Anxiety, seasonal affective disorder, exhaustion, grief in 2020

2020 has been such a hard year for so many, and even as I type those words, those words seem redundant.  They seem hardly worth writing.  They’re so obvious.  See, the temptation is to leave the words alone — not to continue to shed light on them — because people are exhausted by their exhaustion.

Yet it’s more complex than that.

Anxiety is the prevailing condition on most people’s spiritual horizon.  If it’s not the availability of a vaccine, it’s a new variant, the unpredictable nature of the development of the virus, or the sheer size of the numbers, or the proximity of it all to us.  If it’s not that, it’s the concern of social or economic impact.

We’ve resigned ourselves to what we cannot change, but that which we cannot change is still very hard to accept.  Without needing to pin our anxiety to a particular causation (because have you noticed, anxiety often won’t reveal itself to us that way), we can simply acknowledge the stress causes us to be anxious.

Honesty is a healer.  Facing stuff fixes things.  Pain faced diminishes over time if we can be positive enough not to be discouraged by it — there enters the need for faith.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) can be said to be a recovery period, where the normal intensity of life isn’t possible, where the body-mind-spirit complex in a person — their being — shuts down for vital repair.

It can be seen as a maintenance period before more serious breakdown occurs.

What may seem like death can actually resemble the reformation of a life, each year, just as each calendar year we all need some recovery time.  Perspective can help.  If it’s a low time, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or even physically, we can think of it as a time our bodies are checking out — for our longer-term health.

If we won’t take ourselves out of service, we may find God will do it for us.

Just about everyone is more exhausted than ever, especially those who’ve been completely redeployed this year.  I know some who literally haven’t switched off — haven’t been able to — for over six months, and some for much longer.  But there’s also the hypervigilance people are exposed to.

It seems this life with all its constant barrage of stuff coming at us is forcing us to a decision point.  We’re at war against a biological hazard.  And like with all wars we’ve fought in history, we just need to keep going while we’re at the frontline in the trenches.

Grief is what so many people have experienced as a result of the past 300–360 days or so.  With grief comes responses to loss that we cannot reconcile.  It throws us for such a loop we cannot help denying the incomprehensible reality, or get angry or get depressed about it.

Recurrent thoughts of wanting — no, needing — things better, different, changed somehow, back to normal (whatever that is) are to be expected, yet it throws us into a place we don’t like being in.

One thing we can give ourselves is some allowance for living in a time nobody saw coming.

As a global society, we should have seen it coming, but we didn’t.  We’re wiser in hindsight.  As a human race, perhaps we feel more human than ever.  That should be a good thing.

Knowing things will not change remarkably come January 1, 2021, actually helps.  We don’t need to deny reality, bargain for a better day, or remain in frustration.

This year has taught us some vital life skills for living through an ‘unprecedented’ time.

You and I are actually better people, better prepared, better resourced, better situated for a New Year.  2020 plunged us into war and it has prepared us to expect what we don’t expect when we least expect it.

One thing we can resolve to do more next year is to work with one another the best we can.  Being at harmony with others — as much as that depends on us — is a gift to all.

Photo by Raquel Moss on Unsplash

Strength that flows out of sadness, bringing peace to anger and calm to fear

“It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.” 
— Fred Rogers

I see Fred Rogers as a paragon for peacemaking because he always strived to help people to respond to their emotions in ways that would neither hurt themselves or others, and peacemaking is exactly that — not attacking others or escaping from ourselves.

But there is a poignant truth upheld in the quote at top.

There is a reason why anger is such a big problem in our world and in our lives.  We resist feeling.  We avoid going to the very place peace would come in.  We’re fearful it would swamp us, or that we’d be called a sissy or that we’d feel that way.  Maybe we don’t have the faith that we could do it.  We can do it.

Never ever do we outgrow the need for nurture.  Even as a 230lb man, well into his 50s, I need nurture at times every month, and probably weekly.  Sometimes there are entire seasons when I’m down on confidence for some reason unknown to me, or where I’m staving off irritability or anger and don’t know why.

Yet, sadness and fear are usually at the core of it.  Grief from change, from loss, from things I find hard to accept.

