What you are about to hear will make you mad, it will scare you, and it will make you cry. In the end, it will be about perspective.
In November 2020, my entire life changed. I thought I was going crazy, but I just went through some crazy stuff. I thought my life was over, but it was changed for the better, forever. Choosing to be a victim, I nearly ruined my life.
Let me say that I know a thing or two about being attacked for being loving, patient, and kind.
Take a minute to imagine my life as a counselor, pastor, mentor, and advocate.
I’ve spent the better part of 24 years investing in the individual lives of thousands of people; sacrificing my time, building them up, and giving them a sense of hope for the future. My reach expanded beyond the boundaries of Virginia, California, and Georgia, outside the US to Nigeria, the Philippines, and India, and found affinity beyond strict political and religious Christian thought including Buddhism, Islam, and other ideologies. In January 2020, right before the pandemic, I had a small audience of around 25K people on my social platforms, blog, and podcast subscriptions. In May of 2020, my podcast audience was reaching around 1500 people weekly, a small but very active audience.
My message was simple: love never fails. And often that message boldly spoke against practices and belief systems that some religious communities would call “normal” or “loving” in an attempt to justify hatred, bigotry, and sexism. I don’t stand for this, and I don’t stand for bullies.
But I didn’t have bullies in my community, especially locally. We were a family, we were close and honest with each other, without division. Or so I thought.
There are times in life when we feel sucked into a void without air, unable to breathe and the light escapes like a penetrated balloon creating darkness in our souls. Terrorism I understood, but never experienced. Yet, at this moment, terror would be the staple of my existence.
Personal attacks against my character, threats against my livelihood, and my family rained down like nails from heaven. Being bruised from every angle was the roadmap, the end was nowhere in sight. Eventually, connecting with my own thoughts seemed fearful. Was I able to even trust myself?
Were these people right?
Was I going to survive this?
For nearly one year these attacks grew, creating caverns in place of where strong trees once stood as monuments of growth and solidarity. Symbols of hope and foundations were ripped from my life and from the lives of others.
Trusting my close friends became impossible, and loving my family became foreign.
“The axe is laid to the root of your life, meet with me and do what is required or suffer accordingly.” This was a threat and a promise. It came from the mouth of the instigator. These words echo in the chambers of my mind often like the rumbling of the Earth shaking my bed while I sleep. (I used to live in Oakland)
These self-proclaimed terrorists organized and begin to gather sound bites, articles, and other crumbs of media from the last fifteen years that would create a picture of me as a liar, a false teacher, a hater, and a manipulator of people. Making themselves victims, they sounded the alarm to warn the masses of my maniacal scheme. This went on for over a year.
I must say for the sake of integrity, that some involved in this were indeed victims. Not my victims, but victims of those seeking to be the “hero” on their behalf. Once lit, I had to do one of two things to answer this blazing inferno: let them speak or answer them adding fuel to the fire.
I chose to let them be and do what I do. The truth would come out in the end. The end result of this was hundreds of people calling me, messaging me, threatening me, and watching my publications, friends, and family in order to confront them day after day to terrorize them into putting me out of their lives.
Adding injury to insult, I broke my foot in June 2022. In July I developed internal bleeding due to overuse of ibuprofen and became septic. By December I was in a full depression. While the online attacks had subsided, the connection to our local community was still very volatile. A remnant of this group continued to work behind the scenes to try and disassociate others from me.
It worked. By October, I had lost 80% of my income and hundreds of real friends who were just too scared to stick around. The online community was broken and several other “blogs” popped up to reveal my evil to the world. A twenty-plus-page essay filled with fanciful fiction was circulated to dozens of my professional associates around the globe.
In the Spring of 22 we had several familial crises and then in July I encountered another severe infection that doctors were telling me was most likely cancer or a life-altering disease. It took me five months to heal. Minor surgery to repair damage to my body. Then finally was told I had no disease at all.
The suffering was real. The illness was real. But it was all caused by anxiety.
Every. Single. Issue... was fueled by terror. People, for the first time ever, scared me.
Remember that "people" is my business. What am I to do now? I was disconnecting from people, doubting my own thoughts and ideas, and feeling anxious about life in general. However, I did heal. It wasn't easy. While I was confident and secure again, I couldn't help the times that I felt unsure if I could overcome the fear of being attacked. The mere thought of writing, teaching, or lecturing gave me overwhelming anxiety that consumed me, wrote scripts like AI in my brain, and challenged my very identity.
Remember I said I chose to be a victim? A few months ago I received an email from a past associate. He had been watching. He was listening... and he wanted to talk.
