When Mr. Ravenhill was talking today, I was really struck with one thing he said. And what he said was, in the Christian's life, there's no such thing as a mistake or an accident. That what happens to us is in God's plan. And what I believe about losses, in fact, my mind kind of went on a little trip while he was talking. What I believe about losses is that God handpicks your losses and my losses, because He knows just where He needs to touch us to make us more like Himself. Those losses are hand-picked in order to give us a ministry, in order to give us something that will last when we get to glory. He gives it to us, it's a gift, and that's what is so hard for us to understand. He gives us this gift so that we can so that when we get to heaven, he can glorify us, and then we will turn around and give him the glory, all because of our losses. To me, that's exciting. And I think that if, as Christians, we can allow ourselves to feel the feelings and work through those feelings, but always bearing in mind that this loss is God's gift to me. And I think that God's greatest gifts are not the kinds of gifts that we would give to each other. Things, maybe money or opportunities or status or whatever, but God's greatest gifts seem to come in the form of our losses and our tragedies. I don't know why he works that way, but it seems like he does. To me, that's exciting. Yesterday I talked a little bit about the resolution of loss, but I really didn't get into that too much, and I'd like to add a few things on that line. I think that going through that grieving process, which I gave you, and I'm not sure that's in your notes. I'm going to have to get that part typed up. That was extra. When we go through that grieving process, what does it mean to resolve our loss? And I think for the Christian to resolve our loss is something different, perhaps, than it is for someone who doesn't know the Lord. I think that we, in resolving the loss, have to give that loss back to the Lord. I think we have to let go of it. And we have a tendency to hold on to the pain and the feelings and the anger and whatever it is that we're feeling. And God wants us to give it back to him. He gave us this gift. I put that in quotes. He gave us this gift, and he wants us to give it back. And I think resolution comes when we give it back to the Lord. And I don't think that happens as an event in time. I think that's a process. I think it takes us time to give up the feelings that we have around our losses. I was sharing with a young incest victim over Christmas. She was in one of my groups. She was a young girl who was 21 years old. who's been married twice, and she herself has had a father and three stepfathers, and all fathers molested her. And she was angry, and she was saying, Karen, what do I do with this anger? And I said, Nancy, you have to forgive each one of your fathers. And I said, you know, I don't think you can do that. And she said, then why are you telling me to do it? And I said, because I think forgiveness is a spiritual issue. Now, here I am in a psychiatric hospital, where it's not okay to talk about spiritual things, usually. I have gotten permission to do it. They said that forgiveness is a spiritual issue, that you and I are not capable of forgiving, that we need the Lord to help us forgive. And if you can forgive your stepfathers and your father and give up those feelings, you will have resolution and there is no other answer to your problem. And I told her that forgiveness is the most selfish thing we can do. And she looked at me like, what do you mean it's selfish? She said, it's not selfish at all. If I forgive them, I let them off the hook. And I said, no. If you forgive them, you let you off the hook, that you're the one on the hook. Well, after this little talk, as she was walking out of the group, she passed out. I had to pick her up off the floor and get a wheelchair. I think that it was such an emotional, I mean, that was so shocking to her to hear that. She was real angry with me for saying that, and as I worked with her through the sessions, she finally came around. And I have a, if I can find it, a note that she gave me when she left the hospital. She couldn't say goodbye, but she left me a note, and maybe I'll share this with you. People don't usually stop and look at the precious things in life, families, togetherness, friends, the beauty of God's world. I try hard to stop and smell those precious roses, but sometimes it's hard. Growing in your classes strengthens my view to see these beauties in a positive point of view. I will especially miss your caring and concern for human beings and me. I am very invested in you and will always remember you. God bless you. That's coming from a very angry, broken-hearted, incest victim. Now, I wasn't sharing God's love with her in the way I would have liked to have, and that really bothers me. But I was able to share that forgiveness is a spiritual thing, and that she really needs to be able to forgive, and that's a spiritual issue. And that's true for you and me. We can't let go of our losses. We can't forgive the people who have hurt us unless the Lord helps us to. And that's why we have such an ability that the people in the world don't have, that resolution comes with God's help. Otherwise, you and I are just like the rest of the people who have to hurt the rest of our lives. But I do think we have to go through the pain. I don't think we can sidestep it. I think God provides the pain for our growth. And maybe this will generate a whole bunch of questions for us in the session that follows. Today I'd like to give you a whole bunch of characteristics of children who have unresolved grief. Now these are the things that I share with school teachers and special ed teachers and anybody working with kids. I've taken a couple of lists and consolidated them. And of course, you will have a copy of these. We've talked a lot about lack of trust. And lack of trust is one of the major issues you'll see. And I think with a lot of your children, you see lack of trust. We certainly saw that with Bruce and Kathy last night in the film, that they couldn't trust that anybody could help them. And to be honest with you, I don't know. That whole situation is overwhelming. But the lack of trust that anyone could help them was there. Part of this lack of trust is that children don't believe what you say. They don't believe that you will do what you will say that you will do. You have to follow through on every promise that you make, everything you say you will do, you have to follow through on because they don't believe you that you will follow through. And this child will also have inadequate relationships with other children. They don't trust that other children can care about them. They don't trust that you can care about them. And their relationships will be very difficult. They don't relate well because they don't trust. And that's an issue you'll be dealing with. And the last one I have on there is that no authority knows anything. And you represent authority, and they're going to question whether you know anything. They treat their teachers like they don't know anything, and they will treat you like you don't know anything. And low self-esteem. We've talked a lot about that this week. How when we have unresolved losses, or if we grew up in a dysfunctional family, it's hard for us to feel that we're okay. And lots of us here struggle with that, having grown up in a dysfunctional family, or maybe being in a dysfunctional family. That it's hard to feel okay about myself. I wonder if I'm okay. And that's what the child wonders about. Am I okay? Am I as good as the other kids? Am I as good as my siblings? The child might demonstrate this for you by being unsure that he can follow through on your craft projects, or may need a lot of help because they don't believe they can do it. Or maybe I don't believe I can memorize the verse, and I need you to help me. They will show that they just don't believe that they can follow through on the task. Another thing the child will do is discount any positive feedback you give them. If you say, you did a good job, Johnny, they'll say, no, I didn't. You're just saying that. Or they will act as though they don't believe that what you're saying is right, and they'll discount themselves. And the other part to this is that they will seem to want a lot of negative attention, but they'll do everything they can do to get negative attention. Do you have kids like that in your clubs? You know, one of the things we need to do with a kid that's always wanting negative attention is to give them negative attention. That's what they need. They know negative attention. They don't understand positive attention. But what we can do is we can put it in kind of a ratio of four to one. Give them four negative attentions and then slip in something very positive and see how they handle it. And then go back to your four to one and then start doing it three to two and then two to three, and then one to four, and then get them up to being able to receive positive attention. They need to learn how to receive positive attention. If you grew up in a family where all you got was negative attention, you would not know how to respond to the positive. Now, when I'm saying negative attention, maybe correct them for their behavior. But then throw in, you did a nice job. that sort of thing, so that you are teaching them to receive the positive attention. I think that maybe you're setting the stage for them to be able to hear God's love, that God loves them unconditionally. It may be very hard for them to accept that. I don't know if that's a problem. Maybe the Holy Spirit moves in and helps them understand that part, but be aware that these children are so accustomed to negative attention that they will ask you for it rather than the positive attention. Another thing these children get into is what I call, or what the literature calls, role reversal. That's where the child takes on an adult role and may want to be the junior teacher or may even take over for you when you're not looking and be the teacher. This usually happens in families where the child really does have to take over the adult role. Maybe mother isn't there, and the child has to be mother in the home, or maybe has to take on adult responsibilities. And when they come to your group, they don't know how to be a child. They know how to be an adult. And if you have a child like that, I would wonder why the child is being so adult. rather than looking at the child, my, this is a mature child who is so adult, rather than looking at that as necessarily healthy, it may be, but it may be a cover-up for what they're really feeling, like maybe adults can't take care of me, maybe there are no adults around to take care of me, and I have to be the adult. Watch for that in the children. They may even, you'll see it when the parent comes sometimes, that the child will take on an adult role with their own parent. Maybe if the parent's involved in a task with them, the child will compliment the mother. You did a really good job, Mom. Maya's a good project mother. And it sort of sounds like a teacher talking to a child. And here's the child talking to the teacher or to the parent. It could be that that child's had a loss. It doesn't feel like there are any adults available to him to meet his needs. And the child may do this role reversal with you as well. So be aware of that. And be aware that it often looks healthy. But tune into it. Yes? Is that OK now? You know, last time we took this thing off. Yeah, why don't you? OK. That'll help. Is that better? OK. Here are the kids you know, probably. Those that are over-aggressive in the classroom. They don't seem to have any impulse control. They just, when they have a feeling, they act on it. They don't sit still. They're hyperactive. They don't seem to think about the consequences. You tell the child, if you do this, this will happen, and they do it anyway. And they do it again when you tell them not to do it again. And they're a real problem in the classroom. We have a tendency to label them hyperactive, and they certainly look hyperactive. And, of course, they may have a physiological reason for their hyperactivity, but very often the reason is that they've had losses and they have lots of feelings and they can't sit still because if they sit still, they start to feel their feelings. And so they keep everything in chaos. Children from dysfunctional homes only know chaos. They're only comfortable in chaos. And when things are calm, they go in and create chaos because then they know what to do. I had a staff member when I was the director of the drug alcohol team at our hospital And this young man, whenever the unit was upset or whenever the patients were starting to act out or it felt like somebody was going to be out of control, this person knew just exactly what to do. He would walk in and he would say, you do this, you do this, you do this, and he'd get everybody calmed down and everything was quiet and taken care of. Did a beautiful job. But if everything was calm, he had no idea what to do. He couldn't go in and start a group or do any activity extemporaneously with a group of patients. He didn't know what to do if it was quiet. And I started looking at him and wondering what kind of a family he came from. So I had a little supervision session with him. And I said, Keith, tell me about your family. And he turned pale. proceeded to tell me after a while, it took him a while to share all this about a father who beat him all the time and how he tried to protect his siblings and how he would take the beating for the siblings because he didn't want his younger brothers and sisters hurt. And he was so accustomed when his father was violent to going in and getting the little kids out of the way and getting mom out of the way and then being there for dad. And he knew just exactly what to do. And in our unit, as a staff member, he played out that role again. And I had to work with him to teach him how to be an effective staff member when there wasn't chaos. Because my guess is that he stirred up the patients to get them to be chaotic so that he'd have something good to do. I think we see this with our kids in the groups. We certainly see it in the classrooms. And I certainly see them in the children's groups that I do. that those kids that, they get very uncomfortable when you're trying to tell them of something that's important or when you're zeroing in on anything that's real important for them to hear, such as the love of God. They might stir things up. They might tell a funny joke or they might drop something or anything to get chaos stirred up. When you have a child like that, you probably have a kid from a dysfunctional family who's really hurting, who probably can't deal with their feelings at all. And the closer you get to their feelings, the more chaotic they're going to become. Yes? What was that? You're going to have your own copy of all this material, so you don't have to take notes. Sudden relief. OK. These children have a lot of difficulty sharing. And they hold on to whatever's mine. And you expect, you know, we always expect children to share. But you know, if they've lost things in their lives, or if nothing