Turning Around That Sinking Feeling

Stories of life I get to hear plenty of. As I mentor and counsel people, helping them with whatever ails them, and helping them without knowing what to say except by being led by the Spirit, there is one thing everyone has in common.

Everyone experiences that sinking feeling of falling, failing, and faking their lives.

Everyone comes, at some point, to doubt their capacity to cope, their worth, their capabilities, and the veracity of their identity.

Everyone experiences fear, despair, sadness, and grief. But not everyone reacts to such emotion by journeying by faith, to hope, to embrace joy, or to seek healing. Not everyone searches. And searching is the key.

Searching is about fighting; tooth, nail, and sinew are the materials we hold on with.

By searching for the answer we desire, by clawing away at information, by thinking analytically, and by wanting more than we have, we earn something that God wants to give us. But God doesn’t reward the sluggard. God tends to reward the diligent.

The paradox surrounds strength. We need strength when we probably least have access to strength. So we must pray to God that an extra portion of grace is given to us to engage in a sustained search.

But what fuels the search most of all is the mystery.

In this way, all mysteries are good. They pique our curiosity by creating tension that must be wrangled with.

So, if we engage with the mystery, seeing it as a worthy adversary that seeks, in itself, to be discovered, then we stand to find what we seek.

Turning around that sinking feeling is very much about hope when we are feeling most hopeless. It’s about finding the belief to keep stepping, to keep striving, to rest and to revive our strength.

We still have so much to learn. There is still so much we don’t know. We don’t know that life could turn to the positive within a day or a minute. We don’t see the vision for a better day. Unless we do!

We can choose to be open to the possibilities. We can choose to mount a challenge to the oppression we have been living with. We can choose to strategise. Choice is our ally.

There is always hope where all appears hopeless. By faith, a search is undertaken. To enquire into the mysteries of fear, despair, sadness, and grief is to see an option and to make a choice.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.