How Sadness and Loneliness Complement Joy and Contentedness

CHARACTER development is the goal of life. If we see this is the case then virtue learning becomes a goal in and of itself. Learning not of new knowledge. It’s about learning virtues that will carry us better through life, preparing us for what is beyond this life. This life is the learning ground for the next.

Joy is one of those virtues we need. To live a life of joy we must grapple with contentedness. Real joy is found in being content — no matter the circumstances. Joy is a pervasive quality. It becomes us. We hope we may exude joy.

In regards to sadness, loneliness plays the same part. When we are sad, we are really lonely. There is a gap in our being that just hungers for some joy. When we are lonely we are hopefully at truth with the sadness in our soul. Nobody likes being sad, but if we are able to be at truth with it then we are able to grow. Such growth is toward contentedness and a sustaining joy — again, notwithstanding the circumstances.

Joy grows in our contentedness when we can happily coexist with our sadness. And contentedness reflects the notion of acceptance — to accept the things we cannot change.

Maturity is approached when we accept the things we cannot change. There are just so many things we cannot change that we struggle to accept. One way to accept the things we cannot change is to dwell upon the truth of our sadness rather than complain.

It is far easier to complain, but the pride in complaint holds us back from approaching the truth in our sadness. Pride shields us from growth because pride cannot handle the truth. Pride results in a compromised joy where we cannot attain to contentedness.

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Sadness and loneliness are keys to the truth of joy and contentedness because they abide in truth, and joy and contentedness cannot stand up unless they are experienced in truth.

We cannot fake joy and we cannot pretend we are content. We have joy or we don’t. We are content or we aren’t.

Sadness and loneliness are when they are. But we would prefer to pretend they weren’t there. But unless we can be truthful about sad and lonely times we cannot be truthful enough to enjoy the times we are joyful and content.

Better than pretending to be joyous and content is to experience the real thing. Ironically, it’s the courage to experience real sadness and loneliness that opens the way to joy and contentedness.

Joy and contentedness are experienced within the courage to enter the truth of sadness and loneliness.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

The Beautiful Relevance of Sadness for Healing and Growth

INSIDE OUT (2015) is a brilliant Disney production that any family therapist could build a whole philosophy around. It’s a movie about Riley, an eleven year old girl, and her mother and father. They move from Minnesota to San Francisco and that’s where Riley’s troubles start. The movie is based on what Riley actually experiences within the emotions of her inner world — with each of her emotions (Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust) having a character. Without spoiling the movie for those who wish to watch it, there is a key reversal where Joy empowers Sadness.

Sadness is the hero, because, when the chips are down, and Riley is losing all her core memories (her identity is falling apart), it is only Sadness that can get through. Sadness gets through with empathy, because Sadness calls the doldrums of life what they actually are. For a great deal of time in the movie, Riley is forced to run emotionally without either Joy or Sadness, so she only has responses of Fear, Anger and Disgust to draw from.

We could say that Joy and Sadness are interdependent. True joy cannot be experienced without the ability to experience genuine sadness, for both require honesty. If we are not honest enough to be sad when we are sad we will react in fear, anger or disgust. If we are not honest enough to be sad when we are sad then we don’t have the capacity to experience joy. This is because joy is only truly meaningful and true with honesty. Is there anything worse than a fabricated joy?

When Sadness heals everything it touches toward the end of the movie, it’s clear that Sadness is exactly what Riley needs — to be true to her actual feelings. Only then, when she reaches out to her parents in courageous truth, to communicate what she’s really feeling, does she receive, in truth, a response every good parent is blessed to give. They meet her in that emotional space.

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Sadness has a depth about it that courageously employs honesty for healing.

When we can be sad, without anger or fear or disgust intruding, we are closest to God’s healing touch, because we honour what is our truth.

Sadness is central to growth, because it is central to honesty. When our honesty reveals sadness our vulnerability opens us up to healing.

From this it can be seen that emotional and spiritual growth don’t initiate with joy, but from an acknowledgement of genuine sadness.

When we can be honestly sad, then we can honestly feel joy.

If we wish to be healed we will embrace our sadness and always have a home for it.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

Conquerors, Sufferers, Givers, Lovers, Inspirers

WHAT might fill God with a feeling of having been worshipped?

