Drawing meaning out of the confusion of loss

Meeting with a friend today who’s also an expert in chaplaincy, we mused about the meaning in the family losses we’ve endured.  I think we sort of agreed that with loss there ought to be space for grace and the freedom to find one’s own way through grief.

Much of the weekly and sometimes daily correspondence I still get from our loss of Nathanael pivots around the same thing.

In loss, so much is taken away, and so few options are left.  Maximising one’s agency seems one scant permission available to us.  It’s those spaces where we’re free to be still, quiet, weep if we can, sob without fear of embarrassment, even pace or walk in circles if we must.

Spaces free of advice, judgment, or condemnation for the chosen activity.

If there’s one thing we can say about loss with absolute clarity it’s that it’s a confusing experience.  We ask, why?  We ask, why me?  We ask, how long?  Especially as we endure what seems like months and even years of agonising moments interspersed with brief adjuncts of normality, we wonder what the meaning of such a period is.

Where there’s no answer, THAT’S the answer.  Ambiguity is its own invitation.  Entering the cauldron of a vacuous space, we’re there to discover what we would not otherwise if not for grief.

Loss flips us over in a moment from relative balance to listing and teetering for what seems the rest of our lives.  We don’t know what hurts most, the loss of the person or life we had or the grief of our loss itself?  Nothing’s certain in grief except perhaps the certainty of the presence of pain.

In attempting to draw meaning from loss, it’s good that we take the resilience we attain for enduring ambiguity as a win in and of itself.

The fact is we’re stronger for simply holding together what might threaten to rip us apart.

Loss teaches us that we are NOT in as much control of this life than we think we are.  Loss bears witness to the potential of life to be changed in the blink of an eye.  It makes us more grateful than we’ve ever been for the simple blessings we take for granted each day.  Loss teaches us that grief is a pain we endure for love.  It creates awareness in us of the concept of suffering—a concept foreign to so many in Western life in this opulent day.

Loss is such a confusing time there just must be space for the person grieving to do what they must; get support... be alone... talk it through... stare... whatever... whatever it is they choose to do, it’s valid and need never be criticised.

It’s often the only choice a grieving person has.  Therefore, it’s what they should have.

Living the St Francis Prayer of sowing in faith

It astounds me how much this generalisation works in this life—certainly not 100 percent of the time, but for consistent results most of the time, we do reap what we sow.

But we live in a time where many people expect to be “blessed” by others without seeking to be a blessing in the first instance.  People in this situation expect to be understood by others without seeking to understand others.  The commonest sign of this phenomenon is those who easily take umbrage.

No matter what they say to the contrary, notice how those who are easily alarmed and who routinely shriek about injustice seem somehow always on the lookout for it.  I noticed this about myself a few years ago.

Our unconscious biases are instructional because they explain our worldviews.  Also, what we think about most grows, which is just another way of saying our biases drive us.

The person who has insight is constantly seeking evidence to answer the question, “Am I seeing right?” Only such a person is devoted to the truth.  They’re looking for observable evidence which could be corroborated.

However, the one who sees truth outside of themselves, in that they see the truth through the lens of what others are doing wrong or right, without doing much self-inquiry, probably has very little insight.

Think about it.  What does it say about people when they speak as authorities on matters, when in fact there’s not a lot of alignment in their position and knowledge to speak on matters?

This is a challenge for every one of us, especially in social realms when compromises on truth are commonplace, and especially when social norms force us to smile and laugh off what should never be said in the first place.

Sowing in trust that we’ll eventually reap what we’re sowing must be done by faith.  This is because we need to keep going and not give up when we don’t reap what we’re sowing.

This is the perfect introduction to the St Francis Prayer of peace.

In being an instrument of peace, using the St Francis Prayer we can say these things:

Wherever there is division and dissent, especially when it’s toward us, we must sow love, remembering it’s hard to love others when they’re fighting with us or angry toward us.

