Those traumatic experiences we knew nothing about but now do

Just in the past few days I’ve heard several people reflect over the impact of traumatic events in their lives, but with a difference.  These events took place at a time when they neither had the awareness of the harm that was occurring nor the tools (naturally) to deal with that harm.

Then I reflected on one of the seasons of my life where I experienced trauma with neither the awareness of the harm that was occurring nor the tools to deal with that harm.

As an apprentice my first three years (1984 – 1986) involved verbal and some physical abuse—considered normal more or less for that time and context.  Yet it was still harmful.  When I wrote about these experiences (trigger warning) here and here, some of my family were mortified, and my mother expressed sorrow for not even knowing about it.  Of course, she couldn’t have known about it.  It wasn’t discussed because I didn’t realise that it was abuse, even though these harsh experiences eventually inspired me to pursue a career in occupational health and safety.  For something that occurred in the 1980s, none of us really had a bearing for it until recent times.

We’re more trauma-conscious these days than we’ve ever been—and that’s a good though also a hard thing.

It’s good because it’s the truth, and it’s only when we face our truth that we’re truly free.  But it’s hard to face our truth because it’s always a journey, a process, a travelling toward the ideal of healing—one that cavorts with pain.  And it brings us to the point of conflict because the emergent truth is often a revelation to others we care about too.

We will be healed if we enter that journey with diligence, yet to embark on such a commitment is always a step of faith because there are no guarantees.

Those traumas that occurred to us that we really didn’t recognise or acknowledge when they occurred can be a shock.  We can feel like WE are somehow to blame, but how can we be blamed when we were both clueless AND the victim.

It’s understandable if the revelation of what we suffered rocks us.  It’s also reasonable for us to experience all sorts of emotions.  And at times we’re just relieved that we didn’t know at the time.  But a lot of the time, facing such truths is itself a trauma—the sheer shock that we were vulnerable and harmed when we had no idea.

When it sends us into a spin and we don’t know how to deal with what arises, it’s an opportunity to seek help.  Prayers remain that it’s help we get, and not victim-blaming.  To do this is brave on three fronts: to experience the waves of shock and sobering reality, to trust courage to the point of reaching out for help, and then (if we get that support) to trust the support that needs to be relied upon (which is a HUGE thing when we’re so vulnerable).

One opportunity we can miss in resenting the presence of a trauma we now must recover from is growth from the challenge.  In terms of resilience, if only we can hold the tension of two opposed things, we not only heal but we grow too.

The truth is, to wrestle with this is to heal AND grow,
but it may well feel like an impossibility.

Coming face to face with every truth that ever happened to us—a bit at a time so we can manage it—is the opportunity to truly heal.  Coming face to face with every truth—one truth at a time—is ultimately the opportunity to forgive people and situations that harmed us so healing can occur.

See how we enter a crossroad at the sign of pain?

We can either experience disgust that it even happened and lose a significant portion of our lives enraged about it, or we can submit ourselves to the work ahead which we’ll grow from.  We’re certainly understood and forgiven for feeling angry and bitter about it, no question.  But it only takes us so far.

When we experience wonder for what can be achieved, we enter the task of healing from it.

Looking forward to what can be done is a productive way of dealing with looking behind which is just full of pain.  But through the process we need a ton of support.

Trauma is common within the human condition in a harsh world.

Sadly, if we don’t endeavour to heal it, 
we’re destined to be affected by it.

When we’re honest about trauma’s effects on us,
those effects don’t harm us or others as much,
and those effects are even able to be redeemed. 

Stuck between feeling lonely and needing to be alone

Normalising the human experience that runs without running—that is, feeling the full force of one’s existential pain without using anything to numb it—we inevitably end up feeling alone or we crave wanting to be alone.

There are times when we’re stuck in the middle.  And there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.

This is a form of spiritual attack where the solution is neither having people around us nor being alone.  This state of being is horrible.  Little wonder we call it a Poor Mental Health Day.

Here I write that it’s a valid human experience that isn’t explained away so easily.  I guess I want you to know that you’re seen if this is occasionally you.  In feeling alone, you’re not alone.  In needing to be alone when you can’t get away from people, you’re not alone.