When God sees a person doing life tough, but doing the best they can; how does God feel? When God knows we are missing out on what our hearts tell us could be appropriate, and we wait on his timely provision, our Lord is worshipped.

When we suffer well we worship Jesus in an incarnational way. This means we behave as Jesus behaved. We don’t complain. We get over complaint. And when we do that something happens. God transforms us through humiliation to humility and from offence to obedience. From anger we come to joy. From pride we come to peace. And even the devil cannot take joy and peace from us. And then we learn life’s most important lesson — it is through suffering that we come to be conquerors.

Only through suffering will we be humbled enough to know that we cannot control our lives. But we can control how we will respond to life’s tests. When we respond well to the situations of life that are hard, we worship God about the best we can ever do. Better still is it to initiate works of love — in faith — despite the fear, discouragement and doubt we might be feeling. To grin and bear. Not in fakeness. In authenticity, ready to share the amazingly compelling hope we have inside us.

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Conquerors are sufferers are givers are lovers are inspirers.

Why would we not willingly suffer — and suffer our circumstances well — when we are — at the very same time — conquerors and givers and lovers and inspirers? What can conquer us if our suffering can’t? What can we not give if we can give ourselves in suffering? Where will we fail love’s test if we love God enough to live our own life, just as it is, better than ever before? — in surrender to his will. Who will we not inspire? Not least ourselves will we inspire.

We are not called to suffer anybody else’s life. We are called only to suffer our own.

We can do that. God doesn’t ask us to do anything he asks others to do. He only asks us to do what he asks us to do.

Conquerors are sufferers are givers are lovers are inspirers.

If we will live a successful life it will be because we mastered this basic principle: the acceptance of our living situation, now. It’s all we are required practically to do. It’s all we can do. Need we do anything else? We are to be happy with the very life we are given.

Is that so unpalatable? No. It is the best life for this lifetime, because God gave it to us. We all have our portions of suffering.

Conquerors are sufferers are givers are lovers are inspirers. And, are worshippers of God.

And if we will suffer our own lives well, the true Christ will lead us to himself. And life will never be the same again.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

Why Loss Is Fundamental to Life and Growth

LOSS makes the whole of our lives meaningful, but only after we have successfully traversed all the way out of our grief. Such a thing as loss and grief are hardly more paradoxical. Here is a list of statements for pondering, hope and encouragement:

Loss takes us away from this world where finally God can get a look in. It took so much for God to finally entreat our attention. Now he has it, we are his, holus bolus.

Loss increases our growth by decreasing our joy. Growth comes when times are toughest. It is the solemn consolation — a divine compensation — for what we have been forced to go through.

Loss grants us life beyond love, which is life’s true appreciation of love. We cheapened love so much before we experienced the essential grief of loss. Now our truer appreciation for love has been morphed into a deepened sense for the power resplendent in love. Loss makes us better lovers.

Loss helps us grow up. If we never lose love, we never actually live. If we only gain in life we only ever think of ourselves. When I first suffered, as a thirty-six-year-old, was the first time I genuinely thought of all the suffering in the world. The eyes of my heart were opened to see it.

Loss is so profound that the grief lasts and lasts and lasts. However would we learn otherwise other than to greet the same horrors day after day after day? We humans are characteristically slow learners. We need deep lessons, hard lessons; the same deep, hard lessons day after day to learn.

Loss teaches the rudiments of life; that love means so much it costs grief. How could God counteract the truth of such a wonder of love if not to balance it with something equally profound: loss?

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Loss is a horror of living proportions; a death that has come to life in a dirge of technicolour. It has come as a way of communicating just how much the loss of love means. It rents us broken and vanquished of soul and spirit. It takes us deeper than we have ever been before, into the realms of darkness where only the light of the Lord may shine through into a hope for tomorrow — whenever tomorrow will finally come.

Loss helps us to grow up. It helps us to value reality. It helps us not fear reality. It makes us question what is important and relevant in life. Loss brings us through death into new life.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

The Single Best Advantage I Gained From Anxiety

RABID discontentment was the single best advantage I ever experienced out of seasons of anxiety when I have suffered. Admittedly, I have not been worn down by clinical disorders, but I have experienced several seasons of anxiety. And what I found worked for me was to not rest in that rabid discontentment, but to search with all I had to find a way through.

