God’s provision… IN your burden… to sustain you

We all must know by now that to live this life we’re bound within the laws of this life. No railing against God for what is happening to us will change what is happening to us.

It’s futile to blame God, yet God’s got broad enough shoulders for it. And yet, still again, God knows the human condition in suffering because God knows Jesus better than anyone, and nobody will ever suffer more than Jesus.

So, where does the fact of suffering leave us in terms of benefit with God—for we’re all ‘in faith’ for the benefit, are we not? (Isn’t it an incredible, incredulous thought that we might be so sold out to God that we’d need no benefit to cajole us to our Creator? This is actually faith’s aim! But, let’s get back to the purpose of this article.)

If we take as our premise the burden of suffering, and we imagine it as the reality we cannot in a moment change (for that’s the law of life—our circumstances are never typically miraculously lifted from us!), we are left with the situation and what might be done.

We’re obviously in pain and would prefer things be decidedly different.

If we reconcile anything, it’s the need to be reconciled to peace, so our hope might endure, and joy may once again be experienced—hazard to say it, WITHIN the prevailing lamentation, if at all that were possible. So, that’s our situation and our desire.

Now this. Just ponder this:

“God doesn’t promise to deliver us out of our burden,
but God does promise to sustain us in it.”
— Carmel Wright

This wisdom is brought to us by ‘the way life works’…

This is the deeper mystery beyond a prosperity doctrine that just must insist on deliverance as its first aim; and only that as the glorification of God. But could it be that God has more purpose for us as we’re sustained through our trial? The biblical mandate is that God is glorified in the struggle itself, not just once we’re delivered from it.

If we will accept that God’s role, through our faith, is to sustain us in our burden, one day at a time, we will make it through our burden. God delivered the Israelites ultimately through daily provision of quail and manna. Jesus commanded us to pray, “Give us this day, our daily bread…”

And this is the point:

