Your depression is a normal response to what you’ve suffered

Sometimes what makes most sense is actually true.  Isn’t it amazing the trust we put in the smartest and wisest professionals, yet we are more supremely confident in them when they say what we always felt made sense?  This article is about that.

As professionals or as pastors, we can count up our years of learning at university, college or seminary level (and for some of us that can be a 20+ year process), and we can look at our degrees and diplomas, and then at the end come to conclusions that marry up with what we always thought would have made sense in the beginning.  Yet it is so comforting to know that we looked at our knowledge in a scientific way, in the research we did over many years, all the books and articles we read, all the debates we had, together with our years of practical experience working with people, and in observing life, to have God prove to us a logic that cannot be refuted.  It was as it has always been.  And yet we know it is a deep truth because of all that we have learned.

Here is an astoundingly simple idea.  Isn’t it ironic that it takes us professionals to come full circle to agree with what God would’ve said in the first place?  This isn’t putting any of us down, because we really did need to make sure that what we thought made sense was actually true.  And it so often is.

Our depression is a normal response to the losses we’ve suffered.  Indeed, the exact amount of depression we suffer is commensurate with what we have lost and how that impacted us personally as far as we’re a unique and worthy person.  The trauma we have experienced amid life has had an equivalent impact on our mental health.  Is it any wonder that we suffer what and how we do?  We suffer what another person would suffer if they had experienced what we had.

At some point we need to get beyond treating the symptoms of our conditions and dig deeper in exploring the causes.  The symptoms are about what we are doing wrong, yet the causes are about what was done wrong to us.  The causes are about seeing ourselves within the bigger picture of all of what needs to be considered.  In reversing the focus, in looking at the causes, we get to see ourselves within the system of life, and within the systems that have impacted upon us, so we can see what we are responsible for, and what we are not responsible for.  For the things we’re not responsible for we can then forgive, and that is its own very redemptive journey to embark upon.

It is far easier to heal if we can see the whole picture, including seeing how if we put another person in our place that they would probably respond the same way we have.  We would look at their response and say it was normal, so why do we feel so guilty and ashamed, or weaker than we feel comfortable being, for responding the way that we have?  The most important factor in redeeming our healing is being able to see apart from ourselves, in order that we may have empathy for ourselves, by extending to ourselves the empathy we would give our friend if they were suffering.

Even though it is not unusual that we judge others harsher than we judge ourselves, especially in conflict where there’s a difference in opinions, it’s usually the opposite in terms of our mental health a lot of the time.  When someone else says they’re teary and they just can’t shake it, we feel sorry for them and we’ll encourage them and/or pray for them.  But then when it’s our turn to be depressed, we can feel we’re a burden to others, or we feel we’re sad for nothing, or that we’re making more of this than it should be, or that we should be grateful, or that we shouldn’t be feeling that way, or that this is too much and too hard.

But what we’re feeling is normal for what we are experiencing.  A big part of healing is coming to a place where we stop being so critical of ourselves.  And when we stop criticising ourselves, we stop criticising others.  What we extend to ourselves in terms of grace we’re able to extend to others.

We never need to feel guilty or ashamed for the depression we experience.  It is a normal response to what we have suffered.  Just knowing that helps us heal.

Photo by Halie West on Unsplash

You are the whole world to those who cannot afford to lose you

**TRIGGER WARNING**               This post is about suicide.

This is not an uncommon experience for me as a counsellor.  Obviously, I receive people into my care who are usually at their lowest ebb.  Nobody likes to admit they need to talk to a counsellor.  Few people will willingly engage with a counsellor for extended period, not only because of expense, because it is difficult work.  So this scenario I will paint here is something I’ve come to expect.  I’m glad it is also something that I have personally experienced, because it puts me in a place of empathy I otherwise may not have.

“I just don’t know whether it’s worth it to stick around.”  “When I get to that point....”  “I just don’t know if they need me.”  “I feel like an absolute failure.”  “What if I’m getting it completely wrong and just stuffing them up?”  These statements and more are common.

These statements are predicated on such care that prove the existence of a love just about nobody else will give.  Think of the odds of a loving father or mother being able to be replaced.  It’s just not going to happen.  Not by far!

During a session some time ago, I pondered with a father of young children the scenario we had both faced, and it was a salient moment.  A minute or two of silence as a full gravity of the moment was felt.  I have come to realise as I have reflected, together with experience I’ve had having known partners and older parents and siblings and friends who have been left behind, that the worst destruction occurs within the children left behind.  These are very hard things to say let alone write, because the last thing I want to do is to make anyone feel guilty, or to cause anyone to feel distress for how their circumstances have played out.  But there is an undeniable fact in the loss of a parent, particularly to suicide.  For children left behind, it is a devastating impact, but not just that, it is devastating over a lifetime.

As a father who has seriously contemplated his own value as a life to be lived on this earth, I get it.  I understand what drives us to sincerely question our existence.  It’s at these times that we lose our comprehension of how crucially important we are in remaining alive, in going the journey, in holding out hope, however painful the process of life may be.  If there is only one purpose we have in being here it is in being here for them.  Once we are gone, there is no coming back, and there is a missing out on thousands of experiences that without us fall flat.  And not just that, they don’t just fall flat.  These experiences take on a completely different meaning, every single one of them, and they are railroaded by one experience that young people so often cannot get past.

I don’t know how much plainer I can make it.  And I don’t know if this does any good.  But from one parent who has felt like a failure to another, I implore you to stick around.  Every single time you are dogged by emotions that are overwhelming, by thoughts that are confounding, by pain that is unrelenting, make yourself a promise now, before the next time, to pick up the phone and to call someone you trust, and if that person isn’t there, to keep on calling until you get the assistance you need.

The world cannot afford to lose you, let alone to those for whom you are the whole world.  You are never failing if you always want what is best for your children.  You, present in their lives, is the best thing for your children.

Here is a handy link to international emergency contact numbers.

Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash

There’s no greed in the need to be seen

Lemn Sissay.  You probably haven’t heard of him, or maybe you have.  Hearing his story not only resonated with an unknown passion in my heart, it reverberated within the unquestioned nodules of my soul.  So anti-racist as to be racist, I had no idea, and yet what is buried deep within me, that which is intrinsically part of me, is a prejudice that I can only acknowledge.  We all have them.  And the only solution is to be honest, to face them, to admit that they exist, and then repent of them, for we cannot recant them.

Deep in the history of the life of Lemn Sissay (chancellor of the University of Manchester) lay the ruins of a rejected humanity.  And yet there, within the boy, as a child of the state, materialised a man who became a prophet for these times.  A boy who was ‘rescued’ by civilised white church English folk, who was then rejected by these same people — his only known family — who were not so much kind, as “kind of kind,” losing everything and being cast into a boy’s home as a 12-year-old.

Sissay’s story is the ultimate caricature of bigoted scapegoating.  The voice of institutional racism and abuse shines a light on the prejudices that a patriarchal, colonial society carry.  Oh, I know that it’s not a good idea to mention concepts like patriarchy or colonialism, but they’re the sins of the institution of our time.  This truth is sure:

the worst -isms are predicated on pretending to be holy
the most ‘pious’ of people are also typically the most predatory

How many swoon to the overtures of culture, where structures and institutions are worshipped, where Christ is nowhere to be found?  How many of us have ‘thrived’ in the cultures that have swallowed us into themselves by our accommodating of myriad compromise?  How many of us have had to ignore the wrong that goes on, just to keep the peace and to keep our place secure in the subcultures that have given us conditional abode?  It is a tyranny that all are subject to, and the very presence of this wickedness heralds all the more the need of Jesus of Nazareth.

The problem with this kind of society is what it does to the least of these.  Those who are not seen would be the first ones that Jesus would see as standing out from the crowd.  This Jesus of our salvation beckons to these to come close, and to hear his voice, as he may say, “There is no greed in the need to be seen.”