Going into my fear and into my sadness I’ve learned are not hard; they just involve awareness, then action.  To be vulnerable brings relief.  To reach out is a pressure relieving valve.  To pour our prayers and tears to God is healing, if not in the moment, tears of an evening are joy in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

If there’s one life skill we all need, it’s this: to capitulate when our soul screams out for nurture; to know when to fold; to act in the moment of weakness by honouring it, which brings forth the fruit of the truth, that “when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash

For the one who needs prayer... a Prayer

Dear Heavenly Father, 

I bow before you in intercession right now for the person who is languishing at the bottom of a pit they can’t get out of.

They feel lonely and discarded, estranged from all care in this life, jaded for what they have given or not received, in feeling unrecognised, misunderstood, conflicted, confused, overwhelmed, forgotten, or even unsure why they feel the way they feel.  They feel at the end of themselves and don’t know where to turn, and they feel under attack from the enemy.

At the moment in time when they most need love and care and support, they feel completely unloved, uncared-for, and unsupported.  You know, Lord, what that feels like, because you experienced that on the Cross, and we have Your words to attest to that.

You know full well, our Lord, just what abandonment feels like.  You know what it’s like to have everyone turn away and betray You.  You, who never did anything wrong.

You are the One that saves us, and it is my request that You would save this one in their languishing, right now.

Give them a sense of Your comfort, of Your Presence, that can only be felt when we are all alone, when no human being is there with us.

Give them Your Presence, and Your Peace, and the Divine Understanding of Cosmic Empathy that they know is from You.

Even as they travail, and pour out tears, and wail, shine Your Light of Love indelibly at this moment right now, or as the psalmist says, “in the morning with joy.”

Give them the cherished miracle that they both need and deserve, even as they reach out with a humble and solemn pleading.

Give this one a sign, a wonder that can only come from You. Make it so certain on their bearing, they know it is You speaking, and they know that You are loving them into being beyond the languishing experience now.

Lift this one gently out of the mire of their depression, give hope to their being, breathing joy beyond their comprehension.

In Jesus’ name,
Amen.

Photo by Haley Rivera on Unsplash

Peace in a mad world is accepting things that cannot be changed

We are all on some kind of journey.  Better put, it’s plural; we’re all on lots of different varieties of journey.  Some we’re happy to be on.  Others, well not so much.  Those journeys we’re on that are not-so-much, we may have a great battle reaching the land of acceptance.

Journeys that hold us apart from peace reveal great potential for acceptance.  To arrive at acceptance, or better put, to practice acceptance is the goal.

If we have a great deal of a challenge accepting any particular thing, we have opportunities in peace right there.  There is no good denying it.  It’s something to face, because without facing it we can’t address it.  And when we face something difficult it can no longer overcome us.

Those things we found easy to accept we’re likely to become flippant about.  If others struggle to accept what we found easy to take, it’s more likely our challenge of acceptance is accepting they struggle to accept what we found easy.

Every frustration we feel has some form of root of unacceptance at its core.

Every inner conflict, difference of opinion, blocked goal stems from a lack of acceptance.

It doesn’t really matter what others think either if we’ve resolved to stay in a place of acceptance for the peace that belongs in that place.  Of course, acceptance by its very nature means we take everything as it is, and it can only be done because we covet nothing.  It’s not always an easy position to arrive at or maintain.  In fact, it’s a perennial challenge for all of us.

Of course, there are some things we should not accept — aggression, tyranny, manipulation, intimidation, etc.  We’re wise to find effective ways to resist abuse, wherever and however we can.

But for everything else, acceptance breathes grace into situations.

It is an amazing spiritual power in and of itself, because AS we decide to deploy it, we RECEIVE its power.  It’s something that actuates in the mode of use.  A little like Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.”

In practicing acceptance, what’s really happening is we’re agreeing that the things we cannot change are okay the way they are, or at least we’re at peace knowing we cannot change them.

Acceptance is important for activists, because it helps them accept the status quo in the short term in faith they can shift things in the longer term.

When we arrive at this acceptance, we find we’ve transcended the normal human limits of tolerance, and we also find we’re less perturbed, less flustered, more gentle and more balanced, and even more resolved and better directed.

We’re also more available for others and we’re also more accommodating with all (not just some) and we find others draw on the peace we embody.  Such a peace that oozes from a person is a gift to all who benefit.

Photo by Pietro De Grandi on Unsplash

When is depression, grief, and when is grief, depression?

Whenever we’re stuck in a funk it may mean very little to us whether it’s grief or full-blown depression, but at just the time in our lives when we’re looking for a turning point, we’ll take anything that will help us turn that corner.

