New Life LIVE: August 25, 2026

Guest (Male): Welcome to the New Life Live podcast. We hope to provide help and hope in your life through God's word, counselors, and psychologists as we answer questions from listeners who call with the challenges of life. Let's go to today's episode.
New Life: Hey everyone, welcome to New Life Live. I'm your host, Brian Perez, and we're going to be in the studio for two hours today. So call in, grab an open line. 1-800-229-3000 is the number to call us today. Here to answer your questions, we've got a couple of licensed marriage and family therapists, JJ West and Chris Williams. JJ is also the presenter at our Every Man's Battle and Intimacy in Marriage workshops. Chris is here in the studio with me, the lounge, as I like to call it. Chris, what's on your mind to start us off?
Chris Williams: All right, confession time. I've gotten better over the years, but I still find that I can be a bit judgmental. Often those are very quick thoughts that we have in our head or whatever the case may be. Even though they seem benign, at times our judgments can seem like no big deal or everyone does it and everyone struggles with it. It tends to get ignored too much because we don't understand the toxins underneath it all. In fact, one of my little biblical soapboxes is like when Paul wrote the letters, they didn't have chapters and verses when he wrote them. They were one continuous letter. So like when we're reading Romans chapter one and we see all these long laundry lists of sins, we tend to use that like, "Hey, God doesn't approve of this or this is sinful and that's sinful." Well immediately, I mean like immediately in chapter two, it's basically saying since these also are a part of your life or were a part of your life, you have no leg to stand on. Like the point of showing the sins in chapter one is to show us in chapter two, which again later on in the letter, is that we're all subject to God and his reign and his rule. When we judge others at that moment, we are actually judging ourselves. But what judgment does at the most fundamental level is it separates us relationally. It divides us from each other. Sometimes when we're judging ourselves, it divides us from ourselves. Judgment is a way in which we leverage the wrongs against ourselves or each other. What that does is it creates a threatening environment. It often creates an environment where we're too afraid or it's not safe enough to share things underneath the surface, things that we need to get out, things that we need to confess to one another. I know that JJ and the guys multiple times a year get to provide this safe container, this safe place where guys can tell the most honest version of themselves and their story in the scariest parts of themselves, the most shameful parts of themselves. That becomes the entryway to freedom. When we have judgment, it's in the way of God's freedom in our life. In that disclosure, in the truth, in the honesty. That truth and grace working together often get shut down when judgment is present. One thing I want to differentiate here is judgment and discernment are very different. Judgment is I'm leveraging something against you. Discernment is noticing something where I'm not condemning you, but I am noticing it. So if like you can't keep a confidence, I may notice that without judging you, but also learn to set a boundary around that. That's the difference between discernment and judgment.
JJ West: Can I just say how glad I am to be on with Chris? This is such a rare occasion and he's one of my favorite people in all the whole world. I agree with you, Chris. It's easy for us to sit in judgment on others. It's easy for us to sit in judgment on ourselves. We need grace.
New Life: Yes indeed. And because Chris has gotten this off his chest, he's not going to be judgmental today. So call 1-800-229-3000. Never any judgment here at New Life Live.
Guest (Male): To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life Live.
New Life: Recovery is something we often talk about here at New Life Live. One thing you need to know is that recovery isn't just about giving something up, it's about who you're becoming. New Life recovery groups offer guidance, accountability, and community rooted in biblical truth. To find a group meeting near you or online or to just learn more about life recovery groups, visit newlife.com/groups. 1-800-229-3000 is our number and we're going to go right to the phones now and speak with Shirley in Bloomington, Illinois. Shirley, thanks so much for calling in today.
Shirley: Thank you for taking my call. I'm going to be as brief as possible. I have an adult grandson. He has paranoid schizophrenia. He takes his medicine. He wrote this woman and talked for a year before meeting. At first she was very mild. Well then she got pregnant. Well then she became very abusive and controlling, and I mean that's understating it. She won't take her medicine and she's bipolar. How can I help?
Chris Williams: Is your grandson with her?
Shirley: Yes, because of the baby. The baby is his and they live separately.
Chris Williams: And then how is her behavior impacting him?