Wherever there is harm done, especially when it’s done to us, we must sow grace, remembering it’s hard to forgive others when they’ve done harmful things or betrayed us.

Wherever there is fear and doubt, especially when people lack confidence in us, we must sow faithfully, remembering it’s hard to have confidence when others would detract.

Wherever there is despair, whether it’s within us or among others, we must sow hope, remembering it’s hard to be hopeful and express joy when all seems lost.

Wherever darkness bears down, and people are expecting the worst, we must sow the beam of light that leads us out of such situations.

Wherever there is sorrow with the absence of life and hope, especially when there’s nothing whatsoever good to see, we must sow joy, and that must come from within us.

Wherever there is the need of consolation, especially when our own needs are high, we must sow consolation toward others in faith, remembering it’s hard to see others’ despair when we’re despairing.

Wherever there is the need of understanding, especially when we feel most misunderstood, we must sow understanding that knows how important and powerful it is simply to be understood.

Wherever there is the need of love and forgiveness, especially when our own hurts loom large, we must sow mercy and grace, remembering it’s hardest to see others’ need of mercy and grace when we don’t see our own need of them.

These are the keys to life, the life of living out our love which is maturity.

Every parent’s number one prayer

It’s not something we think about until it hits us between the eyes.  I was reminded by the death of a 34-year-old father who leaves behind a wife and a daughter too young to remember her dad.

This has caused me to reflect long and hard on the fragility of life.

For me, the gravity of such a shocking grief is how important it is for a parent to be known and be remembered.  Being a parent of three twenty-something daughters, I’m much more at peace dying when they’re adults than I am dying when my nine-year-old might struggle to know me in all adult fullness and therefore have the capacity to remember me.

I think every parent’s number one prayer is that they would keep their living relationship with their child for as long as possible—certainly to adulthood and then many years beyond.

I think of those people I know who had premature endings to their family relationships and it just speaks so much tragedy.  Children not having their parent survive into their thirties, forties, or fifties. Parents outliving their children.  And many machinations between.

Every parent’s number one prayer must simply be to survive.  A parent’s most unbearable thought is they would not survive to see fruition of their child’s potential.

Parents cannot control so many things in terms of their children—their choices and decisions, but also their health and on the rare occasion their survival.

But one thing that motivates parents most is to stick around, stay healthy, and survive; to see their young ones grow up and so their young ones can access their love, protection, and guidance.

When we think about how much stock we might place in our body image, body weight and shape, how much money we make, what cars we drive and what homes we live in, all these and so many more make a mockery of such finnicky thinking.  The real thing we ought to be focused on is being alive itself.

Life and staying alive is a luxury for some, whereas it’s something taken for granted by all too many of us.  We ought to be so very grateful that we live to breathe another day, to enjoy our young ones.

What a blessing it is to have received life over a lifetime, and for families to have enjoyed such longevity of family.  It can’t be taken for granted.

In our hearts is where love and life starts

People commonly want to show us how impressive their minds are.  But how rare is it that a person would wow us with their heart?

What’s central to this discussion is, of course, the heart of Henri Nouwen, who gave us this:

“What makes us human is not our mind,
BUT OUR HEART,
Not our ability to think but our ability
TO LOVE.”
—Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932 – 1996)

The heart inspires, transforms, and transcends.  It’s where the heroism is.  It’s the Volodymyr Zelenskyy effect.  It’s the Ash Barty influence.  It’s what moves us to action, to courage, to hope, to gallantry; the heart.

The only power worth pledging to in this life is the humanity that beats strongly in our hearts, but everyone is tempted to grasp their share of power, one that harms.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:1, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

In effect, could Paul be saying that the essence of life is to love, that to prefer the mind over the heart is to miss the point of life?  Could he be saying knowledge serves the individual, whereas love serves others?

We live in a world that constantly wants to parade its intellectual prowess and achievement.  Such a method for ‘success’ inevitably sucks us in.  But it delivers little.  It’s a shallow victory.