The single best advantage I gained from anxiety was it gave me impetus to fight.

Why do we just sit there and take it; this grating sense of inner itchy discontent?

The times I’ve had to fight to survive, and the times I’ve had to fight in the hope I could overcome anxiety, were the times I did what I needed to do, instinctively, by faith.

It’s all about the tenacity to search. To search is to enter the caldron by faith — and years may pass without much vision for what we hope for. It’s not the point. The point is we continue to press on, even though from time to time we give up.

Like entering university or college, we learn to research for the first time, being forced to search in order to know enough truth to do a good job of our assignments. The same applies for the capacity of anxiety to force us to use our ingenuity — birthed from the belief that we can climb out of the distress.

The single best advantage I gained from anxiety was to fight like crazy to find, to search, for the way or ways out. Such a search inevitably causes us to learn great skills and attitudes that set us up for the rest of our lives.

***

All we need when we suffer anxiety is to know that our suffering isn’t in vain. It has its purpose.

Sometimes the only hope we have left is to believe. And it’s always enough. It’s always enough to believe in something worth believing in. Some sceptics might say we are wasting our time, but to give up without believing is to have zero percent chance.

I’d rather have a fighting chance. And, besides, those of us in the faith have seen God work miracles when we had faith and simply did what faith requires: obeyed.

If we will search for the answers in addressing our anxiety we may be pleasantly surprised at what we might learn.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

The Biggest Favour We Could Ever Do For Ourselves

EMOTIONAL is what every person is; but there is such a range along a continuum of emotional health and ill-health. Pete Scazzero has carved out a niche in this area called emotionally healthy spirituality.

I took part in Scazzero’s 46-question survey. It’s the sort of survey we get no value out of unless we are brutally honest. You take a survey like this if you’re interested in personal growth on an emotional and spiritual level. Needless to say, I will keep my personal result to myself. But one thing the analysis convinced me of was the veracity for attaining adult emotionality. The rest of this article is purposed toward the areas of competency toward that end.

Depth of Personhood

How deep do we reflect and how deep do we think about our own lives — even our finite interactions and perceptions? If we are able to easily share our fears and pain and our anger with trusted others toward growth we are well on the way. A deep personhood is couched in courageous honesty.

Depth of Redemptiveness of Past

The mature have dealt with the demons of past and any residual guilt or shame has been vanquished in truth. That means the processes of therapy have been engaged with. Nothing that is our truth breeds fear anymore — that’s where it needs to get to. We are no longer afraid of ourselves or our past. The key test is the approval of others. We don’t need it.

Depth of Lived Brokenness and Willed Vulnerability

A person who can actively jettison self-protection — especially if they offer their strength to others — is a person who can live their acknowledged brokenness through a willed sense of vulnerability. It’s a courageous life that exudes safety for others, because it’s a life that is safe within itself. Such a person is emotionally and spiritually right when they are wrong; when they fall upon their sword, say sorry, and seek forgiveness. They prefer to judge themselves than judge others.

Depth of Acceptance for Limitedness

What a strength it is to know our weakness. We have such limitations. One of the benefits I’ve gleaned from burnout (ten years ago now) is my limitations are more on a knife’s edge than ever before. I’m constantly reminded of the need to restore balance. Those with a gift for their limits are wisely adult in their emotionality.

Depth of Experience of Grief and Loss

Expression of sadness and loss and grief are pivotal in this area. That, and to be able to fully acknowledge them without denying any of it. If we are the type of person that people seek out in their distress, we model such a depth that is priceless for the hurting.

Depth of Intimacy with Others

Connecting with others is the point here. If we have the ability to enter others’ worlds, and actually discern them and engage with their inner material, we have a great gift — a gift counsellors need! The capacity for into-me-see is vital. The ability to build relationships at depth is necessarily countered by the adult sense of proper boundary — impelled by the duty of responsibility. Emotional adults (as opposed to adolescents, children and infants) don’t get drawn into affairs because intimacy went wrong. The mature have learned to erect safe boundaries of self-awareness where the vulnerable cannot be hurt.

