Experiencing Uncommon (Godly) Empathy

We don’t know the fear,

They hold so dear,

Within the ventricles

Of their spiritual hearts.

We never know what’s dire,

Or what’s lit their fire,

Until our empathy,

Warmth and compassion starts.

FEAR is a common driver of the unconscious mind motivated to protect what’s dear. People operating in fear may never quite make the connection as to why they do what they do. Maybe it’s all they know. Perhaps it’s the only reaction they have in their armoury. Possibly fear reactions are a habit – it tends to be for all of us; just our default to fear comes from different sources.

Given this propensity to become insolvent to the faith and wisdom needed to go another, better way, we don’t know what we don’t know. And others may easily become upset by our differing and polarised views.

What works best in the situation of a fearful person – one who cannot go but their way – who cannot rationalise or reason – is the space of love; the willingness of grace that goes forth in loving helpings of empathy.

Seeing and Responding as God Might – As God Can

We are not God and we never will be, but our Lord will grant us his sight and feel for things whenever we truly submit ourselves to his heart for those things – those things being people.

As we consider what others have been through – considering the difficulties we have been through – we can begin to understand. They have their issues (the stressors of life, relationships, etc), their background (abuse they were exposed to, perhaps, and the associated fears, etc), their biology (what they received from their parents, including propensities for mental ills), and their brokenness (other experiences of life that have left them destitute for a viable, workable response).

With all these factors of past taken into account it’s much easier to see their actions in context. Whatever is driven by fear (anger, stubbornness, etc) can be seen as driven by underlying factors that we, too, would experience if we were them.

This knowledge softens us. We are much more warm, compassionate, and empathic when we know what’s ‘lit their fire’ – and how we see the situation how they see it.

***

Given other people’s issues, background, biology, and brokenness – their ‘stuff’ in sum – we would react the very same way. It’s easy to experience an uncommon and godly empathy when we weigh others’ circumstances truly.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Pain at the Coming of the Sun

Tears from earth,

Joy from heaven,

Experience of dearth,

A precious spirit leaven.

Tears for grief,

Emotions of the cross,

God for relief,

His comfort for your loss.

A life gone...

Tears, ongoing, had here, for love, to learn.

But joy in heaven for their return.

Our loss; their gain.

But, still, tears.

Look to the cross.

Go to its foot.

Pour yourself out.

God meets you there; right there.

“How can it be that you relieve me, O Lord?”

Just for this moment: relief.

Stinging pain, I must return to Him.

Aching disdain, what am I to learn?

God’s comfort is our repeated need.

***

When nothing can bring them back – that surreal feeling of never knowing them again – that perilous gnawing of never having them back – those moments when this reality swoops and makes its dark home. That’s life at its worst; has to be.

Nights bellowing into a pillow, even if they were fleeting departures into madness, or that’s what we thought, with thoughts of madness attending, we might wonder what kept us safe through the night. Morning came and sometimes we were sullen. Other times there was a sweet victorious emptiness. Also, joy at times – the strangest peace.

That Horizon – the Unknowability of What Comes

Grief is a numbing, jutting pain. It raises itself into a plethora of mystery and we may never truly know what is looming over that encroaching horizon. The horizon is never too far away – it is a scandalous thought, that horizon. The horizon is not dark, per se, but the sheer unknowing enlivens many jagged degrees of panic.

That horizon that looms – that is almost certainly breaking over us – is that waking feeling, out of dream and into a nightmare.

The unknowing is the frightening thing. We are far from feeling protected when darkness intervenes upon the light.

Jutting out without a warning is the strangling and suffocating reality. We miss them ever so dearly, but when life is being sucked out of us, it’s plain scary; not to mention the sorts of sick thoughts of death we personally procure.

