Inner Gladness Defined

Inner gladness cannot be beat,

Accepting its sadness—what a great feat,

Wondering solemnly—majestically we climb,

A heart that’s home in the Divine.

Inner gladness is a great treat,

No more fumbling—this moment’s complete,

Dancing serenely—the soul’s laid bare,

Anxiety’s sorted with bliss to spare.

Inner gladness is made to be true,

No point pretending—only we’d rue,

Moments of denial cannot be ours,

Instead hope and peace do we espouse.

Inner gladness is hence now defined,

Not by us—as only by God is it timed,

It can only be experienced in the momentary now,

Only when before God we authentically bow.

***

How can we define inner gladness except simply experience it, thanking God as long as it lasts? Gladness is fleeting. We do add to our opportunities, though, when we invest in grateful and thankful thinking.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Reconstructing From Brokenness

Feeling discombobulated, which is seriously confused,

Times like these we can’t help but feel thoroughly abused,

Mind’s tenuously aflutter with a heart perplexed,

Why does it happen now—having been vexed?

We thought we got through this, but now perhaps not,

This situation of soul has us all in a spot,

Besides the recognition—uncharacterised are we,

Just what are we now supposed to flippantly decree?

Welling with tears but purge ourselves not,

Not here, like this, are we to become a dishevelled grot,

Instead we trudge along in our preciously veiled control,

Pretence is ours and that we do enrol.

But eventually we come to a place we are undressed,

When this pretence’s no longer good for our best,

A time of deconstruction commences at last,

Such seasons of grief are far from a blast.

Wading through the squalor of strident lament,

And suddenly we see how we’ve become so spent,

A time of rebuilding seems destined to occur,

The stage now for fighting through begins to stir.

Never do we like it when we’re found to be low,

Feelings of contempt we’re never more likely to stow,

Just as quickly, though, we can turn it around,

Such a momentary response is likely to astound.

Responses such as these prompt the sound mind,

To seek a victorious vision only one’s designed,

From deconstruction to reconstruction we can easily see,

This is the passage to where we’re finally free.

The Process Of Disassembly Necessary For Further Assembling

Never do we like it when a dearth of nasty experience is unfurled before us to be lived. Life takes over on these occasions and casts us out into the roughened seas of squalling uncertainty. It’s readily apparent that such spiritual challenges are foisted upon us, usually, after a period of relative well-being. How crass can life be?

But being disassembled is only part of the story. At a time when we’re ready we’re invited to join a new assembly line. With new components on offer we become a new version of ourselves. But there are the obligatory adjustments to make along the line. None of those new components fits perfectly first time. Many need embedding.

And just in time, it seems, as we’re rolled out onto the showroom floor, we’re ready for the roads ahead; a shiny new model of ourselves.

***

As Job and the psalmist found before us, deconstructing our brokenness is a vital part to our reconstruction. From the experience of the depths we can know ever greater heights.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Between What’s Real and How It Feels

Being perfectly candid, I can say, though I have a fit-looking body, I would love to lose 20 pounds—get it off and keep it off. I do love food. It’s a perplexing dichotomy to me that I can be both happy enough looking in the mirror to justify undisciplined eating habits, yet unhappy enough also to want to lose those 20 pounds.

Between what is real and how I feel isn’t much but it’s enough to keep me from my goals, until, that is, I decide once and for all what I want. I believe we all have situations where we battle with what’s real and how we feel about it—being that there is often a gap we find incredibly hard to bridge.

It might be that we’re single and yet yearn to be in a relationship. It might be that we have a health problem and just wish to be healthier than we can be. We may be at a loss to change something about us, and the reality we detest, yet there just doesn’t seem any way to make the change or accept the way we are or the cards we’ve been dealt.

Life Is A Paradox

This is no answer, but it does point out an important fact that can help. If we accept our realities, that acceptance can influence how we feel. On the other hand, if we decide we cannot accept our realities, and we do wish to drive ourselves to change, our feelings can influence our realities. With motivation we can achieve change slowly over time.