has ever been mine, it's awfully hard to share. And so a child who can't share toys, or They won't give up the one toy, and they'll fight over that other toy, and they won't accept a substitute toy. The only thing I want is what everybody else wants. And then when you let them have it, they don't want it anymore. But if they can't share, you might wonder what's happened. What kinds of losses have they dealt with? Why are they having a hard time sharing? Especially we expect children, you know, 9, 10, 7, 8, 9, 10 to be able to share. Maybe two-year-olds don't share. But we expect the little older ones to be able to share. If they refuse to share, start wondering, what's going on with this child? They may also hoard things. They may take other children's belongings. They may bring their belongings with them and just hoard them and hang on to them. And as they take other people's things, you might see them as stealing. And you might want to say, oh, you mustn't steal. Before placing a judgment on the behavior, I would take some time to figure out with the child what it is that's going on that they feel like they need to take other people's belongings and hang on to them. The child may be feeling so much loss that he wants to hang on to anything he can hang on to, and he may choose other people's belongings to hang on to. Likewise, food. Children who have had a lot of losses may hoard food. So when you have snacks in your group, they may take a whole handful of cookies and they might not even eat them. They might stick them in their pocket or take them home. They're just grabbing onto anything they can take because they feel so empty or they feel like they've lost so much. And if we can learn to read that behavior rather than punish the behavior, now of course we can't let them take other children's toys home or other children's belongings. But if we can come to understand what it is that's going on with the child and help them deal with the loss, we can also talk about it's not okay to take other kids' things. I'm not saying this is situational ethics, which I've been accused of. I'm just saying we need to understand the behaviors, read the behaviors so that we can understand the child. And my guess is that those little children in the welfare hotels will hoard everything they can get their hands on. I don't know, Tom, does that, or is there anything there for them to take? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. My guess is that they would grab onto anything they could find and hang on to it just to have something. So I've got may hoard belongings or food. They have a very poor frustration and anxiety tolerance. Just one little thing in there off the handle. They get real angry real fast. I think the reason for this is that they stuff their feelings. Because when we grow up in a family where it's not okay to share our feelings, we stuff them. And it's kind of like a tea kettle on the back burner that doesn't have an escape valve, where you maybe put a cork in the spout. and the water's boiling, boiling, boiling, at some point it's going to explode. And that's how we are emotionally if we don't have an escape valve for letting off our feelings. If these little children have no way to share feelings, or they don't even know what their feelings are, they're stuffing them and living them right on the edge of explosion at all times, so it doesn't take very much for them to explode. If we can understand that and help them talk about the anger, help them talk about the feelings behind the explosion, we might find a lot of loss and a lot of pain that these little children are suffering. Oppositional behaviors we see, lying, stealing, cheating, all these things, very often they are expressions of loss. Now we, again, need to deal with behaviors that aren't acceptable. We can't let children behave in an unacceptable fashion. But it's important for us to understand what the behavior may be saying. I don't know if I said this to you, but all of our feelings get expressed. Whether we express it directly or not, our feelings do get expressed. And you and I act out our feelings, too, if we don't express them. We act them out in ways that are destructive. And so do the children. And they might get into behaviors that are not acceptable, just like we do. Some of the children have temper tantrums. Certainly when children are having temper tantrums, it's because they're not dealing with their feelings. They may also be grandiose about themselves, bragging about how great they are. Probably they're covering up for their low self-esteem, but they may be becoming grandiose in a very aggressive sort of way. And I think to sit down with a little child who acts like this and find out what's behind that is real important. Maybe even suggesting that you must be feeling not too good. And they'll say, yeah, I'm Superman. But what's behind the Superman? And when we find out that usually it's very low self-esteem, they don't feel that they're as good as the other kids. They appear to be reacting in anger towards others, almost very attacking towards other people. And you will see this in the way they relate to the other kids, this aggressive style that they have. And they blame others for their actions. If they do something bad, they blame somebody else. Or if they get angry, they blame somebody else. And I guess I would suggest to all of us that our feelings are our own. If I feel angry, I can't blame you for my anger. That anger is mine, and I need to deal with my anger. If I'm sad, the sadness is mine. You can't make me angry, and I can't make you angry. And kids can't, I see people kind of raising their eyebrows. Maybe that's something we need to talk about, that people can't make us angry. They can trigger our anger, but the anger's already there. The anger's ours. And we have to be responsible for our anger, and I think responsible to God for our anger. And I think that the little children who are blaming others for their feelings and blaming others for their actions, we need to help them understand that they are responsible for it. But let's understand what's behind it so that we show them that we care about them, show them that we understand them, and then show them their responsibility. Very important thing for all of us. The flip side to this particular characteristic is they may be very aggressive or they may be very withdrawn. And the child that withdraws from others, who doesn't relate, who's not part of the group, who isolates himself from the group, that's a behavior that you can almost 100% read as if there's some real loss there. Loss in the ability to communicate, if nothing else. But there's a reason why children can't communicate and probably There's a dysfunctional home situation, or maybe there's a parent that's not available. Maybe they've never experienced sharing feelings, and they don't know how to do it. So when you see the withdrawn, isolated child, we need to read that behavior as something we need to talk about with that child. And I think we can walk right in and talk about it must be pretty lonely to be there all by yourself. You must feel really badly that you're sitting way over here, and everybody else is over here. And the child will probably say, no, I don't feel badly. But as you work with them, you will discover that they do feel badly, that they feel different. Children who don't have parents, children who don't have parents available to them, feel different. They feel like they're not the same as the other kids. And because I'm different, I can't relate. And that's a painful place to be. I don't know if you've ever felt that. I've felt that. I'm