The answer beyond all seeking for answers when there are no answers is this: 

We sit, 
we wait, 
we give our thinking a leave of absence—if we can, 
we give into the feelings, being bravely true to them—
facing their pain not needing to fix them,
we force nothing that need not be forced,
we make no major decisions even as we sit in indecision,
we try to ask nothing of ourselves or anyone else...

While we’re there in that place of feeling neither home or away, of feeling at a loss for what to think or feel, we let the experience flow over us, around us, or through us.

Being stuck between feeling lonely and needing to be alone, we’re not at fault and we’re not to be blamed for being neither here nor there in our state of being.

What can we do other than go gently in the intrepid journey called Enduring the Day.

I’m taking some time off writing.
I may be much less active here for a while.  
Thank you for your fellowship.

Feelings are nothing to be afraid of

The cause of most addictions in a very addicted world is the avoidance of feeling.  People don’t want to feel.  Or the counter argument is that people want to feel good, and many want to feel so good they’re willing to risk everything on the rush of the high that will wane dramatically over time.

But let’s go back to the art of feeling that basically everyone avoids.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling those things that we think we ought to be afraid of.  The truth is there’s freedom at the core of those feelings that threaten to swallow us whole in pain.  But we must be willing to do the achievable work of healing our trauma.

We seem to be afraid of what promises to be painful without testing that ground.  And then when we’re caught there in grief outbound of loss, we’re forlorn and feel like we’re the only ones who feel that way.

What we’re feeling is the sharp din of reality.

Yet even reality is not only not to be avoided, but it’s also to be embraced because our emotional and spiritual freedom lies in its depths.  Sure, this experience of plumbing reality’s depths will change us irrevocably, but we’ll never achieve our true potential without it.

The only loneliness we truly face when we go through feelings’ felt pain is the fact that so few people are prepared to go there with us.

I liken it to a journey only one in a hundred will go to—even many Christians who are supposed to be committed to worshipping in Spirit and in truth won’t go there for fear they’ll not be able to do it.

The age-old Christian traditions of lament and mysticism describes in essence what facing our feelings is all about.  These traditions don’t pathologise pain.

Lament and mysticism see facing pain as the gateway.

Rather than avoid or deny the pain that’s in our lives—and everyone has pain they have the opportunity to deal with—every day of our lives there’s the fresh opportunity to go there and face our truth.

Some of this is about our body image or how our body works.
Some of it’s about our unfulfilled dreams and a difficult past.
Some of it’s about what we haven’t achieved or what we’ve done (bad) or haven’t done (good).  

Some of it’s about how people perceive us or how popular or unpopular we are.  
Some of it’s about what we have or don’t have.  
Some of it’s about who we are who we cannot accept yet.  
Some of it’s about pain that we cannot control whether it’s what others are doing or pain that’s in our body or mind. 

And some of it’s about existential pain, which is that pain we suffer in simply being alive.  Lastly, some of it’s about the fear or sorrow we feel that we seem at a loss to deal with.

The concept of dealing with this pain by simply feeling it is it’s doing just that.  If we feel we can’t do it alone—and most people embarking simply cannot, and that’s okay—it’s a good idea to take a companion with you on the journey.  Someone who is compassionate, reliable, safe, real.

If there’s one thing everyone should do before they die, it’s to feel all their feelings.

Once we feel all our feelings and we find there’s life and hope on the other side of them, we decide to live bolder lives, and fear no longer controls the narrative.

A life redirected after ambition and failure

I kept a detailed daily diary from 1995 to about 2013.  Lately I’ve been tracking back 20 years because 2002 heralded significant changes in my life.  20 years ago today, I left one very safe and good job for another one that saw my career spiral exponentially upward.

Yet as I got the green light for my career to advance, I was naïve to the effect it would have on my life over the following 18 months to 2 years.

It's strange at this point to say that I have few if no regrets—although I still find myself regularly in a place of wondering what might have been if my ambitions weren’t granted.

Having been a tradesman and a hands-on emergency responder until my early 30s, early 2002 was the realisation of a dream when I graduated with a Bachelor of Science.  I studied completely via distance education and averaged a minimum of 30 hours per week on top of my full-time job—one semester it was more like 50 hours per week.