Indeed, every human being needs to be seen, to be noticed, to be cherished, to be held, and to be heard.  If every human being was to be established in such embrace, the love of Christ adorned and personal, there would be no brokenness, no violence, no rejection of God.  “Perfect redemption, the purchase of blood.”  As it is to be with us.

Everyone has a need of expression, just as everyone needs to be met at a gate called acceptance.  It is unfortunate that we often need to be affirmed by others in order to feel accepted, when the truth in all reality is, we are accepted by God already.  Having bypassed God, because we are met by the most broken versions of God’s image, of course we will feel that we are less than we are.

Isn’t it strange and indeed bizarre at the extreme that those who most pretend to have everything together are the most broken of all, because they’re deluded enough to think they do not need God?  So many of these are good churchly people, who feel God is so blessed to have them offer what they’ve got.  People who couldn’t be more wrong.  They turn God’s gift back on God imagining God wouldn’t be the same without them.

Every single one of us struggles in having never quite anticipated the truth of who we actually are.  We are a chosen people, and none are excluded.  Of course, again, I do not want you to miss this, that there are sects of faith in all matters of expression who have acted as if they are exclusively arranged as divine.  These could not be further from God.  The classic irony is that those who treat others with even the slightest disdain — and disdain with the best, most superior intent — are themselves disdained by God.  That’s your Christian snob.  The one who cannot know Christ.

There is nothing that can separate you from the love of God, whether you reject God or not, whether you feel utterly unworthy or not, whether you feel this discussion is discussable or not.  There is nothing we can change about how God feels about us in our mortal bodies, with minds and hearts created in his image, yet fallen by actuality, and by innate prejudice so needy of Jesus.  All who call on this Christ by name, truly, will be transformed in his kindness.  Their fruit will be kindness, with no credit to themselves.

There is a need to abide to the truth.  Every one of us must necessarily live according to reality, and when that reality is wrong, when there is nothing good about it, it needs to be discussed just as much as it would if everything was good about it.  Silence is anathema.  And those who silence the least of these will surely endure most punishment.

There is no greed in the need to be seen, and to be seen is to be heard, and to be heard is to be graced with the opportunity to use one’s voice.  There is no purpose in silence in the kingdom of God, because silencing voices comes from the enemy.  In using our voices, and having people turn toward us and notice us, and in their listening to us, we are known.

There is no greed in the need to be seen.  Greed exists, however, in denying a person their need to be seen.  There is no kindness in that, but God’s judgement.

Photo by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash

The dark night when strength ends and God begins

We ultimately come face-to-face with opportunities in life where we intensely desire to more fully and completely understand hard realities; those things that happen against us, that cause us an enormous amount of pain, and indeed change the passage of our lives.  These excruciating experiences, the event and our recovery, transform us, and in many ways, we wonder the purpose in such transformations.

We look to God in the heavens, imagining that only this Lord of life knows.  Sometimes we wonder if God does know.  If God knew, and because God loves us, surely the Lord of our lives would give us some appreciative aspect with which to view the confounding mystery.

And yet we wait.  There is, of course, no limit to our prayers.  There is no limit to our asking wiser and knowledgeable others. There is no limit to the books we read.  We scour the face of the earth for a knowledge that escapes us at the time.  There is almost nothing we wouldn’t do to know the purpose of why these things happened, or more poignantly, where it is taking us.

Then we come across writings.  Perhaps it’s the mystics.  Certainly, Saint John of the Cross, among many others, indeed the mystics share this cherished tradition of lamenting and praising within the mysteries of life.

“In the dark night of the soul,
bright flows the river of God.”

Therein lies the secret of I’m sure the reason God draws us into the deep and dark and cavernous realities of life.  It was true of my own life.  Not until there was nothing left did God become real.  Oh, how deeply lost I was.  Cast into an oblivion that felt like it had no purpose at all but to crush me. There, deep in the crushing, “despairing of life itself” as the apostle Paul puts it, I came to acknowledge that my power had run out, that my way was no longer working, that all seemed futile.

