This post is part of a series celebrating people who were part of key moments in my life over the past six months. You can read the series introduction here.

When I got back to Denver last December, I committed myself to processing through my life and fleshing out the backstory that ended with so much ugliness. I didn't see the end as something that appeared out of the blue, rather, I saw it as a time bomb that had been waiting to go off for years. I did the counseling thing and one of the Anonymous groups, both of which were a nice start, but didn't mesh with my life. Then, at the counsel of some friends, I decided to check out a faith-based community that focuses on cultivating healthy relationships. I hadn't been there very long when one of the speakers presented this diagram, which completely rocked my world:

Here's a quick overview:

1. Legitimate Emotional Needs: We all have basic emotional needs that God intends to be filled in the context of relationship.
2. Wounding: This is when sin happens to us and somebody sins against us by either undermining or denying a legitimate need (for the Lutherans out there, this would be part of what we confess doing in the, "what I've done and what I've left undone" piece of the liturgy).
3. Negative Beliefs: At this point we begin to doubt either the legitimacy of our needs or that God intends for those needs to be met in our lives ... in other words, we doubt that God is good and his Word is true.
4. Unhealthy Attachments & Behaviors: Here we find some alternative fulfillment of that basic need, a shallow substitute that not only fails to fulfill, but often wounds someone else and puts them at phase 2 in the diagram. It's seeking the right thing in the wrong place ... aka idolatry.
5. Ambivalence: The craving for something real creates an intense desire to move forward in pursuit of our needs being met in a healthy way, but the fear of being hurt again often prevents us from going towards it. We want it, but we don't ... and when we listen to our fears, the only option is to return to deeper wounding. This changing the way we think about God, ourselves and others, and moving towards health, is at the very core of repentance.
6. Healthy Attachments & Behaviors: If we can press through our fears, we can begin to seek healthy relationships that fulfill our needs in healthy ways. When this is done, we experience a taste of the Kingdom of God and his shalom (health, wholeness, peace).

Now, that's all well and good, and having a model that makes sense of our experiences and provides guidance moving forward is a good thing, but getting the concept and living it are totally different. It's at this point where Scott appears.

Scott is part of the community's leadership team and, one night, after he did a talk, I knew I needed to spend some one-on-one time with him because, while our stories are very different, they resonate in many ways. The result was someone to basically walk through the diagram with and discern what's healthy, what isn't, and the kinds of wounds that, in my life, fuel negative beliefs and unhealthy behavior.

We all need guides in life ... people who've gone where we need to go and are willing to walk through life with us. Scott has not only done this one-on-one in my life, but he represents a community that provides a safe place for that kind of processing, and for that reason, he's highlighted in the sixth post in this 10 post series of people I'm celebrating 6 months later.

Oh, if you live in the Denver area and want more details, I'll be happy to share where I've been attending, it just didn't seem all that important in the context of this series.

Finally, I've been writing constantly during this journey and am thinking that, with some editing, much of the content would be valuable for people going through difficult life transitions. I've decided at some point that I'd like to post it on a separate site. If you'd like to be notified when it goes live, please use the form below. There's also a space for you to share some thoughts that will help me in the site's development.