In graduating and seeing I was more highly qualified than a lot of safety and health professionals at that time, I’d developed itchy feet, and in truth didn’t appreciate how blessed it was to be a Wesfarmers employee in the early 2000s.  (There were all sorts of benefits including share options, it was very family friendly, close to home, very little travel required, and I had my $20,000 Degree studies completely reimbursed.)

But my heart hankered for better opportunities and more influence.  To land a position where I oversaw health, safety, security, and environment management over a whole large State and at times into the Northern Territory and South Australia was too enticing to refuse, even if it were daunting.

On April 19, 2002, I bid farewell to a company I’d had two promotions with in not quite six years.  I’d started as a fitter in the Ammonia Plant, went into maintenance planning for a time, before moving into Loss Control (health and safety management) in the fertiliser production business.  I’d also become an emergency response team leader responding to fire, Hazmat, and paramedical emergencies.

Having made the move, things were really starting to take off for me, and those early days at Shell proved that the sky was the limit.

But it was also here, while my career prospects were expanding, that I came to live out the consequences of such ambition.

Besides the fact that I was using alcohol to “destress” on weekends—but that in reality I’d been doing that for 10 years—and besides the fact that I was available and constantly on call and nowhere near as available as I should have been for my then-wife and three daughters, I was also facing a major restructure and was forced to reapply for my job and simultaneously asked to apply for the national manager’s job—which would have required us to shift from Perth to Brisbane.

On the way to Melbourne airport after the interview for the national HSSE manager position I took a taxi ride that was absolutely prophetic for what would happen 7 days later.

First, a riddle:

GUESS WHO/WHAT I AM:
I am your constant companion,
I have the brain of a human, and the precision of a machine,
Half your job you might as well give to me... you only need to teach me and after only a few lessons I’ll do it for you automatically!
You can use me for your success, or you can use me for your ruin.
A warning however; you need to be FIRM with me; if you’re not, I have the power to destroy you.

WHO/WHAT AM I?

This riddle proved prophetic in my life.  The Chinese taxi driver, Noel, had taken me for a ride earlier to the interview and had now picked me up again for the final leg of the day.  He was nice enough, but you know, he’s a driver and I was tired, so I didn’t care much for his banter.

But he persisted, and this somehow intrigued me, particularly after he’d parroted the riddle the third time, commanding my attention, luring my curiosity.  I listened again, and by virtue of this, the driver was even more intense in his rendition of it.  I made a few fumbled attempts to guess it, unsuccessfully.  As we arrived at the airport, he revealed the answer to the riddle: HABITS. The “who/what am I?” is habits.

Exactly one week later my world fell apart. And it all fell apart to a large degree because of my habits, my bad habits.  In retrospect the warnings were there, but we rarely heed the warnings do we?  ‘If only I had done something about these problems earlier’ I mused and agonised.  Too late, my time was up.

As I look back 20 years, part of me wants to school that younger version of myself, but part of me also wants to say, “Buckle up,” because the hardest experiences of my life were about to commence.

The stress of performing at such a high level at a global firm with the culture of Shell Oil Company coupled with the failure of my first marriage in September 2003 was going to redirect my life.

As I spiralled into a profound season of grief in losing almost everything, entering a reawakening through the AA process, even as I was deconstructed, I emerged as someone called to pastoral ministry.  Somehow, having plummeted to the loneliest place I found myself in the very safe sanctuary of the rooms of AA and then of the church.

In all of this, I learned the way of recovery, unity, and service: the tenets of AA.  

RECOVERY from the ruins of marital failure and of emergent sobriety.  Recovery is the practice of faith.

UNITY of brotherhood and sisterhood that in and of itself is the solution to many mental ills.  Unity is the practice of love.

SERVICE in discovering that the end of self-pity is at the beginning of living for others, serving them in their time of need.  Service is the practice of humility.

I would not have learned these things without giving in to ambition and failing in my first marriage.  For this, I’m thankful.  There is so much I would not have today if it hadn’t been for ambition and failure. Again, I’m just thankful.

If we’ve climbed the wrong ladder, or if we’ve failed, hold out hope, the best of life could just be beginning.  Committing ourselves to recovery, unity, and service is pivotal.