different. I know when I was divorced, I felt different from other people. Like somehow I didn't want to relate, because I was different. And it was very, very painful. And I withdrew from people. And it was scary. So if you can know that that's how a person feels, and that it's scary to be alone, and go in and talk about it with the child, you will learn a lot about those children. They will begin to share. Sometimes when we guess what they're feeling and we're right, they really think we really can read their minds. Well, we can read their behaviors. We can't read their minds, but we can read what they tell us behaviorally. And if we respond to that directly, the children will believe we understand them. And we really do understand them. We really do understand how they feel. And they will begin to share with us what the pain is in their lives. And I think this is really important for discipling these children, because I think we have to disciple them with their pain and how to deal with their pain. Am I triggering a verse for you? If you have it, come. Come and share it. OK. Then we see children with thought disorders. Now, I see all kinds of children who have thought disorders. But I see kind of the last-ditch kids in terms of emotional problems. But these are children who really can't distinguish between reality and fantasy. Children who are hurting will fantasize that things are different than they are. And in their fantasy world, everything's okay. They don't have any problems in their fantasy world. Well, I don't know, I do this sometimes too, you fantasize, I wonder what it would be like if, and there I go off on a little trip into a different world and things are great and all my problems are solved. But if I don't know the difference between my fantasy and what is real, then I have a problem. And sometimes these little children don't know the difference between their fantasy and what is real. If you suspect that a child is fantasizing away his problems and is telling you that everything's okay, a response like, that's how you wish it was, isn't it? Will help bring the child back. They'll look at you, how did you know? Yeah, that's how I wish it was. And then you can start talking about what it really is like. And children will fantasize. And they're not telling us lies in the sense of trying to deceive us. It's a lie that they're living for themselves because they can't bear the pain. And if we can address that for them and help them differentiate and help them deal with what's real, we'll be helping them in a great way. These children who are kind of checked out of reality will stare and gaze kind of aimlessly And you will pick them up by the way they look. They don't seem to be with you. There's a glassy stare. They're not in touch with you, even though they may be conversing with you. Watch for that aimless kind of gaze. That child's probably not with you. And you can just invite them to come back. And just a statement like, you know, you look like you're way out. What are your thoughts? What is it you're thinking about? And they'll probably share it with you. Part of that is they appear to be in another world. There's this young man that I'm working with, a 17-year-old boy who was sexually molested by his stepfather. And his mother called me New Year's morning and said, he's just in another world. I don't know what to do. He just doesn't seem to be with us. What should I do? And the kid was really fantasizing Things were not the way they really were. And we had to, I'm trying to get this child hospitalized. The mother isn't going along with it. I think the child really needs some intensive help. And going along, same thought as appears to be in the fantasy world more than in reality. Then we see the kids who probably your incest victims or your sexual abuse victims will act out sexually. And you will hear them saying things that just doesn't fit children that age. They might make statements that let you know that they've had an experience that's beyond their years. Or they may tell jokes that are sexual in nature that just don't fit a little child. or they may try to kiss people, and their kissing is very sexual rather than a little child kind of kissing. And when you see that kind of behavior, you might suspect that this child has had sexual experiences. And the sexual abuse that's going on in our country, it's amazing. The statistics are very high. And I would guess that probably 40% to 45% of my clients are all sexual abuse victims. So I think that's something that we need to be aware of. We can't put our heads in the sand anymore. It's happening. And the devastating part is I'm finding it's happening in Christian homes too. And that's what's hard for me to believe, but that's what I'm discovering. Children who seem to be sexually older than they ought to be, we need to find out what's going on if you can. There's a danger to that. If you discover sexual abuse, you have to report it. That's a real danger, because when you're building trust and confidence and there for the purpose of sharing the Lord, and you discover sexual abuse and have to report it, that's a real breach in the confidence. But you need to check the laws of your state. And I know in Colorado, if I have knowledge of any sexual abuse, I must report it to social services, and I'm sure it's that way in most states. Kansas and Missouri? It is? Okay. Yeah. I know it is in Wyoming, but I'm sure it is in every state. Another characteristic you will find of a child who's has losses, who probably comes from a dysfunctional family, is muted senses. They don't notice details. They don't notice little things. They're not in touch with all that's going on around them. They just haven't had somebody who's been helping them, reading to them, giving them information, helping them grow emotionally and spiritually. And academically, they're just not in touch with us much. They don't appear as bright as some of the other kids. And they may be very bright in other ways. They may know all the soap operas on TV, and they may be sexually aware, and things like that. But in the ways that you would expect children to be growing and developing, it's not there. And you'll notice a difference in these children. And so if you notice that, you might explore that with the child. They may also misinterpret interactions. They might, you go to touch them and they'll pull back. Child who's been physically abused, if you put your hand on their shoulder, they might just jump like you were going to hit them. Or if you lift your hand, they duck. That kind of thing. You can be almost certain that these children have been beaten. It's kind of like a dog, you know. You'll know a dog that's been abused because you go to pet him and he'll pull back, or he'll growl at you, or attack. And the children are the same way. If they have experienced a lot of physical abuse, they will not be comfortable with touch. And when a child does that, I wouldn't try to be touchy with them. I would talk with them and see if you can figure what it's all about. But it's too frightening for them to be touched. Also, sexual abuse victims might interpret your touch as being sexual. And then you might be in trouble for that one. So you need to be real careful when you pick up that something's uncomfortable for a child to respond to that. And then try to figure out what it's about. Another characteristic is hypervigilance. And that's where the children just don't seem to feel safe in their environment. It kind of goes along with what I was just talking about, them flinching when you lift your hand or pulling back if you touch them. But they don't feel