There, amid the end of all things from an existential viewpoint, I stood in the valley of decision; to throw my life away or to run hard after God; to drown myself in sorrow and anguish or to hold out hope for another way; to decide something that had no return or to decide to do something concretely good.

It was a decision in prayer with God.  “I will take You on your word, Lord,” I said, “just please don’t fail me...” The fact is, deep in that dark night, with no sign of God present and active, we seriously doubt God’s omniscience and omnipotence and omnipresence.  We quickly forget, and yet perhaps we are in this place where we have never known.  That’s really where I was.

It’s not until we have really committed ourselves to God that God really shows up.  God knows that our faith is just a decision away, and this isn’t just about the initial point of faith, because faith is required every day, at all times.

The more we step forth each day in faith, the more God shows up.  This is not the truth of it, because there is more, but that’s how it appears.

As we press into this hard dark night experience, not knowing why, or how long it will last, we can decide in a moment’s inspired thinking in humility, to let go of our ideas and our strength, and to take one step forth in faith.

One decision, and we may meet God there as God joins us.  Only later, however, do we see that God didn’t join us, actually, we joined God.  Only afterward do we see this.

We do not choose God.  God chose us.

We only see God move when we expect God to move, that is, in the purity of faith.  This is how faith works.  This isn’t just a knowledge for newbies.  We can be in the faith for decades and still need to learn this.  We easily get to a place where we stop expecting God to move, and lo and behold God stops moving.  Moving forward is about acknowledging a basic thing; God moves when we expect God to move, when we are looking for God to move.  The key question, then, is always, “Where is God moving, and what is God doing, here, right now?”  The more keenly we watch, the more we will see, and the more we will see, the more we will believe.

Photo by Sam Manns on Unsplash

If you just feel broken right now...

I have had several friends over the past 48 hours reach out for prayer, for pastoral assistance, for a word of encouragement, or just simply to say that they feel broken right now.  This word is for them, but it may also be for you.  Partake as you please:

Dear Friend, please know how precious and dearly beloved you truly and sincerely are.  Know that, whether you believe or not, the Lord God conceived you in the divine thought well before you were conceived in your mother’s womb.  Whatever that divine conception looked like, there every fibre of your being was set up as unique as one being could be.  You are such a priceless being, there is no one like you, and you could never be replaced.

If you are feeling like you could be replaced, that you’re not that special, let me assure you that there would be many people cast into a world of pain if you weren’t here.  And in some ways, to call it a ‘world of pain’ is a colossal understatement.  If you were not around it would change the life direction of many lives, and even if it we’re only one life, isn’t that such a significant thing?  You are quite simply irreplaceable.

Perhaps you feel broken by the weight of a journey before you, or a journey behind you that still has not been reconciled, or maybe the present moment is unbearable.  It could be a triple-whammy of all three.  Please know that you are not alone, that there are hearts interceding for you right now.  Hearts who want peace for you and the return of your hope and joy.  Hearts who will stop at nothing less than praying for your full healing.

Maybe as you ponder these words or prayers, sobbing in mobs of tears, forlorn and stricken with untenable, mystical anguish, you are able to hold out a moment’s hope.  Surely that moment’s hope holds within it the prayer that says, “This, too, shall pass,” and “soon this shall all make sense.”

As you hold in your left hand a suffering that isn’t compensable, together with a hope that all things can be made new in your right, you come close to God and God comes close to you, because — whether you feel the Lord or not — the Lord God can never be far from those who are contrite of heart.

Photo by Jaleel Akbash on Unsplash

The Bible’s empathy for a Christian’s despair

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia.  We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.”

... far beyond our ability to endure... despaired of life itself.  What does this mean?  I wonder if anyone knows where this quote comes from.  Some will think it a trick question.  It’s not.  It’s a legitimate question when it comes to the difficult question, “does God give us more than we can bear?”  Does God?  Life certainly does!