AS God sustains us, God rescues us.

~~~ DAILY… ONE DAY AT A TIME ~~~

Even in the mode of bearing a burden of suffering, even because of it and in spite of it, God, in sustaining us through it, is rescuing us because of it; because of our bearing it in a way that trusts the provision of holy sustenance.

There and there alone is the method. It is implored of us to simply practice the method. What is required is the humility of surrender, which is trust. That’s all.

In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul reminds us that we’re not comforted in our self-sufficiency, but that we’re comforted by God in our tribulation. This, of course, is a great mystery! Perhaps the greatest of all mysteries.

But we must also know this. Even as an entire passage of Scripture heralds the purpose of suffering, as does Isaiah 49 for good example, as the final verse hammers the nail home.

God sustains us a day at a time for the ultimate
in deliverance, for the Lord’s glory alone.

Image background by Ron Smith on Unsplash

As the pain of regret gives way to the meaning of hope

Perhaps we’ve all been there. That place of circumstance and being where all before us and all behind us is tainted with the pain of regret.

It could be something we’ve done. Equally, something we should have done. Maybe something we shouldn’t have done, or just as likely major regret for not getting out of the way sooner. And, oh, the taste of regret when we’re innocently sidelined, harassed, persecuted, maligned, rejected or disposed of.

Even in loss there are massive fragments of regret that impact on us at different times, for different reasons, where retrospect is a frame for what should have been.

And then there is the inevitable present moment that lingers on the palate of experience. That which ushers forth a future that as yet remains largely unwritten.

The present moment is pregnant with possibility and it may give birth serendipitously or with great difficulty. It may bring forth a beautiful child called Hope, or it might engender instant sorrow as we cast our eye more over what was than what could be. This ‘child’ could brighten the mind, or it could depress the heart. And such a life could bring such enormous joy in its being, or it could be a bane to all in society, with all possibilities in play at the genesis of this one life.

The inevitable opportunity awaits us all in the season of regret.

Will we look around and kick the ground of those digs, continue in our self-disgust, or insist on hurting ‘the other’ when they don’t even know we’re camped there? Will we make that existence a prolonged reality? Will we show to one and all the power of pitying oneself over the power of picking oneself up?

Would we consider for a moment that life’s course has been reset? Could we visualise the setting of a certain sun for the rising of a new one once night is over?

Regret is painful. It preoccupies our mind for what dominates our heart. Those feelings are insurmountable. They sing a dirge that will reckon to a beautifully sensitive person their portion of grief. There is a journey in regret. But sense in that journey that there is a point where we make our departure from self-sabotage.

As the pain of regret gives way to the meaning of hope we sense that the war is over, and peace has once again returned to our heart.

We must be prepared to do what we can do. We must be prepared to forgive ourselves, and part of that will mean, to move on, we’ll need to forgive moments of indecision, folly, impetuosity, fear, silence, apathy, reluctance, and freezing, fleeing, and fighting.

As we move past the shame of self-disgust, we may sense that forgiving ourselves corresponds with our willingness to learn. In sensing that a fresh-fire beginning comes when the end has come, hope brightens in knowing that something can yet be done.

Amazingly, all of ‘this’ can be reconciled. Not to undo what has been done, but a doing now of what can now be done.

There’s no wisdom and nothing to be gained in holding onto regret with grim resolve. Instead, raise the blinds, throw open the curtains, and allow the Son to shine on in!

Photo by Ron Smith on Unsplash

Between how life was and how we wish life can be

I’m captivated by moments. Like waking and not wanting to be awake… or being reminded how life was, connected with pangs of regret or… equally, how life isn’t quite what we thought it would be… yet.

… YET … is such an important word;
it holds hope pregnant on the heart.

Many of us have known that time between how life was and how we wish it would be. Many of us were there for literally years. And many of us are there now.

In all truth, most if not all of us are on that journey between a reality that was—perhaps it was very beautiful, because we’ve forgotten the ugly parts—and the ‘reality’ we hope for.

And there are also many who genuinely feel they’ve never had that life they wish they still had. Many strive for a life, a healing, they’ve never had. There is an authentic ailing for that which has never been a reality, and yet (that word again!) that hope cannot be let go of.

~

Yes, there is pain. There is more in these in-between time experiences than we can readily stomach on occasion. It does overwhelm us. It does cause us to lose hope and wonder about God. And yet, once we’re through it, we realise what occurred, and even as we’re going through it something makes us suspect there’s something being gained ahead.

~

There is something tantalising with hope. It’s a now-but-not-yet thing; now, because we’re impelled forward toward to what we hope for; but not yet, because it hasn’t yet become a reality.

So, what do we do in the meantime…?

This is where the crunch is. We’re all living in the meantime, especially as we consider our own lives when someone might look on and quietly envy what we have that they don’t. We’re all living in the meantime, for such a time as the present time, where hope is imbued on a vision that is always ‘over there’ somewhere. We’re all living in the meantime, and we need to grasp this if joy is to overwhelm us, because of gratitude, because we recognise that now—even though it isn’t everything we hope for—is what we have. We’re all living in the meantime, all the time.

