The paradoxical power in apology as power for redemption

Imagine being the instrument of justice in a person’s life you have hurt.  They have said you have hurt them, so imagine you have the integrity to take them at their word.  Imagine being cut to the heart that you were an instrument of someone else’s pain.  It does happen.  Imagine seeing their truth, acknowledging it, empathising with it, and confessing your role in it as a mode of repenting in order to bring the hope of reconciliation to the relationship.

ONE CAVEAT: if you are already the one who is more characterised as the one apologising in your relationships, and some of the others in your world rarely apologise, seriously, don’t read any further.  Sadly, there are those who extract apologies but give none in return.

This article is for the person who lacks empathy and mastering this principle of sincere apology is one crucial evidence of the overcoming of narcissism.  It’s only the person who can sincerely apologise — and the best judge of the quality of an apology is the person who’s been hurt — who demonstrates they’re empathetic and not narcissistic.

Empathy truly is the opposite of narcissism.  The truest sign of a person who bears narcissistic traits is their lack of ability to climb into the heart of other people; everything is about the self and their image and protecting both.  Narcissists do not have the capacity to think or especially feel into another person.  Neither are they motivated or even interested unless they sense an opportunity to exploit a person or situation.

But let’s get back to apology.  And its power as a concept!

Not only is a person’s lack of capacity or ability or willingness to apologise a sign they’re toxic relationally, it’s also a sign of disability.  They’re seriously disadvantaged by their very own will. Their arrogant self-will that will not compromise with others is a sign that not only do they not care about others, but they by their hubris also demonstrate they don’t even care about themselves.

Much of this lack of capacity or ability or willingness to apologise is of course covered over by a faux charismata or appearance of humility.  Many tend to compensate for a heart that refuses to be or be seen as wrong by another aspect of endearing personhood.  But if a person cannot apologise any personhood that’s endearing is a masquerade.

People like this will put on the show and the majority find that show absolutely compelling.

People like this rely on their master plan of deception because that’s all they have.  They cannot compete on integrity’s stage.  Some even get a sick sense of schadenfreude delight when they see a “good” person swindled.

But they miss out.  Their lack of sincerity is a major blow to their potential.

That’s a justice to those of us who are frustrated by their stubbornness.

The paradoxical power in apology is a power for redemption.  Those who don’t engage in these behaviours of humility miss out on the blessedness of justice as it’s offered from the one who has power to hurt toward those who have been hurt.  Those who don’t embark on the language of sincerity and godly sorrow miss the opportunity to love others with the love of truth and justice.  Those who don’t commit themselves to restoring the imbalances of lopsided scales miss out on the blessings of insight that God wants to give all of us.  Those who refuse to impart a justice only they can give refuse themselves a grace that is theirs for the taking.

The powers of apology are the powers of flourishing, to every life bathed in such a grace.

Only those who enter via the gates of apology transcend guilt, shame, arrogance, greed, pride, and anger, and journey toward a constellation of blessing that ripples out inspirationally to those their life touches.

All because they own a portion of humility and know how to speak compellingly the languages of apology.

The heart of humility and wisdom is a heart for others

“A new command I give you,” said Jesus, “Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  (John 13:34-35)

So thick with meaning, so multifaceted, so incredible in its depth, this couplet of verses, along with the couplet of verses in Psalm 139:23-24, are enough of God’s Word, if nestled in the heart, to live the whole of life from.  Four verses.

For the sake of completeness, a helpful paraphrase of Psalm 139:23-24 I’ve found is a useful discipleship prayer: 

“Search me, God, and show me my heart,
test me and show me when and why I’m anxious.
Reveal to me every time I offend,
and from my confession and repentance,
lead me in your way everlasting.”

The heart of humility and wisdom is a heart for others.  That’s what these two couplets of verses are saying.  It takes humility, which is replete with wisdom, to love others as Jesus has loved us.