Comprehending the sadness, fear, and anger in depression

This is no precise synopsis to explain depression, but it is an attempt to explain how much of it occurs.  It can help us understand and empathise with those who suffer or who have suffered.

Depression has little to do with how much we have or how blessed we’ve been, so therefore it’s a spiritual phenomenon with few neat answers, there is much enigma about it.

Indeed, it could easily be argued that the more “blessed” we are, the more we may struggle.  What’s often missing is what we feel we’ve lost—loss is a phenomenon that confounds materiality.  Loss is demonstrative in the fact that nothing on earth can make up for what’s missing and now in the heavens.

A lot of the normality in depression is due to a cycle where uncontainable sorrows well up into fear because we don’t know how to control it, and that fear causes anger at the felt injustice of it all.

I didn’t fully understand the role of people’s fear for sadness until a few days ago my wife said, “A lot of people fear being sad.”  I know many people have said to me that they worry (fear) opening the door to the true level of sadness in their hearts because they worry (fear) they’ll plummet in a way that they can neither control nor retrieve.

When we sense we have a lack of control over our emotions it increases our stress, and our unconscious and conscious anxiety compounds.  The typical response is one of frustration and agitation that we can’t control ourselves or the passage of our emotions.

But it’s not just the anger within frustration and agitation.  It’s an authentic fear that our truth is a very sad one, not just the situations of our lives that we cannot change, but that we can’t shift our responses 1) to be happier, and 2) to be more in control of ourselves, especially socially.

This is about understanding the predicament.

Depression is a very real thing, and perhaps the first time we realise this is when we’re first impaled in a season we can’t get out of.

In the season we can’t get out of we realise just how little control we have over our lives at times of loss.  Anyone might see that there are a range of emotions in that state of being, and like grief, those emotions are a mishmash of experience; a bit of fear, then a bit of anger, then some deep sadness, and then a clash of fear-produced-anger, and so on.

When it’s sadness that cannot be reconciled, fear that cannot be controlled, anger that has no justice, there’s little wonder we find ourselves—at least in a season—despairing and depressed.

Comprehending the sadness, fear, and anger in depression is complex, and perhaps the only real understanding we need to achieve is that it’s complicated, and that compassion is the only valid response.

Bidding bon voyage to ‘the’ dream, in exchange for Acceptance

A lot of the wisdom of life is in not giving up.  But sometimes it’s the only way forward.  This is not to say that we give up being kind, generous, or even resilient people, but there are some goals we prize that may never be ours.

Here is just some of the wisdom in letting go...

First, in letting go, that dream of ours might still come to us of its own accord.  But we also need to be aware that if we’ve truly let something go, we need to mercenary about it—no letting go and looking over our shoulder every five minutes.

Second, as we genuinely let go, we feel the freedom of being freer than we can remember.  Maybe it’s been years or even decades that we’ve retained this dream.  Not a day’s gone past that we haven’t envisaged the realising of it.  Now we’re free of the burden of it.

Dreams tend to bind us to the vision of something we may never have.  Yet, dreams also facilitate and undergird faith.  It’s all about being realistic around how likely the dream is.  Sometimes we might agree that holding onto a dream is worth the tension of it.

Sometimes holding to the dream has meant we’ve reached other goals that are just as cherished.  If the dream is a noble one, it’s probably led us to good places that are part of the journey.

Third, in letting go we’ve experienced more than letting go of a dream, we’ve also experienced what it’s like to forgive someone or something; to move on with our lives.  To break past what we’ve always wanted to be free of, we’ve got more space for life.

Fourth, to have let go of something we solemnly sought, we’ve demonstrated the power of learning, the strength of humility, the capacity of sacrifice.  It’s empowering to witness ourselves exhibiting such qualities.

Fifth, as we’ve let go, we’ve invited the cosmic phenomenon of ‘as one door closes, another one opens,’ and that’s exciting.  Possibilities truly abound when we agree to covet nothing.  Suddenly our eyes are opened to more of what’s available and to what can be done.

Acceptance is its own prize, and in letting go of what we cannot change, we experience acceptance, and in another language that’s peace.

Acceptance is something that only needs to be experienced once to live its power.  It’s the fullness of life.