But life is a paradox, in that our realities, however good they are, are never really satisfactory; not to us. Sure, to others what we have and many of the problems we have are interpreted differently. But it’s our lives. We’re the ones needing to live in our skin, thinking and feeling as only we can.

Between what’s real and how we feel is a gap, and an opportunity, to be worked on. Both acceptance and the challenge to change can reduce this gap. We could even do both. Anything to reduce the level of felt insanity that we deal with on a daily basis—the self-talk that runs rampant between both places—our realities and how we feel about them.

Committing To Reducing The Gap

Reducing the gap between what’s real and how we feel is an important step in our process for contentment. Being aware of this gap can send us out of our minds, unless we choose to do something about it.

Committing to change and to create new more satisfying realities is acting on the feelings we’re not happy with. We either change or accept; making the decision is the most important thing. But then the decision must be worked out. It’s a process taking time; our entire lives in many cases.

Bridging the gap between what is real and how we feel is the spiritual conquest of our lives. Beyond our commitment and our process is the grace of God to get us there—to acceptance or change or a combination of both.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Has God Really Heard My Prayer?

“The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer.”    

~Psalm 6:9 (NIV)    

“But truly God has listened; he has given heed to the words of my prayer.”    

~Psalm 66:19 (NRSV)    

What is a ready-made and predictable question—the abovementioned title—took me by mild surprise when it was asked of me in the early hours of a recent morning.

How do we know God truly hears our prayers—those shouts from our groaning, burdened hearts that deal with calamity, betrayal, and the spirit’s desolation? Any decent answer to such a question requires instant and ongoing reflection in justifying the right answer for the occasion. No ‘pat’ answer will do.

So, why would God hear and how do we know?

Encountering The True And Living God By Prayer

The God of the universe and all creation sits ever present everywhere in life, whether by our circumstances, geographically, or by the presence of the Spirit residing within each person, endorsed of love.

We can be assured that God does hear, not simply because that’s the promise of the Bible, but we can know that God has designed life around the portents of love, and prayer is such a universal human need (very few people do not pray); God is love and would not have designed us to reach out in prayer had he not the capacity to hear our prayers.

We can know, without any doubting in our hearts, and without justifying it within our minds—by pure faith good enough for the saints of old—that God does hear every single one of our prayers.

Indeed, God feels every silent temptation, hears every troubled thought, and is privy to all our secrets—good, bad, and indifferent; so good is the grace to know we’re never condemned. The Lord understands our human plight.

One Sure Sign Of An Encounter With The Living God

If there is one sign all Christians agree on, that demonstrates God has heard our prayers, it’s this: by the sense of gentle peace felt deep in our souls, a tranquillity that transcends understanding, because we have offered, in faith, our prayers in honest forthrightness.

There are many ways to have an encounter with this living God—a Lord living within us and all through life, especially in the scary bits. And in the present context it’s via prayer that this living God makes himself known to us by that sense of peace... the problem or issue that precipitates our prayer has not gone and the pain is still there, but a strange peace coexists with it enabling us to keep our heads above the threatening waters. That peace remits hope, giving us the ability to dig in and get through, somehow.

***

After we have prayed we should know God has heard our prayer, simply because of the strange lightness of heart we feel, despite the pain present. If we don’t feel heard we should pray more and keep praying until we feel heard. God hears all prayer, but we need to know it within our hearts by a peace that transcends understanding. If we don’t give up, God will show up.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

At the End of the Rope

If you are fatuously in love, and that love is being returned to your complete satisfaction, you won’t want to read this. You won’t believe it, and it would do you no good anyway. You may have forgotten your isolation. This is instead for those surreally forlorn; isolated, just now, within their relationships and beyond themselves.

In just about every sense this message is for every single one of us—at one time or other. We all come to the end of our rope. In the still small spaces of the night or the gleaming generous glitter of the day it strikes. We feel isolated.

This is the state of knowing we’re alive but feeling rather dead. It’s living abandoned in a world designed for connection. It’s pretending that we’re succeeding when there’s nothing left behind the smile and pretending has fatigued us indelibly. Our isolation feels unique.

