches his legs and watches and waves at his children because he looks like you, when you wave and smile at yours playing on the swings, or that circular spinning thing that makes you nauseous when you have the poor judgment to get on it. And you don’t see that this very same child on the swing set saying look at me look at me will have to be returned to her mother’s house like a videotape by six because that was the time agreed to in the agreement.

And you may not know the sadness he feels returning that child to her mother as she closes the door to him like a vault while his kid waves, sad, bewildered or worse, happy to be back with her mom and now oblivious of him, her father.

And you, who walk in and out of your home every day with your wife and kids, can’t know what it’s like to sit in your car and watch the place you lived in as family, knowing your child is in there, laughing, talking loudly, or waving briefly at you from the window like she does when her uncle leaves.

And since you are married, and wake up every day to your child’s loud laughter and endless questions and requests and frustrations and hurts, you can’t contemplate the deadwood barrenness of a house deprived of that sound.

And you wouldn’t know that going home to that silence, a silence you craved many times while married, is a silence found more often on hillsides, after a large-scale fire.

And being married, you and your wife may have just put your child to bed with Harry Potter or the Little Engine That Could or other magical children’s stories that teach the value of never giving up and struggling
against the odds. And as the evening goes on, you end up in one of those god awful fights with her that leave you feeling alone and why should you have to put up with this as hard as you work and try. And it’s hard to feel like nobody else has it as bad or understands what you feel except perhaps the woman you’ve begun to have an affair with who always says the right thing and makes you feel good about yourself, which, of course, you deserve. And the sex with the woman you’re having an affair with is unbelievable because sex is always unbelievable in affairs or else why would anybody bother?

And since you’re a married father, who goes on vacations with his kids and helps them with their soccer, homework or playground politics, you may underestimate the feelings of seeing your child walk out of the house you once lived in as family, holding the hand of your ex-wife’s new husband.

Perhaps you’re surprised by the stab of betrayal when you hear your child refer to your ex-wife’s new husband as “my other daddy.” And even though you’ve had enough psychotherapy to start a clinic on both coasts, you watch yourself get mad and hurt and state that she Does not, Can not and Will not have another daddy because that is a position only you can fill and if she ever brings up that phrase again, something really bad is going to happen to somebody, you’re just not sure who.

And you begin to wonder if anything is worth this kind of pain. Is anything worth having your baby, your child, your self, handed to you and ripped back out like an assembly line robot on a killing spree, week after week after week after week? And friends and family and professionals say it will get better over time and it does get better because you eventually get better at finding new and improved ways to blind and numb yourself. And people will tell you this change is called growth. And you know that must mean growth is highly overrated.

And you always swore you would be a great dad and you have been but you
better set your sorry ass down with divorce and give thanks for every other weekend or summer visitation or some other version of fatherhood that has nothing to do with family and everything to do with an arrangement so dubious only a court can invent it. And maybe when your kids grow up and go off to college or move out you’ll feel better. But then maybe you won’t.

Maybe their new independence will just free them up to see your limitations even more clearly.

And though you would never do it, you come to understand those lost fathers, marginalized through their own mistakes or a lousy arrangement, moving miles away and rarely calling, leaving their kids bobbing and drifting like toys thrown from the back of a moving boat.  And how these fathers get struck dead and dumb years later when there’s an angry and betrayed call from a child who’s now a teenager or an adult. And how these dads stumble out an excuse that tries to be an apology but ends up blaming the child and the ex-wife, and leaves the kid glad the father wasn’t around in the first place no wonder mom wanted out.

And maybe you’d never let it get to that point and you do need to leave your marriage. Maybe the smoking stacked years of hurt and resentment are sooting the air you and your family breathe and no priest or rabbi or therapist can ever reverse it because you already tried all that. And you end up falling in love with someone new because she reminds you of all the qualities you love best; those of your children, your closest friends and you hate to admit it but – yeah, those of your ex-wife.

And then, whether it’s the right thing or the wrong thing, better or worse, you look back. And at some point, your kids ask when you and mom are going to live together again. And though they eventually stop asking, they won’t stop hoping. And they carry that hope the way you carry your love for them – soft, constant, and close to the surface. And no matter how awful it was to be married and how grateful you are to be out, and how much getting out was the right decision, some part of you may always wonder, was there something else I could have done?  Something?”

Dr. Coleman is a psychologist with offices in San Francisco and Oakland, California. He is the author of “WHEN PARENTS HURT: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along” (HarperCollins), “MARRIED WITH TWINS: Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Marital Harmony” “The Marriage Makeover: Finding Happiness in Imperfect Harmony.” and “The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework.” Call him at 510 547 6500 or visit him at www.drjoshuacoleman.com

I’d like to end with a quote from the Bahá’í Writings:

“He feels that you should by all means make every effort to hold your marriage together, especially for the sake of the children, who, like all children of divorced parents, cannot but suffer from conflicting loyalties, for they are deprived of the blessing of a father and a mother in one home, to look after their interests and love them jointly.” (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance, p. 227)

What’s been your experience with divorce?  Post your comments here: