Alienation that bleeds all the way through to the soul

Mother’s and Father’s Days have a marketing allure that is only matched by realities of disappointment in the real world. For all the mass hysteria of expectation generated by these halcyon days, by far and away the most probable outcome is disappointment. Such is life, you might be heard to say.

No, worse. For so many, these days are atrocious. I know there were years when after such days, as a separated father who desperately missed his kids, that I would sob inconsolably for hours after returning my daughters home to their mother. I knew it was right that they go back home, that they were generally okay, but I just missed them terribly. It only got a little better when I married again. But at least I had someone to cry with.

Father’s and Mother’s Days remind me more of grief than of ecstatic enjoyment the marketing gurus would have us buy. These days remind me more of what is wrong, exhausting, hard and difficult about family, than of bliss, and this worldview is supported through a broader experience than merely my own.

The man who wants his kids but is refused them, the woman who wants her kids’ father around, the man who won’t have a bar of his kids, the woman who refuses her kids’ father access to them, and so many more impossible situations are on my heart right now.

If a father wants his kids, and he’s prepared to devote his life to their wellbeing, he’s got his priorities right. If he’s alienated, he must dig deeply within. It may be beyond his present will, but if he wants them, he will do whatever it takes to earn his way back into their lives. He can’t demand respect, but he can win it. It’s worth the hard graft.

Likewise, for the woman who wants her kids’ father around; she may have no recourse to that desire, but she can work toward a life where a significant male role model can sow into her family’s life. She believes in her children that much that she believes in faith that a solid male role model is worth hoping for, not that she can’t be an effective role model herself. I’ve always maintained that one loving parent is enough, and infinitely enough as compared with no parental love—especially if there are two parents but no love.

The man who doesn’t want a bar of his kids is a fool. If there is ever a day when he’ll honestly face his reality, he will face scorn and regret. It’s the same for the mother who could have her kids’ father around, but won’t, because he won’t be manipulated, and she can’t bear over him the control she desires to inflict. If only she could be honest, she’d face a world of sorrow and regret for what her kids are missing out on. There will come a day when it is all too late.

There are cases of abuse that preclude certain parents’ access. These, however, while they do happen, are not the norm. If the father loses his kids because he lacks respect for his former partner—the mother of his children—however, then he’s got a decision to make as a man. Is he going to learn some humility or insist that he remain a child? Every day wasted is a day wasted, but it’s also a day where his children will only see despicability in their father.

There’s so much grief in families, and children bear the brunt of it. Where fathers are estranged, it’s heartbreaking where they would be part of their children’s lives for their betterment. But children who have been deserted by their fathers are understood when they’re envious of children whose fathers are active in their lives. If a woman denies her children’s father with no good reason, she brings grief on her entire family. These and many other situations cause an alienation of soul and spirit and that bleeds its way all the way through to the soul.

We ought to always seek ways that the alienation of human beings be avoided. It rots not only one human’s soul, it rots entire families.

Photo by Paola Chaaya on Unsplash

Humility don’t come easy but it sure is a delight… for others

It’s a daily experience that flies under the radar the majority of the time. Every frustration, every inconvenience, every time we don’t get our way, and even in the portion of pain, there is a time—an opportunity—for humility.

Let me take you deep into one of my most recent moments: we have been getting some electrical work done in our house. Improved lighting, better power points, and the like. When the electrician arrived this morning, he knocked on the door and said, looking to the heavens, with his friendly, engaging smile, “It’s not good news, I’m afraid.” The forecast for a storm and 80mm (3”) of rain meant climbing on the roof wasn’t such a good idea. As an ex-safety professional, I certainly understood. He arrived sick on Monday and quickly returned home. He’s already been on the job two full days (it was supposed to take two days). And he’s a lovely older guy.

But I was watching myself as I heard these words. I know the nature of my heart. Part of me wants my way, part of me doesn’t want to rock the boat, and another part of me wants to see if there’s any innovative way to solve the problem at hand. It can be a real internal battle even if I do have the countenance of peace.