It’s better by far to resist the temptation to exhibit our cerebral wares, that benefits only ourselves, and to prefer instead to give what cannot be returned to us.

An interesting thing happens when we do this, however.  Somehow, it’s a hugely cathartic exercise.  The more we give our heart away, the more we stand to be blessed in our innermost parts.

I want to finish this short article by quoting Dane Ortlund:

“The deepest way to know a professing Christian’s actual theology is not to ask them which historic confession they subscribe to but to watch how they treat other people.”

A person who lives through their heart is a person who casts all their prospects toward the common good.  They covet nothing, always preferring compassion over conquest.  Their vulnerability invites others in.  Those who live through their heart are, in themselves, a safe place for others to come and connect.  They offer the hospitality that Henri Nouwen often spoke of.

Treating others as we would be treated (Matthew 7:12) takes Jesus seriously to the point that we’d prefer a loss over a win, when almost everyone else will ‘win’ and do so at our expense.

Think about it.  It’s always a better thing to be betrayed than to be the betrayer.  Doesn’t sound right, does it?  But it is better to be the wronged than be the wrongdoer.

It’s only the heart that truly understands the gospel who lives the gospel, and living the gospel is about giving up what we can’t keep so we can gain what we cannot lose.

Only the stuff of loving others lasts.  Only what cannot be kept lasts.  The more we practice this stuff of the heart, the more we’re spiritually blessed.

It’s incredibly simple yet powerful to love others.  We put them first, we’re quick to listen, to seek to understand, to serve, to give, to live at peace with our brother and sister.

The best way to not give up is to not have an option

The most courageous people in life are also those who don’t have a choice.  Their values created for them a position where they could do only one thing: march, as they have, and keep marching, in the right direction.

It’s the same the world over, and in any time you care to choose—in wartime and in peacetime, in plenty and in want—there are always situations where a person of principle will find they can go only one way.

There are people who wake up every day not knowing how they’ll make it through.  Perhaps we’ve all been there?

There are people today who know very well they’ll encounter situations that will completely trigger and overwhelm them.  Perhaps we identify?

There are times when we arrive at déjà vu and wonder if we’ll make it through—even though we always have, albeit on a wing and a prayer.  Surely we know what this is about?

The best way to not give up is to not give ourselves the option; that is, to strive by faith, against the moment’s experience of sheer fright, that by moving forward against what our heart says, things will turn out.  For our good.  That we’ll survive.  Again.

Even when we’ve found ourselves having taken the option to bow out because we’ve got nothing left, somehow we’ve found ourselves with a get-out clause to get us back into the option that takes us forward—even if we’ve been opted out for what seems forever.

It’s never too late to take the only option there is, which is to hope as if that’s all we’ve got.

Because all we have of hope is hope, and to hope upon hope is attractive when that’s all that will keep us afloat.  We can run on those vapours for a long time if we have to.

The best situation we can be in is one where we have no option but to keep going.  We have much more tenacity of strength than any of us realise.

I know you’re exhausted.  It’s not weakness, per se, it’s that you’ve been strong for a very long time.  Kudos to you!  Now, find rest where you can, but keep going.  Get supported.  Find people who give you life, and resolve to live with the life that they give you.

Beware the harm of spiritual bypassing

So many people have been harmed by Christians who have said something akin to, “Get over it,” with a spiritual spin given to it like, “God means it for your good not your harm,” or trotting out a Bible verse out of context.

The harm that is done is at least twofold: the person who is met with the spiritual bypass is harmed in that they’re not MET in their pain, AND that harm sets them back further, and their healing is even farther away.

In spiritually bypassing the pain we do not heal.  Pain is meant to be felt.  Pain never kills anyone, even though it can seem deathly.  To coin a Fred Rogers saying, “Everything that happens to us is mentionable, and because it is mentionable, it is manageable,” and indeed everything that is mentioned and held safely in context of the pain can be healed.

Much of the time what really needs to be healed is our trust, which is our confidence that we’re safe.  We feel safe when we’ve faced and transformed our hurt from a pain, and we can stand such a pain that no longer wields power over us.