So, who wrote these words?  The scribes of the apostle Paul, under his instructions.  It’s 2 Corinthians 1:8, the commencement of Paul’s “tearful letter.”  He had many chances to change his mind.  Did he change his mind?  No, he did not.  He retained the words.  To make the church at Corinth feel guilty?  To manipulate the church?  I don’t think so.  It is his factual reflection on the trials he had personally suffered.

We can only postulate that Paul felt these very things, and indeed includes the “we” presuming that the cohort suffered together to such a degree they regretted being alive.  Don’t worry, Paul, you join a very esteemed company of biblical heroes.

Job, for instance.  Chapter 3 verse 3: “May the day of my birth perish... and the night that said: ‘A boy is conceived.’”  There are several times where David is said to be that cast down in lament, he could seriously muse on what his son, Solomon, would pen in Ecclesiastes 7:1: “... the day of death better than the day of birth.”  I could go on, but I think you get the picture.  The Bible is littered with grief that welcomes death.

Where am I going with this?  One thing I will say as I skate around the edge of unmentionable issues is, beyond reprehensibly abusive theologies, there’s got to be no condemnation for the one who takes their fate into their own hands.  So many who have been left behind, to pick up the scraps of a life spent before its time deserve their redemption, to record awareness that they’re not alone.  Their loved one they still grieve is gone and there’s something awfully final about that reality, but grief is just the start of the challenges they face each and every day.  The least that is due this one is to rationalise the potency of the force that gets us to question our lives.

The suffering known to life that takes us deep into the grips of despair is potentially a reality for us all, and perhaps blessed are we to have been taken to the abyss and then to survive it.  It should give us heaven’s empathy, a divine compassion, for anyone else — not to mention the millions daily — who are there.  If there’s one gift, it’s seeing the uncompromising stand that the intransigent nature makes on us as it claims our lives for a time of obdurate despair.

The last thing that our world needs is people of the faith undermining the reality of despair in this life.  But what the world could really do with is Christians who ‘get’ despair, who are able to be a Jesus or a Mother Theresa to and for the sufferer.

The sufferer of despair is feeling something is never more real.  It takes its grip and it doesn’t leave, and the lived experience of despairing of life itself is something that is tragically all too common.  The least we can do is cry with those who have no tears left to cry.  In that, strangely, is a tangible hope.

Photo by Dimitry Anikin on Unsplash

Wise as serpents among wolves, innocent as doves among sheep

The old book is chock full of hidden wisdom, from the narratives of Genesis right through to the mysteries of Revelation.  At each juncture God is found living and active, in and through the accounts, the poetry and the prophecy, making meaning for the people of faith, thwarting all who would contend otherwise.  There are the go-to places for biblical wisdom, namely Proverbs, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Job, and James in the New Testament, as well as places like Romans 12 and 1 Thessalonians 5.

Perhaps Jesus said too many wise things to be recorded (John 21:25), but we can resolve that he said one very powerful thing about wisdom.  When sending the disciples out, part of his instructions were:

“Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.”
— Matthew 10:16 (CSB)

Jesus knew his followers would be going out into perilous situations — that they desperately needed wisdom.  They would be innocent as sheep, venturing out into situations where they should expect to risk being ravaged.  Note the parallels between sheep and doves, and serpents and wolves.  These diametrically opposed concepts are crucial in the understanding of an and/both (rather than an either/or) world.

Wisdom first wrestles with the tensions, being able to hold disparate matters together.  The wise person transcends the sequestering allegiance of one political party or ideology as the be all and end all.  They see beyond sides, agendas and conspiracy theories.  They tussle with the dualistic, judgemental mind, seeking instead to perceive truth in the vast freedom between the extremes.  To be able to work with this Jesus wisdom, we must be able to hold shrewdness and purity together; one that trusts nothing with the other that trusts everything.

Innocence as a dove has the virtue about it that it protects us from cynicism, yet it is extremely limited in terms of discernment.  Shrewdness as a snake is necessary within a world where are there are wolves in every setting, yet it suspects wrong in everything and that’s an overcorrection.  We need both.

Having the serpent about us prepares us for encountering wolves.  Having the dove about us prepares us for encountering sheep.  And yet, wolves are thwarted more by shrewdly deployed innocence or innocence aided by shrewdness than they are by shrewdness or innocence alone, because evil has no answer for a godliness beyond fear, which is a pure faith.

As we take the counsel of Jesus on board, we begin to comprehend that a dove wisdom is purposed for situations with sheep, whilst a serpent wisdom is purposed for situations where there are wolves.  The shepherd must protect the sheep, so they need shrewdness to expect attacks on the flock when they least expect them to occur.  Whilst ever being watchful, however, innocence gives the shepherd the desire to be present in caring for the flock.

Such innocence believes the best about people, while shrewdness tempers naivete with a healthy dose of suspicion.  Nobody who is pure of heart minds being tested.  Indeed, they’re glad of the evidence of such protection.

Our job as believers is to recognise that we’re either strong in shrewdness and weaker in innocence — where cynicism is our snare — or we’re strong in innocence and weaker in shrewdness — where naivete is our snare.

Just as the hypostatic union was living and active in Jesus — being that he was fully divine and fully human at the same time [the ultimate and/both reality] — we also need a full measure of shrewdness with a full measure of innocence.

This is the Jesus wisdom we are to seek.  With only shrewdness we will see only the wolves and miss loving the sheep.  Our cynicism will fail others and God.  With only innocence we will miss the wolves and fail the sheep who will be eaten.  Our naivete will fail others and God.

We must be shrewd as serpents among wolves, innocent as doves among sheep.  Less than the fullness of both is a missing of the mark.

Photo by Nazar Hrabovyi on Unsplash

A tale of two Mother’s Days 12 months apart

Two photographs taken 12 months apart tell quite a story.  The first arrives the day before Mother’s Day, 2014, a day full of hope when we announced to our world that Sarah was pregnant, again.  I guess we hadn’t anticipated this conception.  But we were overjoyed that we were going to have another baby.  If you were to look at the second photograph, taken on Mother’s Day 2015, together with the first, and not know what happened during the twelve months, you’d have no idea how much we crammed into one year.

For starters, where is the new baby?  So much happened between those two Mother’s Days.  From announcing that our son was going to be a big brother, that his older sisters and us would welcome another little bub, to be rocked by news that floored us at the scan, to carry our baby knowing he wouldn’t survive, to arrive at full gestation, to experience stillbirth, to leave hospital without our baby, to learning to live without him — all in twelve months.

In this time, we also changed church ministries and homes; our community and friendship groups (as happens in pastoral ministry) needed to change in that time.  There was so much change in that year.  It was breathtakingly hard and relentless at the same time.  In 12 months, we had an initial eight-week period of bliss, followed by a four-month period of ambiguous loss and complicated grief, followed by six months of finding a new way to live having lost our baby.

One Mother’s Day was full of the hope of expectant joy, where in that little period of life all seemed calm and settled.  Our married lives have been far from settled, however, and as we look back, we must’ve thought all our dreams were coming true.  In 13 years of marriage we have lived in six homes and I’ve had nine jobs — only three of those full-time.

Sometimes you don’t realise what trajectory you’re on, and it’s only when you look back with the benefit of five or six years of hindsight that you finally get a grasp of what was really going on.

We had to deal with so much bad news in that year, that it is fortunate that none of us have a crystal ball, and yet it’s only through our faith, and having been carried by many faithful prayers, that we got through.

We often joke that in a leap year that 2020 has been, that it has felt like a year already, and we aren’t even halfway through.  But the twelve-month portion of time between May 2014 and May 2015 feels the same way.  How we packed so much life, sorrow and change into this time period is still beyond me. But that’s life, isn’t it?