Shirley: Because she will be one time she can be as loving and caring as you can imagine and then she can flip just as fast and be the most ugly person and abusive that there is.
Chris Williams: And this is towards your grandson, correct?
Shirley: Yes.
Chris Williams: Is she ever abusive towards the child?
Shirley: She has not been yet.
Chris Williams: Okay, that's one thing that you definitely want to monitor. Because if she turns abusive towards the child, then we have a different scenario at hand. But the other question I have to ask is, is she ever abusive towards your grandson in front of the child?
Shirley: You know what, I don't live there. We live in the Midwest and she lives way down south. So he never mentioned that. She has been because she talks about what a horrible father he has, the baby has. His dad is just horrible, he's no good.
Chris Williams: But they don't live together, is that correct?
Shirley: No, you're exactly right. So it seems like he's able to keep some distance from her. It's true, but whenever he has a chance to see the baby, he's going to see the baby.
JJ West: So does that mean she has full custody and he just gets to visit?
Shirley: It hasn't been to court or anything, but she does take care of the baby full-time. He does not.
JJ West: How old is the baby?
Shirley: He'll be six weeks old tomorrow.
JJ West: Very newborn. And has she been assessed for postpartum, anything like that?
Shirley: No.
Chris Williams: The other question I have for you personally, Shirley, what's your greatest fear in this situation?
Shirley: That he'll end up dead. That she could possibly take his life or he would take his own. He would not take his own. I could see her getting that mad because, like I said, she's either all one way or all the other. And that's what scares me.
Chris Williams: So I think one of the things that's important here, and I don't know if she's ever exhibited violent behavior in the past or anything like that. But knowing that if there are these swings that happen, if her rage can get out of control and that he feels unsafe, does he have the skills to be able to keep himself safe or the wherewithal to call authorities? All of those sort of things because one of the things is that this fear that's in this other state outside of your control is really, I can feel it, really impacting you and having this huge effect on you. And what I want you to be able to do, Shirley, is I love your concern for your grandson. I love that you want him to be safe. What I don't love is how much it's disrupting you and your well-being.
Shirley: I don't either.
Chris Williams: What I would encourage you to do in that fear is, first and foremost, do what you've done here today and do it with people in your community. Do it with people in your church, people in your area. The other aspect of that is I would encourage you to get some counseling. And the counseling isn't addressing what's wrong with us. Counseling is addressing what's right with us as much as it's addressing what's wrong with us, but it's just really helping us get a more stable interior life that we can show up better and make better decisions. Fear and anxiety really steal that ability away from us, and that's where a good therapist could help work through some of that and provide you some coping skills and mechanisms that that fear isn't controlling you.
JJ West: Does your grandson live with you, Shirley?
Shirley: When he lives back here, he does.
JJ West: How much of the time?
Shirley: Well, he went down there for the first time last September and he was there off and on until October, the middle of October, and then he went down there permanently. He came back in February, stayed here for two months, and then she just begged and begged and begged him to come back and he went back in April.
JJ West: And where are his parents, your daughter or son?
Shirley: My son is his dad and he's an over-the-road driver. And his mother lives in Indiana, but she's not the best influence. Hence why your grandson is living with you when he's there in your state. She does not want him living with her. The mother does not want her son to live with her. Even though she begged him to come down, she doesn't want him living with her. My daughter-in-law or former daughter-in-law doesn't want him. But the mother of the baby, the six-week-old, does she or does she not want your grandson living with her? It's not that she don't want him living with her, but he can't do that. He can't do it full-time. He said he has to create space because he feels like he's losing his sanity because of how toxic and how violent the situation is there.
JJ West: And so when he's not there, he comes all the way back to Illinois or he has another place to stay down south?
Shirley: No, he does not have any friends down there. It's simply her and her family. We're talking from Illinois to New Mexico. Very long trip. So when you're in communication with your grandson, is he saying that he feels unsafe with her?
Shirley: He tells me he does at times. He says, "Grandma, I don't know what to do," but he said, "I can't leave the baby."
JJ West: Sure. Okay, so I'm going to go back to something that Chris talked about, which is does your grandson have the wherewithal if he or the baby are in danger? Does he know to call 911, to call the authorities, to get whatever protective child protective services are in New Mexico involved?