As a counsellor and pastor, I cannot commend enough to people who have borne trauma to heal, which is a tender journey that often takes years not months but is worth very much all the effort and sacrifice required.

If we don’t heal, we don’t heal, and we’re robbed of the life we could otherwise have.

And in the healing, we receive the foretaste of what’s in store for us.  Entering the pain is very much about learning and practicing a better way of absorbing the traumas of life.

But if we arrogantly say, “No I refuse to feel the pain of this trauma because it’s unsafe,” and don’t trust the process that inevitably would work, we remain in a place where no healing can be done.

Now, connect the truth that if pain is the issue, then trust will be the sticking point.  Trust in a healing process helps us to rebuild our overall trust.

Beware the harm of spiritual bypassing.  Don’t allow such people to speak such caustic power into your life, no matter who they are.  Insist within yourself on living the power of facing one’s truth.

Only the truth can set us free.

To heal a truth, we must face the truth.

And if we don’t heal a truth, we extend that lack of healing and harm others also in the process.  This is letting fear win the day, not letting faith to chart for us a new course.

Facing the inevitable identity crisis all truth-seekers face

About 15 years ago, approaching 40, my hope took a nosedive.  It seemed to occur overnight.  Suddenly having taken an honest look at my life, I was distraught with how little I’d achieved, what little difference I’d made.  My crisis was, what did my life even mean or stand for?

I was recently remarried and was still quite idealistic—my then new wife didn’t know who she’d married for a while.  My career was at a crossroad, many of my most important relationships were in flux, my expectations were being right-sized, and I just faced a huge season of humiliating doubt.

I wasn’t the person I’d thought I was.  

I wasn’t needed in the ways I wanted to be needed.  

I faced so many shocks to my inner core.

It was excruciating.  I’d lost confidence in who I was and found this translated in my being unable to do even the simplest things well.

I’d forgotten a lot of things.  I’d forgotten that only three years earlier I’d received the call from God to be a minister, to devote the rest of my life to service.  I’d forgotten that I was a father and that I was performing well.  I’d forgotten it was okay to be imperfect and to not have my life altogether.  I’d forgotten I was loved.  I’d forgotten my life was enough.  I’d forgotten I was enough.

For a time, we face these inevitable identity crises.  It’s like all our insight—all our vision for truth—disappears.  We’re blinded to the realities of the good things we’ve done and the values we represent.

The truth is all truth-seekers will enter times of inevitable identity crisis.

As truth-seekers, we’ll be challenged to dig deeper to find the truth we need to know to reconcile our crisis.

The identity crisis will take us to a deeper version of ourselves.

One thing we ought to really cling to is the eternality of hope when there’s no scaffold of external hope left.  In fact, it’s when we’ve got nothing left in our external world to cling to that we go deeper inside to the eternal truth that otherwise sits dormant there to set us truly free.

“In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we loved.”
—Saint John of the Cross

We can very often think of ourselves as failures when we see how much others have or the successes they’ve achieved or are achieving, or the influence they’ve had—or have.  For how much other people are honoured and revered and valued on earth when we aren’t.  We can feel we missed out, and even that people might have a particular negative perception of us.

But how important are these things on the eternal stage?

Clearly, our priorities are upside down to where they need to be, but of course it’s human to crave what the human heart seeks, and we can understand we crave what the world values—possessions, performance, popularity.  What the world values is always in our face.

So we can understand it when we’re hard on ourselves.

Indeed this is the first step in coming to grips with the truly important things of life—the love we sow into our relationships that may very often not be returned to us; the times we receive ill for the good we sow; the suffering that comes our way for our acceptance of the things we cannot change; bearing the occasional humiliation that our efforts aren’t rewarded.

When all is said and done, if we love and yet fail, we have not failed, we’ve succeeded.  And more to the point, we’re seen!

There’s no depth plummeted that God doesn’t reach

The ultimate revelation in the vision of faith 
is the depths of life that God meets you at.

Only when you’re there at depth desperate to seek God, though.  What I mean is, when you’re already sold out to God — like you’ve got nothing else and there’s no other scaffold to cling to.

There where you expect God to be, you will find what you search for.

It’s as if the Spirit of God desperately wants to communicate at our depths — “I’m here AND I’m enough!”

I recall a time when there was such a void in my life, a depth of despair I’d plummeted to, where, with nothing to give but my weary, glazed attention, there was such great spiritual capacity to receive.  I was hungry, thirsty, needy — yet no human connection could have met me.

Pain of loss had so gripped me, I reconciled only pain for pain, drawing upon only my parents and the fellowship of those others in some kind of similar pain to where I was at — the rooms of AA.

Such paradoxical experiences of “I belong here with these people” with “How on earth did I get here?”

Later, of course, it was the church, and later it was seminary, where I’d been given people to support me.

But the times I was alone were both the hardest and most precious.

It’s an alluring impossibility to put into words the memory of those moments alone.  Both the absolute pits — the utter essence of mental, emotional, spiritual torment — but, with faith, the unconfirmable yet shimmeringly real presence of a hope that you KNOW will see you through it all.

It’s the holding of two divergent forces together in tension, one of comprehensive despair, the other of unrelenting hope.

~

For the one who has plummeted to that place of aloneness in loss, catapulted to the desolation of grief, this thing I can tell you ...

There are experiences you’re going through right now — especially the hardest realities you never conceived pain like it possible in this existential life — that will prove to be your most solemn and cherished possessions for you later.  Possessions of experience you’ll bizarrely want to return to again and again.

I cannot explain this other than such a pain experienced with a hope that seems distant but true is a true spiritual gift.  Not so much a spiritual gift you use, but one that you HAVE.  It’s a spiritual gift of BEING, not doing.

I cannot explain this other than it’s the reality of God’s touch — that you’ve been MET in a place of your being you could NOT have been otherwise met.

Again, these things are something you see better AFTER the event — the presence of your help at that time is gone, even as your need at that time is gone, but that presence was otherwise there, right there with you, at a time when the presence of pain was untenably acute.

The presence of God, it can be seen later, was the only thing you could have with you at the depths, it was all you needed, and God proves the divine miracle as evidence enough through what got you through at that most frantic time.

Having traversed such a time — and it only needs to be once for all time — the spiritual gift you possess is that portion of the knowledge and faith of God’s presence — in pain.  You needed to be in need to receive it.

You know there’s no limit to pain yet also the unequivocal presence of God that meets people in it — by faith.

Having traversed such a time — to the depths you may never be called to return to — we embody something that is tangible for the ministry of souls in anguish.  It’s not a ministry of doing, it’s a ministry of being.

There’s something of having been to the depths that we miss when we’re no longer there — once healing has come and the new normal is absorbed into self-acceptance.

And yet, if we are called there again, there is now something of the revenant about us; we’ve already died a death to self over such an extended period to the point it changed us, and we find grief a strangely familiar place.  Though the pain is real, there’s more capacity to feel and be real.  It will seem bizarre to some people, especially those who’ve never been to hell and back.

So don’t be fazed and accept what seems easier than it should be — accept it for what it is.  Perhaps at this we’ve partly melded into the divine?

Living ‘normally’ in anxious times

If we think on the present day as hitherto, an anxious time—war descending into our living rooms in a moment, pandemic waxing and waning—variants imposing, climate change disaster far from averted, economies in the balance, the end of life as we know it.  It bears down like that, doesn’t it?

Then we think to the momentousness of our own lives, dynamics in our workplaces and marriages and streets, challenges from without challenging our peace from within, amid dynamics of the uncertainties of life.  Loss, the great threat to our equilibrium, and the burden of such possibilities breeds... anxiety.

We wonder if we’ve ever been so stressed.  I think back to 2019 in the context of today’s world, and it seems so banal.  Yet, back then it, like today, had pressures all its own—December 15 that year, for instance, was a moment when the darkness of mental incapacity descended scarily.  I was due a good break and yet when you’re there, amid burnout, you truly wonder if you’ll ever regain what you never thought would be a threat to retain: one’s functional mind.

I was reminded recently of this wisdom in terms of the perpetuity of anxiety:

“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.”
—C.S. Lewis, December 1939.

Anxiety is normal to the human experience.  At every given time of our lives.  Sure, thoughts of wars, famine, plagues, climate catastrophes raise the alarm a notch, but the uncertainties of life are ever present.

Living ‘normally’ in anxious times is about reminding ourselves that anytime will always challenge our equilibrium.  We’ll always be concerned for ourselves, others, how we feel, what we think, the situations of our lives, our world.  We’ll always worry about tomorrow.

Yet... the following is possible, a moment at a time:

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
—Jesus as cited by Matthew 6:34

Perhaps what Jesus was getting to overall in Matthew 6:25-34 was all we can do is do our best, set our priorities in the best order we can, don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good, and get on with the present moment, choosing to smile and be intentionally hopeful, because we can.

No matter what happens with our world, we cannot control what others do.  We can only exist in the acceptance that what comes, comes.  We’ll always be ready.  There’s nothing like not having an option to help us cope with what must be coped with.  Seriously, we arrange courage to suit our circumstances and we’re equipped with what we need when we need it.

In the events of life, in the daily frustrations, in the temptations to call it all too hard, we’re encouraged most through considering how far we’ve come already—even to the present day.

Whatever comes, we’ve got what it takes.

We’ve got good records for showing up.

Keep going.  A smile in fear defies the power that would subjugate us.

It takes humility to be honest when facing ‘imposter syndrome’

Everyone suffers imposter syndrome.

Everyone.  At one point or other each and every single one of us thinks, “I don’t belong here,” or, “If only they knew how much of a fake I feel I am right now,” or, “I just hope I don’t mess this up!”  Or, what about the thought, “I feel so far out of my depth right now.”

The latter one is poignant.  It’s a fact that we stagnate in life if we’re not challenged, but when we’re challenged, we face many self-doubts.

When several stresses combine, at least for a time, we can feel frustrated and thwarted at the very least, and even overwhelmed and anxious.  Fear is normal, and at least some of it is performance related.

But think about the many times you’ve felt inadequate or a fake, yet you’ve kept the faith and it’s worked out.  Think of the times when our self-doubting drove us to reach out for support.

There’s nothing to feel guilty or ashamed about in feeling owned by the forces beyond us. 

These forces drive us to seek support and draw upon resources, and that’s the epitome of humility—to rely on things outside us.

Think about leaders who are honest about being out of their depth; we appreciate their authenticity.  We certainly knew it when a leader tried to fake it and couldn’t admit it; they projected aggression and almost everyone suffered the consequences.  Feared reigned.

Think about anyone in a position of power, and their honesty to declare a vulnerable truth inspires us.  That kind of ‘weakness’ is a strength.

Think of a parent who can apologise to their child for getting it wrong.  That humility softens hurt hearts because justice is restored.  The parent is saying in effect, “I failed that moment as a parent.”  All parents fail.

Failure is not the end; 
admitting it is hope for a fresh beginning.

The point to make about this is there’s humility in the honesty of confessing our fakery at least to ourselves.  And it’s important that we don’t either shun ourselves for not being more genuine or hide in that shame terrified of exposure.

Our psychology suggests that imposter syndrome is a common, even daily, phenomenon for anyone who is self-aware.  There are aspects of our lives and even entire seasons where confidence abides, but sooner or later we’ll have much cause to doubt whether we’ve got what it takes to succeed or even survive.

It’s good just being honest.

It saves a lot of anxiety and it’s also empowering to others when we pick our moments to tell it like it is.  Being honest about how we’re really feeling doesn’t so much bring the consternation of others, but it inspires others to be honest about how they’re really feeling.