Here was part of the range of the thoughts and feelings running through me:

·      “… don’t you want these parts of the job?” – the part of my heart that sees I wouldn’t want to do this work.

·      “… I didn’t expect this… Steve, you didn’t expect this… okay, so what now?” – the part of my heart that doesn’t like surprises.

·      “… he’s right. Look up and see for yourself.” – the part of my heart that is compelled to wrestle with truth.

·      “… wow, if only he knew how much work we’ve done to prepare the house (twice now) for this! This is a ‘massive’ inconvenience.” – the part of my heart that sees first world problems as bigger than they actually are.

·      “… I wonder if he can be talked around…” – the part of my heart that resembles ‘the player’.

·      “… stop making this out to be bigger than it is, Steve!” – the part of my heart that sees things realistically.

·      “… but my wife really wants this work done!” – the part of my heart not wanting to disappoint someone I love.

This was literally a moment of time in the context of my life, and whilst not all our moments bear such unanticipated displeasure, we do face many of these moments, and some days are filled with them!

In moments where we are rattled by disappointment, surprise, frustration, betrayal and the like, we have our greatest opportunities to be humble, because humility isn’t required until we’re tempted into pride.

The way we handle our disappointments, the horrible surprises, our frustrations and betrayals are evidence of our humility or lack thereof. Humility, whilst it seems the champion of all virtue, is hard won. It never feels virtuous. It feels as if we’re losing out, and the very best of this is the delight we can enjoy that someone is blessed.

And people are really blessed when we smile pleasantly instead of becoming angry. People are blessed when we restrain our initial emotion, when we exercise patience and self-control.

There is no shortcut to humility. It always requires a sacrifice. We can only ever be humble each moment as it comes. But, as we sow in humility, resisting the overtures of pride to have our own way, we reap untold blessings in the relational realm, and these may encourage our hearts to keep the faith.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

What you’d do to be back there, IN the pain

Five years ago, about now, we were holidaying; the four of us. Now as we consider taking a little break soon there are three. It all feels interminably normal, until the collection of our thoughts turns to who is missing. Like the moment it dawned on our son (when he was 5) that his brother didn’t live and there were instant tears. What he would do for a brother to play with!

It’s like saying goodbye to the person you love who visits for a time, then leaves, and neither of you know when you’ll see each other next, especially if ever. What an incredible void is created; a spiritual vacuum that nothing on this earth can amend. And yet there are the purposes of God in this. These are the depths of love outbound of loss that furrow so deep in sadness they reach down to the other side of the world and out into space and keep going.

Then I think back to 3 years ago. If five years ago was hard, for me personally, three years ago to the day was so much harder. As a person looks back to that 2016 period, the worst year of that person’s life thus far, such a milieu of silent grief, it was made all the starker because the more public grief was over. Something happened in silence at that time that should not have happened. And silent grief in this way is anguish atop abandonment.

Part of him wants to disassociate from that person who was abandoned. And yet another part of him can hardly believe that that person in him got through such a time. That person wore all the responsibility back then. That person reeled out a narrative that cared for the reputations of others even while he torched his own reputation for taking all the responsibility for how things went down. Let the record be straight. That person could be dead tomorrow.

Wanting to dissociate from painful experiences is normal within the existential. The experiences of scarring imprint themselves on our psyches, and we’re left with no reparation other than therapy and time and our own processing in order to make meaning of what shouldn’t have happened.

But a big part of me wants to be back there, at the time before everything went wrong, before we lost our son. A big part of me has moved on, but an equally big part of me laments for what happened, for what took place.

There’s a big part of all of us that laments for a time when we were pushed to the point of despair. We never forget what that pain cost us, but that sense of being pushed beyond your limits, dims with time. But if we’re not careful, if it doesn’t matter to us, we can all too quickly forget what it cost us, the faithfulness of God to get us through those days, and what we hoped for, which is possibly only now coming to pass. Yet, as we cherish what we got through, we’d be back there in a flash; even for a five-minute sojourn to sense with our senses the taste, the sight, the touch, the smell, and the sound of a grief that overcame us. And the bizarre thing is we wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

We know we’ve definitely recovered from our grief when we experience grief that that part of our lives is over. See how a sorrow couched in acceptance is both good and sad at the same time.