***

Grief would not be so bad if it was only that we missed that loved one now gone. There is a dark and sinister side to grief – the depression, the anxiety, the helpless hopelessness – that’s the scariest. The rebuilt identity is a construction taking, in many cases, years to complete. Grief may last just as long.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The Incredibly Protective Nature of Boundaries

“If your boundary training consists only of words, you are wasting your breath. But if you ‘do’ boundaries with your kids, they internalize the experiences, remember them, digest them, and make them part of how they see reality.”

― Henry Cloud

MOST parents take seriously the incredibly important protective nature of boundaries, but too few engage in actually training their kids. It is too late when a child is abused – generally in secret – and commonly by people they know. Training in boundaries, awareness of unsafe situations, and knowledge of the inherent evil in this world – these are all things our kids should be skilled in. They are things we should all be skilled in.

I was told recently, as a pastor, I should never say to a believer in the congregation, “You must...!” It’s okay, it’s not my nature to tell people they must, but on this sort of topic, God justifies the exception – not to tolerate abuse, grooming, and other inappropriate boundary-crossing behaviours.

We need to be watchful for those who implicitly break down and fail to respect boundaries. We need to teach our children and the vulnerable about such things. But we also need to teach by example.

What we tolerate we accept, and what we accept becomes us. It comes into our lives. It comes in and it makes itself a home. Tolerating those in our lives that continue to break boundaries – implicating fear, discomfort, anxiousness, and even depression, in us – is a recipe for eventual disaster.

How we train our children and the other vulnerable people in our lives is by talking frequently about safety, including using real-life scenarios that happen right in front of our eyes. Why would we not go into a public toilet and check the cubicle before our sons or daughters went there? Or, are we always going to allow those with easy access to our children that ease of access. We have to be on the look out – “Abuse – not on my watch!”

We must protect those who rely on us for their safety.

We must endeavour to give them the skills of discerning unsafe situations in their gut – and empower them to get out!

It only takes an errant few minutes for someone to damage a loved one or friend. Prevention is infinitely better than cure. There is great benefit in keeping boundaries front of mind in the family context.

***

The greatest skill we can teach our kids and the vulnerable is how to protect themselves; to empower them to get out of unsafe situations. Boundaries are incredibly protective in nature. The person who intentionally disrespects boundaries – the one who makes us squirm – we should not tolerate. We should call it for what it is.

When we train our children to respect boundaries they learn not to transgress others. It’s our job to train them about appropriate boundaries.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Heaven to Covet, Every Hell to Ignore

PATIENCE is a virtue lacking in seemingly all people, cultures, to every corner of the world. We are all either getting there or going there. But we need to ask where ‘there’ is. We covet all too many goals, purposes, and potential outcomes.

We say to ourselves, “I will relax at the next thing,” and then that comes and we don’t afford ourselves the luxury of relaxing; we are more likely to chase the next thing, and then the next, and so on, until we are tired and fatigued enough to say enough is enough. We miss our opportunities for rest and contentment. What we need is:

patience

Patience will get us through, but patience, of itself, will get us nowhere if we don’t already have vision of where we are going to.

Instead of the next thing, our vision should be of heaven to covet. Instead of looking ahead at the next thing, we are invited, by the Lord our God, to look up and to covet the only desire we were ever destined to covet.

Heaven and Hell in Plain View

When we begin to see life just two possible ways – one way to look ahead (or behind) and the other way to look up – our choice is relatively simple. We go one way or the other.

With heaven in plain view – that is, to look up – we have the way of patience. There is no striving because we are enjoying the simple and unadorned moment, naked as it is. No frills – that’s good enough.

But with hell in plain view – that is, to look ahead and keep incessantly looking ahead – we are cursed with frustration, because we never get anywhere.

We are always striving but never arriving, or when we do arrive we cannot stop striving. We just don’t rest there and enjoy the view. Whereas, with heaven in plain view we enjoy the patient moment even though we haven’t achieved anything other than the serenity that was eternally promised us.

When we look at heaven and hell in plain view, in these ways, the decision as to which way to go should be easy. With heaven in plain view we are blessed, but with hell in plain view, insisting on going that way, in our frustration, we are almost certainly cursed.

