The pursuit of becoming a safe person is very important when engaging people who are healing from the impact of abusive relationships. Yet being a safe person is hard work. It’s not an inherent quality we have. It requires patient, diligent, courageous work confronting our own healing and need for ongoing growth. Safety involves self-awareness and differentiated responses. Becoming safe takes wrestling with all the things within us that feel dangerous. It takes feeling our own grief and heartache, making way to receive real comfort. God may challenge us beyond our comfort zones, but He always desires for us to be comforted. It’s from that place that we can empower others with the comfort of which we ourselves have received. If we are not willing to let Him and others go there with us, we are not prepared to lead someone else there.
Safe people are in control of themselves and take responsibility to address presenting issues. They have accountability in their lives. Accountability meaning people who know the true them and will hold them to that standard of authenticity and integrity. This empowers ownership of their own mistakes and rebuilding when trust has been broken. To have people who know them this well requires vulnerability – which can feel scary, especially for leaders. But it is the safest place to live. For them and for everyone their life touches.
Safe people are those who stay in relationship, even through the messiest trails. They have let go of nostalgic notions of healing and they do not stay in offense when rejected by the ones they are seeking to love. Safe people set good boundaries. They know they can say yes and no, even as they go on loving unconditionally. They are protected ultimately by God; therefore, they do not need to react defensively.
Safe people have anchored their expectancy in God, not in ideal outcomes within ideal timeframes. When the goal and the reward are found in faithfulness to God and faithfulness to those He knits to our lives, there is confidence that there will be fruit that remains. This alleviates relational pressure on those in process and encourages them to simply receive love and be changed over time, as is the story of us all. This protects against striving to please and to keep approval/love (which can reinforce old patterns of fear and manipulation).
Safe people demonstrate the steadfast love and durability of God because they receive daily from Him. They are tethered to Him and learn to regulate their emotions according to Him and not according to the instability of crisis circumstances. They practice the dance of both joining with others in the up/down/sideways rollercoaster of healing, while inviting others to join them in becoming more accustomed to peaceful living.
Safe people know themselves as loved and are thereby free to give love without agenda. The more we are defined and secured by the Father’s love, the safer we are to a suffering world.
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