Living in the sweetness of acceptance, gratitude dawns and what beckons is a whole world to be thankful for.  Gradually, our vision opens up, and kindness and generosity of heart become the default, even as we look for opportunities to bless people.

All this for the investment of letting go.

The age-old harm of emotional bypassing

Emotional Bypassing: when we don’t allow ourselves or others don’t allow us to fully process our negative feelings.  And it’s always toxic for our recovery from change, loss, and grief.

There are times in culture where, for many reasons, pain goes unacknowledged; not always because it’s too painful, however frequent that’s the case.

For many reasons and in many situations it’s because there’s not the time and space available to speak therapeutically, and not everyone has that skill or passion.

But we do all feel we should say something to render the awkward silence less palpable.

Without the space and time or the skill and even the interest, we try to make something tangible of the intangible moment, never realising the potential harm we do.

Loss, grief, and trauma can’t be healed with nice sounding words.

A lot of the time the person we’re dealing with who’s in the pain of grief also has no idea what’s being said isn’t helpful.  Often, they’ll go along with it.  Except they’re met with a complete lack of support.

This might sound okay if they’re not looking for support, but many people are harmed by emotional bypassing when they’re just trying to get on with life.  Triggering occurs worst when we least expect it, and of course that’s how triggering is such a shock.

At a common level of community, the ministry of pastoral support can so often have the image or the illusion of just that—that support has been given and therefore also has been received.  Even when it hasn’t.

Much of the time we think about the support we’ve been given in the moment, and we’re satisfied.  We don’t always discern that something was amiss; like when a pastoral worker might say, “You’ll be okay… it won’t always be this hard…” or some other flippant thing.

Oftentimes it occurs to us sometime later that what was said wasn’t helpful or was even inappropriate.  We’re there stuck in the thought that something’s not quite right.

The key to being helpful when interacting with someone in pain is to say less and to simply be present more.  This is called opening space for the other.  If the other person who’s in pain wants to fill that space verbally, they can, and if they don’t want to, we’ll do no harm by not saying anything inappropriate.

The thing with culture is it moves so slowly in terms of correcting what might have somehow been considered okay 20 years ago.

Perhaps the fear in a bygone era was, “You can’t just say nothing; you’ve got to be able to say something.  You know, something’s better than nothing.”

But actually nothing is okay if it’s all you’ve got.  Nothing said, but with presence, is actually powerful support.  By our actions we might say, “I can see how hard this is for you, and I’m with you,” without having to say it.

Christian culture is a bit like the husband who must fix everything.  I’m not having a go at husbands, other than to say, much of the time men tend to want to fix things.

Grief is something you can’t fix.

The Christian worldview is that there’s victory in the resurrection, but that doesn’t always translate into victory over all our pain.  Yet, it seems to be the default narrative—“are you living in the victory?”  (“If not, why not?” can be the unspoken attitude.)

True biblical Christianity—Old Testament with New Testament—holds open the idea that lament is the explanation for those many things in life that can’t be fixed.

Pastoral care is counterintuitive, less is often more.  More is gained from pastoral care that’s prepared to walk the lonely journey with a person in pain than to pretend that it can be fixed and, worse, easily at that.

But, of course, this is hard to do—to do what seems to be nothing.  It doesn’t feel like we’re doing anything when we hold space for people.  What’s required in doing this, however, is the fruit of the Spirit—gentleness, patience, kindness, and the like.

More good can be done with fewer words, 
and the less advice the better.

Better support is given in being committed to walking with a person, but of course that takes a genuine commitment of people.

So we can see a lot of emotional bypassing is about moving people onward so they’re not sad anymore or for the convenience of the majority.  But it never helps and only harms.

Proper spiritual care and friendship is about being with the other rather than doing things for them.

“I’m not excusing their bad behaviour, I’m explaining it”

Conflict brings the worst out of us initially, yet it’s always hoped that misunderstandings can be redeemed, and apologies can be made—genuinely by both—so impasses can be resolved, and hurts are healed.

One situation that often arises is the situation of a person empathetically explaining a situation when another person misinterprets it as excusing the behaviour.  It happens so often.

