Retreat, Flee Forward or Freeze: Three Tendencies in Crisis or Disillusionment

An inclination, according to dictionary.com, is

“a disposition or bent, especially of the mind or will; a liking or preference”

“a tendency toward a certain condition, action.”

Our inclinations may not be discernible, even to us, until times of pressure and duress bring them to the fore. Crisis and trial, I have observed, cause people to react in three ways: 

flee forward, retreat backward or freeze.

Fleeing is a reaction I know very well, as it is my personal trademark.

Every time life or people have pushed back at me, my sole goal was to get out of Dodge, and it didn’t matter where. Paducah Kansas was as good as Monaco because being there got me out being held captive to my issues here. 

Sometimes I was able to physically leave a place, only to find, as we all objectively know or ought to know by now, that the problems I thought would be solved by my fleeing had also packed their bags and tagged along, or morphed into an entirely different animal! 

So there I was, unpacking my life in my new place, when out came the boogey men of the past to claim the spare bedroom!

It’s like Luke Skywalker trying to shake the bad guys in the famous “trench run” scene. They come out of nowhere and find you. And so for me, that always led to even more flight from the here and now, oftentimes with guns blazing at the enemy in return! (otherwise known as burning bridges). 

A totally opposite way of assuaging adversity is through retreat. 

Here, looking into the rearview mirror, we go back to what we know because living in this new unexpected is too much. We can’t or don’t know how to accept the new normal so we run to the old: old friends, old hometowns, old careers and jobs. We lop off the possibilities of the future by retreating into the past, because the past is what we know.

It’s interesting that forward fleers take flight because they want to get away from what they know to the unknown, while retreaters retreat because they want to get away from the unknown to the known.

And finally, juxtaposed, are the freezers, those who cannot decide one way or another which way to go. Freezers don’t flee; they don’t retreat; they just don’t. 

Freezers are the proverbial “deer in the headlights.” They immobilize themselves in their present situation—not in denial but in full awareness of it—doing nothing, resigned.

I believe that in each of these cases:

the retreaters step back—not out of true nostalgia; 

the fleers run—not out of a motivation of sincere seeking; 

and freezers stand still—not out of a commitment to overcoming and making things work; 

but out of fear that we cannot, or do not want to be, the person our adversity is attempting to turn us into.

We don’t want to face the daunting task of looking inward so that we can for once stop taking our problems with us.

We don’t want to face having to grow new skills, new friends, new purpose. 

Retreaters hope the past will sweep in and save them; fleers hope the new location will be their refuge, and freezers hope to just get through today and that’ll be enough. 

All of this points to motivation.

In all three cases, avoidance is what we’re truly after. That is our motivation. We are Jonah, and our retreat, flight or remaining frozen is the city of Tarshish which Jonah chose to go to instead of the city of Nineva, where God had sent him. 

Jonah reacted to himself rather than respond to God.

And what did God do?

He had Johah thrown off a boat, and then He sent a whale to swallow him up. 

Which is exactly what God will carry out in us.

It isn’t wrong to “go back.” It isn’t wrong to “go forward.” It isn’t wrong to “stay put.” What’s wrong is the motivation behind it if it is a motivation to evade. 

And what we are evading, we discover—as did Jonah—is God’s attempt to mature us. 

Maturity is that process of iron sharpening iron. It can happen with another person, but it can also happen between us and God, the same as it did between Jacob and God in Genesis 32.

This is the process that takes us from complacency to contentment, come what may.

Complaceny says “Ah, I can kick back” and not really think too hard, as long as everything is going well or even just so-so. 

But when the creek, indeed, does rise to alarming levels, threatening to flood and drown us, or God asks us to do something difficult that we certainly did not sign up for, complacency does not float: it sinks to the very bottom, taking us with it.

Contentment, on the other hand, says “I can be content in all situations…” (Philippians 4:11-13). It rises to the occasion.

Contentment derives from God: only He can instill it. That is what carries us afloat, on the Ark of the storm. 

It is in that right motivation of Godly contentment—a contentment fashioned in us as we work with Him through the very distress we are so inclined to shortcut—that we persevere and finally find clarity of direction: whether it means staying put in God’s active waiting, going back to a time and place in history at His call, or setting out for a new island guided by the dove of God’s hope.

Copyright Barb Harwood

Self-Acceptance Leads to Acceptance of Others

When I read the following words in a book the other day, I realized the authors have aptly described the "broad place" that God is bringing me to (Psalm 18:19); a place arrived at through His consistent rescuing of me from the plentiful and specific dysfunctions of self to one of increasing maturity, ease and contentment in self that organically then breeds an increasing acceptance and sincere enjoyment of others.

I was telling my family the other day that I actually like people now! I have only just come to realize that it's not so much that I did not like people before; it's that I did not like myself when I was with people before. 

So the following words are very true in my life, and I thank God for His miraculous transformation of my inner person that is subsequently leading to His miraculous transformation of my wider world, even though bad things still transpire and rejection is always just around the corner. My self-acceptance is no longer situational because God is not situational.  

That is why I believe that, short of an inner peace within each individual that has been worked into place by God over months and years--I don't think we'll ever come close to an outer peace that transforms the wider world. 

Here's the quote:

"Acceptance is needed following self-disclosure. It needs to be applied to oneself as well as to the other. As individuals gain new self-awareness as a result of self-disclosure, they can react to this new self-knowledge with either self-acceptance or self-rejection. Often the easier path is self-rejection. Rejection, or self-denial, of what I am presently and potentially is a way of absolving the self of responsibility. However, since Jesus has accepted us just as we are, the only valid response is self-acceptance. Jesus did not say, 'Love your neighbor and hate yourself.' He said, 'Love your neighbor as yourself' (Matt. 19:19).

Self-accepting people generally find it easier to accept others. Individuals who are more self-rejecting also find it more difficult to accept others. Self-acceptance is a key to accepting others. Self-acceptance makes it easier for us to practice self-disclosure and respond positively to the self-disclosure of others.
Healthy self-acceptance also opens an individual to personal change. Change growing out of Jesus-like acceptance tends to be in keeping with both one's unique self and in becoming all that God created one to be." 
Stephen A. Grunlan and Marvin K. Mayers, writing in Cultural Anthropology: A Christian Perspective

His Grace

The beauty, and yet at the same time, excruciating difficulty of a life of faith in Christ in a world that is open to “all religions” is the part where our beliefs contain specifics, and the foundations and precepts of God are actually attempted to be followed.

It’s great for us to strap in, secure in those beliefs, until what we have become convinced of meets possible push-back or scorn, with us and any potential for relationship thrown out with the bath water (either by us or by the other person).

How can I hold true to what I am so contentedly and finally at peace with—not having arrived at this juncture lightly, and in fact, through much wrestling and winnowing of God in my very naive, broken, defensive and stubbornly righteous heart and mind?

This entire life of fits and starts—of two-steps foreword-one step back—has brought me to a place of coveted rest with myself and God, and also with others—regardless of who they are, their worldview and their reception of me. 

Or so I think. 

Until along comes the new friend with whom I am now in a quandary as to how to reveal my faith—not because I want to “share the Gospel” but because I want to be sincerely honest and transparent as to who I am, just as my friend is being toward me, and as all strong friendships are. 

Certainly, ideally, I am to live Christ with everyone: it’s those initial deeper life and worldview discussions that will inevitably come up that will test my mettle to be an unwavering person of Christ at all times, especially when it comes to the “specifics.”

And that “rest” with other people that I mentioned having arrived at: does that remain steady when I meet the pro-abortion canvasser calling out from the sidewalk to “support reproductive rights?” 