safe. And they're kind of looking around and making sure that no one's there. And they just have a kind of a paranoid way about them. you can be fairly certain that things aren't too secure in a home where a child behaves like that. Or they might become overwhelmed or overly frightened if an object is missing, if they lose something. Very often, these children who have losses will carry things with them belonging to the person they lost, or things that are kind of resemble or significant to them in terms of who they've lost. And if they lose that object, they will become frantic. I told you about the group experience that I had where we had to bring objects to the group. The children will, oh, I know. I have an example for you. There's a little girl. I didn't ever work with this little girl, but I worked with her older sister. But the girl's 15, and her mother died when she was nine. And she carries with her. about five or six pictures of her mother every place she goes. And if those pictures, if she can't find the pictures, she's absolutely frantic. And if she were to lose them, that's like losing mother all over again. And these children will often have something over which they become frantic if they lose. And if you see that kind of behavior with a child, you need to explore that and see what that's about. then they become frightened or might flinch at the slightest sound. And they don't know what to expect because they've been hurt a lot. And remember, they don't trust you. And they're not sure what you're all about. And they're not sure that you won't do what their parents have done. And so they're hyper-vigilant. They're going to protect themselves if they can. And then we see developmental delays. This would be delays in the way they think. They don't think at an age-appropriate level. They're not able to reason to the degree that a child that age would reason. Their motor skills, their social skills, the way they relate to people, the way they attempt to share feelings, they just don't have the skills. And you will notice that in them. They just don't function at their age level. And there may not be an intellectual or a problem with their brains. It may be strictly that they've had losses. I know there are little children who, lots of our children with loss end up in special education classes. And one little child was saying, you know, I know what they want me to learn, but how can I learn when I'm so scared what's going to happen to me when I go home? I just can't think about what I need to learn, so they've got me in these dumb classes. That's a kid with a loss. And probably he could function intellectually, but he's not able to because of what's going on at home. This child may appear to need more direction and may be less interested in novelty experiences. They may just want to They just need a lot of help doing what the bare necessities of getting the task done. Let's see, I had, okay. They have slow gross motor skills and large body movements. They're clumsy. They're not developmentally where they ought to be. And you might notice this in a child. Seems clumsy and seems to fall a lot. And these children tend to have more accidents. I don't know whether it's their way of expressing their feelings, but they tend to have more accidents. And they may even regress back to wetting or soiling. And when they are doing that, they really are having problems. And many of our kids that are seven, eight, nine years old are still wetting or soiling. I don't know whether you see that in your clubs or not, but many of the kids that I see have this problem. And it's due to unresolved losses. And they might seem to be depressed. They may not have a lot of interest in their surroundings, but they will deny that anything is wrong. When you say, what's wrong, Johnny? He'll say nothing. Remember that children who are hurting don't share that, that they're hurting. They say nothing is wrong. So don't take it at face value. Maybe you look sad, Johnny. Well, nothing's wrong. But you look so sad, I'm just wondering what's going on. If we can respond to what we see, how they look, even though they deny that anything is wrong. The next one says, they fail to display appropriate affect for the emotions they're feeling. That sounds like our field here. That means they don't show, their emotions don't show what they're really feeling. On the outside they may be laughing, but on the inside they're really hurting. Or they may be talking about being happy about something and they may look like they're about to cry. Just what they're saying, they feel and what they look like they feel doesn't fit. And what we can say is something like, you know, Johnny, you say everything's okay, but you look so sad. If we can just respond to what we're seeing, we hear what they're saying and respond to what we see, so that we can get the child to share what's going on. Another characteristic is that they may be eating less or eating more, and if we look at they're eating. One of the things when we have losses, and I don't know whether you do, I'm sure you do this. When we have a loss, we feel very empty. We feel like we've lost everything. And we may eat a lot to fill up that emptiness, or we may not want to eat at all because it feels like I couldn't handle eating. I'm so empty, I just couldn't handle eating. And we act one way or the other. I tend to eat if I'm upset or lost. But some people don't eat when they're experiencing loss. Watch the children. If there's a change, or if there seems to be a pattern, maybe this child just eats everything in sight. Or maybe the child never touches anything of the refreshments that you give. Take a look. Because we're looking at behaviors, because the behaviors tell us what's going on. Child may be very evasive with his feelings. That's like, nothing's wrong. Nothing's wrong. Get off my case. Nothing's wrong. You sound angry. They may also have sleeping disturbances. When children have losses, they aren't able to sleep. And I think that they feel out of control when they have a loss. And they're afraid to go to sleep Because if I give up the control, more losses will come. And very often we will find the child doesn't sleep well at all. And if a child tells you he's not sleeping well, then I would explore that. What's happening? He might tell you he's afraid to go to sleep. Now, there's a lot of reasons why kids today are afraid to go to sleep. I think the TV is enough to make any of us afraid to go to sleep. And children are watching TV indiscriminately. Explore that with them. But if they're just afraid to go to sleep because maybe mommy won't be there. I don't know if I told, I did tell you about the young lady whose mother kept threatening suicide and threatening to leave the girl. She was afraid to go to sleep because she didn't know if mother would kill herself. She was afraid to go to school. She just couldn't do anything because of fear of what mother was going to do. And of course, going along with that, the child may appear chronically tired. But when we're depressed, we appear chronically tired. We have no energy for anything. And depressed children do the same thing. They have no energy for anything. And there might be a lot of absenteeism with these kids. They may come a couple times and then be gone a while and then come back. And they're not very consistent in how they attend the club. So you might want to watch for that. Then we find children who are either clingy or untouchable. They may cling to the objects they bring from home, getting emotional security from the objects they bring from home. Or they may seek affection from other people. They may be