I could feel the anxiety, worried that it was another attack. All day I sweated this mental workout in fear with the thought of answering him making me relive the terror in my mind. Mid-afternoon this day I realized it had been 24 hours since I had eaten.
I was hungry in my soul to escape the fear and hungry in my body for food. I was "hangry."
Driving to the local sub shop I revisited the thousands of conversations over and over, making new arguments, defending myself in my mind, getting enraged at the cost of everything. During that short drive, I concluded that making a difference in the lives of others no longer had enough teeth to chew through the potential pain of intimacy. I decided to exit my vocation.
I was done.
Walking into the shop I was greeted by attendants joyfully plowing through the mixings of sandwich construction like ants parsing picnic crumbs.
"Hello, how has your day been thus far?" A young clerk asked. Let’s call her Rose.
"It was good, and you?", I lied.
"My day is OK, thank you. How can I help you today?" Rose asked.
When I started my order with “My wife is celiac….” Rose slumped her shoulders and lowered her head with an expression of what appeared to be irritation crawling over her face. I assumed she was frustrated by the amount of energy it would take to prevent wheat contamination for my order. I was wrong.
Without missing a beat, tears welled in her eyes, Rose said, "I'm sorry if I seem sad, my little sister died a few hours ago. Forgive me if I have to pause."
What did she say?
My heart was struck. It was all I could do to engage with the desire to eat, much less watch this person work for me in such a manner. It was difficult to manage the sea of thoughts and feelings. All I could say, was "I'm sorry." How dare I come into this shop as a victim of contextualized fears when this poor woman was working while her baby sister was on the way to the mortuary?
"It's ok", she replied, "She had struggled with leukemia for years, she was eight. Her pain is over now.”
The woman in front of me jumped right in, "Oh Baby, I am sorry, I lost my sister last year, I know it's hard, but why are you at work?" "I cannot afford to take off right now, I have to be here.".
My heart sank. My day swam in my head, filtering my muddy thoughts with sobering clarity. I understood my "meh" day was nothing compared to her pain. All I could do was watch her expressions as she dutifully crafted my sandwich, without a word or pause, and sent me off to enjoy my food. On my exit, I handed the cashier $100 to give to her, walked to my truck, and cried.
My drive home seemed endless, reflecting on what I just experienced in relation to my own suffering, I thought, "It's time we start thinking a bit more about what it means to feel deeply about the pains of others. It’s time to understand, James, that pain is part of what makes love work, makes caring for people possible.”
I realized that in that small encounter, several amazing truths have motivated me to keep going, given me a new appreciation for my calling, and provided a way to really focus on remembering the vital reality of perspective.
I'm very confident now. There are times I still have some moments of fear when I "smell smoke", but that's OK. I have the tools and the experience to know what is on the other side of fire: rebirth, strength, and new intimacy.
My perspective that day about my own life was a lie. I had to remember that loving people, even those we will never see again, is one of the main points of life. I also had to be reminded that my pain, though real, was over and that it was time for me to help others in their time of need.
We all experience pain. But joy comes at the end.
When we connect with others in their pain, even feeling it ourselves, we gain a blessing. We become a blessing. We share in the blessing. Why is this? Because suffering has a purpose. It has a purpose to drive us to others who are strong when we aren't. To dive us to the next dark moment where we won't be as afraid as we were before.
And we won't be alone.
Unless we choose to be a victim.
Be a victor instead. Hunger for joy. Hunger for hope. Live it.
Being victorious isn’t easy. It isn’t found in an instant or reading a few lines in the Bible, a book, or a poem. It doesn’t come from being motivated or encouraged alone. It comes by going through the pain, letting the pain do its work, making us stronger, and it comes through the community around us, who, when the darkness seems to overtake us, shows us that there is light, purpose, and meaning.
Sharing this journey is one of the greatest paths to victory. Don’t hide. Live.
This is not new.
Today I read a journal entry from my last day of 10th grade in 1990. I spoke about the sentiment that “Life is not a bed of roses” – I argued that life is pretty prickly but that if we take each day as it comes, we will “Get the most out of life” and when we live with a complete purpose for others the “stickers of life won’t be as bad.”
Just so you know, the truth did finally win. The haters subsided, found another guy to destroy, and my friends came back.
Some of them.
But that’s OK - my professional connections never believed it and the money… well, we had a pandemic going on. So, that’s another writing for another day about “excuses.” This one is about perspective.
One more thought.
I am glad this all happened. I would do it all again and cannot tell you why except that the freedom in which I now live is more powerful than all the enemies that have ever come against me. I am alive.