Our family is by no means unique, and every family has interesting stories, and it is in investing in each other’s stories that we become richer as a society.  Mother’s Day affords us these opportunities of cherished reflection.

Many husbands and fathers presumably are proud of their wives, and so many have such stories to tell.  I know many men, most of us in fact, who married up.  I know I have.

There were many more sacrifices that my wife made in this 12-month period than can be shared publicly.  To have experienced everything that she did as a mother, and not least as a wife, the sorrow, the stress, the change, and the shock of it all, I’m still amazed.

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers and families.

The transforming power of a treasured lament

Secrets to making life work are something that consume many people’s thoughts.  This fact is evidenced whenever we give up.  Trying and despairing come from the same source: wanting to adapt and to be happier or wanting life to be different.

But what if there was a way that we could live as life is?  I mean perfectly attuned to the struggles without needing to fix everything.  Or even to be audacious enough to go one step better.  To adhere to this as a possibility is an alluring thought.

There is a way...

THE FORGOTTEN & IGNORED BLESSING OF LAMENT

The least used form of prayer in our modern day is the mode of lament.  It is also the most misunderstood.  We commonly think that lament is about wallowing in our sorrow.  Sitting in our sack cloth and ashes.  Throwing ourselves a pity party.

But actually, the laments of the Bible are nothing like that. There are only one or two lament psalms, for instance, that start out dark and remain so.  But they are all refreshingly honest, and especially in a day where there is more denial than ever, we could certainly use this language for prayer and for faith.

The lament psalms grasp two divergent ideas simultaneously. We could imagine holding in one hand the overwhelmingly calamitous present situation of COVID-19, whilst holding in the other hand the perfect Presence of the Lord our God.

This Lord who is not only for us, but who is WITH us by the Holy Spirit.  Lament presupposes just that.  God WITH us.

DIVERGENT YET COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTS TO HOLD IN TENSION

Holding these two divergent ideas simultaneously challenges our thinking, that a good and holy God continues to be present with us even, and especially even, in diabolical situations.

Holding both a fallen world amid God’s redemptive nature, we ascend, but only through lament, which is again most deeply misunderstood.  What we commonly think of as disempowering is actually more empowering than we could ever conceive, and we realise this when we actually try it.

WHEN WE SIT IN A MYSTERY, WE GET
THE CHOICE TO TRANSCEND IT

Imagine being able to live cognisant of the full truth of reality, not being scared of it whilst also not being resentful of it.  Only through genuine lament can we achieve this.  This is why the laments start out so dark and typically end in praise of God — in which case, Psalm 13 is a resplendent exemplar.

The history of the laments is such that there is no attempt of escape made.  Likewise, there is no attempt made to fix the situation through human effort.  Having resisted the temptation to do either of these things, what opens up before us is the opportunity to transcend the situations that threaten to assail us.  We give up trying to manipulate God.

What we enter, therefore, is an authentically liminal spirituality.  This is indeed the faith that Jesus referred to when he said in John 16:33: “The world is full of trouble, but do not fear for I have overcome the world.”

LICE & FLEAS

I was recently reminded of Corrie Ten Boom and how she became thankful for fleas.  The fact that her concentration camp quarters were infested with lice and fleas meant that fewer patrols by guards were conducted, meaning they could preach about God all the more often.

Through the action of lament, Corrie Ten Boom was reminded of the need to, “give thanks in all circumstances.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).  There truly wasn’t any better way of witnessing to the power of Christ.

Lice and fleas.  Can you imagine it?  Can you imagine turning such a disgusting and painful situation around and seeing the blessing in it?  This can only come out of lament, which is a facing and an embracing of reality without being driven hard into despair.

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Allow me to finish with a thesis of lament that neither denies realities of sorrow, fear or hardship, nor does it attack them resolving that they must be ‘fixed’.