Sometimes knowing important information about WHAT and WHY we’re suffering helps us turn a vital corner on the long journey of recovery.  And we don’t realise how important these things are until they’re instrumental in the turning point.

I recall the moment my mind was opened regarding key differences between grief and depression.  The trouble is depression is a large part of grief and every experience of depression involves a great degree of grief.

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Grief is full of pain and anguish like that will take us directly to depression when we’re honest enough or not strong enough to not pretend that things aren’t like they were.

With regular departures into denial, anger and bargaining, we get a general reprieve from the depression, and in grief there are also fleeting flights into acceptance — the authentic, though usually temporary, reprieve from all of grief’s pain.

The causes of grief are many, of course, and they all stem from loss.

§     Loss of identity when it has been ravaged by one or more of many things; usually those things outside us.  

§     Loss of opportunity when timing has been missed creating regret.  

§     Loss of dreams that floated away before it was realised, also manifesting in regret.  

§     Loss of loved ones, which is always a most visceral, heartbreaking loss.

§     Loss of trust in a person, group or people due to betrayal or comprehensive disappointment.

§     Loss of the capacity to respond well and bodily changes because of trauma.

These are just a few examples of an inexhaustible list.  All of these sources of loss will entail much depression — entire days through to weeks and longer.  And the depression of grief we suffer in loss mimics the real thing — we lose motivation, have no energy, our purpose is gone, sorrow morphs to dread as anxiousness redoubles the pain of depression.

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Real clinical depression is an existential crisis that perhaps can be thought of as causeless.  It can be such a conundrum and it can take a great deal of therapy to determine what the ‘losses’ are, remembering that unlike grief, the losses in depression are not so obvious.

Depression can certainly manifest through an abject lack of confidence, and is often joined with anxiety, or the other way around.  But it can also be most inexplicable, which serves all the more to confound the sufferer and their loved ones all the more.  Perhaps additional to the depression a person enduring loss feels is self-condemnation that they don’t know why they’re complaining so much or feeling so down and dysfunctional.

There are those, too, who suffer depression silently, always putting on a brave face, yet never receiving any healing, because they cannot face it.  Often there’s no support structure there and no access to such support.  Typically, men and women who have had to toughen up, which is a grotesque sin against every fibre of a person who seeks to be transformed.

The greatest and saddest irony is depression picks certain ones out and it really isn’t their fault.  It’s an irony because we only get to see and accept this when we look at the truth with enough distance from our emotional selves.

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What might seem like just another academic discussion isn’t.  It’s important that we chart the causes, the symptoms, the reactions, the triggers.  The more we learn, the more and the quicker we can heal.

Healing grief and depression are long-term ventures with many turning points along the way.  It’s not arriving at a set destination that matters most, but the journey and even the trajectory of that journey.

Whenever we face anything tough in faith that all will be okay, our faith is fortified, and we do become stronger for avoiding avoidance.  Wherever we have faced the lies we once told ourselves, we stand on the cusp of a powerful breakthrough.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Faith enough to keep going when you’re in too deep

There are times for us all, when midway through a job or journey or endeavour, you realise you’re in too deep, it’s too late to turn back, and you have to keep going in faith that all will work out.

It’s like a few times when I’ve found myself on the cusp of panic in hazardous industrial situations, responding to chlorine and ammonia gas leaks, over 20 years ago now.

You rely solely on the layers of personal protective equipment you’re wearing to protect you from a very nasty chemical hazard.  It’s a surreal situation to find yourself in: “Without this clear Perspex or PVC between me and the hazard, I’d be at risk of dying.”

Part of my job was to don breathing apparatus and a chemical splash suit (at times, a fully encapsulated suit) and go and fix leaky cylinders, drums and tanks.  It’s work that was often done in hot and confined space conditions.

One such day, we were working very hard physically and with all the gear on it felt at one point as if I was going to hyperventilate.  I began to panic.  In a flash, without thought, I could feel one of my hands involuntarily reach for my mask to rip it off, because I felt as if I was suffocating.

I just couldn’t get enough air.  The demand valve on my mask was delivering the maximum volume of air.

I couldn’t believe how quickly with the heat, the movement of crawling on all fours and the effort that that took, fully clad in heavy PPE and a breathing air cylinder on my back and a positive pressure full-face mask on, that I reached the point where I suddenly realised, “I can’t breathe with the mask on AND I can’t breathe without the mask on.”