clinging to you, wanting you to pat them, wanting you to put your arm around them, wanting to hang onto your skirt or your trousers. They seem to be always there, clinging to you. And they're emotionally needy, and they can't tolerate working by themselves very long. They just need you there. They need a lot of help, because if they need help, you'll be right there with them. They just cling to you. And they have a lot of trouble separating from their moms. If their mom brings them to the club, they may cling to mother, and mother has to kind of take some kind of a glue solvent to get free of the kid in order to leave for the kid to be at the club. And then when mother comes back, the child may either be angry at mother for having left in the first place or may cling to mother then. But the clinginess, you have to wonder what is the loss or what is the child afraid of. or they cry frequently and for long periods of time, and they appear to always be hungry or hurt, and they get hurt a lot. Like I said, they fall a lot. They have lots of accidents. Now, the flip side to that feeling is that they refuse affection. They won't relate to you. They don't want to come near you. They appear aloof, and they don't come to you if they've been hurt. And they don't cry when they've been hurt. We see either side of this, either the clingy or the untouchable. And they won't reach out for help because no one's ever been there for them. They don't know how to reach out for help. Now, some of the children we see vacillate between the two. And these are the confusing kids. They cling to you. And then when you just feel like you've got a relationship going with the kid, the kid will push away and have nothing to do with you. And you wonder, what have I done? These kids really have a problem in relationships because they cling and then they pull back because that's been what mother has done with them. Mother has been emotionally available and then she's not been there. And they've never known whether mother would always be there. So they cling to you and they find that you're there and then they get angry and they push back. And you'll see them vacillating between the two. These are kids who really have shaky attachments They're not able to be sure that you'll really be there for them. And we have a whole psychiatric hospital full of adults who have these very characteristics, where they cling and then they push back. And when they're pushing back, they make many suicide attempts. And then they come back and cling to us. And then they're back and forth in their feelings. It's a really severe psychiatric disorder. But you will see it, the roots of it, in the children. They cling and then pull back. And just when you think you've got the child, a good relationship going, the child will get angry with you and push back. And they usually use anger to push away. And so then you think for sure you've done something wrong. And it's what's going on in the child. He's really afraid. Afraid to be in a relationship with you. Because he's afraid that you won't really be there for him. Do you see kids like this that do this? Maybe that's just because I work with a way at the other end of the continuum. These kids are also environmentally deprived. They are not exposed to different things in their environment, and the parent doesn't talk with the child and explain to him. We've already kind of talked about that. And after a while, the child loses his curiosity, and he just sort of accepts whatever happens. and becomes rather lethargic and not interested in surroundings. Then there's the whole issue of control. These children who have had losses want to be in control. I think they feel that when they're out of control, losses occur. And so if I can be in control, I'm not going to let losses occur for me. And the child wants to be in control because he feels that nothing's been in control in his life. And when you and I feel out of control, we want somehow to gain control. And we may become very controlling of others around us when we feel out of control. And that's what these little children do. They become very controlling. And they control the club. And they control it by their negative behavior or in different ways. But usually it's their negative behavior. And they may treat other people just like objects, like you do this, you do that, and they may treat you that way in a very controlling fashion. And they may defy anybody telling the child what to do. Nobody's going to tell me what to do. Now, these are the kids that I call self-appointed orphans. They just won't let anybody guide them. And they have to be in control. And one of the things you will see with these children is that they get very upset if you change the rules. or if you change the order of your club, if you usually have refreshments at the end and if you have refreshments first, they'll be very upset, that's not the way we do our club. And they will really get angry with you for that. They need to be in control. Are we just about out of time now? Or should I go five more? Okay. I'll finish this material then, I'm just about done. just other characteristics that don't fit in any categories, that they are not interested in modifying their behavior to please you. Now, some of the kids will, but these kids who really are devastated by losses don't usually change their behavior just to please you, so that the hyperactive kids or the kids that create chaos for you continue doing it, even when you have set limits on them, and there's a real temptation to say that this kid can't come to club anymore, because they don't want to modify their behaviors. If we can figure out what's behind it, what are the feelings that are underneath it, perhaps we can get them to a point where they do modify their behavior. They appear lethargic, they appear to be repeating a painful experience, they seem to create painful experiences everywhere they go, because they know painful experiences, they know how to respond to them. Often they will appear to be talking like or acting like somebody else. And sometimes they will behave and take on the characteristics of the parent that they lost, trying to bring that parent back in some way. I think some of this punk behavior, that punk dressing that we see, is probably the flip side of that, where they are trying to be not like the person that they've lost. If father was you know, a businessman, and he left the family, I will become a punker and show him that I'll be different, I won't be like him. And children who have had losses, very often adolescents will actually wear the clothes of the parent that they've lost and be just like that parent. Now, your little kids can't do that, but maybe there are some characteristics that they take on that are like the parent. And the flip side, of course, is to be exactly opposite And I haven't found any of these punk rockers who haven't had major losses. And they think that this punk stuff, and I don't know where you are from if you have a lot of it, but in Denver, it's amazing what you see walking down the street, the displays of hair colors and clothing. But these kids, if you talk with them, you will find they've all had losses. And they're usually losses of parents, and very often, parents not emotionally available, or parents have left the family and abandoned them. And they're angry, and they're expressing their feelings through this bizarre dress. And it's hard to love these punkers. They are the most bizarre-looking people. But underneath, I have found them to be really hurting kids, or just little kids that are hurting. Another part is that they might talk about their parent as either all good or all bad, the parent that left. Remember we were talking about when we've done our grief work, we see the person we've lost as a combination of good and bad. We don't say they're all bad or they're all good. When a child can only, maybe dad deserted them and maybe he only talks about how wonderful dad is. That child is really hurting. He hasn't dealt with his feelings. Likewise, if he talks only about how bad daddy is for leaving us, that child's forgetting that there was a positive side to his feelings. And if we can help the child talk about both sides of the feelings rather than agreeing, and many times we'd like to agree, yes, your father really was bad. Yes, it's terrible what your father did. but maybe helping the child express those negative feelings and then help him see that there's another side to his feelings. Because for him to grieve involves getting in touch with both sides. I already talked about it appears to be pushing people away and clinging to them. And then they may appear to have little or no guilt for wrongdoings. And if you or I grew up in a family where Parents were doing all kinds of things like being sexually active outside the marriage, stealing, cheating, not communicating, all these things. They're setting the role models for these children. And my guess is that Bruce and Kathy's kids would have a hard time knowing what's right and what's wrong because they're not seeing that the role models for right and wrong set for them. And these little children who don't grow up in families where standards are given to them, where they have losses around these kinds of issues, they will not know the difference. They have a hard time. They act as if they don't know the difference. If they do know the difference, they act as if they don't and have very little guilt feelings for what they do. And I'm amazed at the kids that I work with, the lack of guilt that they have for their behaviors. And the last characteristic I have is just loud talking, and you see that all the time. They seem to need to draw attention to themselves, and loud talking is one of the ways they do it. I've given you a lot of characteristics, and maybe some of this was a little, eh. But if we can learn to see what children are telling us through how they behave, and respond to the behaviors, and tomorrow I'll probably talk about a little bit about how we respond to the feelings rather than the content when someone tells us something. If we can respond to the feelings that the child's expressing through their behaviors, we will really show the child we understand what they're all about, and we will get beyond their behaviors, and really their behaviors will stop if they understand, if they really feel that we understand and care. I'm not suggesting that we tolerate inappropriate behaviors. I'm suggesting that we, in addition to setting limits on the behaviors, that we try to understand what's going on, and maybe a little one-to-one time with the child who's giving us a lot of trouble, to find out what's happening would be real helpful. And I think you're doing that. But if you can read some of these behaviors and try to understand what they mean, and then interpret to the child that you do understand what he's trying to say, that you'll be amazed at what he'll say to you. How did you know? I think there's something that we ought to address that would be very helpful to us for this afternoon, and that is, Karen has shared some basic premises, and I think we have a good question to say, are her premises biblical? she doesn't usually do this kind of thing, and I was just, she was sharing different scriptures, I'm not proof texting, but I think it'd be well that we maybe jot down some scriptural basis for what she's saying, because I think people are gonna say, but where, you know, is that really true? If it's true in life, it's gonna be true in what? It's gonna be true in here, is it not? If what she's saying is true, some of the basis for what she's saying is in here, and I just thought there's some basic scriptures you could jot down, and even this afternoon, because a lot of people are going to question that. And so I think her very basic premise, she says all the time, and that is, we look at behavior and we see what is going on on the inside. Is that something that you say, or similar to that, Karen? Yeah, I think so. Okay, I think she does. And I think there are at least three passages that popped in my mind, and I jotted them down, you might want to put this down, because she's saying, what you see is telling you what's going on on the inside. Now, is that true? Really true? I'm not saying you're not true. I'm relieved. Are you relieved? Okay. I think it's true. I think the first, if it's true, it'll say it in scripture. I think the very first scripture on this would be Proverbs 4.23. Build a lot around. Remember, I'm just sitting here, no concordance, just popping in my head. But here is a very important scriptural statement. Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are what? The issues of life. So she is saying there are things that people are deciding on the inside, and sometimes what you see on the outside may not be exactly what's going on on the inside, and find out what is going on on the inside, and that is a statement that's made here. Another one in Proverbs is Proverbs 23, 7. Is that, even a child is known by his ways? Yeah, that would be another one. Go ahead, say it. I forget where it's found. Even a child is known by his ways. Where is that found? It's Proverbs, isn't it? Yeah. Proverbs 20, 11. Yeah. Proverbs 20. Here's another one in Proverbs that I think is probably the heart of the whole thing. Proverbs 23, 7. For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. But you don't always know what he thinketh. As she's talking about it, let's find out what he's thinking. But you know what you seeeth. Yeah, you know what you seeeth. And another one I think is beautiful, it's in Matthew or Luke, just on the basic premise, Luke 6. The Lord Jesus is talking and he says something extremely important on this particular issue. He says, Luke 6, 45, a good man Out of the good treasures of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good. An evil man, out of the evil treasures of his heart, bringeth forth that which is evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaketh, and also he acteth. And so she's been telling us today this verse. Watch what they're doing. You may hear what they're saying, kind of a thing. Going back a little earlier, wait now, a few more minutes. Going back a little earlier, she said some things about this girl, and it's hard because Karen switches a lot of gears, but this I think is extremely important. She talked about that as Christians, there's a difference between a Christian and a non-Christian, and how they respond. And I think we ought to just throw some scripture in there at this particular time. I think it'd be really helpful. And the first scripture that came to my mind was in Corinthians, 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter one is a very excellent verse because it starts out with what you can do with your losses and how they can be part of a ministry. So it starts with that, but it ends with, how do I respond to losses? I think it's kind of neat. It starts out that, you know, these things will give you a ministry to all kinds of people, but how do I respond to them so I can have a ministry? You know, if Karen said, you know, someone says, you know, I lost my husband and daughter and I'm bitter. And she said, so am I. That's not much of a ministry. Now they may