It’s not unique.

***

We know there is no just reason in complaining—that ‘nobody listens anyhow’—but how can life be reconciled in joy at all times? It goes against the grain of realism. Even the ancients (especially the ancients) knew it!

But, as Christians, we’ve been grounded in the stoicism of ‘consider every trial nothing but pure joy’ and we feel guilty, even ashamed, to get it wrong. We hate ourselves for failing God, even when God implores us that grace is eternally sufficient despite how we might feel.

And our anxiety increases the more self-aware we become. Much learning about ourselves comes at a price. A closer relationship God brings possibly more pain. Everything we feel is ever more real.

And so we shelve our goals of learning for a soul-soothing denial, because it’s more comfortable there and the anxiety shrinks. But then there is less of ourselves than ever before. What is used to decrease our anxiety increased our sense of isolation. We just can’t seem to win.

***

The isolation of existence impacts all. We feel condemned in a moment, with the rest of our lives still ahead of us. There is an answer. One answer. God is that answer, but even God won’t rescue us from our sense of isolation, for that is what draws us to God.

The end of our rope comes. What was is no more. We have come to the end of ourselves. At the end of ourselves, though, is God. Isolation draws us into his loving grasp. This makes our lives no easier. God is there when the truth is hard.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

The Heart of Inner Grace

The mentally and emotionally capable person shrinks at the sight of a person experiencing severe breakdown—some will experience guttural disgust; others, such empathy given to panic. So many people live lives captive to inner demons unreconciled to a logical peace all were destined to have. Still, we all have a secret little demon or three.

For nearly a century, millions have repealed their demons on a daily dose of the spiritual syrup of The Desiderata:

“Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.”

~Max Ehrmann, The Desiderata (1927)

With a real sense of balance, prose like this instructs those given to disorder, any and all of us, for the balance so richly needed to sustain the day, and, to perhaps, even thrive. These imbalances that we struggle with and strive through are what they are.

Without any apology we understand life as a challenge to be continually mastered; a test for our increasing capacities of fortitude; all of which are wrapped within the assurance of grace.

Grace makes all the difference between battling stoically, but without hope, and struggling well, hopefully yet incomprehensibly.

The Experience Of Inner Grace

Our starting premise is this: there is no sense in destroying our person, just as there is no sense in cooperating with any force that would have as its goal the same thing. Inner grace is our protection.

These are matters of personal risk management. Knowing the calamities that might set themselves within a bull’s roar of us is a simple yet great thing. Having the foresight and traditional insight to allow the truth to rest upon our consideration is an enormous skill.

If we can bear such truth, and most of us can, with strength we can get through anything. This strength we speak of, however, is paradoxical. Our strength would rest on inner grace. This is the presence and experience of God’s power in achieving the total acceptance of the challenges before us, and of our person within those challenges.

This sounds both harder than it seems and easier than it is.

No matter what happens against us, and there are some things we feel we cannot bear, inner grace, which we can never understand, helps us just enough to get through. Grace is sufficient for us (2 Corinthians 12:9). This is something not easily explained; better experienced. It’s available for all people.

***

The heart of inner grace,

Enrolled upon struggle and strife,

Encapsulates our space,

Reconciling us to life.

Hope prevails for a reason,

Always worth the chase,

Saving the self from treason,

That’s the heart of inner grace.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Happy Hope from Thin Air

The trick of the world, as it often prevails over us, is convincing us that we cannot live without its modern pleasures, its dignifying dispositions, or its superficial caring.

Though as a populace we’re fiercely independent, often criticising people for their dependence on God, we, in fact, are more comprehensively dependent on our worlds than we readily realise. Many hardly conceive that living the best life is about enjoying the little things, the invisible things, even the hard things:

“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.”

~Helen Keller (1880–1968)

The Open-Minded Approach

Our reticence to live the simplest of lives comes across mainly because we don’t furnish our imaginations. Additionally, we’re attracted by our comforts. But there’s certainly more to life than what we can see, feel, hear, taste, or touch.

Whenever we struggle in life, notwithstanding the pain we feel which is real, if we hold out hope that there is more to be experienced we can experience a hope beyond knowledge. That is, we might feel strangely hopeful without reason or explanation.

This is a faith-impelled hope. It’s a hope borrowed from the hands of time, and nobody can understand it besides us. And all it took to procure such a hope was an open mind; one that chose to see the open vista—a stilled lake, a bristling sunset, a meandering stream, waves crashing at the shore—instead of the vapid silence, the dark corner, or the musty closed-in space of a damp immovable mind wanting comfort alone.

Converting A Thought Into A Vision To Be Retained

“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.”

~Helen Keller

A moment’s hope seems much less difficult than retaining it through faith. The strength of faith will work when we have a solid image, a vision no less, which is reason to strive forwardly for. And as we repetitively come back to this vision, training our mind to think this way, faith becomes our method. We begin to believe there is a way through—even in the presence of nothing but thin air.

As we prove to ourselves that faith is enough through the struggle, our hope is fortified, because the reason for our hope has been established. It works.

***

When all else fails, and there may be little foreseeable to live for, because all our meaning is called into question, there is a way to the next place of meaning.

Hope and faith combine, especially in matters of struggle. When belief sets our mood, to fix on getting through when there’s no apparent reason to, we learn there’s more to life than the visible hope the world provides.

When there’s precious little to believe in,

And our struggles redeem thin air,

Faith fortifies our hope,

If only we’ll hopefully dare.

With nothing now to lose,

And an untold mystery to gain,

Our future inflates with hope,

And by faith through which to sustain.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Discoveries Made In Silent Isolation

To the question of why there is suffering in the world there is no answer satisfactory to the grieving soul other than the answer they may find satisfactory to themselves. Some find an answer and some do not; some others never search. But to journey with God in matters of loss and grief is courage, and such pluck is rarely, if ever, denied a prize for its persistence.

As far as the felt absence of God is concerned, the following is of remarkable assistance. It holds out, like a flame, an answer with which to bear the pain:

“God left me in silent isolation to help me see what was in my heart.”

~Anne Platt

Grief As An Important Completion Process

Entering my own stark period of grief, the words of a colleague echoed from the abyss: ‘You are beginning a journey.’ I hated that word: journey. I didn’t want to be on any ‘journey’. I resented the journey. But as truth would have it, a journey it was. There was nothing I could do about it, and there’s nothing now I would change about it.

An important yet shrill part of the grief cycle, this journey that is characterised in silent isolation, where God might appear strangely distant or eerily close, comes as an important test. All of the rest of our lives will come to rely on how we got through this phase. This ‘phase’ is the making of a new identity, given the transformation that’s occurred within our lives—a transformation we must now, in our time, accept.

When I grieved I want to know when it would end; it seems to never end at the time. And ever so frequently, when it seemed it had ended, it hadn’t. Grief is cruel in this way, but she is but a tool in the hand of God. And, despite how despicable this thought is, the Lord has his purpose in it. It is for our best.

Could It Be That Through Grief We Find Ourselves?

How do we possibly get to know one human being, and someone as complex as us?

We have a very good idea of the complexity of humanity by plain knowledge of ourselves. Disregarding how well adjusted we may be, there are complexities, and layers of them, that are terrifically difficult to put a finger on.

Grief may be a process so grim with pain that we must face what’s truly in our hearts. And though we’re tempted to deny, again and again, God will patiently bring us back to face ourselves. Sooner or later we get tired of running. Having the courage to face ourselves, to deal with our inner stuff, becomes a necessity of survival.

***

There is a purpose in silent isolation. Such unassisted suffering teaches us, beyond our denial, to look calmly within; there we find God leading us to ourselves. There we see what is in our hearts.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

3 Bases for Spiritual Well-Being

Something irreplaceable in the armoury of living is the feeling of buoyancy within. We either have it or we don’t. And it’s not something that, having received it, we keep indefinitely. Spiritual well-being is a thing to be worked for; a thing to be nurtured; a delicate balance to be mastered.