Or will the canvassers continue to bring out the “I don’t care what I say or how I say it” in me? Will grace clear out, leaving me standing there facing my “opponent” in unbridled passion and infuriating incredulity over the injustice to the unborn and the cavalier attitude and unchallenged worldview that advocates for their death? 

God, I believe, will test our progress in one way or another.

And just when we think we’re standing, He will throw a curve ball to let us know whether we will fall or not: the test is for us, not for Him. He already knows. (1 John 3:20). It’s us He’s teaching and training in His righteousness, lest we hit the ground running in our own.

And so although I can be honest with God about anything, and live in His rest, I haven’t proven yet that I can come from His place of rest and remain there with others. Not always. Not initially. 

And so it comes down to His grace, and trusting unequivocally that He will provide it when I ask Him.

His rest means the laying aside of any agenda or worries of myself, and letting His grace do what it will, and when. He will give enough; He will fill our lack (Hebrews 4). 

But I must ask. I must rely.

It all comes down to His grace. And my wanting it bad enough. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

“Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed enter that rest…” Hebrews 4:1-3a.


"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16

Living In Our New Name

My last blog post, titled “I Love, Even If…” is one I describe as “putting something in the present-affirmative to help make it so in practice.” 

By that I mean, I wrote that post with the intent and purpose of doing what it says, of encouraging my ability to do it, of actually living it because it is what Christ requires (similar to when, in grade school, the teacher made us write “I will not be late for school” one hundred times on the blackboard in order to drive the point home).

The writing of it is just the beginning. It’s a way of imputing the truth of Christ, that, once on paper, helps clarify and cement the direction in which to go. 

I am not entirely there yet. But I’m further than I ever have been, all credit to God alone. 

And that is the Christian life: being further down Christ’s straight path than we were yesterday, and the day before that. 

Do I wish that God had brought everything that I know now to my knowledge sooner? I used to.

But now I see that the obtaining of Christ’s wisdom is, for each of us, a process; the sheer act of starting life over as a Christian (while at the same time having a past and a present to make peace with) that each of us has to enter and continue through via an immutable God. 

The developmental stages of head-to-heart and heart-to-head knowledge are similar to a 5-year-old starting off in kindergarten and proceeding on to each successive grade thereafter. 

Sure, some kids skip a grade, just as some Christians grow at a faster pace than others. But still, we grow—and growth takes time.

We mature through study and experience—imperfectly and gingerly at first, then imperfectly boldly—finally getting to a place of realistic and humble confidence in simply staying the course.

In time—times of desperation at the slow pace, at the seeming as if nothing is changing in us, at the sense of flatlining—and also times of beautiful incredulity, of perceiving unmistakable instances of God, of protection, of definite calm when we ought to be freaking out—during all of these times, we metamorphose, bit by bit. We are changed. 

We come to understand why, in the Bible, Jesus gives people new names.

We, too, are given a new name: His name, Jesus Christ. That is why we call ourselves Christians. He is our Lord. Our identity rests in Him. And so that is how we live—how we must live, and will certainly desire to live, increasingly so. 

copyright Barb Harwood

“For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” 

2 Corinthians 4:6-11

I Love, Even If

I love, even if not loved back.

I love, even if not loved back the way I have loved.

I love, even if not loved back the way I expect or want to be loved.

I love: at all times, in all places—all people, even if….

It begins with the unequivocal commitment to carry within an attitude of love and goodwill—not selectively, or in favoritism, or to receive accolades for loving “difficult” people, or for the purpose of obtaining affirmation in return. 

It is simply and purely an attitude and motivation of platonic Godly love: authentic, not sentimental; balanced by a gentle and soft objectivity that requires that all people be considered and respected within an attitude of love: Godly love, of Christ, generated within by the Holy Spirit, whom we listen to and cooperate with.

Sometimes loving someone is easy. We all know this; we don’t have to think about it: for reasons of peculiar chemistry and sheer simpatico we simply hit it off with another and grow deeper and deeper in fondness. 