As a third party to the conflict, someone who may have perspective to add that can be gleaned, that person may in explaining lamentable behaviour look like they’re excusing it when they’re not.

Indeed, in explaining bad behaviour, identifying the facts of wrong and harm done, the very explanation is hardly excusing the bad behaviour at all.  In fact, explaining the behaviour like this highlights it, bringing it out for all to see in the cold hard light of day.

Being able to explain bad and even toxic behaviour is important.  It’s important to locate what it was that was wrong, to pinpoint it.  It’s also important to contextualise what was done.  It quantifies it and is therefore such an explanation can be used powerfully to validate the person who was hurt by the behaviour.

This in effect is what counsellors are able to do, to provide clarity in putting the matter out on the table so it can be viewed from all angles.

Even though it can come across as an excusing of behaviour, explanations of behaviour don’t condone the behaviour when they shed light on the wrong.  Explanations report what happened, and at times why it happened.

When explanations of behaviour are misunderstood for excusing such behaviour, both feel misunderstood—the one explaining is misunderstood because they know they’re not excusing the behaviour, and the one hurt by the behaviour feels unsupported.

If only an interaction can take place without the high emotions of conflict, there’s a chance both can come to understand each other better.

What’s required is for both to believe more about the strength in the relationship and less about the what the other seemed to do wrong, because conflict resolution is always about attaining better empathy and understanding.

Starting the process off, either can enter the dialogue demonstrating their relational care for the other.

It takes a lot of courage to re-enter the fray of conflict, but love overcomes the fear through trusting in faith that misunderstandings are just that—only a temporary barrier before mutual understanding takes place.

Understanding is central to the best in relational experience.  Without it there’s conflict, and depending on responses, there are all kinds of outcomes, including those where misunderstandings and a lack of working the conflict through leave one or both harmed.

Where people have a good relationship over many years, there’s so much to be said for working hard to reconcile, for both to embrace empathy for the other’s position and their interests, which are about WHY they want what they want.

Reconciliation is always worth the humility it takes to achieve.  Emotional baggage is heavy to carry, and relational conflicts that haven’t been resolved continue to cause issues for years to come.

The person who makes the effort to reconcile matters deals with their emotional baggage.  Theirs is the recourse to peace.

A closer relationship with Dad... through loss

The 9th of October 2003 was a seminal day.  My father had major knee surgery that involved having a halo frame fitted to the leg.  It was supposed to fix significant leg and knee pain, but that five-month journey sent him close to the brink of despair.

But the 9th of October 2003 was also significant for a short conversation I had with my mother about my commitment to never drink again, my first marriage in tatters.  Little did Mum and I know just how close Dad and I would get over the ensuing months.

The frame around Dad’s leg needed regular adjusting, and the wounds where the metal bars penetrated the skin into his leg needed cleaning morning and night.  He was basically immobile and each and every time he moved his leg over those months involved acute physical pain.

One day he was moving in the house on the walking frame or crutches and he fell hard and it was a traumatic experience for us to help him up he was in that much pain.

It was during these times Dad would break down, and though Dad is a gentle and humble man, he’s also not given to tears.

I know the sort of pain that Dad was enduring—the physical pain—was made doubly worse because of the vicarious emotional pain he was suffering seeing me suffering.  I would sit there with Mum and Dad in the living room at times and just lament, repeating the same narratives of grief and torment, having lost wife, easy access to my daughters, home, etc.  Mum and Dad would sit there and be present in my pain, which must have been just so painful for them.  But they never reacted angrily, with advice, or in any harmful way.  They just listened to my repetitious lamenting and stayed with me.  Every.  Single.  Time.

There were more than a couple of times when Dad and I broke down together and embraced each other.  I don’t think we’d ever hugged as father and son before this.  I was 36.  It’s just not what sons and fathers did in our culture or time.  (We’ve hugged regularly ever since.)

The pain that Dad was enduring broke him, but it made him more available to me.  The pain I was enduring broke me, but that pain made me more available to him—especially given they were my chosen helpers, besides sponsors and friends in AA and later the church.

Even though we would never choose to return to that season, and even though we both hated it, it made our relationship stronger than it’s ever been.