***

Heaven is a thing to covet. Nothing else is worthy of our worship. When we covet heaven we look up in our struggle, somehow knowing patience is the way there. Everything else other than God is vanity. When we stop striving we start arriving – at blessed contentedness.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Jay-Peg.

When Sadness Arrives and Watching It Leave

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it – always.”

— Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948)

SADNESS is a universal quality of emotion we all feel from time to time, and it is important to put in context. Sadness comes and then it goes. What comes always goes eventually. And when we say, “This too shall pass,” we say a truth, whether it is a good thing or a sad thing that passes. All things pass. When sadness arrives we might as well be ready to watch it leave as we accept its presence, come what may.

And accepted sadness is wonderfully marvellous, for when have we ever accepted sadness blissfully? This seems such an anachronism during a sad time. But sadness accepted has already made the way for its leaving.

Investigating the Injustice within the Sadness

There seems to be a correlation between injustice and sadness.

Feeling sad, of its own volition, seems a very unjust state of being. Much sadness is due to relational concerns – betrayal, disappointment, resentment – all based in the perception (and probable reality) of injustice.

Sometimes these injustices remain, clinging to our psyches for a time. It doesn’t mean we are sad all the time, but there is never too much a departure from a prevailing depression.

Sometimes there is no need to investigate the sadness – it just is what it is. We accept it and we are favoured somehow. But then there is the vacancy of emotions that springs from emptiness. We just don’t know why we are sad; we just are. Some investigations prove fruitful, whilst others are futile.

Experiencing its Arrival; Observing its Leaving

The less we cruel ourselves for feeling sad – resisting the “toughen up, princess” approach – the more we can just cut to the chase and accept what is. Feelings from deep within ourselves that are heard and validated as real and worthy of attention are healed with relative ease.

We only have to see how we go when we share our deepest selves with a caring other – when we experience healing’s lightness – to know the effectiveness of gathering and garnering the truth.

***

When we say, “This too shall pass,” we say a truth, whether it is a good thing or a sad thing that passes. All things pass. And the injustice in our sadness is ultimately reconciled by God, because the Lord of Life always wins.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Photo by Matthias Haltenhof:  www.matthiashaltenhof.de/portfolio/

Change and Freedom Are Closer Than You Think

“If you can accept yourself as you are and give yourself permission to have difficulty with it, the curious paradox is that you will change!”

— Carl Rogers (1902–1987)

CHANGE is a paradox; it is weird and ironical that when we flow in the direction of acceptance, regarding the way things are, only then will we have the power to change.

This works because acceptance is rooted in honesty; to be so brutally honest with ourselves without judging or condemning ourselves is to allow ourselves the space which proves as a platform for growth and, therefore, change.

Change and freedom are closer than we think.

But our human default is oppositely arranged. We get hard on ourselves for making the same worn mistakes. We say, “When will I stop doing this!” Or we say, “When will this end?”

Why do we think things will change if we get harder on ourselves? It hasn’t worked for our children or for us when we were children, for that matter.

Making people change is never a way to make people change.

Change doesn’t work like that. Unless the forces for change continue to be there, forced change cannot be sustained. But change that comes as a product, first of acceptance, and then secondly with vision, has every hope of being sustained.

Self-Acceptance and Self-Love Facilitate Change

If only we would know and learn to accept that the grace of God, experienced as an abundance of self-acceptance, is the answer to most if not all our challenges.

If we experience self-acceptance, we also experience self-love. And with self-love we have stripped away all the worldly distractions to the love of God. We begin to understand self-love emerges out of God’s love for us as individuals. “We love because he first loved us.”

When we have self-love, because we attribute God’s love correctly to us in the first place, we are automatically inspired to love others with the same love we are receiving. Love is suddenly very real. It is palpably real and practical in all matters of life. And as the circle turns, all this love promotes self-acceptance, and so the cycle of blessing’s multiplicity continues to revolve.