It seems absurd to say “what I’d do to be back there, IN the pain,” but the experience has become part of us, what we lost was precious, and there is something sacred that we take from such a time that is a loss when we lose recall of it.

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

One keystroke from brokenness to wholeness

Most of our lives we make our best of efforts in the direction of effort. In giving all of ourselves to the quest for change, we tend to make a meal of what could otherwise be a powerful work of God.

Like everything in life, we make the path straight for ourselves when we get out of God’s way and allow divine forces for good to have their way in and through us to the glory of the Lord.

But such things are interminably difficult for us because we’re all, of a sense, control freaks when it comes to our own lives. We want change and the things that we feel God is calling for us to do to get there, but at various points along the journey we fail to trust, fear gets in the way, and our love for not-so-good things besmirches our opportunities to redeem wholeness from areas of brokenness in our lives.

Just as God’s plan for our lives is just and wholly good, our Lord gives us the simplest of cues for how to step forward; from whatever position of life we find ourselves.

Take the symbol of a keystroke. The simplest of figures that is literally typed billions of times every day.

You know the keystroke! It’s the semi-colon. It depicts an incomplete sentence. What comes after the semi-colon further defines the previous section of the sentence. Indeed, the semi-colon clarifies the previous part of the sentence and gives the whole sentence meaning. And the most inspiring life stories are come-from-behind, against-the-odds stories motion pictures are made of. Such stories make us believe what is the very best about life. And all of us want such a life story.

The semi-colon literally means that the future is open, that the past has only certain relevance, and that everything turns on how we use the present.

We all need hope. But some need more hope than others. Or, better put, there are times in all our lives when we seem to need hope more desperately than at other times.

The symbol of the semi-colon suggests that we transcend the past, the reputation, the limits, and the barriers that would otherwise hold us away from achieving what would give us hope for change.

And if we seek with all our heart to convert our brokenness into wholeness, acknowledging that reliance on God will lead us all the way there, with the concept of the semi-colon, we have the belief that we have both the method and the vision to get there.

No matter what you’ve been through, no matter what plagues you, no matter what your internal scripts are, and no matter how arduous the way forward is, you can do it. God can be read in the Scriptures as saying, “Look to me! Rely on me! Do not rely on your own understanding.” (For instance, Proverbs 3:5-6)

God is calling each of us at every point in our lives to live a semi-colon kind of life. Nothing speaks to the purposes of life itself amid the context of each of our lives better than the concept of the semi-colon. What is now and what is coming is all that is relevant.

The past, more and more as time goes on, has less and less relevance. God calls us constantly to transcend the ‘pasts’ that hold us apart from our potential.

Do you see how GOOD God is?

That dark descent into dread isn’t your fault

Oh, I’ve had them, I can certainly tell you that I’ve had them—those dangerous descents down the slippery slope of despair, not knowing how or why or why so quickly.

Sometimes it’s a soul sense of sadness that has no rhyme or reason, that reveals no source, and gives no clues as to how or why it came. At other times, there was stimulus, either too much stimulus or the production of the negative, and discouragement came mounted on the wings of the biblical leviathan or behemoth. And then there are the times when something of unknown origin becomes the trigger. None of these are flights of fancy beyond the pale. They are all curiously common.

That dark descent into dread isn’t your fault. You need to know that, don’t you? You need to know that in the midst of being pulled down with the suction force of water going down a drain that you would prevent it if you could.

Ultimately, we can do something about the long-term pattern reaction to the seasonal trend of these dark descents. But this article isn’t about that.

This article is about resolving the kind of matter that is beyond your control, so you may have peace and a lessening of shame and guilt, for shame and guilt and a lack of peace never had anything to do with healing.