There’s no question that Jesus loved with truth, even as he loved those who were malevolent with the truth — those who pursued him to his death on the cross.  He spoke that truth in love, in the love of accountability, to draw a person to repentance.

Love is not just about having nice things to say.  Love is having the courage to speak the truth for the other person’s betterment.  But we must first be speaking the truth.  It is an absurdity for a person to say they’re speaking truth and yet to be gaslighting, for instance.

Just as much, Jesus has empowered each of us to hold ourselves to account.  Shudder at the thought, you might think!  It’s the way it’s always been.  Those who LIVE the prayer of Psalm 139:23-24 carry about within them the constant reflection — bearing it in their heart and keeping it close to mind — of whether they’re “loving one another” or not.  Humility is the shape of this wisdom.

So much of Matthew chapter 7 is incredibly instructive in this regard, particularly poignant is getting the log out of our own eye — staying in our own stuff.

Indeed, in mental health terms this concept is called “IN-SIGHT,” meaning the degree to which a person has “sight in” to themselves.  How much we can truly see about ourselves from within that nobody else but God can know, i.e., our true mental health, as well as being truthful with ourselves about the impact we have on others, in other words, the totality of our experience.

There is no more fundamental or empowering tool 
for each of us than to be fully aware, i.e., fully truthful.

That ability of sight in and of ourselves.  To see ourselves truly and to face that reality, whatever it is, to see and accept every failure and frailty, to not be ruled by anxiety and shame; this is the mark of humility.

There is NOTHING more important 
in discipleship to Jesus than this.

It is a heart motivated to acknowledge truth.
It is a mind convicted to live for truth.

To be able to see and to own our role 
in how we impact others 
is the most important gift 
we can bring to our world.

One thing we will need to be aware of, however, is there are people in our lives that will take advantage of our insight and seek to swindle us of the gift we offer.  They will seek to draw out of us more acceptance of wrong and repentance of same.  We will be targets of gaslighters.  We need to be innocent as doves, wise as serpents, particularly with these, knowing our insight is enough.  But having said this, humility is even a gift to the self, where we may own more than our own contribution, not feel more shame than we ought, and still have the grace to hope for reconciliation.  And this gift does not in my experience backfire on us.  God is faithful.

The heart of humility and wisdom is a heart for others, and paradoxically, by living this out, it is also a heart for ourselves and God because we’re constantly reorienting our heart and mind back to truth.

IN-SIGHT is the greatest asset any of us can have as we live a life of humility and wisdom.

Being at peace with the bargaining in grief

By far and away the most common thing I’ve been thinking of since we’ve lost Mum, is time’s now separated into the time we had her here with us, and the time since.  No matter what I do, this is the predominant thought pattern.  I’m at peace with it, mainly because I’m intrigued about the whole process of bargaining within grief, as an invitation to remembrance and letting go.

If you were to give me one wish, 
I’d have Mum back in a flash.

Just being truthful . . .

That’s the most stinging reality in loss; the one thing you want, you cannot have.  If I couldn’t have that one wish, and you gave me another, I’d want to step back in time to a time when Mum was alive, and maybe to a time when she and I were much younger.  I’d step back into that time even for five minutes.  Just to lap it up in my senses.

But of course the very presence of these wishes indicates a heart of bargaining, of wanting that which one cannot have.

~

Bargaining is integral to the loss process, because without loss we wouldn’t even be cognisant of bargaining on something we can’t have.  Without loss there would be no looking back and pining for what was and can never be again.

But there is a strange and bizarre peace that I am enjoying in this grief of having lost Mum.  I see it as a positive sign being the student of grief I am.  I see it as something to be learned from, something to be embraced, something to inspire healing and indeed growth.

What I do possess in my memory’s eye is the capacity to re-paint pictures that have long faded.  I don’t know if it’s just me, it could well be the case, but the more intently I invest my consciousness in reclaiming a memory long ago — and there are so many of them! — the more I can fill the gaps simply by knowing the shapes in the image of that bygone era.