understand how she's feeling, but she can't really minister to them if she just says, yeah, I'm a mess too. And so I know why you're investigating this. Even though that may be true. Okay, in the last part of 2 Corinthians, I think there's a real key here, and that's the Apostle Paul going through a real major struggle in his life and putting it down. 2 Corinthians chapter 15. And just taking that one verse. Remember, Paul was going through some struggles. God, as you talked about, giving a gift of loss. Paul was giving God, God was giving Paul some struggles. And they were coming along and his first response to this was what? To reject it. And he said he prayed three times and asked God to take this away because of the pain of it. He did not want to go through this. It's not identified. But the key to accepting loss and dealing was a Christian who's found in that particular passage. And if we don't have this, we kind of miss a whole lot of things. Because Paul said, I don't want this. And God said to Paul in verse nine, He said unto me, my what? Grace is sufficient for thee, for God's strength is made perfect in my weakness. Now the whole thing I wanted to, and we're going really fast, and you can build a lot of scripture around here, but the key to responding to losses is what? What's the key? Counseling. Not necessarily. What is it? It's the grace. We have to realize that God gives grace for losses. It doesn't mean we don't feel a lot of things and all that. We're not talking about that. We're talking about going through that thing successfully is going to require something that is beyond me. Did she not say that? And what is the thing beyond me is God's grace. God will give me grace. And I think the next thing is that I want to do before we take the question, and that is to give you, I think, the best definition of what that grace is. What is grace? And to me, you know, my favorite verse in the Bible is Philippians 2.13, and I really wish that you would flip there in your Bible and look at this, because I think it'll really make sense to a lot of these things she's saying. Philippians 2.13 says this, for it is God that works in you. Both. So God is working in us both. He's doing two things, and He identifies those things. The first is to will. The second is to do His good pleasure. And I believe that grace is the desire and the power to respond to losses in a way that would please God. So grace is the ability of God, the ability God gives me to respond to the things in life in a way that would please Him. And that's so important, God's grace. And so when people don't know the Lord, what is the one thing they don't have? It's God's grace. And it takes the grace of God to forgive someone. And I want to pick that up, but you go a lot on forgiveness. But one more verse. I was thinking about, we have hope. that we sorrow not as others who have no hope, but that we sorrow. She's talking about the hope in sorrow. And there's all kinds of things on suffering in Peter. They that suffer according to the will of God. Now that's really a hard verse to handle. You know, why are you down because you're going through losses? Why should you be exempt from losses? And so on, Peter teaches all that. But one other thing about forgiveness that we wanna throw in here, because we may not get back to it, and forgiveness is really important. If you and I do not accept, what God is doing in our life, we're going to have all kinds of problems. And one of them is going to be bitterness and resentments towards God, but towards the tool that's causing losses. And she says something so important that one of the basic things we have to learn to do is to forgive. And one of the hardest things to do is to forgive. And Ephesians 4.32 is one of the key passages about forgiveness. And it says this, in fact it says in verse 30, that we grieve God when we're not willing to accept what God is doing in our life. And accept the people, or whatever's happening at that point in time in our life. Grieving not the Holy Spirit of God, in verse 31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, being kind one to another, tenderhearted, what is that? Forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, will forgive you. And I want to say this about forgiveness, write it down, you may not understand it. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It's my feelings that keep me from forgiving. So you'll never work up the feelings of forgiveness. It is impossible, if you're bitter and resentful, to work up the feelings of forgiveness for bringing up the subject just does what? Opens the wound up and I'm just all that bitter again and again. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It's an act of my will. That is a command in the Greek. God does not say, I want you to feel something. He says, I want you to do something. So as a Christian today, I can look at you right away and say, if you are holding wrong feelings towards another person, you are wrong. And you're violating scripture. And what you have to come to grips with is, will you, as an act of your will, forgive? Will you do this? And you will find the healing of forgiveness is the healing of the emotions after you will with your will to do it. I don't know anyone who did not forgive, they had a whole lot to forgive, like incest and all this stuff. And it takes a while, and you and I, and the healing process is God's business. And I would say, I don't know if you would agree with my definition, but I would say my definition of forgiveness is not forgetting. And I don't like that because the more traumatic the event, the deeper it's ingrained within me, and I'll always remember it. You won't forget it. You won't forget it. I don't think you'll forget it. But I believe this, that when forgiveness has worked its work, that you'll remember without pain. That when that comes back, you will not have the pain of that, and you will know then that forgiveness has brought its healing. And sometimes the healing takes a long time. So forgiveness is something I can do. The healing is something God does. And we can't put a time limit on it. We can have dip-ins into our bitterness again, though. Yes. Like with grief, we can have dip-ins to our loss. When we're in the process of forgiving somebody, we may dip back into our bitterness again and have to then give that up again and let go of the bitterness and let God take it from us. But it's a process. I don't think I don't think we forgive somebody who just didn't say, I forgive you, and that's it. I think it takes more than that. I think it's a spiritual process. And what will happen is, like these dip pens, is when someone does something that reminds you what they did before. And you say, well, I've taken care of everything that's happened, now this is fresh. And I have to deal with this one. And I think it's the piling up of the unforgiveness that gets us. And then we have to forgive on a basis of, because there's some people who will constantly irritate us. There's just something about them that is different, and we have a hard time with them, and it may be our state director. It's very possible. But on the other hand, it could be a local director. It's somebody that so often we can't get away from, and we're working with them, but just basically we're not that kind, we're not that tight, and there's just always that little thing going there, and I constantly have to be dealing with this thing, and I'm not allowing it to build. Our time is gone. Arlie Martin's going to come and chair, I believe, and Gene's coming. But bring your questions this afternoon, and I think if you have scripture verses...