Shirley: I've talked to him about that and he says, well she has been in trouble numerous times. She has a history with the police and he does not want her to get in trouble. And so that's why he doesn't want to say anything.
JJ West: I understand that and that's kindness and compassion on his part. However, if it was just the two of them, if it was just your grandson and this woman who were involved, that would be a different story. But because there's a baby involved, he doesn't have really that option anymore. If there is indeed violence, if there is indeed danger especially to the child, even if the child is not the victim of the violence directly, as Chris was talking about earlier, if the child is witnessing violence, that's still a form of abuse. It's important for the authorities to be involved. So I would just have a conversation with your grandson about that, that there's a need to protect that child. But then secondly, going back to what Chris was talking about, to protect your own heart, to recognize that there's a limit to what you can process on your own. Having a good community around you that supports you, that you can share your pain with, your concerns with, and who can redirect you to the Lord. Because as Chris was talking about, my fear is not from the Lord. Now that doesn't mean that God is mad at me for being afraid, but it does mean that God wants to remind me that He's with me. So we see all through scripture, "fear not, fear not, don't be afraid, don't be afraid." Sometimes we interpret that as a command from a drill sergeant, "you stop being afraid." When really I think it's a reassurance from a father saying, "I am with you, you don't need to be afraid. Even though you feel that fear, you don't need to let that fear control you because I'm with you to offer you my support, my protection, my guidance, and my comfort."
New Life: The baby is six weeks old and some people listening might say, "Well, six, if there is yelling or whatever between the mother and the father, the baby's not going to remember. The baby's only six weeks old."
Chris Williams: Actually, there is the implicit or what we call the somatic memory. The body does remember. It's taking in. We've got to remember that infants, their vulnerability is that they are taking in the world and absorbing the world through sensory data. With only very limited resources because a brain isn't developed fully yet and has a long way to go, they can't communicate what their needs are. So the attentiveness and atonement of a parent to provide a safe, secure environment is of paramount importance. If that baby is growing up in an unsafe, insecure, or threatening environment, that starts to get into the nervous system and that starts to embed itself there. I want to be very careful here. We don't want to get perfectionistic. We don't want to say that children aren't resilient or God doesn't design us with some resiliency. But the number one job of a parent with an infant is the provision of safety and security and necessity for well-being. And so when that is threatened or consistently threatened or deeply insecure, can flip in a moment, then that happens consistently over time, that does have an impact. It reminds me, I think this was from The Body Keeps the Score, but I'm not positive. But it reminds me of the story of the woman that called her pediatrician during World War II at the start as Germany was beginning this offensive against the Jewish population. She calls her pediatrician because the baby wouldn't stop crying. The baby just kept crying and crying and crying and she calls the pediatrician. The pediatrician says, "Are you Jewish?" She's like, "Why are you asking me that?" He says, "Because all of my Jewish babies are crying." There is a way in which our bodies respond to that stress, to that violence that's happening around us even before our language allows us to describe it.
New Life: Well Shirley, thanks for calling today to 1-800-229-3000. We're going to be praying for you and your grandson and the baby and even the baby's mother, that Jesus will just come and heal that relationship. We know that He can do amazing things. We're also going to send you an article that's on newlife.com. It's called "Helping Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder." We'll put a link to it in our show notes if you're interested, that anyone else watching or listening. One of you guys mentioned postpartum depression, which has been in the news lately. If you want to talk about that, call in. We're going to be here for two hours.
Guest (Male): To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, visit newlife.com. Now back to New Life Live.
New Life: Remember, no problem is too big or too small. If it matters to you, it matters to us. So call in at 1-800-229-3000. Maybe you've been listening for a while and you're hoping somebody else calls in with whatever situation you're going through so that you don't have to call in. Hasn't happened yet? That could be a sign that maybe you're the one that's supposed to call us. 1-800-229-3000 is our number. We've got licensed marriage and family therapists Chris Williams and JJ West here and we're going to talk to Tim in Annapolis, Maryland, listening on SiriusXM channel 131. Hey Tim, thanks for calling.