That ‘manly’ culture of needing to be too tough for tears melted away in the midst of our pain.  That macho way of doing life fell away amid pain machoism has no answer for.

You either bear the pain in brokenness or you evade it through substance abuse or some other form of denial.  For us, both of us non-drinkers, there was no escape other than to be broken every now and then.  Tears were never truly far away in the lament we were both experiencing, and Mum faithfully rode that journey together with us.

Thankfully, the journey of pain and loss meandered and changed throughout that year, and I found myself back in church and embraced and growing there, while Dad had the halo device removed and gradually enjoyed more function.

Our relationship was strengthened through our weakness.  What softened us both did us no harm.  What was set to break us didn’t destroy us.  Indeed, we were stronger for bearing the pain in the only right way we can bear pain—by continuing to show up after it had broken us, again and again.

Sometimes it’s the very thing that we never see coming, that challenges every semblance of sensibility, that becomes the cause of the making of us.

One thing’s for sure: I love my Dad, and he loves me.  And I know that my two brothers feel the same way.

**Whenever I think about how much I love my Dad, I’m inspired by James Blunt’s video Monsters that depicts his love for his Dad (in the image).

Charting the existential loneliness of grief in loss

Grief is the felt intrapsychic experience from the thing called loss.  And there are so many varieties of loss, but we typically ground the experience in the loss of death.  But we all endure many losses throughout the living of our daily lives.  Yet many of these losses don’t break through the threshold of pain into what I’d call existential loneliness.

When you’ve been there—in a state of prolonged deathly loneliness—you know exactly what I mean.

In this state, for basically an entire extended season of months and even years, we feel completely disconnected from everything that ever meant anything to us.

It’s a parallel universe where nobody and nothing feels close, where there are moments of tremendous insight interspersed with yawning chasms of vacuous nothingness.

It’s in the nothingness, where we cannot escape the pain, that we learn to search for a way out of the living hell called grief.

Charting the existential loneliness of grief in loss is utterly unique to each and every person called by their circumstances to that journey.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Holding the tensions of two opposite ideas that are both true, it’s both good and bad that nobody is qualified to give us advice.  It’s both good and bad that nobody has any idea what we’re facing.

It’s good because the right people enter our lives, but it’s bad for the people we thought would be helpful but aren’t.

Those people who end up being good for us—who understand that they don’t know—come from some surprising quarters, and just like everything else, our world is turned upside down.

Nothing we came to expect to be as it is ends up being that way.  This is both a good and a bad thing. There are huge disappointments that exacerbate the grief, whilst there are also unexpected, pleasant surprises.

Journeying each day is, of course, treacherous, and we quickly realise that living in such mental, emotional, and spiritual uncertainty makes us distrust the present whilst it also makes us nimble and agile—again, some good in the myriad bad.

But life in loss is still a vacuum, and our whole being—our whole existence—is subsumed in being forever stuck in the in-between.

In the starkest times, when we truly question if our existence is worth the pain, we descend to depths that one day—when we’ve recovered—we’ll paradoxically want to return to.  Again, good with bad.  Somehow, we’re touched in such a visceral way in these experiences, afterward we see them as that rare time we truly felt connected with ourselves.

Isn’t it amazing that in an experience that is as close to a living death—at that point of sheer brokenness and overwhelm—that we come to a place we’ve always sought to arrive at?  It’s in many ways the finding of who we are.

Grief will take us to where we would never go of our own volition.  The bad.

Grief will take us to where we’ve always wanted to go but never knew that this was the way there.  The good.

Grief is a revenant experience.  So aligned with the gospel—the good news of Jesus—we never truly live until we’ve died first, that is, dying to oneself.  Then, all of life opens up!

There’s a depth that comes in enduring the long season of grief that teaches us something nothing else in life ever could.  It’s bad, but it’s also good.

But we must adjust to saying goodbye to the old life and that can seem impossible.

Finally, without trust in grief we do despair.  Grief takes us to the precipice and simply asks, “Will you walk by faith this journey that will test your trust every step of the way?”

In grief, there is one way or the other—never both.  Grief forces us to choose between holding onto what was, OR embracing what IS in faith for what is coming—believing it to be good.

We chart the journey well when we take the losses of grief on the chin yet refuse to give up.