Stepping Stones: “Care-Fronting”

Transformational Thought

I have two brothers with drug addictions. One is in recovery; the second brother died from an overdose. Life-impacting issues so often turn to life-taking addictions. Each day I live with the guilt of not having done more to help the brother I lost. Talking with a friend or loved one with a life-impacting problem can be like talking to a brick wall. But that wall can be broken down…brick by brick.

Does someone you love struggle with a life-impacting mindset or behavior? When you try to talk to him or her about it, do your words seem to bounce back at you, as though they've hit a brick wall? Try this: picture a man behind a brick wall, becoming trapped and continuing to lay brick, building the wall higher and higher. In his mind, each brick is a way to defend himself…but in reality, the wall is trapping him, not defending him. Denial has blinded this loved one to his real condition.

David Augsburger, in his book Caring Enough to Confront, uses the term "care-fronting." This is a communication technique that combines love and caring with confrontation. Caring confrontation can chip away, bit by bit, at the wall of delusion that hides reality from your loved ones…the reality of the reason they are spiraling and the reality that an answer does exist to turn the spiral in the other direction. When you are able to get rid of anger and replace it with caring, confronting your loved one with the truth can actually be the most loving thing you can do.

A dear friend, Connie, told me how she "care-fronted." Early in her marriage she was experiencing a marital situation that she knew could become volatile if she confronted her husband. She devised a technique that always worked. She would craft a loving letter, detailing the issue and its effect on her and the marriage, and leave it on the pillow. When he came home from the office it was his custom to go upstairs to change his clothes. He would see it and read it in private and take it all in. He always thanked her "for the very good letter" and then worked on solutions for the situation.

The bridges through the wall are made of care and are really derived from a growing relationship with God first. From there we can shine His love and care onto our struggling loved one. As God grows in us, His forgiveness of us will melt the hurt we feel from our loved one and allow us to see that loved one through Godly lenses so that real care and real love can flow from us.

So today, make a commitment to confront your loved ones, to speak the truth in love…not in anger or condemnation…in order to help them tear down their walls of defense, brick by brick, until they are able to see themselves as they really are…someone made in God’s image, someone God loves and sent His son to die for. God wants to use us to deliver that message, first modeling it, and then saying it. God doesn’t give up on you; don’t give up on others.

Prayer
Dear God, Lord, help me be more honest with myself and with those I care about so much. Help me look beyond their faults to their needs…and then to express the reality of the situation to them…in love. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit so that I may speak as Christ would speak. I pray that love for You and them will make me tell the truth. I pray this in the name of the One who crushed my wall, Jesus Christ; and all God’s children say - AMEN!

The Truth
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
Ephesians 4:15

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:13

The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.
Proverbs 12:16