I have such strong memories of Mum, of her laugh on the phone (we used to laugh almost every day together in the last two years), of the look she would give me when we hugged, of her cheeky smile, of her perspective and wisdom.  But of course I’ve also got memories of Mum from when I was much younger.  I think back to times when Mum had to reinforce boundaries and put her foot down. She never stopped loving any of us at any time.

~

I think this is why I’m at peace with the bargaining process.  I understand that life has changed, but I also think that loss is such a necessary wakeup call.

People lose their parents or their children or their marriages and we don’t bat an eyelid until it happens to us.  Then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, we’re connected to a club we previously had no inkling of.  Suddenly, we are connected to people who have been through the same ordeal.

In an instant, we feel understood, 
because as they say, 
birds of a feather flock together.

Simply acknowledging the bargaining process is central to grief, we begin to acknowledge its presence as something that’s unavoidable, and therefore nothing to be resisted.

Even as bargaining is the constant thought on the mind, the gift within it is our loved one is remembered and will NEVER be forgotten.  More is our actual fear that we will one-day forget our loved one who has passed away.  It’s such a reprehensible thought.

It will never happen, and at least while we bargain for a wish beyond reality, what we cannot have is also a reminder of what we will never lose — our cherished memory of our loved one or the situation before loss took them or our dreams away.  And yet, before we lost them, we had no idea how final and polarising grief would be.

~

To a choice between remembrance or of letting go, I’d say go both!  There’s peace in both locales of spirit.  In constantly remembering, even as we bargain to have them back, our lost loved one or situation is never forgotten.  And neither are they forgotten when we let go.  Indeed both these situations loan to us peace for the very fact that we can merge them.

Even as we remember them, 
we let them go, 
thankful we had them in the first place.

7 boundaries for empowering responsible self-care

“When we were not allowed to set limits for ourselves often enough the art of kind but firm boundary setting is an art form worth pursuing.”
—Owen Robinson

Boundaries are holistic in that people will find a multiplicity of ways to impact on our stewardship of our own lives.  Sometimes we find ourselves in relationships where boundaries are necessary to be designed and enforced.

As I’ve written about recently, those who force us to protect our time availability, mental energy, emotional resources, material resources, internal capacity, conversational safety, and physical needs will often be the ones who continue to manipulate us to break into our personhood.

It’s helpful to think about boundaries holistically, as we steward our lives for the maximum beneficence of ourselves and others.  The seven boundaries for managing our time availability, mental energy, emotional resources, material resources, internal capacity, conversational safety, and physical needs are necessary for empowering responsible self-care.  This is without doubt the most important investment we can make in the journey of becoming.

The most important thing we can do from our overall life’s perspective is to continue to stand back and view our life from the perspective of God.  That is, to have sufficient time to reflect on our life purpose(s) and to regularly review if we’re on track or not.  There’s nothing worse than that feeling of chaos in NOT doing this.

There are people who appropriately rely on us, and if there are people who steal our time, mental energy, emotional resources, material resources, internal capacity, conversational safety, and physical needs those who genuinely need us end up deprived.  And we, ourselves, are left depleted, stressed, compromised, poorer, aggressed, and indeed possibly traumatised.

If WE don’t manage our time, mental energy, emotional resources, material resources, internal capacity, conversational safety, and physical needs nobody else will.  It’s not a selfish thing to do this.  On the contrary, it’s our responsibility to cater for our self-care.  It is our responsibility, and it can’t be delegated to anyone else.  It’s our stewardship of US.

Let’s think about this according to the minutia of these identified needs:

TIME AVAILABILITY

We all have finite time, we all work on a clock that requires us to rest sufficiently, to work, to study, etc.  There are unfair demands people place on our time, just as there are unfair restrictions made by others on their time.  Ideally, we give our time to those according to their need of us in our lives, but it’s a constant balancing act apportioning time.