We’re living in the existential chasm… the gap between what has been and what’s to come.

We’re living between the past and the future, even if the past looms large to depress us, and the future looms just as large to make us anxious.

But the past and the present are not regular foes like the present often appears to be.

The present moment must be managed, or it makes of future moments—as we see them from here—ultimately regretful moments of past.

What does all this mean?

The present—for it to encompass joy—must be indwelt with hope. And that’s the experience of peace, right there. To accept one’s present is to draw hope into the moment, to live there, content with what we have, all that we are, and all that we’re doing and have done.

The present must trust that the future will be good and that all in the past may be resolved and reconciled.

All of what is the good life is done in the present. It cannot be done in the past, for those days are gone, and it cannot be done in the future, for those days are not here yet.

It’s the present that invites us into the opportunity of acceptance.

The idea of acceptance breeds the possibility of positivity; for thought of all there is, all one has, all one is, and all that could be.

All is as it presently is, and the present as it is cannot be changed, but it can be accepted, and start of hope resides there, and peace abides, and at last, joy guides.

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No matter what, tomorrow always comes

16 years ago, as clear as day in my memory, a certain person laughed at me. I was not in a position then to do anything other than wallow. I had no idea back then, at the genesis of my grief—in the first week of any genuine suffering I’d ever experienced—whether I’d ever recover. And that recovery did take years.

But tomorrow came. It came.

It was, of course, inevitable that tomorrow would come. It always does.

But we fail for hope in not being able to get past our present circumstances. We must be reminded of a truth of life that comes to pass always.

~

The funny thing about tomorrow coming is this: it’s not just one tomorrow, but there are many positive, favour-filled, payback tomorrows to be had. If I had a rock bottom September 16 years ago, by 13 years ago it wasn’t so much forgotten as redeemed! And almost every September after that has been etched in some sort of glory.

Our disasters are only ever temporary. They’re designed to test us. If they knock us over and we don’t get up when we could, whose fault is it? Sure, it was a calamity, and whether we brought it on or not, if it was our reality that couldn’t be readily changed, we’re fools unless we set our minds and hearts on making good on it. The event of adversity is an event. What we make of that event is a story. What narrative are we writing?

We aren’t defined by the moments that wreck us. Our legacy isn’t in the things that happen to us, but our legacy is made in our response to these things. The impact we have on others has magnitude either way. If we react negatively, all those who love us are also disadvantaged.

But if we react positively, against the tide of our own temptation, and those ‘wise’ ones who would advise, we hammer a stake into the ground of our destiny.

~

That September 16 years ago for me was utter torment. The months and indeed few years after it were astonishingly painful. I did have thoughts to end it all. It got bad, often with incredible suddenness.

Yet, I hoped that my lot would dramatically improve, and I had to hope, for it was all I had. Faith was my only option. And in a fair analysis of all our laments, that’s the reality we all face. Faith is the only viable option if we are, like God, for ourselves.

Who wouldn’t be for themselves? Who would sabotage their own life? Well, astonishingly it’s so many, through apathy or sloth or anger or lust or envy they cannot overcome.

But a will that insists on the hope of a coming tomorrow does what is needed today. That is to bunker down, take in some food, get one’s rest, be patient for the long haul, and ready oneself for hard times immediately ahead with few guarantees.

But much better days are coming.

They surely are!

The person who laughed at me 16 years ago doesn’t laugh at me anymore. That story ended, and ceased being relevant, so long ago.

It’s how every story ends. If we keep the faith that tomorrow always comes.

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Treasuring loss as a valuable life experience

The gospel is a game changer. Not only are we put right with God in accepting Jesus’ finished work on the cross and in following his ways; we are empowered to live a life that cannot ultimately conquer us.

This life, however, is accorded only to true converts whom actually apply the basics of the gospel rule—which is to suffer this life well. Why do we know this is the case?

Let’s now dig into what every person needs to know before they die.

~

Jesus came to save souls—every soul. And in doing that, in being saved, two things are granted to us; first, we have direct eternal access to God; second, which is the context of this article, we have power from above that reframes our attitudes and responses to life. And this has particular relevance, in this case, to our attitudes and responses to loss.

We will all undergo experiences of loss. Not one, but more. For some it’s many. For some it seems that’s all life is, loss! Within many losses, also, there is a layering affect, where many levels of loss are felt. It can feel that in losing a partner, a child, a marriage, etc, that we’re losing so much more, such do the ripples of grief extend into so many areas and relationships in our lives.

~