Depth of Integrity Manifested in Self-Control

This is not just any sort of self-control. It is self-control over our use of time, which means neither envy, nor greed, nor covetousness are inwardly (unconscious) drivers for us. If we find that devotional and spiritual activities have their own reason for being our integrity is vouchsafed.

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The biggest favour we could ever do for ourselves is to embrace adult emotionality. A reasonable, rational, responsible, realistic, reliable and logical person is our best gift to others and ourselves.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

Why Understanding Is the Key to Everything

TWO different situations on the same day proved to me the depth of life in the mode of understanding. Understanding is the key to everything.

The first situation involved a young lady who was estranged from her parents and was missing them so much. They were missing her, too. It was an enforced separation for a time due to a project she was working on in a remote location. Yet, homesickness threatened to derail her progress. Her parents had given her every backing on this new vocation. The challenge was one of simply sticking at it.

The second situation involved a mother of five, who was in hospital recovering from surgery that had complications. A relatively simple procedure hadn’t gone to plan. Pain management was now an issue and the woman’s ability to endure the pain was stretched past the limit. She wanted it ended. Her hope had completely evaporated.

Both of these situations prove that understanding is our greatest aid. In both situations there is pain. In both situations there is a sought-after outcome and a situation to run from. But both these situations illustrate how getting our own way runs cross grain against the truth of the presented reality.

Understanding is where our thoughts and feelings match God’s thoughts and feelings.

It’s incredibly hard!

We may feel as though we simply cannot go on. But we lack only understanding. Understanding doesn’t promise us a way out of the things we loath. It simply aligns us with God’s truth. Understanding doesn’t miss a beat. Understanding cannot lie. Understanding agrees with God in how and why to keep going the hard way.

If, in the first situation, the young lady can knuckle down, she will get through. She needs to be able to discuss her homesickness with someone who has empathy, warmth and genuineness — a person-centred counselling approach. Such an approach will soften appropriately enough a very tough direction, to keep going; that is, to find a resolution beyond complaining. Understanding knows that if she can get through, then it will be right to interact with her parents.

If, in the second situation, our mother of five is able to bear up under the pain, and she will need copious support, she will prove a good level of understanding. It’s possibly the hardest thing she will ever do. And she should be applauded every step.

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Understanding accepts the truth of life that can only in truth be accepted.

The hardest truths in life, when accepted, prove that we understand life. Understanding life is the key to the abundant life.

When we accept what cannot be changed, we understand, and nothing can beat us.

Understanding life is accepting the truths we must accept, for there is no point in denying them.

Understanding will prove the golden gateway to all of life. It is character put together with maturity.

© 2015 Steve Wickham. 

What Does Your Life Stand For?

LISTENING to Gheorghe Zamfir’s Lonely Shepherd, I know God is going to take my mind’s heart off to some distant galaxy that has its best view of my life as I live it right now.

Isn’t it peculiar how far we need to go from our inner lives in order to see the inner life for what it is?

The problem is this: we do not learn early enough in life (if, indeed, we learn ever at all) to look at life and live it from the eternal perspective.

Yet life is but a wisp, a piece of fluff on the carpet so easily sucked up by the vacuum pressure of life.

We miss the point of life. We don’t get to understand the eternal gravity of life. Like the undeniable significance of dependence. My son is so dependent on me. When he went into a bed, having graduated from his cot, it was such an important moment for him. It was an important moment for me and my wife. He was no longer a baby.

Our families are growing as we speak and listen and consume time for understanding.

We don’t get back one second that is given us.

In all truth, there are bound to be regrets — things we wished we had done or not done or done better. But regrets are positive, in that, they impel us; they motivate us to do better before it’s too late.

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And where does this end?

It ends at the point where we ask ourselves a question that has no answer; no answer, but an invitation. What does our life stand for? The way we are living our lives, what does it stand for?

Our lives are passing away, yet we have this day.

What are we to do with our life this day, given the eternal nature of such a fleeting life has a remarkability about it that we cannot deny.

One day we meet God. That day we will give an account. Actually, our lives will account for us. We will stand before God, kneeling as an expression of thunderstruck awe, and our life will be right before us. We will know what God is saying. What will God say?