I like the rule of Dunbar’s Number and hold to the truth in it.  That is, we all only have so much space for so many relationships.  We’re limited, and in terms of time, we can only devote so much time to people.  Sometimes some people will demand more of us than we can give them.  This boundary is about ensuring we can maintain what we can maintain.

MENTAL ENERGY

We’re all limited cognitively no matter how ‘smart’ we are.  We all have finite resources.  It’s not good if people in our lives don’t respect the mental resources that we do have.  Very quickly we learn who we can trust because they accept our mental limitations.  They don’t blame us when we’re not able to give them what they want.  There’s a certain freedom that comes with being in relationship with such a person.

But others don’t accord to us these allowances.  They may very well set standards that are too high for us to reach.  In other words, they may expect what is beyond our ability to give, or they may expect that which would deplete us, and therefore wouldn’t be fair on us.  This comes across as a demand.

EMOTIONAL RESOURCES

I love the quote, “As much as I want to support you right now, I do not have the emotional capacity.”  This encourages people to accept what we can give them, and if they can’t accept that, it needs to be their problem not ours.  The only time this becomes really problematic is when we’re talking about intimate familial relationships where we need to be there for another.

But whenever relationships begin to resemble a co-dependent dynamic, there ought to be a warning that it’s about to become toxic.  Some people will tend to lean on anyone who shows that they care.  Empaths particularly learn early on that some people are best avoided.

MATERIAL RESOURCES

There are probably not too many more overt ways of someone breaking normal conventions of boundaries than someone asking for money or other tangible resources over and again.

It doesn’t matter who they are, if someone is reliant on others for material resources, they will never learn vital life lessons that will sustain them.  Besides, it’s not fair.  Like the other boundaries, it’s a red flag when a person continues to flout this kind of boundary.

INTERNAL CAPACITY

It’s too easy to be characterised as an introvert for not having the internal capacity to be overly social.  Actually it doesn’t matter whether we are introverted or extroverted, we all need time to self-regulate.

This has more to do with preventing burnout than our personality style.  If we can’t meet the “needs” of a person who needs our presence with them at all times, so be it.

CONVERSATIONAL SAFETY

How many situations do we find ourselves in where we aren’t allowed to disagree, or we must agree with another person in the presence of others, because they’ve manipulated the conversation this way?

I know some people who do this all the time.  It’s like it’s the only way they know how to operate.  They have no idea how unsafe they are.  I avoid these people.

PHYSICAL NEEDS

I’m the sort of person who likes to hug and be hugged, but I respect that many people don’t, just like I respect the fact that it is often safer not to.

Nobody ever needs to make any excuses for not receiving physical intimacy from anyone.  We own our bodies, and nobody has a right to touch us or be physical with us in any way that we feel uncomfortable.

The days are long, but the years are short

15 days since Mum passed away and my third grandchild was born 2 days ago.  Gee, it’s a funny life.  Since Mum passed away, I’ve been doing a lot of reflection, and indeed the last few years have involved a lot of reflection, when I consider that this year and last year I re-visited the area I grew up in 30 to 50 years ago — the Pilbara region in the rugged north-west of Western Australia.  A good deal of my reflection is age-appropriate having arrived in my mid-50s.

Only this morning I was introduced to the song The Older I Get by Alan Jackson.  As I considered the lyrics of the song as it was played on the radio, the nostalgia was thick.  Check out these lyrics:

The older I get
The more I think
You only get a minute, better live while you’re in it
‘Cause it’s gone in a blink
And the older I get
The truer it is
It's the people you love, not the money and stuff
That makes you rich.

I sent this song to my Dad and two brothers.  They all thought it was poignant, and especially in the backdrop of our loss as a family, amid all the activities that our children, grandchildren, and now great grandchildren are involved in, life is a blur.  As the song says, you only get a minute, better live while you’re in it.