Only in loss do we get this gospel opportunity. (Even as I read this previous sentence I’m left with mixed feelings—the worldly me thinks, “How can you ‘sensationalise’ loss,” but the Christ-centred me thinks, “Okay, this is when Christian faith finally becomes relevant in a life we can so easily live without God.”)

Let me repeat the sentence: Only in loss do we get this gospel opportunity.

Only when life turns pear-shaped and we’re thrown into a situation where our circumstances cannot be reconciled—at least in the short-term—do we become desperate to reach out for help. We must reach out to be helped.

Only in loss are we positioned to ponder, “What kind of life experience is this, and how will I and others (ultimately) benefit from this life experience?” That kind of reflection drives us to believe there is a purpose in suffering this loss.

While life is going swimmingly, let’s admit it, the gospel forever feels detached from our experience. We know its truth at a head level, but we also know at a heart level that we do not have a cross to bear at present. At least unconsciously, this causes us to feel a little far from God, which is a paradox, because we don’t need God close. This doesn’t discount experiences of joy and gratitude that we do have because life is going so well—with that we do have a connection with God!

Then what enters our life is loss. Suddenly we simply must draw on God through surrender. No longer can we get away with a superficial connection with God.

We know we must go deeper, not only because it’s essential to our survival; but also because we become patently aware, that with a level of suffering we never thought was possible, there is a reality of God that is deeper than we ever thought was possible.

Having traversed the experience of loss—after we’ve reconciled the depths of grief—we do remain connected to God at a far deeper level. We’re taken deeper in our worship, we know more because of those intensive experiences of reading our Bibles, we’ve grown in empathy and compassion, and we’re all the more grateful that we got through the worst experience of our lives thus far.

~

We can cherish loss as a valuable life experience because we can. Not only that, but we need to because it’s the only way we can respond in grief with positive sincerity.

When we step out of our pain sufficiently to wonder ‘why’ we are having this experience in the context of our overall lives, and life itself, we can begin to hope that the experience will mean something someday—that it was for a purpose.

We may not be able to do this every day, for there are some days when we just can’t, but there are also days when we can, so when we can, we can, and we should try.

It’s when we try and make an assault on the Mount called Pain, striving for the purposes in it and beyond it, as a cherished life experience, that we come to see God at work; the gospel coming alive in our midst, as we cling to our cross as Jesus clung to his.

Let’s face it, if loss has arrived, no choice is availed to us to do anything other than see what we can make of it; no choice other than to deny the experience or rail against it. And neither of those choices wash for hope.

~

I know it was the case for me, though it’s not the case for everyone. The only way God could truly reach me was through loss. It was the only way to get this back-slidden Christian’s attention.

What I speak of here is not about making an idol of loss. It’s about making something of the undeniable event and circumstance of loss for God even as God woos us back to hope.

None of us reckons that it is loss that gets us back on track in life. None of us counts it a truth that the experience of loss is a valuable one. I, and many I know, do attest that what I speak of here is true.

Indeed, it is highly likely that if God woos us back to Jesus through loss, we will come to treasure the life experience we’re given, even as what we valued was taken from us.

Of course, it’s only the converted who will reckon this as a work of God.

Loss is God’s way of showing us a form of life that is common to life. Until we experience more of the gamut of experience, we cannot empathise. Until we experience times when our hearts fail, we don’t have empathy for those whose hearts are failing. Much of the time it’s true; until we are broken, we don’t really fully appreciate the plight of the broken.

Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash

Believing in the validity of our own experience

I get a little sick of hearing how people with power lord it over others who are vulnerable to their views, particularly when they invalidate the experience of the person. Even if the person in power (say a medical professional) knows more, they have no right to denigrate the person’s felt experience.

There is great veracity in believing in the validity of our own experience. When we believe our own experience is valid, we have a confidence within our lives that isn’t easily shaken.

Imagine you have some chronic condition—it could be physical, psychological, spiritual, or a blend thereof. Just about everyone who’s got or had a chronic condition has experienced the invalidation of others, and worse, the invalidation of medical professionals whose job it is to diagnose and treat such conditions.

The other salient example I should like to mention is the outworking of trauma through abuse. Many are there who either aren’t qualified to comment, but do, and they do all sorts of damage, or those who are qualified who have no sense of empathy. Either way, the trauma response and people being triggered are too quickly invalidated.

~

The invalidation of others tends to work us over psychologically and we can easily begin to doubt ourselves, our own experience, our right to complain, etc, even our morality for having experienced what we felt. This is such a deep soul-level betrayal.

But the fact is we do experience what we experience.