Tim: All right, so I'm 64 years old. I have a daughter who's 35. My daughter lives in New Mexico in Albuquerque. I live in the Annapolis area. Amber, my daughter Amber, has two sons, 13 and 11. To give you a little bit of a backdrop, I raised Amber as a single dad ever since she was five years old. The mom, we got married, the mom started displaying certain characteristics a couple years into the marriage where it was just very bizarre behavior, going out and not coming home, things of that nature. So basically I ended up getting full custody. Mom just kind of split the scene. But she was just displaying these characteristics I've never seen before and didn't know what to make of it. But so, she's now passed away. The mom's passed away, my ex-wife has passed away. She was on, from what I understand, she was on several different kinds of drugs to help her. I don't know if she was bipolar or whatever the situation was, but she passed away a couple years ago. The reason for the call is my daughter has these two grandsons and she's been displaying characteristics that I would it's like groundhog day all over again with my ex-wife. It's crazy. From what I found out recently, I have some very, very good friends out there because we lived out there for a while before I moved back here to Maryland. But anyway, I have some good friends that are watching out for her and the grandsons. Right now the grandsons are somewhat they don't even want to be with her anymore. I do know several months ago she got locked up and was in jail for a couple days for, I guess she got a DUI. And she had a couple more incidences where now I am working with my friends out there to try to number one keep the boys safe and secure and number two get her help. So I had a conversation with her last week and she's willing to go for a psychiatric evaluation. But what I don't want to have happen is I don't want her to go to a psychiatrist and have the psychiatrist not get the whole story. I want a proper evaluation. I just don't want my daughter, "Here, take this," if you know what I'm trying to say, right? I want somebody just really going to know the story. So my question is this, how do I find how do we find the proper psychiatrist? And number two, I understand HIPAA, I know the laws somewhat. Does my I mean if I write out a timeline can and my daughter agrees, can they use that timeline with that extra information to maybe help my daughter out?
JJ West: Tim, thanks for the call and thank you so much for the way that you're really loving your daughter and your grandsons well by staying involved, making sure that they're cared for, making sure they're protected. In response to your question though, directly, anything that the client is willing to share with the therapist is covered under HIPAA. So if your daughter is in agreement to share this timeline, then by all means you're able to do that. You would be able to attend one or multiple sessions with her if she were open to that. So that's always an option if she's in agreement. Now obviously you can't communicate with a therapist or a psychiatrist if she has not given that permission. If she hasn't signed a waiver saying that the therapist or the psychiatrist can communicate with another party, then obviously no. But if she's in agreement, you're more than welcome to do that. And it may be helpful. In fact, you could talk with her, since she is open right now to finding some help, finding some treatment, maybe talk with her about if you're in a position, I don't know if you're still working, if you're retired, but if you could take some time to go out there and do a session or two or more with her or even a family session, those are options as well.
Tim: That's good information because I do have the ability to do that. I'm not retired, but I can work remote. So if I needed to get out there and proximity is everything sometimes, and I think me showing up out there and maybe attending the first one with her, I don't know if that would be wise. But just knowing that if she gives me permission I can speak to the psychiatrist. But how do you find a good psychiatrist? How do you find somebody that you can trust?
New Life: We can help you here at New Life. If you'll stay on the phone, we have a huge network and that can assist you for sure. So and anybody else watching and listening who is also looking for a counselor or a therapist of some sort, give us a call at 1-800-NEW-LIFE or go to our website newlife.com. More calls coming up and you'll be up next when we return here at New Life Live. 1-800-229-3000.
Guest (Male): Every day we hear from people all over the world who are looking for hope. They've been lost in a relationship struggle, addiction, anxiety, depression, all kinds of ways. Wouldn't you love to be part of a rescue team? Don't miss your opportunity to be part of something that changes lives every single day because every one matters. Your generosity helps find them. And you know, we've seen God work in the lives of so many people over the years here at New Life and we want to invite you to be part of what God is doing. 99 for the 1 is our partner program that you can give to the ministry on a monthly basis to make sure that we continue to reach out to the lost. Call 1-800-NEW-LIFE, 1-800-639-5433, or newlife.com/9941. Join the mission, rescue the one and restore the many. To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, visit newlife.com. Now back to New Life Live.