And this is exactly why loss and grief are so polarising, because we’re ordinarily so busy in the living of life, we never consider that there is an inevitable cost in loving those we love, and that is the grief we bear in losing them.  Even though the days are long, especially in childrearing, in working hard, in paying off homes, in studying and working to get ahead, the years are incredibly short when you look back over 50, 60, 70 years.  I can remember being 30 and scoffing at the thought.  The last 25 years have whizzed by!

In the three photographs profiled in this post there are about 10 years between each photograph (1971/1982/1992), and you can readily see how quickly we grow up, from being toddlers to being youths to being adults, and in my case, a parent at 25.  When you’re a parent amid all this growth, the length of the season seems incredibly long, but as you look back, myself a grandparent now, you begin to pinch yourself, asking if it even was real.  It went in the blink of an eye.  My Dad said just that in the week before Mum died, “60 years gone in a flash!”

The days are long, but the years are short.  Hardly a truer word in terms of the realities of life — early on those days are long and it seems to take forever to achieve anything.  But then you arrive in your later years, knowing you’ve experienced so much life, but it really does feel as if it was a mirage.

And yet, 15 days on from Mum’s death, 9 days on from her funeral, two days since my brand-new grandson has been born, I am filled with thankfulness and gratitude that I have experienced all these things.

Underpinning this thankfulness is an overwhelming sense of peace that has replaced some of the more intense feelings of pain for losing Mum.  Mum was a joyful soul, always serving her family with unconditional love and wit, and I sense that her joy and kindness has been imparted into my life — what a gift you’ve given me, Mum!  There are times when I feel that my life is too full, with the equivalent of 1.5 full time work roles, some volunteering activities, on top of my immediate family and then my extended family, as well as friendships.  The last few weeks have been a massive reset for me in understanding the real priorities of life, for which I am sincerely thankful.

When I think over what has transpired over the last month, from August 11 to September 11, I can barely believe how much has been crammed into that time period.  Indeed, I had a very significant phone conversation with Mum on August 11.  I’m so very glad we had that chat, but we had so many wonderful and intimate conversations, talking daily on the phone, over the past two years.  Sheer blessing.

It seems the grief leaves you with a sense of loss that makes it inordinately hard to continue life as it was.  It’s like another filter has been placed over your vision.  Life will never be the same, but it’s one thing I appreciate about grief, it changes our perspective irrevocably and that’s okay.  In acceptance is peace, and yet it can’t be faked.  The peace is there or it’s not.  I thank God for this peace that transcends my understanding.

In many ways it feels as if I didn’t have Mum for long enough, even though I was blessed to have her for 55 years.  There is never enough time, but from a faith perspective, I believe the best is yet to come, and Mum is in Paradise right now, and that reality will be mine one day too.

I think of all the lives that have been impacted by Mum, just as there will be so many lives impacted by my new grandson over his lifetime.  It’s humbling how much impact each of us makes in our lives.  It’s humbling how much each of us is loved, and how much each of us is missed when we are gone.

It’s good to remember, “you only get a minute, better live while you’re in it.”

Please feel free to share to get this important message out there.

A quick field guide for empaths

Empaths are often criticised and pathologised and that’s not fair.  Below I’ve set out some of the characteristics of being an empath.  I’ve added some thoughts below each heading.  If you’re an empath:

YOU OFTEN FEEL OVERLY STIMULATED

If you’re disturbed or triggered by sudden loud noises and other sensual realities that you can’t readily control, you might be an empath.  Part of the challenge here is being prepared for sensory overload — it’s inevitable.

You may not be able to control your environment, but what can be controlled is two things: 1) in the first instance, you may be able to control your response, and 2) if you aren’t able to control your response, the second opportunity is to forgive yourself to reconcile the effect of the overwhelming experience.