God loves you no matter what—whether
you’re susceptible to the dirge or not.

We are enough. No matter who we are or whatever we’re susceptible to. You would not believe the weaknesses, addictions, secrets, fears and phobias, and other vulnerabilities your neighbour is harbouring. You are not alone. We are measured with the commonalities of humanity far more than we are with the frail aloneness of our, at times, fragile minds and failing hearts.

Travelling the deep dark descent, without word or gong of warning, is frightening to us and for those bystanders who love us. None of us enjoy that pitch-dark descent. But we can be encouraged to know that we can be there for one another; that our strength is in our unity, if only we can be weak together. And where there is such weakness, there is much maturity, for humility mounts up on the wings of reality, and one who can be weak without feeling berated is someone adept at accepting what they cannot control. And out of such acceptance comes the want and wherewithal to act upon the climb. We descend so as to ascend.

It’s not your fault when you sink in a moment. Feeling inadequate or worthless or useless are commensurate reactions. All so predictable. If only we had the awareness, the insight into our condition, enough to call ourselves to gentleness with ourselves; to experience the kindness we could truly do with; the gentleness and kindness we would issue to anyone else in empathy for their descending into darkness. It’s time for us to partake of our own empathy.

Some things we need to tuck away for a necessary moment; for when that moment comes and for when we need the reminder. Some things are useful to be kept, tucked up safe in a known place where retrieval would be efficient and easy.

When we’re giving life our very best and for some reason we just don’t seem to measure up, what life throws at us is a lie. We know deep within that we are enough. Be gentle, refute the lie, don’t fight the descent, go with it, and when you come to rest at the bottom, make your climb from there.

Photo by Riccardo Mion on Unsplash

The very best response to failure

I really don’t know why it takes us so long to discover this truth: the very best response to failure is to take responsibility for what we, alone, can do to learn, to grow, and ultimately to change.

But change does not come without a change of heart. It’s like the person who promises to change and never does, simply because all they have is their willpower. 

You need more than willpower to institute sustained behavioural change.

What is needed is a change of heart, that sees the need to change from a very visceral level. It’s almost like, the need to change comes from within, because the heart has seen how damaging or inefficient or futile the previous way was.

So many people in life never ultimately change, even though they make many attempts, simply because they cannot take responsibility that the buck stops with them.

The moment we take responsibility for what we have failed to do is the moment we establish what is called, in psychology speak, an internal locus of control. Having an internal locus of control suggests that things don’t just happen to us, but that we are integrally part of the dynamic. Internal locus of control, though it might sound tough to take responsibility at times for what is not ours, is, in other words, empowerment.

Having an external locus of control, on the other hand, means we see that ‘stuff’ happens to us, that we cannot be to blame, and therefore we do not have control. This is a chosen disempowerment. Not good!

Think of it this way. The more we protect ourselves by resisting the blame, especially to the point of blaming others, the more we reduce our only source of empowerment, because we essentially believe other people have more control over us than we have over our own results. This is an unwise way of living. We refuse to take the only control we have to take.

If only we can accept that occasionally we will fail, and if only we can take responsibility for that failure—all of our own contribution—we can learn a great deal, and in learning a great deal, we refuse to be controlled by external means.

By refusing to control others by blaming them,
we take the fullest control available to us.

Isn’t that liberating! The more responsibility we take, the more freedom we experience, because the more responsibility we can take, the less fear of failure controls us.

The more responsibility we take, the less we blame others, the better our relationships are, and all the more respect flows as a result, and that produces great peace which comes from great rectitude.

If we desire success, and every single human being does, we need to understand that taking responsibility is the very best response the failure. Only when we take responsibility amid failure do we demonstrate we’re fitted with the character for success.

If we were rather to blame others in the case of failure, we lose every sense of credibility, and our world sees that we would rather blame others than get on with getting it right next time. Blaming others not only burns relationships, it is a waste of time.

