Resurrection of Your Inner Hero: Rendering Passivity Obsolete

Copyright © 2014 Jim Snyder.

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Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc.

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Cover photo by: Vernon Photography

Cover photo concept by: Allen Arnold

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5288-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5289-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5287-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014916942

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/09/2014

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1 What is Passivity?

Chapter 2 History of Passivity

Chapter 3 My Own Worst Enemy

Chapter 4 The Haunting Wounds

Chapter 5 Defensiveness

Chapter 6 Overwhelmed Feeling

Chapter 7 Risk: Not the Board Game

Chapter 8 Confidence: Building Blocks

Chapter 9 Taking Things On

Chapter 10 Anger

Chapter 11 Addictions

Chapter 12 The Women In Our Lives

Chapter 13 Putting an End to the Curse

Chapter 14 More Tools

Chapter 15 Where To Go From Here

Chapter 16 A Day In the Life of Passivity: Tim’s Former Story

About the Author

Acknowledgments

In writing this book, I want to thank the many who have helped me write this book, lived with me during the process of writing it, and those that have influenced me in the content. First I want to thank my family: Rebecca, Tyler, Cory, Grace, and Madison for sticking it out during the long arduous process of my coming out of my passivity and the time I spent in the passivity. For the time I spent holed up in my office writing the book itself. Second, I would like to thank John Eldredge for writing Wild at Heart which jumpstarted the thoughts and Craig McConnell for flushing them out during the boot camps and our talks about passivity. Third, I want to thank my brothers in my Band of Brothers who walk with me daily and are quick to point out when I might be checking out. To Vern Hyndman for your unique gifting in helping me through the writing process, the sections and content you provided and beyond, and for the many men that helped with the final flushing of details. Next, to all my clients, who remain anonymous because of confidentiality, I want to thank you for allowing God to use me to speak into your life regarding passivity and helping you turn it from a minor theme into a stage prop of the story of your life. Thank you to my mother who has always been my Reverend Maclean in editing but the task of hacking this book into glorious pieces belongs to Katie The Ax Axelson who has done a miraculous job. To my father, I thank you for your support and encouragement through our transitional process. And almost last, the professor who told me that I would never be a cognitive behavioral therapist but an existentialist, and he was right, thanks Dr. Saxby. And finally, I want to thank God for pouring into me this message and helping me work through my passivity in a way that I can be an example to others and offer hope to others.

Introduction

For whatever reason that you have picked up this book, I hope you won’t be disappointed. This book is about my story as a follower of Christ, a husband, a father, a counselor, and a ministry leader and how God helped me turn my passivity from a major theme in my life to a useless stage prop. It is comprised of stories and examples from my life and those of my friends and clients, coupled with the words that God has given me to share with you. The names have been changed to protect my friends’ and clients’ identities. I’m not going to tell you what this book is and what it can do for you but more of what it isn’t. This is not a step-by-step guide to getting free from passivity, but I do provide hints and methods that many of my clients and I have employed in making passivity something of a minor theme in your life.

I also wrote this book as a way to help reach those who desire help in overcoming passivity but who cannot come to my office or afford similar counseling. I’ve done a lot of research on finding similar books and have come up with a really short list and most of them do not cover the topic exclusively. So for that reason, I felt compelled and mainly convicted by God to write one. What you find between the covers of this book is almost everything that I have had downloaded into me by God and where I have struggled in my own life. Our lives are stories and they must be told, even the gruesome areas that we don’t want exposed.

Now your first question by now is, who is this writer? At the time of this writing I am a counselor in my forties who has been helping people for over a decade unprofessionally and helping people professionally for a handful of years. I have a couple of advanced degrees including one in counseling. This innate ability to help others was planted in me at a young age by God, but only really surfaced over the past decade.

If I come across as some John Eldredge zealot or Eldredge-ite, it is NOT because I worship the ground he walks on but because God has blessed him with a message or two and an ability to express that message in such a way that I can grasp and understand. To me, Eldredge is the modern day version of C.S. Lewis without the old school English that I struggle to read and comprehend. Truth be told, I’ve only shaken the man’s hand twice in the numerous times that I’ve helped his ministry with the running of their boot camps. I know the staff of Ransomed Heart well and the men that associate with that ministry. These are my brothers who help me and who have encouraged me to write this book.

Now I know that there will be many women reading this book on how to understand their man or the men in their lives so I want to address that here. I appreciate that you want to know these concepts and there are a few that will apply to you as well but do not try to force this upon the men in your life. You can lead a horse, or in our case a stubborn donkey, to water but you cannot make him drink. A keynote is you cannot change him; he has to want to change for himself and not even do it for you.

Another note regarding this book is that I have chosen to use scriptures from only the New International Version and not the various versions just for simplicity’s sake. Plus it always drives me bonkers when a writer jumps from one version to the next looking for the right syntax to get their point across. While I’m fond of reading the Message version because of its story-like telling of the scriptures, I figured that if this book goes international, or better yet, when it goes international, it will have a common reference for everyone to get and understand.