New Life: Hey, if you're a guy struggling with sexual integrity, it rarely stays contained. If you're trying to do it with nobody knowing, it will come out in one way or another. It's going to affect your relationships, it impacts trust. Often it leaves the people closest to you feeling hurt, confused, or unsure what to do next. Guys, if you're facing this kind of struggle, we want you to know that real help is available at the Every Man's Battle Intensive. It's led by JJ West. It's a three-day workshop designed to help you understand, confront, and break free from patterns of sexual struggle with honesty, support, and a clear path forward. JJ, you're looking forward to the next one? It starts on the 11th of September.
JJ West: I'm so excited. I love getting to lead these things. I say all the time, I get to sit on the front row and watch God work miracles in people's lives. It's such a great opportunity, event, privilege to get to be a part of it. To your point about trying to solve it all on your own, keep it hidden, our good friend Bob Sklar, who's been a facilitator for years and years at Every Man's Battle, he talks about the fact that we either can choose the path of humility where we open up and confess our sins, or we end up choosing the path of humiliation. Because God loves us too much to leave us lost in our sin. He will bring it to light, not to embarrass us, not to ruin us, but to set us free. So I would invite you guys listening, if you're struggling in this way, choose the path of humility. Sign up, show up, and start sharing these things in your life that have been hidden for decades. Begin the healing process that way as opposed to having to choose the path of humiliation.
New Life: What's it going to be, guys? Humility or humiliation? Sign up by this Friday and you'll get a discount. You can go to newlife.com or call us at 1-800-NEW-LIFE. 1-800-229-3000 is the number to call us in the studio. You're up next, but first got to clear something up that I kind of misspoke at the end of the last.
Chris Williams: I think a lot of people struggle with how do I get a good evaluation and who can do it for me. A psychologist who specializes in psychological testing and evaluation in these what we call higher acuity, more high-end mental illness struggles, I think is really important. Because we want a clear picture of what's going on and they're hard to find. So you want to look up, when you're looking up resources, can I find a psychologist in this area within the state that can do a full psychological evaluation? A psychiatrist is a medical doctor. There are psychiatrists out there who also can do really good psychological evaluations. But psychologists are typically where I start there and then I let the psychologist determine do we need a referral to a psychiatrist who is the medical doctor who can prescribe medication. But also beyond just medication, the psychologist hopefully can also present a course of action. In Tim's case, it sounds like the daughter is struggling with substance abuse, specifically alcohol, so you want to have someone who specializes in addiction. And also there can be some genetic things going on, epigenetic things, mother to daughter. Also, I mean she has abandonment from her mother from a very early age. So there could be a lot of trauma she's carrying on inside of her as well. And just to affirm what Tim was doing all along is stabilizing life for the 13 and 11 year old as much as humanly possible. And so I'm so glad that they have resources out there. Hopefully that's helpful in that delineation in seeking the help that your daughter needs.
New Life: All right, 1-800-229-3000. Anne in Virginia, listening on WAVA. Hello, welcome to New Life Live, Anne.
Anne: Hi, how are you? I was listening to the radio today and heard you discussing situations that I had a question about. I'm raising my 11 and 12-year-old granddaughters. As we all know, two children can have the same parents and be completely opposite. My 11-year-old granddaughter seems to not have any empathy or any remorse for anything that she may have done. Like when she's just simple kid things, she actually seems more angry than remorseful. I'm not sure exactly how to deal with that and I want to raise her well.
Chris Williams: Well, can I ask, they're your granddaughters and what were the events that led you to be raising them and not their parents?
Anne: My daughter is in recovery herself for alcohol and drugs and she's in rehab right now. These grandchildren have had a lot of abandonment and changes in their lives and trauma incidents that we're dealing with as well. And we are seeking help. I do have them in play therapy.
Chris Williams: The lack of empathy could be coming from a bunch of different places inside of her and in her own life and so being able to know where it's coming from. We hope that it's not like embedded in her like she you know kind of like a burgeoning narcissist. We hope that that's always like the fear of that. But at 11 years old with her world being so unstable, most likely she has gone insular, meaning she's gone inside of herself and self-contained. But if inside of herself, especially abandonment, abandonment issues often times create a tremendous amount of shame within children. There's something wrong with me. So inside of her, and this is me being armchair therapist for a moment, but I just want this as a possibility and an awareness that if she already feels really bad about herself and other people affirm it, it's too much. She can't go there. And so that's where you'll get defensiveness, that's where you'll get blame shifting happening, a lot of different things like that because there's no room to feel worse about herself.