Think how inspiring it is whenever someone is not defined by their failures. When they get up off the canvas, when they show up the day after defeat, when they are determined to practice past a failing technique, and when they keep coming back, we admire such a person. Every. Single. Time. They show us what we all want to embody. Sure, dwelling within the failure at the time is a wretched experience, but how humbly we dwell in it says a lot about our character. It says a lot about our mental, emotional and spiritual resilience. But those who cannot bear such humiliation will not improve for they’re too busy minimising their own contribution.

The very best response to failure is to keep going, to resist blaming others, to define the positive in the negative, and to convert the disappointment into an opportunity.

Photo by Ian Kim on Unsplash

A prayer for those experiencing soul exhaustion

God of all consolation and comfort

For the one who is inundated with grief, forlorn with a soul sorrow that brings them not only to fatigue but to exhaustion, who contends with a contention that seems broken from hope, encourage Lord, give the peace of a joy that transcends their reality.

For the one at the end of their tether—You know which one—many is the one—give them a reason and the reasonability to continue, to hold out one more day, then one more, and so on. For this person, their purpose has faded to null or the pain they bear has become all too real or it always was. Alleviate, Lord. Send Your mighty troop of angels to their stead.

For the one whose flame is barely flickering, for the whose flame fizzled out long ago, fan and revive, Lord, and give attention to the haste at which this help can arrive. Breathe Your Spirit. Glory in them. Bring them to a life that they scarcely believed possible.

For the one who is despondent and discouraged, grace them with an encouragement and a hope that can only come from You, even in spite of their circumstances. We know, Lord, You are capable of these spiritual feats. Break them clear of holding their identity in the things they do, but show them their covenant identity is in whose they are.

For the one who has all but given up on that relationship that grew toxic so long ago, grace them with the peace they could reconcile in a moment; a peace that sustains and attains a spiritual joy beyond all human explanation. For this one, who has rallied at Your behest, who has been compelled to continue upon Your quest, give them the sanctity of a holy union that brings unconquerable hope.

For all those experiencing soul exhaustion—whether in the day of spiritual attack, whether by season within the warfare, whether by a life of confoundedness—give to each one the gift of life amid their experience of existential death.

Only You can do it!

In Jesus’ mighty and precious name,

AMEN.

Photo by Ahmed Hasan on Unsplash

A prayer for the grieving person to be courageously honest

Dear Lord

As it occurred to me, so it occurs to many I see. We get the choice to run and deny or to stand and face. There is the temptation to hide within a veneer of self-protection, so thankful am I that I had no such defence available to me.

It is good, Lord, if we don’t have the ‘strength’ for self-protection, though such an experience is disabling and debilitating. So, feeling weak, we can know, is a great blessing, so long as we can feel and be safe along grief’s journey. Provide for the weak one’s safety, Lord. Give them the listening ear, even if it’s a stranger who can provide that cup of cold water of compassion or a thick warm blanket of empathy.

Help the grieving person see the folly in self-protection—that there is no growth for transformation there. But, as you know, Lord, eyes that are not enlightened will not see the opportunities before them. Help the ailing, therefore, receive encouragement, for their eyes see a hope that only faith can appease. Help them in their surrender, one day, one moment at a time. Build within them the muscle memory that recognises the reward for faith applied.

Help this person, Lord, who is disappointed to the point of despair, who has been blindsided by a loss stark in its unexpectedness, who recoils in a shockingly surreal sorrow. Help them not hide beneath the wings of what they did right, what others have done wrong, what should not have been, and what could have been. Help them, rather, to hide in you, Lord, which is a safe sanctuary from which they may be courageously honest. Help them dwell in the shadow of your Almighty provision.

Even as they enter in one or more manners of expression for therapy, give them courage to be honest, and be with the therapy process and the therapist; that faith will be accorded both, and that nothing that is hard in the journey would be shirked. Help them to take that risk with you, Lord, that they will have the faith that you hold them by your righteous right hand.

Even in betrayal, Lord, help the person who in their loss feels they can trust nobody. Provide this person the very sign they need to see to trust again, and soon! Give them a special piquing of discernment that in their trusting they don’t feel exposed and vulnerable to abuse.