Prologue

Late on a Friday afternoon I prepared to see a new client, Tim and Carrie, for marriage counseling.

Carrie had called me earlier in the week desperately needing something to change in their marriage. I probed a little deeper into what was going on in their marriage and she unloaded easily.

Tim seems like he is just not into me anymore; we feel like roommates more than husband and wife. We make pretty good money, but he is always at work. When he does come home, he’s down in his office claiming to be working but I suspect it might be pornography. When we do get a chance to talk, it is usually about things going on around the house and I feel like I have to constantly tell him what to do, especially when it comes to leading the family and kids. I hate being the one who has to do everything! She stopped suddenly as if she may have said too much.

I asked how conversations about their futures went, and Carrie explained that all personal conversations have to happen in bed. He was usually quiet and didn’t invite her into what’s going on with him. If he opened, she’d inquire more, and he’d either explode in anger or feel bad about what hadn’t happened. He’d shift the blame to someone else, made excuses about why they couldn’t do something, or make promises about changing but never follow through.

In telling me this, Carrie began to choke up, I can’t continue on like this. I had to threaten to leave him in order to get him to consider counseling.

We agreed upon an appointment time, and Carrie breathed a sigh of relief. This was her last hope.

chapter one

What is Passivity?

After a quick prayer, I headed to the lobby to greet Tim and Carrie and found them sitting together on the couch but with a decent separation between them.

As they noticed me, Tim stood up and greeted me with a nervous handshake and a petrified look on his face. Carrie placed a smile on her face, but I could already see the frustration behind her façade.

As they got seated in my oversized love seat, still with a little bit of distance between them, I purposefully turned to Tim ask what brought them to counseling.

Tim opened with, I thought everything was going ok. We are getting all of our bills paid, the kids are doing well in school, we attend church every week, but she’s not happy. She keeps wanting more, but I don’t know what that looks like and then she gets mad at me for not knowing what ‘it’ is and not doing ‘it.’ Ask her; she knows more and can better explain what is going on.

Carrie erupted as soon as the statement was out of his mouth. When it comes to money, we are up to our ears in debt. Our house is falling apart, my minivan hasn’t had an oil change in over five thousand miles, and he won’t go to the church’s Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsay like I suggested. The kids are doing well in school; however, he never attends any of their school functions or sports. They often say that they miss him. We go to church every week but are never involved or stay after for any of the extra events they do. As for the more that I want, that more is you. Your time! You fully engaged with me and the kids. I can’t even remember the last time we even went on a date.

She paused and Tim came to his own defense. I can’t take off from work every time there is something with the kids, and we need the money to pay off our debts. As for repairs on the house, we need the money for the projects and finding the time is hard as I only have the weekends and half of my Sunday is taken up by church.

I decided that I’d heard enough for now and started by saying to Tim, It sounds like Carrie can come across demanding. He nodded in agreement. Then I turned to Carrie and said, It sounds like Tim is very checked out and passive. She also gave an affirming nod.

I faced both of them and said, I think we are dealing with passivity. They both gave me blank stares.

I’ve been where Tim is. Caught between complacency and just getting by. I had excuses on why not to engage but no solutions on how to engage. Through out most of my adult life, I knew deep down inside of me that there was something just not right, that I could be something much more than I was. I could never really put my finger on it. The feeling that I sensed was coupled with a presence that something was holding me back from being that something more. Was it a dream or aspiration I had? I knew that I wanted that something more for my life and my family. The feelings were almost that of having settled for less and some resignation to this is how it is going to be.

A number of my clients would share similar thoughts and feelings, and my heart would break for these men. In our sessions, I would get hopeful that God would reveal the origin of the feelings these men had so I could learn how to gain freedom from whatever was holding me back from the something more God had in store for my life. Sounds selfish, I know, but I was also trying to help these men find their something more too.

My hunt for the answers led me to read numerous counseling books and men’s self-help books. Everything I read danced around the questions, except they all said it was possible to have that something more and it looked like x, y, and z. I found another conclusion without a path or roadmap to get me there.

My first major revelation on what was holding me back came while attending my first Wild at Heart Boot Camp put on by John Eldredge and the team from Ransomed Heart Ministries in the great expanse of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. I had led many book studies through John’s book Wild at Heart over the years and used the content extensively in my counseling sessions with men, but it wasn’t until one of the speakers, Craig McConnell, used the term passivity did I have a revelation. That term passivity was my golden nugget, my treasure buried in the field, like the parable, that has led me on this journey of discovery. The term passivity was not the answer but it propelled me into finding the answers.

Merriam-Webster defines passive as tending not to take an action or dominant part. Passivity was what described the thing or force holding me back. I scoured the internet and every book I could get my hands on but couldn’t find any resources on it. Sure, I found snippets here and there, just enough to tease me but nothing substantial. Immediately I signed up for every boot camp offered by Ransomed Heart Ministries as to glean more insight and knowledge on the topic of passivity. I also read and listened to every resource offered by John Eldredge and Ransomed Heart Ministries. It wasn’t until after participating in their Spring 2010 boot camp and talking with one of the speakers about passivity, did I realize that there were not any resources on how