Several years ago we owned a house which had a garden from hell. It was a beautiful garden full of specimen trees & perfectly clipped box hedges (of which we were particularly proud). But we lived beside a reserve and whilst we enjoyed the birds and animals that frequently dwelt in the garden, they were also the same birds & animals that brought weeds of every modern and prehistoric variety to our manicured eden.
Over winter whilst we avoided venturing into the cold, those weeds seeded and slowly took over the entire back and side yards of our property. We would joke about finding tigers roaming amongst the long grass & weeds. But in reality it was the deadly poisonous snakes that I feared more.
Summer came and we knew that we needed to get out and clear the jungle and start turning our garden back from hell into eden.
So I sent my husband outside to begin the work of labouriously pulling weeds by hand.
From the windows I could see him begin clearning. 30 mins later I again checked to see how things were progressing. His face expressed demoralisation, defeat and hopelessness.
There was no doubt in my mind before we started that the task of clearing those weeds was going to take days and would be very hard work. But my husband had approached the task with a feeling of being overwhemed, but also with the self imposed expectation that the job had to be done today and by him alone.
He came back inside a few minutes later. Defeated and silent.
The magnitude of the task had overwhelmed him and slowly but surely negative, aggressive thoughts had grown in his mind like weeds choking life out of him.
Oswald Chalmers called them "details that take portentous dimensions and crowd out the great issues of life".
The neighbours dog barking whilst he pulled at weeds made him think about going around and yelling at his neighbour.
We talked about his unrealistic expectation of clearing a couple of hundred square meters of weeds in a single day. He admitted that he felt that the task was getting larger and larger each weed he pulled and that he felt hopeless.
He couldn't make a dent in it and so thought to himself "What bother trying?" - he had moved into paralysed passivity.
And so we set a realistic goal together. "Just aim at clearing 1 meter, then if you do more set another small goal"
Eat the elephant peice by peice.
And so he and I headed back into the garden together that afternoon with a renewed vigor and realistic goals. We'd overcome passivity. And we'd both learned a new strategy for identifying and defeating the overwhelming things in life.
Many times since then, as we've worked at building men's ministry and encouraging other men to join us on the mission, he's faced other battles which have threaten to overwhelm him and paralyse him into inactivity/passivity. And all I've had to do is remind him of the weeds and that he just needs to do "now" and only this square meter of life.
Your man could be struggling with passivity if he sounds like this:
"I can't do anything right"
"I don't know why I bother"
"It doesn't matter what I do"
Passivity is not an attiutde of "I don't care" it's the attitude of "I don't know how or what"
What can you do to help him?
Ask him what his expectations of himself are. Then share with him the reality of what he can achieve or in your relationship what matters most to you. Use tools like the Four Love Languages (by Gary Chapman) to help articulate your needs and the differences in his needs and style.
Seeing the trees for the forest is important but sometimes really hard for us all to do, alone - that's where a good friend can help.
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