Anne: Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
Chris Williams: That's where she needs a lot of help to really uncover her internal world, what's going on inside of her to really hopefully in the end really just release and let go of shame, self-loathing or self-hatred, anything like that. And that she needs cared for in these areas. And I think as you're navigating this, it's not that you don't have boundaries with her, it's not that there aren't consequences to behavior, but you're always wanting to reinforce that calling out a behavior or setting a boundary or even having a consequence is not indicative of who they are as a human being. It is establishing safe and secure responsible behavior and so separating those two things out I think is really important.
JJ West: I would just add to that there's a reason why we don't diagnose personality disorders in children because there's a lot of behavior that can look like a personality disorder, but it's behavior that can be unlearned or relearned. We can learn new, better adaptive behavior. Children are very malleable and so even though you've seen some significant evidence or symptomology of her not seeming to display empathy, really getting angry rather than feeling remorse, that can be something that grows over time or changes over time as she begins to do the work that Chris was talking about where she feels more and more okay inside of herself. Then she can start to feel safe enough to go, "Oh, my actions have an impact on those around me." And I can look at that and I can see it as behavior, not as an indictment on my identity.
Chris Williams: There are two different acronyms I use in our household to help with healthy relationships, healthy emotions. The first one is just AID, A-I-D. A-I-D just stands for I have awareness. I have awareness that I'm an emotional being and I have emotions. The I is I can identify what those are. I can put a name on those. And then the D is disclosure. I can tell another person what I'm experiencing. And so the grand term there is emotional intelligence, but that is something that we have to learn over time and that if you grow up in my household, you didn't learn it. And so it's a little bit more difficult as an adult, but the more we can do that. One of the things I love in the intimacy and marriage workshop is learning the soul words and that's another way of doing that. Another quick acronym is OR. Think of an oar in a boat. When we make a mistake or when we have caused an offense, the O stands for we own it. The A stands for we apologize it and then the R stands for we repair it. "So here's what I've done, I'm sorry about that, what can I do to make this better?" And so those are just things that give us handles to move into these behaviors that are going to take a lot of time to learn, but give us a direction in which to go.
JJ West: Can I add one final resource? There's a book called Parenting with Love and Logic. I would just encourage you to pick that up.
New Life: All right, Parenting with Love and Logic. Thanks JJ and thanks Anne for calling us today. Dorothy, you'll be up next. 1-800-229-3000.
Guest (Male): To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, visit newlife.com. Now back to New Life Live.
New Life: The hour is almost done, but we're going to be here for another hour. So keep those calls coming to 1-800-229-3000. If you feel like you've tried everything and nothing seems to help, call in. Chris and JJ are going to be here for another hour to give you a plan to help you move forward. So we'd love to hear from you. Let's go to Dorothy in Memphis, Tennessee, listens to us on WUMY. Welcome to New Life Live, Dorothy.
Dorothy: Hi, you guys, how are you?
New Life: Doing well, thank you. How can we help?
Dorothy: I need some help on two questions, please. My husband passed away in 2016 and so that means that it's been 10 years and yes, I still miss him dearly. But I'm being talked about in a very negative way because I don't want to date, I don't want to go out, I don't want to mingle with the friends and all of this. But that doesn't make me a bad person. And then when I go around my family, they say I need counseling so I isolated myself from them because they always judging me because I won't do anything. I'm not depressed, I feel like I'm okay, but even my friends say, "No, no, no, it's something wrong, you need to move on." So I looked in the Bible and the Bible said that during the Old Testament days, they mourned for 7 to 30 days and these so-called Christians always come up to me and say, "Well you know you in the church every Sunday and you know the Bible says that you should only mourn for 7 to 30 days." I mean I can't help it that's not me. I mean yes I still miss him and everything but I'm not about to jump in a river or kill myself. So I just need some help how to answer my family because I have isolated myself from them and maybe that's not right but I just get tired of them saying I need help. So can you give me some suggestions please?