“I’m going to die here!” was suddenly my forlorn thought... “They’re going to carry me out...!”  It’s amazing how quickly my mind turned on myself.

What do you do in those situations?  Like many situations in life, we have to find a third way.  The better way.  The right way.  When both the other methods spell disaster.

The third way in this situation was initiated the moment I realised I was getting into a flap, and I simply had to talk my way through it... “Stop panicking!  Slow down!  Just breathe!”

It’s amazing how quickly my emotions turned from panic to empowerment through the poise of that moment’s faith.  I’d slowed down.  I went into survival mode first just for a few moments.  I slowed down my breathing, and though it took probably 10-15 seconds to stop sucking in big gulps of air in the mood of terror, I just kept talking myself down.  Telling myself to stop panicking.  I had a buddy, but we weren’t within sight of each other for those fleeting moments.  Part of it is I felt I had no help and just had to help myself.  After I talked myself through it, after those 10-15 seconds of sheer panic, then I started moving again, toward the objective.  I’d made another way.

We all have moments in life when we’re suddenly thrown the curve ball and we’re stunned without words for a response, or frozen like a deer in headlights.  Not all of these situations have we been able to talk ourselves out of, but just the thought engenders possibility.

Beyond the triggers for trauma that seem to so disable our response, everything that triggers us in a flap of panic is a learning opportunity.  Of course, I know this is easy to say when the hazard is a ‘thing’ and not a dangerous person.

Think of the power of being in that moment when the voluntary in us starts to become involuntary because our whole being feels out of control.  But imagine how this process is circumvented, because at just the right time you go on your instinct and fight your way through it in faith.

It takes the moment’s courage to go with that gut and to take the risk to keep going and to not give up or capitulate.  One such moment is all that’s needed.  One moment of pluck.  One moment you and I are both capable of; where we hear the voice of the survivor’s path through and you and I take it.

One moment like this is enough to stick with us for the remainder of our lives.  One moment of victory over ourselves, our circumstances, our adversaries, our fears.

At just the right moment, when the pressure comes on, prepare for it, and then go through with it.  Whether it’s a physical challenge, an emotional or mental challenge, or a spiritual challenge, keep going, because you can get through.  It’s just for a moment, a very pivotal moment.

Photo of myself in SCBA, c. 1997, Kwinana, Western Australia

A prayer for those feeling especially lonely in a crowded life

Whether it’s a fleeting moment, a period of days, an entire season, or even a reflection of most of our lives, there are those times when we feel especially disconnected, paradoxically where there are people everywhere — usually enjoying life as if to rub it in.  There are these times.

This is a prayer for the individual and for the community:

Gracious, Lifegiving Lord

Giver of life in an existence that feels a delight when we’re loved and able to love, and that feels abysmal when there’s a scarcity of love to give and receive, help us reconcile how lonely life can really be.

Pique our interest in the lonely soul, Lord, not so much as to draw attention to what they lack, but to put direct focus on simply connecting with them in meaningful ways.

For the man or woman tonight or today, Lord, who needs to get away to think, to feel, to connect with themselves, who wants to be lonely and needs to be alone, grace them the time and space they need.  Help this one understand their need of loneliness.

Help us, Father, to be the hands and feet and ears and eyes of Jesus, serving the person who wants human connection with the connection they seek.  Help us overcome our desire to insulate ourselves in our own safe cocoon.  Compel contented ones to look outward, to reach out, and to draw the lonely in.

For the person who is lonely to the point of despair just now, right now God; the one about to give life away because their purpose has evaporated into the ether.  By Your covenant presence would You provide a sign for this one?  Please reach into this one’s heart and save them right now before the frantic choice is made.

For the teary this night and this day, would You, by Your power and love make Your presence known to this one, whether instantly or by the morning’s rays of light.  Bear a witness of Your comfort even as this one prays desperate tears of loss and lonely travailing.

For that one missing their loved one terribly, grace this one with hope of a homecoming more terrific than they can imagine.

For him or her who still wonders if they’ll make it, for their losses are incalculably large and incomprehensible, give them the wisp of hope they need.  Encourage them in their courage; the ability to SEE their courage.  Elevate them to believe that there is something wonderful in the future.

For the poor soul who never thought life would or could descend to the present depths, who never thought such suffering were possible, provide a vision for the mountain peak vistas to come.  Make this the anchor for their soul that they need.