There are many ways to tackle the achievement of spiritual well-being. This approach, below, suggests physical, mental, and emotional bases as inputs for the moment’s spiritual fulfilment.

1. Physical Fitness

Capitalising on the production and secretion within the body of neurotransmission chemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin and endorphins, physical fitness provides much fuel for our spiritual well-being.

There seems to be a great sense of personal optimism gathered in not only exercising, but in the confidence secured in achieving quantifiable goals. Physical fitness relative to our personal states presents bountiful opportunities for well-being. A higher portion of physical fitness is available for any person applying themselves—it’s a personally relevant higher portion. It’s easy to outdo what we’ve previously done, not comparing ourselves with someone obviously fitter.

We may struggle to link the physical with the spiritual, but a higher level of physical fitness will make a better value of spiritual well-being self-evident.

2. Sufficient Alertness And Conscious Mindfulness

Something that is both physical and mental is an appreciation of alertness. Such cognitive attentiveness seems rarely achieved in this busy day. But the well-slept person who manages their sleep like an athlete, getting enough for their personal needs, will have enhanced conscious mindfulness. This informs their spiritual perspective. It must be impossible, on the other hand, to enjoy spiritual well-being when we’re chronically tired.

We don’t need to be perfectly slept to appreciate this truth; just to be better rested than we’re typically accustomed to. A small improvement will deliver a big enhancement of hope.

3. Emotional Authenticity And Resilience

Both of the above inform this most precious vestibule for spiritual receipt and embodiment.

The emotions and their management are crucial in a self-selection of our experienced spirituality. In other words, we enjoy spiritual things all the more when our emotional contact is authentic, and our resilience is operational and thriving. The truth is real, and better are we when we receive it head-on without fear.

***

Physical, mental, and emotional bases help with spiritual well-being.

The best of life is spiritual oneness within our inner selves; a high degree of harmony within relationships; peace with God. Above all is the state of acceptance for everything as it is. Spiritual well-being gets us there.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

The Need to Believe

Hope is ever present but we don’t always feel hopeful. What we expect doesn’t always come about. Or we feel inexplicably empty. Somehow disappointment and frustration, among the myriad of negative disparate emotions, plagues certain days.

But because hope is ever present, yet sometimes out of vision or reach, we can still reconcile it. Times like these we should search high and low for this missing hope. But many times we don’t have the energy.

We need to become reminded, by some means, of this hope that should indwell us. We do this by going forward of our acknowledged hopelessness any way we can, by way of faith.

The Practical Way Of Faith

Faith is never more important than during times of mental, emotional or spiritual debt. Such a truth that proffers hope is the miracle of the resilient life anyone can have. But much of the time having the faith that would reconcile our hope requires more strength than we have.

Faith is more of a conscious competency than we would otherwise imagine. If we can be aware of our lack, just the same as we’re aware of our need of hope, faith might simply be the extension of a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other sense of decisiveness. It’s not hard to do what needs to be done if we break it down into its components.

The practical way of faith is not rocket science, but it does require the reverence to obey. And it’s hard to obey, for faith, when our hope has been throttled. But faith surely knows, we’ve travelled these tumultuous steps before.

Honouring Our Previous Steps Of Faith

Most of us that struggle for faith to sponsor our hope perhaps never reflect on the many steps of faith that have brought us this far in life. Added to these steps is the faithfulness of God; the grace by which even the breath we breathe we ought to be thankful for.

By going forward in faith we honour the times we were steadfast enough for endure to each moment up until now. Again, we don’t often credit ourselves for such faith. But there it is in plain view. We have cooperated with God, to some extent, to get where we’ve got.

***

Hope is ever present but we don’t always feel hopeful. To redeem hope, faith is something we need to be consciously mindful of; to act in faith. One foot in front of the other in obedience—God, then, is giving us reason to believe in ourselves.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.