Mission Month – Tree of Life Manenberg
For the last few years KXC has partnered with Tree of Life, an amazing community based in the township of Manenberg. Here’s a short reflection from Adam, an ex-KXC congregation member who now lives and works with Tree of Life. For the last 3 years he has served in the CRU62 and Maak ‘n Plank ministries.
Jam in the coffee by Adam Hughes
When I was 23, God made it clear he wanted me in Cape Town, South Africa. So over 6 months of divine meetings and encounters, I ended up packing my life up and moving to a township called Manenberg.
In South Africa, townships were born out of a white supremacist government regime called Apartheid, and were places for people who had been forcefully removed from their homes and communities so that “crime could be controlled”. This racial divide produced widespread trauma through communities, addiction, poverty and the formation of gangs. This place and it’s history has a lot more nuance but it's important to have a brief understanding of the context I entered into.
I work and live in a sober living discipleship house in Manenberg which creates a safe space to help young men leave behind gangsterism and drug addictions, and ultimately helps them meet the only person who can truly set them free, Jesus.
Most people's reaction to this sadly sees me as some sort of saint but the reality is the day-to-day of this job is fairly ordinary. I spend a lot of my time telling lads to stop shouting at girls out the car window or "no you can't have a 5th cup of coffee with 6 sugars in it". The big, holy breakthrough moments that everyone imagines when I tell them what we do are few and far between but that’s because freedom and transformation are often slow journeys. They require faithfully showing up and trusting that God will do the rest.
This brings me nicely to today's topic, old behaviours. This is a phrase we talk about a lot as we do life in the house. When the guys come into the house we show them that addiction isn't a drug problem, it's a heart one. It's a practical response of self-protection against pain and trauma, self-soothing. One of the common things we see is that when the drugs are cut out, sugar becomes the next God. Sometimes it's food or coffee but to be honest I've seen it all - I once caught a lad furiously spooning apricot jam into his coffee trying to get his "next hit".
I think it would be good to break this down a little bit so we are all on the same page. Essentially an old behaviour is normally something you used to do when you were unaware of its root. In this context the root of these behaviours is not good i.e. another attempt to numb pain that you have pushed down deep.
We aim to help walk with these guys and with the holy spirit (basically it's all the holy spirit) to reveal these blind spots and address the root of the pain that is causing them to have these learnt behaviours. You would think that once the blind spot or root is revealed its job is done right? But it’s not always the case. I've learnt this one first-hand. Sometimes when God opens our eyes to these things it's an instant beautiful shift and other times it's not.
For me, the Christian culture I was brought up in really pushed hard "experiential Christianity" meaning there's a lot of us chasing good feelings and holy spirit explosions. However, I've come to see the beauty of slow, faithful transformation in which you get to know the closeness and witness of God through all the suffering in a way you wouldn't otherwise. This gives space for us to be a people that mature and have our "spiritual palette" changed. We become a people that crave the closeness of God, not just the nice shiny things he gives us.
So, old behaviours. Even after the blind spot is revealed these things tend to crop up like a horrible game of emotional whack-a-mole. It can take months or even years for these things to change which sounds pretty depressing but I want to make a case for the opposite. When you walk closely with people the tendency is your brokenness brings out theirs but their healing can lead you into yours. I've experienced all of this first hand but I also know the frustrating feeling of an old behaviour cropping up time and time again and asking myself "When will this go?".
I used to be a mechanic so I like fixing things, including all my fragile emotions. I often found that if I started seeing an old unwanted behaviour show its head again, I would take things into my own hands and work out ways I could squash it. Maybe more counselling? Have I got the root wrong? What else can I be doing?
What I'm not saying is to lose all self-awareness but all of these things were just a form of violence to myself. I wasn't allowing myself to be in pain or to just be human. Ultimately I was trying to put God out of the job and fix myself. The reality is this, only God can heal me but if every time a part of me that I don't like comes out and I violently try to sort it out myself - there's not much hope.
The reason I'm driving this home is because if we are unable to be kind and gentle with our hearts, how can we have patience and kindness for others? It's a floored dynamic. As we are gentle and kind to ourselves we will allow God to tend to the wounds and then when we start spooning jam into the coffee again, we can slowly and gently bring ourselves before God and let him do what he does best.
Over time you will start to see that the same way you handle yourself will be how you handle others. I think we all long to be a people that operate from a space of peace, gentleness and kindness right? This is where we start.