Help the one right now, God, who feels the weighty burden to shrink down, and give them the motivation and impetus to reach out, and I pray that they will be met with the warm embrace of inclusion.

For the one who is completely disconnected from the world, themselves and life itself, I pray You open a door of opportunity that they would encounter the most precious connection — connection with the Divine.

Help us all to discern for the spirit of loneliness in all the people we meet.  Help us have the ability to connect with a person in their need.  Protect us from the odious spirit of fickleness and condescending.  Give us the capacity to dignify the one who feels estranged to life itself.

In Your loving and inclusive Name

AMEN.

Photo by Lenart Lipovšek on Unsplash

Inspiring lessons I learned about leadership in the early 1990s

1993 feels like a century ago, but I can assure you what I saw back then inspired me, even if it did the opposite for my father.  As I cast my mind there, flicking through a file I’ve keep ever since — the Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd Team Leadership and Membership course — I’m reminded that the teaching in this philosophy of ‘teams’ is superior to everything I learned in doing both a frontline management diploma (1998-1999) and the leadership and management unit I’ve done in a seminary context (2016) — and everything in between, with only a few fleeting exceptions.

Almost everything else I’ve studied in terms of leadership never really hit the mark regarding culture — the absolute heart of leadership and membership.

True leadership appreciates and works with culture, even as it endeavours to shift culture.

But back in 1993, the world was different.  I worked in mining and the unions were strong.  I remember picketing the previous year, yet by the following year through masterstrokes in industrial relations practice, the company had basically rendered the unions null-and-void.  They did this by completely adopting inspirational leadership and management practice.  And it all pivoted on safety.

The company literally poured multi-millions into the safety effort, and employees by and large were convinced that the company was trustworthy.  What a way to shift the culture!  

One project I was put in charge of — and I was just a young tradesman — was worth over $1 million ($1.9 million today) in tools and tool lockers for nearly 100 tradespeople.  But there were several of these projects occurring at the same time, and the company won the hearts of most employees through their commitment to spend big on improving safety — they won the hearts of most; except many of the older ones.

One of the exceptions was my father — a diligent metal lathe operator, a skilled craftsman with metal.  My Dad disliked the direction the company was going in because it no longer valued employees who just did their job.  It was a quandary for me as a 26-year-old tradesman, because I wanted extra responsibility, and the opportunities to lead.

Dad and I saw things quite differently yet we both respected the others’ point of view.  I think Dad definitely saw me thriving in this environment, even if he refused to do the ‘Rambo course’.

If you take a look at the text in the photo for this article you may see truly the heart of the power for change in any context.

If only the powerful — the boss, the church, the government — can be humble enough to equalise power differentials and take the lead in apologising for mistakes made, seeking first to understand rather than insist on being understood, they win over their employees, parishioners, constituents.

It seems well before its time that this article quoted how important women are in executive roles, because they “are often better at understanding social processes than men.”

It talked about the importance of leaders predicting people’s behaviour and likely responses to situations.  Creating a culture, this method says, is all about working with the social dynamics that are already at play and working to harmonise the social cohesion already present.

This is the antithesis of control we often find in diabolical leadership.  It says, “the leader depends upon the initiative of the group members.”  What?  No manipulation, coercion, manoeuvring an agenda?  ... the leader DEPENDS...?

The leadership I was exposed to in the early 1990s backed up its words with action.  There was a consistent fruit that could always be seen.  Another initiative the company put in place was to communicate what the Executive were doing through all strata of the organisation, every week, within 48 hours.  Managers at all levels were held accountable to ensure the consistent message was communicated.

And, how’s this, just as an example of the ethos:

“If the group perceives the leader’s actions and instructions as unfair, dishonest, or cowardly, they will not follow for long.  This does not imply outright insubordination, rebellion, or mutiny.  There is a myriad of ways in which people who feel untrusted and devalued can grind the group or organisation to a halt.”

There is the admission here that in business, force always backfires.  “The power of asking versus the force of telling,” David Deane-Spread has been heard to say.

This isn’t rocket science.  It’s working smartly in tune with human nature.

What the early 1990s taught me in terms of leadership is this: people are won over to good leadership, which is inherently servant leadership.  Whenever any of us gives ourselves to another, with a heart that is FOR them and never against them, we are in fact leading, because we are in fact loving.

So why is it that the more common way people lead is by lording it over those they lead?