Other times, more frequently I believe, deep love for another grows gradually, from liking-well-enough, to knowing, to loving.

Other times, we may initially hit it off with a person but, upon learning more about them, we aren’t so sure that we still like them! This is where the practice and internalizing of even if…..begins: even if I do not really like this person, I will harbor within me a love for this person according to Christ’s first loving me, and continuing to do so, in spite of my certain unloveliness.

And when we find ourselves with some folks and situations where we come close to the edges of hate, we love even then through the entrusting of ourselves to God for His protection from ourselves and from our deep-seated ability to own and nurse an attitude of hate that quickly morphs into a motivation of hate, and worse. 

God can—for me, He must—be trusted when I can’t trust myself to love and be loving. 

In Christ, His love—not our drummed-up attempt at loving grudgingly in our own power—His love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), primarily our own by preventing them from being directed at others. 

So the beauty of the Christian life—the saving grace—is that we can love at all times from a pure motivation in Christ, even if. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” 1 John 4:7-13

Trusting God When We are Insulted

Frequently, especially at certain points in our hearing of Scripture, God’s Word astounds in its monumentally life-altering simplicity, as it does here:

“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).

I look around, and as I do so, I hear my inner voice, mingled with the audible voices of the multitude as they go about their daily routines, and I perceive that, more often than not, many of us don't entreat God to protect us from gut-reactive thoughts—especially thoughts that retaliate in repudiation of whatever we perceive to have insulted us. 

In other words, we—I—don’t trust God with the safe-keeping of my attitude and mindset: with the preserving of my heart in Godly integrity (Psalm 51:10).

Generally speaking, trust in God is commonly, and I would say more easily, rendered during rather obvious times: such as when we hope to land a new job, or hear “yes” to a marriage proposal, or for healing of a disease or protection from a weather event. 

But entrusting ourselves to God so that He will keep us from our own sinful daily reactions? 

To trust Him to hold another person accountable (when we are clearly not in a position to hold someone accountable)? 

Or to expect God to keep us in His grace when we are in a relationship or position of authority and leadership in which we must hold someone accountable (Galatians 6:1)? 

And the second half of that: If the accountability which we provide in grace is rejected, do we rely upon God for our self-control so that we do not resort to scorn or berating? Can we, in all honesty, consistently leave other persons to God? (again, we place them lovingly in God’s arms in prayer and trust, not in an attitude of superiority or haughtiness).

The nasty thorn in everyone’s side—pride—will usually have no trouble humbling itself to a trust in God throughout the conspicuous strains and vulnerabilities of life. 

But when we are insulted, be it passively, aggressively or imagined, what then? Does our pride submit to God in unequivocal trust, or suddenly justify itself to take matters into its own vengeful hands? 

When we decide to make the exception that our “run-ins” and personal sufferings do not fall under Christ's Lordship, we jump from God-mode to privy-pride mode where we stingily trust in our right to ourself, giving ourself permission to take on an identity of valiant victimhood.  

Paul says that he can be content in any situation (Philippians 4:11-13). I believe one reason for that is because Paul implicitly trusts in God in any situation, so that offense and retaliation cannot darken the door of his thought-life in Christ. 

This contentment is a discipline that God will train us in when we trust in Him to do so, desiring for Him to do so.

Like Paul, though we are “afflicted in every way,” we are not “crushed;” though “perplexed” we do not  “despair;” if “persecuted,” we are not “forsaken; when “struck down,” we are not “destroyed;” in everything we are “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).

In the example of Christ and the innate power of His Spirit, we die to retaliation. We die to threats. We die to haughtiness and sour grapes.

We live now in the new life and grace Jesus seeded and continuously grows within us (John 1:16), trusting Him with—not just the obvious parts of this new life, but all of its parts, especially our deep inner unloveliness that lingers, tempting to entangle and entice us to sin (Hebrews 12:1). 

copyright Barb Harwood