Chris Williams: Well I think first and foremost, when we go to the scripture, I think one of the strengths of the scriptures about grieving is that we see that there was established cultural rituals and religious rituals for grieving. Some lasted seven days, some lasted a couple, some lasted thirty days. The ritual of grief is different than the process of grief. The process of grief can last a lifetime. Rituals help us move through that process. And so I want to kind of make that delineation between like putting a timeline of seven or thirty days. No, no, that's how long a specific ritual lasted for the purpose of the grieving process. The process itself can look a lot longer and take on many different forms throughout a life. The other aspect of this, Dorothy, is that going back to kind of where I started at the beginning of the show, was that judgment can separate us. This is a great, unfortunately a great and horrible example of that. So the judgment of others requires us to have an internal boundary. Meaning this, it just means less to us. You can hold that, you can think that there's something wrong with me because I love being single, but that's on you, not me. And I'm going to love my single life and the freedom and the opportunities that it has afforded me because I mean listen, if there was something wrong being single, there was something wrong with Jesus. He wasn't missing anything, right? We see that throughout scripture, Paul, you know, being single. Singleness itself is not there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, there's a lot right with that. I would be curious if there was anything underneath that that they were concerned about for you and that the concern somehow is judgment and that's what I'd want to have conversations to work through in your family of what does it mean to be supportive, what does it mean to be judgmental.
Dorothy: Well being ten years is that I mean I don't think it's a bad thing even though that was ten years ago, but they do they think it's bad since it's been so long.
Chris Williams: Well I'm curious, what do they expect of you?
Dorothy: They expect me to go out to like they go to these fast places and drink wine or they have these functions and parties at their homes and I don't go to any of all that. I don't do any of all that. It's just not your thing.
JJ West: Well, that's the good question actually. Is are you not going because it's not your thing, you don't have an interest in being at the party with the people that are there, or I'm avoiding going because I don't want to face the possibility of meeting someone that I then have to reject?
Dorothy: At first it was because it wasn't my thing but I mean it used to be my thing. Don't get me wrong, with my husband we would go do these different things but when he left I just stopped doing everything. I stopped going different places and everything and I don't go now because they made an issue out of it that it's something wrong with me.
JJ West: So Dorothy, here's the question that I have and I think it's a question maybe that you can raise with your family and friends who are on you about this. Is your concern for me the fact that I am still single, that I'm not dating, or is your concern for me that I am isolating from the world, from others? I'm not engaged in the same activities that I used to enjoy, I'm not spending time with people that I used to hang out with. The reason why I delineate between those two is that you know if they're simply wanting to get you married off again, find a mate for you and you're enjoying being single and you're content in that, then I would agree with you. I don't think that that's an issue that they need to solve for you because it's not a problem for you. If in fact what they're concerned with is that after your husband's death you have retreated into a much smaller world in such a way that I have to make my world smaller and smaller and smaller so that I don't hurt. I don't want that for you.
Dorothy: I am hurting but I heard what you said. I am hurting and they know this and they know I miss him and sometimes you know I talk about him and I cry. So they think, "Oh it's really something wrong with her," but I just didn't think it was anything wrong with just that I still love him and miss him so much.
JJ West: No, I don't think that there's anything wrong with that either, Dorothy. I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that you still love your husband and that you still miss him. You spent a significant part of your life with him. He was at a time, he was the most important person in your world outside of God, yes?
Dorothy: Yes.
JJ West: Okay, and so when that person is taken away, of course it would leave a gaping hole. Of course you would miss him. What I don't want to have happen for you, and maybe this is where your friends are coming in, your family's coming in, and I don't know because I don't know you and I don't know them. But what I would hate is for that pain that you experienced in losing your husband to now dictate or control the rest of your life in such a way that I have to make my world smaller and smaller and smaller so that I don't hurt. I don't want that for you.
New Life: Dorothy, thanks for calling in today to New Life Live. We're going to be in the studio for another hour, so keep those calls coming. Tess, we'll talk to you in just a moment. 1-800-229-3000 is our number. And if you can, support us financially so that we can continue to do the work that we do here at New Life Ministries helping people at their time of need. You can find out more at newlife.com. God bless.
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