YOU MAY STRUGGLE WITH BOUNDARIES

Many people who are empaths are targets for those who would manipulate them.  Knowing you’re being manipulated, you may struggle to say no, and sometimes you may find it impossible to do so.  In the core of you, you simply don’t understand how people can exploit people, because if you’re an empath you may find it unconscionable.

Part of the challenge is to get beyond the astonishment that manipulation, abuse, deflection, gaslighting, etc, are the domain of many.  The other part of the challenge is to work on developing attitudes and behaviours to remain calm and in control — resisting anxiety and panic — when you’re confronted by controlling and coercive behaviour in others.  Boundaries are one of the most empowering strategies for empaths.

YOU CAN FEEL OTHERS’ EMOTIONS

This is part of the superpower of being an empath, but it can work against you.  Feeling others’ emotions helps us help and even heal others but it also makes us a target for others’ attention in what can end up as controlling and co-dependent relationships.  Also, when you don’t feel you can turn off this superpower, it can easily exhaust you.

This is where boundaries for ourselves can help, especially where those boundaries involve self-care, which can be one of the hardest practices for empaths; easy in theory, harder in practise.

YOU CAN BE OVERWHELMED BY CROWDS

It’s the noise and the unpredictability of crowds, as well as the abject inability to connect to others, that proves frustrating to the primal functions of an empath.

Part of the strategy to maintain your poise in crowds is to keep saying, “This, too, shall pass.”  It might be just for a few minutes or hours that you need to endure a noisy environment where listening seems impossible.  It’s about telling ourselves to be patient and not expect too much of ourselves.  Again, it’s about preparing ourselves for the discomfort of being in a crowd where we might feel diminished in power or significance.

YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN SENSITIVE, ESPECIALLY AS A CHILD

If you haven’t heard of the term “highly sensitive person” you have now.  HSPs are common in this world, and our world is a decidedly better place because of HSPs.  If you’re an HSP, you have a heart that’s receptive to feel, but you may find yourself having been criticised by many because of your sensitivities.

Part of the challenge is accepting yourself as you are, as you’ve been designed by your Creator.  Part of the challenge is also to harness the best parts of your sensitive nature, whilst also going on a journey with humility so the behaviours of others have less impact.

YOU RECEIVE ENERGY FROM OTHERS VERY EASILY

This corresponds with feeling others’ emotions.  Receiving negative and positive energy from others can be both debilitating and uplifting, but it still taxes your resources.

Spending time away from sources of energy is the thing empaths need to do on a regular basis in order to reset.

YOU ARE A NATURAL HELPER OR HEALER

Again, in feeling others’ emotions, it draws them to you and you to them.  It’s amazing to the see the powers of help and healing move in another person’s life because of you.  You’re a channel of miracles.  But it also makes you vulnerable.

It’s good to take stock regularly in how effective you’ve been in helping and healing others.  Getting a good balance between helping and healing others and helping and healing yourself is essential.

PHYSICAL SPACES HAVE A STRONG EFFECT ON YOU

Little wonder you’re triggered by places that have traumatised you.  It’s highly beneficial to desensitise from these experiences by weening yourself back into those environments that you find scary.  This can be done with others and through a varying form of means to make these experiences safer.

YOU OFTEN FEEL ISOLATED

This one’s horrible.  Feeling isolated you may feel stimuli that are or aren’t there.  The fact is feeling isolated from time to time is normal, and it’s a hard reality to bear.  What can be done about it is to determine whether you’re actually being isolated or not, and whether that’s fair or not.  When it isn’t fair, we can still grow by finding room for patience with ourselves and others by, as the Serenity Prayer says, accepting what we cannot change.

YOU MAY NEED TIME TO RECHARGE BY YOURSELF

Against the assumption that all empaths are introverts (who need time by themselves to recharge) many empaths can be what’s termed “ambiverts” or a mix of, or at the mid-point of, introversion and extroversion.