In being honest and courageous, God, help the person see that they please you. Help them know that your countenance toward them is favourable, and that you will protect them sufficiently when they simply must step forward in a faith that may even seem ridiculous to them as they take the plunge.

Most of all, Lord, help any and every person recognise that you are doing something in us through loss that you cannot and will not do until we are brought to our knees beyond self-sufficiency, to teach us finally that we cannot grow unless you do it.

In Christ’s name,

AMEN.

Photo by Max Williamson on Unsplash

A prayer for the one under immense spiritual attack

Oh God

You impress on my heart right now, through a tremendous burden, a crushing weight threatening to oppress my soul, that there is one to be prayed for. One. A person who is lonely, tired, afraid, assailed by life in one of many ways of anguish.

This person is beside themselves with grief in the moment. They cannot stop the flow of tears. Comfort them, Lord. Give them your peace and your acceptance and your hope, even as they feel tormented, rejected, despairing.

This person has decided to obey you in a way that the enemy hates. They have decided to venture the narrow way, and they are paying the price for their allegiance to you. They have lifted their head above the parapet wall and now their soul is vulnerable to one of many manner of assault. Encourage them in their being, Lord.

Oh Lord, it just got harder, interminably harder. The struggle is deep, it’s real, and there is a sense of plummeting. Reach down and rescue, Lord. Go down to the depths as you have over and over and over again. Meet them in their gutted tumult, all-powerful God. Make your presence real to them in their time, for their need, in a way that speaks to them.

I pray that you would give this one the gentle though firm assurance of the immediacy of your presence. Go deep into their visceral parts and massage your grace and comfort deeper below skin, even into those unknown places.

I pray that as you rise up in this one, Lord, that you cause them to experience your raising them up like you either have done so many times before or like you’ve never done before. Give them your power right now, Lord.

Restore them. Reveal yourself to them. Renovate their spirit. Reignite their passion. Relate with them in their soul void. Reconcile this one to themselves and to their world.

Go to this one, now, Lord.

AMEN.

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

When words make no sense, yet our hearts speak

Pain like it never was. Pain like rain on a sunny day. Pain like glass shattered in your face. Pain like it won’t go away.

That Conversation on the Train

“I hate it how he’s with her… he’s going to dance with her and sing with her… for the rest of the year… I can’t believe it’s over… he knows I’m the best thing that ever happened to him… but he’s gone with her.”

My heart agonises for the broken heart. She cannot escape the thoughts that plague her awareness. And there are ‘hims’ too. Many a heart is torched at the stake of betrayal.

And yet these experiences of living death seem to be the destiny of us all.

~

Think for a moment about the statement: “he knows I’m the best thing that ever happened to him…” 

What I hear in this statement is pain.

What is polarising about loss is the effect of sheer pain on the grieving person. There is absolutely no ability to see or think or say what makes sense. Because the heart is speaking.

The heart speaks a language in grief that seems to betray words, and if we only heard the words we would fail the heart, and the person.

The young woman who was grieving with her friend was genuinely forlorn like any of us when a relationship is no more. We think and say these kinds of things. They are our reality. I thought of the care in the person on the end of the phone she was speaking with; whether it is truth or not is irrelevant. In pain, there is permission to say what comes out and not be judged for it. In loss, not everything we say makes sense; lots of it doesn’t. And that’s okay.

Until we’ve been in a situation where our heads were that messed up that our words made no sense, our hearts haven’t truly spoken, for a broken heart is the reason the heart exists all alone to speak for itself. There is nothing left. No pretence, no bravado, no self-protection.

There is only one thing more beautiful than a heart broken that speaks its truth, albeit in forms that seem to betray the truth. That is, the person who cares on the other end of the line, or physically, as the face that greets the grieving one with a countenance willing to sit and silently mourn.

There are times when words make no sense, yet the heart speaks.

Photo by DAVIDCOHEN on Unsplash