What we sense and what we feel are true. And only we, ourselves, can tell what we’re feeling, how painful it is, its depth and severity, and status any given moment. Why should we doubt what we feel?

It is an insanity to allow others who don’t know how we feel to talk us down or talk us out of it, or worse, to talk us into feeling guilty for what we are, in the truth of experience’s reality, feeling!

What we all need more of (not less of) is some acumen and dignity around our daily, moment-by-moment, experience of life. God gave us senses to feel with, to perceive with, to judge with, to discern with, and to decide with. God didn’t give us our senses that somebody else would tell us what we’re feeling is wrong.

Our job as human beings in this life is to live a true life in the light of experience. God trusts us to feel what we feel; we would not have five senses otherwise.

So, please do believe in the validity of your own experience.

What we feel is real.

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Men, being a man means managing your mental health

Inspired by a bloke named Wayne Schwass, speaking on the occasion of a good mate’s death, we call this moment a moment to be truthful. It’s a moment we claim as men to say to other men, “Now’s the time, men, for us to stand together, and to be known as stronger for showing our weakness and for bearing it together.”

Why? Because we can. We need to. We’ve lost too many brothers, sons, fathers, best mates, favourite teachers, footy coaches, old school mates, distant cousins, and in some cases, partners.

We’re chucking out, “harden up, princess.” It’s filth, men! For starters, none of us are women. And there’s nothing wrong with women! And as men with daughters, what do we think of our daughters? They are princesses!

We’re done with, “Take a chill pill… here’s a cup of concrete… harden up!” Far out. We’re done.

“Man up?” What does that even mean. Only the man who is honest about how he really feels is anywhere near manning up.

These are gutlessly dangerous statements, because nobody knows how the man who hears these callous jibes hears them, how he feels them to his core, how they erode him in his inner being; least of all the ‘man’ who says them.

It’s time for the men in the room, on the construction site, on the footy field, in the classroom, to say, “Enough’s enough, buddy! You’re out of line. You’ve got no idea what he might be carrying. Far too many of us carry far too much! So, back off.” 

It’s okay to say, “I love you, bro… it’s okay mate… keep sticking with it, a day at a time… I’ve been there, mate… it’s the pits… but, I’m here for you anytime.”

Pray for the time a man calls you in tears or with fears; one that’s tired of the jeers. Ten minutes is all it might take to say, “Speak up, brother, there’s nothing you can say that will make me feel any less of you; in fact, you’ll only go up in my estimation when you have the guts to be real, to shake and shiver, and especially if you cry.”

So, men, there it is. Be real men and allow men around you the freedom of being real men. Support everyone you can, but most of all be humble and courageous enough to reach out regularly. Build your support network. Be proud of the fact you have mentors and mates who will hold you up, even as you hold them or others up when they need it.

Come on, men. Let’s BE men by managing our mental health, for ourselves, sure, but for all those who depend on us staying alive.

Men, you all mean so much more than you could ever know. So, always give it one more day, one more go, and know that digging deep is knowing when to speak up and not feel weak.

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The role of responsible care for our depression

Medications are crucial in the management of mental illnesses, as they are for other illnesses. Now, I’m no general practitioner, so this is just my opinion based on my own experience. I’ve been prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) more than once and found they were essential for getting my body’s biochemical levels back in balance.

As a counsellor and pastor, when people come and see me about any mental illness, I’m quick to enquire with them how their journey with their GP is going.

Many times, I find people are quite resistant to taking their struggles seriously enough to drive recovery in the right direction. I think there is a direct correlation between taking the bit between the teeth and one’s recovery. Sure, there are some who are debilitated no matter what they do, but most people can and do improve if they insist they can do something to improve. Diligence is more often than not rewarded.

There is the psychological principle of the internal locus of control in what I’m saying here.

The more we say we’re in control over our own destiny, the more we find that to be a reality. But it requires significant investment over time. Why would we not invest? Well, it’s hard, that’s why! But the rest of our lives is ‘coming at us’ at a rate of one day and one second at a time no matter what we do, so we might as well own the opportunities that present themselves at our door. There’s no time to waste unless we resolve to waste our lives.

One of the biggest issues we all have to face in this entitled age is the predominance of any pockets of entitlement that win their way into our being and modus operandi.

Entitlement, to me, speaks of the opposite of an internal locus of control. It speaks of a person in a state of externalising everything that ‘happens to them’. Sure, many things do ‘happen to us’ but in all of life the factor or our response is understated.

Those who take it upon themselves to do something proactive in response to a disaster do tend to prosper. Amid depression, we have an opportunity. Is it a learning opportunity? A self-care opportunity? A healing opportunity?

The occasion of depression is an opportunity to learn empathy, the depths of suffering possible in life, and to acknowledge aspects of loss and grief.

It can often be the gateway to deepening our path toward maturity.