On the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, for instance, I’m just over the midpoint into extraversion (basically midpoint) but some people who know me see me the other way around.  I find it frustrating to be categorised in any way, but my dream job would be one where I never had to do any tasks except for connect with people.  But when you’re an empath, the fact you draw so much energy from others and others from you means needing to recharge is normal.

Grief’s depression is a heart turned toward truth

Many people who are depressed feel absolutely characterised as disabled individuals.  This is such a sad reality, yet to a great extent, when we look at our world that promotes success of every turn, we can see WHY those who are depressed feel the way they do.

Anyone can see how outwardly nobody would want to be seen as “depressed,” and we certainly know that inwardly it’s a horrifying reality to live.  Until a person has had depression, they have no idea how deep and hard a reality it is.  Most people who grieve for the first time are utterly gobsmacked by the sheer depth of pain involved in grief, and that pain is best described as full-blown depression.

Depression is not just acute sadness or chronic hopelessness, and it isn’t just about being assailed by panic attacks.  Depression is debilitating in killing our drive, in extinguishing our purpose, in crushing our confidence.

BUT...

Have you heard people talking about ADHD and autism being superpowers?  They absolutely are.

Do you sense that the world is changing and becoming more inclusive of those who are simply different?  Do you believe for a better, more understanding future society?

Is there a place in our society where we might connect with others who are grieving and experiencing depression because of their circumstances?

In these connections is facilitated a healing.  In connection, we learn to reach out for the support we always needed.

Have you ever thought about depression being a state of being where the heart is turned toward truth?  That is, the circumstances that have conspired against us send us headlong into a season of lament.  And that, in many ways, is what depression is about: lament.

There are worse ways of living than depression.  If we were to deny our struggle and dip our toes in the water of addiction, to dissociate from the pain of our existence, that would be far worse than being depressed.  If we were to turn our depression outward onto others in anger, turning our depression into aggression, that would be worse than being depressed.  It would be better to be paralysed in our depression than to struggle with addiction or aggression.

Depression really is a state of being where a 
person agrees with what their life looks like.

It’s sad.  And it’s true that it’s sad.  Dreams have been crushed.  And it’s true that dreams have been crushed.  Losses have been incurred, and these losses are irredeemable.

The grief in depression leaves us lost for an answer.  And we go over it again and again.

There is no destination but acceptance, but acceptance often seems miracles away, and we can’t wish miracles into action.  We can’t manufacture what we would dearly love to be the case.  But what we can do is diligently step out each day in the belief that today might be the day.  All the while we can’t escape the lament, and why would we?

To escape the lament would be 
to deny the truth of our lives.

Depression is set of inconvenient realities that induce pain which have no recourse in the here and now.  To be depressed because of a grief carried is the epitome of courage.  Think of it for a moment.  You have no choice but to walk each day in the fear and sadness.

We never need courage until 
we experience fear or sadness.

When we experience fear and sadness, we 
necessarily need courage and we show courage.

If you are depressed, can you see yourself as courageous?  Can you begin to see yourself through God’s eyes.  You will tear up afresh when you comprehend that God sees you, and God knows your pain, and God cries with you.

The only way to heal is to face our reality.  Sure, our realities often need to be faced, then reframed, so we inject hope, a sense of joy, and a burgeoning peace into the equation.

But depression is the first step along the journey to healing, because a heart cannot be healed unless the heart first turns towards truth.  It’s just the case that it takes an inordinately long time to get there — years in fact.

Any significant grief journey will take about three years.  For some it’s longer.  There are times when we feel quite healed, and then we are triggered by something which it takes us back almost at the start point.  All this is humbling, and there’s nothing wrong with being humbled.  Indeed, it’s blessed, even if it feels horrible.

As grief’s depression resembles a heart turned toward truth, be encouraged that you’re on the right path.  Being on the right path is ALL that matters.