There are three positions of thinking in all situations. We deny hard facts and turn AWAY from the trauma of them, or we accept and turn TOWARD our trial, or we embrace or turn BEYOND these and transcend them.

The same amount of thinking energy is involved in each process.

The first takes us into a nowhere land of maladaptive behaviour.

The second is a holding pattern.

Only the third empowers us to make a new, transcendent choice.

All that remains is that this is a journey in which we never arrive.  It’s a spiritual practice we live out a moment at a time.

I think it’s only fair to round this out by finishing in this vein: lament is about acknowledging the sadness, which is the common grief of life that we all inevitably suffer at many points and to varying degrees.  None of what I have written above in any way devalues the raw process that takes us from despair to hope.  On the contrary, it is by entering in upon the grief that the inner work of Christ can be done.

Lament, therefore, is God’s agency and method for redeeming hope in the oft-crushing, broken world, life.  As we worship God in spirit and in truth, the truth sets us free, and facing our sorrow in the mood of lament is very much about how the truth sets us free.

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

Signs of a feigned repentance, apologies that aren’t

One of the most dangerous things in relationships, in procuring solutions to conflicts, is getting an apology that isn’t authentic, and that plays on the sympathies of the empathetic us; because too quickly do most of us want to put it behind us.  “They apologized, didn’t they?” is our inner sentiment, “Don’t be mean, give them a second chance!” we may hear ourselves say.

And we do. Only later do we come to regret that choice, as we see they haven’t learned anything, and we haven’t made any progress in terms of what is right and just and fair.

As we backtrack, we begin to investigate what went wrong and where we let them off, and we begin to take too much responsibility for being too lenient.  This is a point at which we need to be reminding ourselves that they are responsible for their actions, and we aren’t.

So, what are the signs of a feigned repentance?

Þ           a visible contrition is definitely what we are looking for just as much as we are looking for someone throwing themselves at our mercy. But this is easily taken advantage of.  Many tears maybe poured out and much groveling can occur, but we need to be aware why people do this.  Our emotional heart strings can easily be pulled and be played to their tune of Academy Award sorrow.  Genuine contrition looks like a commitment to change, the kind of commitment the carries through.  Resolutely wrong rather than tearful.

Þ           sometimes, as we discuss the conflict, the person ‘repents’ by saying very little, perhaps nothing at all, and we can be lulled into thinking that they are admitting fault, that they bear responsibility — because they’re not defending themselves.  Some people use this as their own tactic for not saying anything that would incriminate them.  By saying nothing, people are very often saying nothing.  When it comes to such an important conversation as apology and repentance, we need their engagement.  The person who refuses to engage is not going to negotiate and compromise.  We may get absolutely nowhere with someone like this.

Þ           repentance in and of itself is a changing in attitude that translates into transformed behavior.  The bitter sorrow expressed in the apology needs to be matched with the earnestness of setting things right, which is sustained behavior change over the weeks and months.  Repentance is a journey of honesty and humility and it can’t be done without God’s help.  It is a change of heart that is more for the relationship than it is for itself.  Use this as a check for a person’s motives.  Are they putting the relationship before themselves?  Viable relationships feature all parties doing this.

Þ           too often a feigned repentance in one runs in parallel with an unnecessary repentance in another.  We need to be very well aware of the times we take responsibility in some bizarre way for the infractions of others.  If this happens in any of our relationships, we can see it by the patterns that are visible to see.  We aren’t talking one-offs here.  These things are happening just about all the time, i.e. with regularity.

Þ           apologies and the restoration of relationships can be, for many couples and in many kinds of relationships, a war of attrition, and the person with the softest and most generous heart can be guilted into folding first and taking all the responsibility.  If one person is holding out in a war of attrition the balance of the relationship is skewed.

These are just some of the signs of a reticence in a person’s heart to really and sincerely apologise.  There are many people who simply cannot or will not go there, into the land of vulnerability, or of concession, or of faith, or worst, of honesty to see when they are wrong.

Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash