Unmet Needs

By Al Gee

What causes respectable people to display extramarital behaviors that shock us to the core? Is it a weakness in their character or something more profound? Could it be a lapse of their moral compass or the secret penchant for the excitement of immediate gratification? Some would say 'it's just plain old lust."

Those reasons may all be vali

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andre Gee Ministries
• Release date: May 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780999462690

Al Gee

Born in Miami, Florida, Pastor Allious Gee has committed his life towards empowering and inspiring believers and congregations throughout the world. His insightful life-changing principles have inspired generations to live more meaningful and fulfilled lives. His years of experience as a pastor, evangelist, convention speaker, teacher and university administrator, have inspired him to author books to educate and impact others. Presently, he fulfills the role of associate pastor at World Overcomers Christian Church, where he has faithfully served since 2007. When Pastor Gee is not leading and ministering to others, he loves spending time with his family, which resides in Durham, NC.

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INTRODUCTION

Unmet Needs is not another book written about life’s challenges and how to overcome them. Rather it’s an exposé of a critical element basic to every one of us that can wreck our lives if undetected, eventually taking on a life of its own. This book is about deep unmet needs and the inappropriate, disturbing and sometimes shocking behaviors that can and do arise unexpectedly. The world is full of people who act in ways that others judge as unfit, unholy and/or downright disgusting. However, a deeper and more sensitive look may reveal that, no matter how distasteful the behavior, the driving motivation may be purely just to get a basic need met. It doesn’t matter how clearly we judge from what we see. Our judgment is inherently flawed. The observable tip of the iceberg is always deceptive. There’s always more just below the surface. We can see questionable actions; what we cannot readily see are the unmet needs that drive them. The saving grace for us all is that God looks beyond our acts (faults) and sees our needs.

Recently, this hidden compulsion to meet legitimate unmet needs remotely reminded me of something disgusting that I saw my pet dog do. How does my pet dog enter into this conversation, you might ask? It’s interesting how we can find meaning in seemingly the most unrelated things. But even Jesus used what seemed like unrelated natural things to describe powerful spiritual concepts in parables. It was actually his chosen way to get his point across. One day this son of a carpenter had the audacity to give a lesson on planting seeds to farmers. What can a carpenter possibly teach a farmer about planting seed? It sounded audacious on the surface. That is, until they learned he was accurately revealing the critical reasons that the powerful Word of God wasn’t producing results in their lives. He also spoke of corn, trees, sparrows and even camels and such to make his point. It almost seems foolish, but when we allow ourselves to think more deeply they can be related perfectly to our lives today. So here I am reminiscing in a parallel comparison. Call it a modern day adaptation.

One day our pet dog came in from the outside thirsty after running around and playing in the heat. He headed straight to the bathroom and to our utter disgust started lapping water from the toilet. We were all totally repulsed by the very thought of him drinking water from a toilet, but oblivious to our revulsion he was simply getting his basic need met. We had neglected to give him water in his dish so he was doing what he needed to do to meet his basic need.

Driven by heat and thirst, my dear pet saw no option but to drink from an unsanitary toilet because those who could have given him clean water (me included) didn’t. Ever feel driven to do something obviously beneath your standards? It’s humbling to realize how much we have in common with animals. Jesus himself compared a rich man to a camel.

In equal revulsion we often encounter people doing what appears to us to be degrading things to get their needs met. We may be sickened at the sight, and at their determination to do so, regardless of how we feel. There are many examples all around us of this today. The rebellious teenage boy running in a violent street gang, the young woman enduring the daily beatings within an abusive relationship, and the young runaway tricked into prostitution are all forms of unmet needs crying out for fulfillment.

In extreme cases, there are many accounts, some in recent centuries, of starving people even resorting to cannibalism when their basic need for food went unmet too long. History has taught us that disturbing behaviors can arise from our basic needs like hunger, thirst, love and yes, even sexual desires.

Some may question in judgment, How could you do such a thing? Those of us who experience no such deficits in our lives are appalled at the depths to which a person seems willing to descend.

For those of us who have relatively good marriages, loving families and affirming relationships there is no need for extremes. On the other hand, although we can accurately point our fingers at their problematic predicaments we fail far too often to lift a finger to help those suffering in their calamity. I believe our neglect, apathy and or lack of compassion for the plight of others makes us complicit in what are predictable outcomes.

Of the many who are utterly aghast at the very thought of aborting the life of the unborn child, how many will alter their lives to help with the expense and work required to raise an unplanned, unwanted infant? The truth is that without intervention or remedy, those caught up in the need will override what others feel is a moral code. Needs that remain unmet too long can incite many to press past traditional inhibitions, satisfying the needs without concern for where they are or who is watching.

This book also takes a look at a few of the multitude of "out of control feelings stemming from unmet needs that flood our lives and affect our actions. Those feelings, if left unchecked, may ultimately betray reason and proper protocol, wreaking havoc if allowed to surface.

Many people are unaware that these numerous hidden feelings actually exist. That’s because they never see the light of day without a trigger of some kind to provoke the awareness of an unmet need. Others suppress their unmet needs under tight control because of how they bring into question our moral character. Their unmet needs and secret feelings are seldom mentioned. They’re like the destructive unmanageable adolescent kept away from public view.

It’s unsettling to find out how prominent, though ethereal this issue is in our lives. Regardless of how pervasive it may be, we feel it must be kept hidden all costs, lest someone find us to be fallible or even worse than that, human.

DAD CAUGHT WITH … JANET

As I write this, a disturbing flashback comes to mind, from a counselee named Jared who confided in me. He said, "Years ago, while visiting my older parents in Mississippi, Dad went missing for a couple of hours. Months earlier, Mom had moved down from Connecticut to join Dad in his assignment to pastor a small country church in Biloxi. He seemed so proud of his small but necessary work. Greatly loved by the congregation he served, he helped them to renovate their run down building and to bring back former disgruntled members. Mom said he was so dedicated he would do ministry until the wee hours of the night, getting out of bed past midnight to answer calls for help from his small beloved group.

He loved being so needed but this unaccounted for absence was more than a little worrying for our family. Collectively concerned, my brothers and I drove around the places familiar to us in Biloxi and eventually found his car, a beige colored 1981 Ford Fairmont, parked alone on the street, some distance from well-worn path into the woods.

We got out, looked around and noticed that there was an old cabin about two hundred yards along the path into the woods. He was obviously inside the cabin. I thought, What on earth could he be doing here? Did he come here for a brief time to be alone away from the family? We really didn’t know what to expect. I asked myself, had something happened and gone terribly wrong and he needed this time for reflection?"

As we approached, a startling but troubling thought began to surface that I just didn’t want to consider. Coincidentally and very surprising, at that same moment, Deacon Rogers, an older gentleman who had accompanied us to help with our search, spoke up with a firm and unsettling warning to ‘just walk past and do not look in the cabin’. The command was delivered authoritatively, ‘Don’t go in there.’ He said it twice for a serious attention-getting effect, ‘Don’t go in there.’ As if he knew what was going on and implying that we would be better off not knowing. I thought, ‘Don’t look in the cabin? Are you serious? We’re trying to locate Dad!’

Then it hit us all at the same moment, that sickening feeling in the pit of the stomach. We may discover something we never even considered. My eyes met those of my older brother Brandon’s and at once we were on the same dreaded page.

We both felt the jolting, grown-up realization that he may be in that cabin with someone. We may wish we had never looked in. We all obediently averted our eyes and walked past the cabin as if we were on a stroll through the woods. Unfortunately, Gordon, one of my younger brothers lagged some way behind and never heard the warning. He boldly walked straight up to the cabin and poked his head in the open doorway.

‘The scene was quite awkward and embarrassing’, he told us later. There was Dad, the paragon of virtue throughout our lives, our straight laced drill sergeant type who always lived his life as strict military to the core, pastor of a local church, peering up at his audience, from a cabin in the woods in the company of a young female named Janet.

Thank God both were fully clothed. If not, that would have been a scene not one of us would want haunting our thoughts for the rest or our lives. After mercifully allowing Dad and Janet enough time for a hasty departure, we turned and walked back past the cabin. We all looked in. It was now empty. It looked like a large empty dollhouse with no furniture and no door. It was just a place to come in from rain and stand or sit on the floor, nothing more. Why was my Dad caught in such an undignified predicament, I wondered. In a cabin in the woods with Janet? We never did find out.

He returned home much later and gathered us all together. He said nothing untoward happened; he just needed to talk to her. He further explained that they were like a father and daughter and we ‘just wouldn’t understand.’ He was right…we didn’t. ‘We just depended on his character and our love and believed him. Later mom revealed that whenever Janet would call, no matter what time, Dad would act as if he were under a spell, get out of bed, and leave the house in the wee hours of the morning". She trusted him. She just knew that he was honestly trying to help this young female in need. He would return hours later