What is missing from our lives is the mode of peaceful, daily reflection — not about what we seek or desire, but it’s about how we are behaving. It’s not about the things God is yet to give us, but it’s about what we are doing with what we’ve already got. It’s not about ministry or even the lost. It’s about family, principally. Then it’s about the lost. It’s about the human family and creation. It’s not about what angers us. It’s more about what should impassion us, but isn’t. What do we do about the truths of life that matter most to those who love us; those we are called, sacrificially, to love?

It’s about the simpler things; being grateful for the simple things.

What is eternity saying as we look back at our lives from there? (A ‘sneak peak’.)

There is today, this day alone, and no other presentation of time or life to work with.

What is to be done in this day?

© 2015 Steve Wickham. 

A Simple, Powerful Vision for Joy, Today and All Days

Make your past the very platform for your future. Do what you’ve never done before. Hammer a stake in the ground, today!

That’s what this article is about: forging a future that departs from the forces that have held us in the past — for far too long.

It starts today. And the vision we create has to in no way be a perfect one to abide us in peace and proffer us to joy. Today is simply a new day. It is a gift the same as all the thousands of days we are given.

As we awaken on a new such day, laying in our beds, having been cared for by God throughout the rest we had, we lay and ponder a moment. Then we spring out of bed. Why? Because we can. Then we wiggle our toes and do a bend-back stretch. Why? Because we can. Then we separate the curtains and open the blinds. Why? You guessed it! Because we can.

We can do what we want today. Everything is a choice. Everything, even to enter a workplace in the sight of fear, bitterness and despair, and do so courageously.

But some of us have arisen this morning to a death in our psyche; an inexplicable heaviness of heart. Perhaps there is thought of the day derailed before it started.

Never mind. Whether we decide to languish or leap is inconsequential. God understands. And with no coercion in view, the Lord will give us power to rise, if we would want — even in some remotest of way — to join his will for life.

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God is good. For the capacity to think our way out of the problems of our minds, God is good. He gives us passage along the road of our searching. He gives us the faintest of hopes on the way. And he carries us when we can no longer move.

They say “fake it ‘til you make it.”

This is nothing about that. This is the commitment we can make at any time to decide for life, for in life — which is movement and hope and conquest — is joy. To create the space within our minds for hope — and to keep that space open — is truly life.

To impassion the goodness of God in our own lives, notwithstanding any grief we bear, is to believe; to believe is hope; and, to hope is joy.

© 2015 Steve Wickham. 

Why Feeling Valued Is Central to Our Everything

The greatest gift to give is to value someone.

Giving is a gift all its own. There is nothing that will take us directly into the field of God more than giving with a cheerful heart.

The greatest gift to receive is to be valued.

To be considered, to be accepted, to be appreciated; these are the receipt of such good gifts that they are God’s gifts from a loving person to another.

The greatest feeling in the world is to feel valued.

Being cherished, acknowledged, appreciated and esteemed is to be respected, even treasured. It’s simply the greatest feeling. Even better when we feel such from God.

The greatest outcome is that which is valued by all.

The community wins when the community is in consensus. It’s a victory that ought to truly be celebrated.

The greatest gratitude is to value God and the life he gives.

It is hard in a privileged and comfortable life to express gratitude instinctively. The more we get the more we want. But to appreciate God and the life he gives is the greatest gratitude.

The greatest test of life is to sustain ourselves when we are not valued.

Tough relational and situational experiences aren’t the end — they can be the beginning; of the resilient life. The reminder is that we are only truly valued — at all times — by our eternal God.

The greatest disappointment is to know we were not valued.

Resignation hits hard the soul of anyone who knows with the gravity of truth they were never valued. A certain spiritual death occurs, but not one that cannot be overcome. Such a revelation as coming face to face with such a horrendous truth can actually be liberation.

The greatest courage is in those who value others when they, themselves, are not valued.

The true leader is capable of the above, and they are commensurately inspiring.

The greatest hope of all is the eternal value God places on us through Jesus.

We have the esteem of God, pure and simple. We have the regard of God. Let it sink in. There’s nothing we can do to improve that situation. Feeling valued by God is our everything.

The greatest value is God’s affirming value.

No other esteem or regard comes close to the esteem and regard of our Creator.

***

People don’t value what we say until we value who they are.

We don’t value what people think until we know they value us.

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The heart of the matter is this: feeling valued is central to our happiness, joy and contentment of life, because it provides life with all its meaning.

