Lighthouse Baptist Church
and Christian Academy

God's rescue doesn't always come the moment we want it. God had promised to bring the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt. The people had waited a long time for that promise to be kept, but God rescued them when he knew the right time had come. God knows the best time to act.

When you feel that God has forgotten you in your troubles, remember that God has a time schedule you can't see.

The Israelites felt abandoned by the death of the king of Egypt.

WHAT IS ABANDONMENT?

Everyday there are people who feel as if life itself has left them on a doorstep or thrown them away.

Abandonment is about loss of love itself, that crucial loss of connectedness. It often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness.

Abandonment represents core human fear. We have all experienced it. When a relationship ends, you remember your feelings all the way back to your lost childhood when you were helpless, and dependent. Your adult functioning temporarily collapses.

You feel:

• shattered,
• bewildered,
• Condemned to loneliness.

Abandonment is:

• A feeling
• A feeling of isolation within a relationship
• An intense feeling of devastation when a relationship ends
• An aloneness-not-by-choice
• An experience from childhood

Examples of Abandonment

• A baby left on the doorstep
• A woman left by her husband of twenty years for another woman
• A man being left by his finance for someone 'more successful'
• A child left by his mother
• A friend feeling deserted by a friend
• A father leaving his marriage, moving out of the house, away from his children
• A child whose pet dies
• A little girl grieving over the death of her mother
• A little boy wanting his mommy to come pick him up from nursery school
• A child about to be 'replaced' by the birth of another sibling
• A child needing his parents but they are emotionally unavailable
• A boy realizing he is gay and anticipating the reaction of his parents and friends
• A teenage boy with his heart twanging, but afraid to approach his love
• A teenage girl feeling her heart is actually broken
• A woman who has raised a family now grown, feeling empty, as if she has been deserted, as if the purpose of her life has abandoned her
• A child stricken with a serious illness or injury watching his friends play while he must remain confined to braces, wheel chair, or bed
• A woman who has lost her job and with it her professional identity, financial security, and status. Now she is left feeling worthless, not knowing how to occupy her time - - feeling abandoned by her life's mission
• A man who has been 'put out to pasture' by his company, as if obsolete
• People grieving the death of a loved one report feelings of abandonment
• The dying fear being abandoned by their loved ones as much or more as they fear pain and death

How would I know if I have been abandoned?

You reject your own good self esteem.

You're unable to find closure: because the person has not died, but has chosen not to be with you.

You feel:

• Rejection,
• withdrawal-of-love,
• criticism, and
• Desertion creates a devastating personal injury.

'Being left' cuts us all the way to the core. You lose not only your loved one, but you lose your sense of self.

Example of Samson

The Philistines grabbed him. They poked out his eyes and took him to the prison in Gaza. They tied him up with double chains and made him grind grain in the mill there.

Judges 16:21 (GW)

Example of Moses

But when she could no longer hide him, she got a little basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the edge of the Nile River.

Exodus 2:3 (NLT)

Process: it burrows deep within where it can silently leech away at our self esteem. You feel sadness, self doubt, insecurity, and fear - sometimes indefinitely.

7 Ways to describe your unresolved abandonment

1. It interferes in future relationships.
2. The source of your insecurities, addictions, compulsions, and distress.
3. That dangerous virus invading body mind and soul - the anxiety you are forever trying to self-medicate with food, alcohol, shopping, people, or something.
4. The roadblock to reaching our potential - the invisible wound that drains self esteem from within - the hidden trap that keeps us stuck in patterns of self-sabotage.
5. The chronic insecurity that becomes the scourge of human relationship.
6. The internal barrier to fully connecting to others. Fear short-circuits your attempt to find love - you struggle to find and keep relationships. You become abandoholics.
7. The emptiness of the soul.

The Abandonment Cycle

• Perceived attack on self
• I must protect myself
• I react in fear each time I encounter a person whom I perceive as dangerous
• My mind maintains a constant vigil on the abandoner
• Temporary obsession with the abandoner
• My nerves are set to "Go off" when I think of them or see them
• The pain lasts long and feels so strong, therefore the person must be very special

How do you stop the cycle?

Don't be afraid, because I am with you. Don't be intimidated; I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will support you with my victorious right hand.

Isaiah 41:10 (GW)

I will seek my lost ones, those who strayed away, and bring them safely home again. I will put splints and bandages upon their broken limbs and heal the sick.

Ezekiel 34:16 (Living)

Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.

Lamentations 3:40 (NIV)

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Psalm 139:23 (NIV)

"Come now; let us argue this out," says the Lord. "No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool."

Isaiah 1:18 (NLT)