I often think it’s God’s opportunity to go back and heal those past experiences that may continue to come up and haunt us.

If we’re compromised in some significant way, like we have chronic pain or chronic fatigue, what we can do is engage our faith to maximise our value for life. It will never be perfect, but it will be marginally (maybe a whole lot) better than if we did nothing and focused on remaining miserable. (It should go without saying there will still be miserable days, which is a sad and inevitable reality to accept.)

There is a role for responsible care in our recovery from depression. Even when we have a diagnosed depressive disorder. If we don’t take responsibility for what we can do, who will? That’s right, nobody other than us can.

The sole purpose of this article is to say that if we have depression, counselling is very helpful, but it’s not actually the starting point. A properly managed plan of action begins at the doctor.

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Dark night to sole delight

I’ve only ever needed one of these experiences to know the reality of God—and, when all is said and done, that’s all that matters.

It was July 2004. I was all alone, and had taken my teary lament to my sponsor, on a chilly night on the foreshore. I was forlorn. And for some reason, he challenged me, but not in a damaging way. It was one of those times where I couldn’t have been much lower, but I was in a safe lament—despairingly sorrowful, but by no means without hope. Held, as it were, by God.

I returned home and just knew I had to warm up. I was shivering. I ran a bath and soaked in the warmest water I could handle. Dripping wet, without a care, probably a quick dry off, but still a little wet, I climbed into bed—and just sobbed. I didn’t have my daughters with me, I relived the fact that I’d lost everything dear to me, and I called out to God in a teary rendition of a Psalm 6 prayer—“I am worn out from my groaning, Lord, all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.”

I don’t recall falling asleep, because I was so exhausted; I could have died and I wouldn’t have cared. I do know that my pillow was sodden from my crying; I had no thought for the discomfort of that cold surface upon my face.

I lived in a townhouse. The weirdest thing happened during the night. I had no awareness of this, but in the morning, I woke up in the bed downstairs, and something had happened.

Almost as if God had answered my prayer of lament, somehow in the darkness of the darkest night of my soul, I was raised by the rays of light that shone through in the morning. The Son’s radiance had revived me, and I saw that morning had indeed broken, literally and figuratively.

Broken was the grip that the darkness had over me.

Suddenly, over one night, God showed me the pattern of resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection is the pattern that we’re given passage to emulate, but we must first be prepared to take God to our hell with us—to seek the Lord’s help there in the miry bog of our sorrowful despairing; a place we ordinarily think is both inconceivable and no place we could coalesce with God.

This experience taught me something cogently salient:

Seek God with all your heart in your experience of dark night
and discover God present with you as your sole delight.

This is not to say any of this is easy, but God has a way of showing up when things are hardest to remind us that we’re never alone!

And life didn’t miraculously get better. My dark night situation didn’t change. But it made a huge difference to me to know God was there with me IN IT. Just as it makes a huge difference to know, even now, that when my soul darkens like night, morning is never too far away.

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A prayer to STOP the one set on suicide

Almighty God,

You know all things and all beings. You know the one who needs to read these words, even as I do not know. Show this or something else right now as a sign of Your care, as they reach out one last time to be stopped from ending their life.

Whether I was 20 metres and 20 seconds away from my end, or whether it was the concept of the mode I would use, just as it could be suggested by the enemy of life itself, You can suggest to the target of this prayer to STOP.

Whether it is the humble remembrance of children that would be left behind, like it was for me, or some other reminder, I pray for that sign and that reminder to be sent as a siren.

Place a word before them, a memory, a moment of delay, an annoyance, a physical impediment, even a plan that does not work… anything to show this one that they are meant to be alive.

Make meaning even in the mode of self-harm and suicide that You are alive, that You are real, and that You have purposed for this person a destiny—that they simply must remain alive.

Make their pain mean something personal and powerful, Lord of heaven and earth.

Make their silence spring forth on their lips for caring ones to hear.

Make of their lonely contemplation an avenue of connection.

Make of that senselessness they feel of some future hope that’s embodied even now by faith—even if it seems absurd to them now. Help this precious one know that they belong here, in their life, in their living body, as a living person, for such a time as this.

As beacon shines forth occasionally from the wilderness, may this thing here be used for Your covenant purposes to STOP the cutting, the shutting, the using and confusing, the dulling and the culling.

Make what is occurring in this moment right now, in the secrecy of a quiet flurry, something compelling, that this person knows beyond a shadow of doubt that this STOP message is from You, Lord.

And even in the moment that that see that this is from You, Creator God, give them cause to get sustenance, breath for life, hydration, a plan to endure!

… the words, “I CAN” uttered from their lips.

AMEN.

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