The meaning of life is understood when a life of meaning is undertaken.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

7 Ways God’s Light Helps Us Live the Overcoming Life

WHAT are the advantages and dispensations for faith? What, in this life, can we cling to in order that our faith may prove worthy of its own regard in this life?

Here are seven ways faith, overall, helps us to live the overcoming life:

1.     In pain, in spite of everything, God’s light empowers us to endure. Because we can endure, we must. It’s sometimes the only solace we can give our pain — to hang on in there, and to not give up.

2.     In trial, in spite of injustice, God’s light empowers us to be patient. Doing nothing would seem easy, except when to do nothing torments us. Even in the midst of trial — a hardship most grotesque — we must verily hold to God’s account of timing and method. His purpose must be served, and then we are blessed.

3.     In testing, in spite of fear, God’s light empowers our reliance of faith. We ought to pray that times and situations of testing pique at our awareness. If we know we are being tested — and we identify our fears — we can easily institute faith to proceed, wisely, with caution.

4.     In failure, in spite of disappointment, God’s light empowers us to persist. We get down on ourselves too much in this life when we could see failure as an opportunity — to get it right next time or the time after. Grace accorded to us, personally, empowers persistence.

5.     In temptation, in spite of weakness, God’s light empowers us to be faithful. In overcoming those weaknesses that bear over us we have the key to overcoming them when we are faithful. To be consistent, day in, day out; that’s what we need to be.

6.     In betrayal, in spite of hurt, God’s light empowers us where to trust again. People will hurt us, just as much as we are destined, ourselves, to hurt others. When we see this as a fact of life in relationship with others, we learn the point is simply when and where and how to trust again.

7.     In despair, in spite of fatigue, God’s light empowers us to trust again in hope. Despair’s destiny is to find itself in hope. The very presence of despair is the clearest evidence of hope — a hope dashed. But the boldest hope is outbound of despair. The person who despairs, yet can hope again (and again), is tenaciously resilient and spiritually mature.

***

In the harder times of life we can and should remind ourselves that this, too, shall pass, for all things are passing away, from the perspective of heaven.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.

Seeing, Knowing, Accepting God’s Treasure Inside You

LEARNING to live our new life now is as much about seeing, knowing, and accepting God’s treasure that he’s already put inside us. It’s already there!

If we believe such a thing — that we are already equipped with much capacity for goodness — we are able to live such a thing out. In this way, most of what we believe is obligatory to our actual practice and enjoyment of life.

We become what we believe.

If we have the capacity to believe — which is as much a ruthless choice as it is something God does in us — we have the capacity to undergo the Spirit’s transformation. We will not bar, by our own negativity, the work that the Spirit desires to do in us.

To see as truth, to know by experience, and to therefore accept these treasures is just what all of us want. But will we go the extra mile and determine that these treasures are actually, in all truth, there?

There are far too many people interested in belonging right where they have been in life. The disciple’s life, however, is never about remaining satisfied with their status quo. If we are dogged by anger can we not believe that a more patient us resides within? If we are plagued by depression can we not believe that we don’t have to be characterised by depression forever? If we are harangued by fear can we not believe that we have the potential to break past our anxiety? If only we can name our nemesis, then we are aware and, so, are positioned to make a frontal assault on it.

We will never believe in our own good — the presence of the gifts God has given us — unless we are prepared to jettison our fear of authenticity.

It is a fear of authenticity, of honesty, and of courage, that hems us in. We worry what others might say about us if we back ourselves in. We get concerned that people close to us will think worse of us if we believe in our potential. Only the jealous types do that, and they are probably not the ones we should be playing close attention to.

It’s up to us.

What will we do with the lot that has been given us?

Will we take what we have, honestly evaluate it, and make of what we have for the best?

If we do such a thing as honestly look, so as to see, and find out, so as to know, and finally be rest assured, so as to accept, we will discover the treasures God’s placed within each of us.

***

Why do we criticise ourselves when we don’t as much commend ourselves?

Why do we hate on ourselves and allow others to hate on us?

When we see ourselves as worthy of love we more often find others are worthy of love.

God has done some amazing work in each of us. It’s time we started to believe in the story that is our life.

Better to believe God made us capable than believe God made others better.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.