11 new things I’ve learned about grief losing Mum

Being a student of grief now for 19 years (anniversary 8pm on September 22), I’ve come to recognise that ‘once a student, always a student’.  Grief is never a school you graduate from.

Here are 11 new things I’ve learned about grief losing Mum:

1.             Clueless – from a hindsight perspective, it is normal to be absolutely clueless regarding what’s about to happen in the immediate future.  None of us expected Mum to descend so quickly, though from the perspective of hindsight, we can now see.  It’s actually been a process of forgiving myself for not seeing it coming.  Of course, especially in this situation, death is a thief.

2.             Guilt – is normal in grief.  Not guilt for what I’ve done or not done in terms of Mum.  Not that type of guilt.  Guilt I mean that I’m still alive and Mum is now dead.  Guilt that she is missing out.  Guilt because it seems that Mum has been robbed.  Of course, the opposite is true.  Mum is at peace, and we, the living, bear the pain of our lost relationship with the matriarch of our family.  But it’s so hard to rationalise this as a living person.

3.             Reassessment – at my age and stage, with a busy professional life as an investigator, consultant, pastor, and counsellor – yes, four kinds of work simultaneously – I know many of you will relate, so this will be helpful – Mum’s loss has made me re-assess how I set priorities.  Push has come to shove; family must come first.  At times, it hasn’t.

4.             Firsts – this is surely not a new thing I’ve learned but it feels brand new in the context of losing someone who has been in my life, alive, from the moment of my conception – and indeed was and is responsible for me being me.  All those moments of my routine that I did while Mum was alive, all have their first time – all of them are noted very consciously on my mind – that I’ve done them since she passed away.

5.             Most unexpected are the experiences nested within loss and grief.  No matter how much we envisage the pictures of our experiences to look, they always appear differently in real life.  Like viewing Mum at her funeral.  Such a strangely ‘real’ experience when I expected it to be utterly surreal, yet I knew how eternal the moment was.  In fact, the whole last week or so has been so real in real time, yet so surreal as I look back.

6.             Before versus After – never before have I ever separated events in my life into two clearly separable categories of ‘when Mum was here’ and ‘since Mum passed away’.  It is the most bizarre experience where life just seemed a million percent better simply because she was there to pick up the phone or visit.  Times ‘before’ and ‘after’ are polarising, and indeed painful.  Painfully and inescapably real.

7.             Death’s finality – of course, this is no surprise in theory and at a head level of understanding.  But the finality of death when it sinks to the level of practise, when it’s an incontrovertible reality, is impressed upon the heart, and a deeper, more painful reality emerges.  The finality of loss is matched by the unchangeability of the grief that’s felt.  Until the last 7 days, I’ve always had this most important person in my life.

8.             Loss ripples outward – I’m sure we felt this when Nathanael passed away, but it feels completely different and polarisingly new now with the matriarch of our family gone.  I have that sense that there are a few dozen people really affected by Mum’s loss, and certainly a dozen or more who feel shattered and will do for some time, not least our Dad.

9.             Presence – I had the feeling when Nathanael had passed away that he gave me something special to carry with me, yet with Mum gone I feel she is present and able to see us and what we do.  Strangely, this does not at this stage offer me comfort at a felt level, yet.

10.          Waves – grief comes in waves, and some of them threaten to be like tsunamis.  What I mean is these tidal waves of grief defy any answer and I’m simply left with the pain that cannot be denied.  It’s raw and tender.  This pain insists on being seen.

11.          New but not new – so much of what I’ve said isn’t truly new at all for me, but in the context and the enormity of this loss, even though I fooled myself into preparing I was about as ready as I could be, I wasn’t.  So many of these themes are the same as I felt when we lost Nathanael, but at the same time it’s completely different, and so much different than previous experiences of loss don’t help with this one.

What’s most surreal right now is, this time exactly one month ago, we celebrated my birthday, Mum was alive, and Mum was here, in our home.

We just miss you, Mum, so unfathomably much!