The secret to change is acceptance: of where we are at and where we are going. Acceptance accepts that the going will be tough, but it doesn’t suffer from disillusionment. No more stressful thought needs to be entered into when we arrive at acceptance.

***

When we arrive at acceptance we have the keys to change and, therefore, the experience of freedom.

Self-acceptance leads to self-love. Self-love is grown out of experiencing God’s grace, as is love for others. Acceptance is the key to love and life.

Change and freedom rely on acceptance. The more we accept reality the freer we are.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The Father and the Healing of His Precious Child

SONS and daughters we are, by this accord. Recently my son, who was under one year of age at the time, and I were playing and he got hurt. I got to feel as a father how the Father might feel when we are hurt. I had gotten down to his level – my head on the floor, as I lay there prone – and he was so excited as he climbed on me, he lost grip and his nose (with gravity) came to rest with a thud against my hard head!

Instantly, there were shrieks of crying, with anger, for he didn’t know in his infancy what the pain was or how to stop it. He took a minute or so of my wife and I consoling him to finally settle down. He was palpably distressed and so were we! We wanted so badly to take his pain away; to make it like he had never experienced it in the first place. But we couldn’t. What was done was done. We did the best we could in consoling him. Our anxiety only settled when his did.

As a father I was delighting in the outworking of intimacy with my child and, then suddenly, that joy was overturned to anxious sorrow. Can there be this parallel between human and Divine parenthood?

How Must Our Heavenly Father Feel?

We thought of the parallel between what a human father (or mother) feels and what the Father in heaven might feel.

Perhaps the Father takes great joy in being part of our lives – his sons and daughters. Maybe the Father sees us get hurt and is just as distressed (in his hurt – however that is manifest) as we are, though we cannot know because we don’t see.

Possibly he wants to take our pain away, but, like us real-life parents, he cannot – the consequences for actions taken or received persist. Perhaps he hates it that we ever experience such pain in this life. These are worthy thoughts, because we are made in the image of God, and at least by parenthood we might feel something of what the Father in heaven feels.

Such an attribution of the Father’s empathy is helpful as we consider how to respond to the hurts of life – seeing that God actually does care, because, like us, he cannot not care. It is possible to experience God groaning, crying, lamenting, and angry, with us through the Holy Spirit, like we may be. This experience of God helps a great deal, because that’s how we experience healing through meaning-making.

***

God the Father feels, as does any loving father or mother. When his precious child or children are hurt, God groans, cries, laments, and is angered, according with what we might feel. Such an understanding of God ultimately helps us approach healing through meaning-making.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Disempowering the Shame of Past

“Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.”

― Brené Brown

Tricked into isolation,

It’s the shame for our sin,

Overcome it by testifying,

Then God lets the light in.

One thing I quickly learned in the AA Fellowship was the positive power of sharing my story. As I shared with a sponsor or with the gathered crowd at a meeting, those ten minutes or one hour or longer time period was a platform for the disempowering of my shame. What I brought into the light then had no more power over me in the dark.

I learned that by testifying to some ‘shameful truths’ those facts about me would no longer be a discouragement. Of course, a big part of the passage God’s light in these situations was the validation of loving people who listened and affirmed.

We all have some things we are ashamed of; things we feel regret for; things we wish we hadn’t done or had done differently.

When we think about God’s purpose for shame we quickly understand that this sense of purgatory was never meant to remain with us.

God’s purpose for shame is simply to motivate us to repent; that can be done in a moment. But we may have suffered shame for years. And we know who is behind it. It is Satan – the enemy of souls.

Opening Up Before the Trusted and Trustworthy

So it is clear how we are to disempower the shame of the past. We must have the courage to open up and share, but we should only open up with those who are trusted and trustworthy. Opening up before people who may judge and condemn will only drive our shame deeper and further from the God of our help.

Instead, we can open up and share liberally with someone who is in touch with God’s grace; who knows intimately their own personal need of such grace.

When, as the listener, we are in touch with our own sinful nature, we are astounded and amazed at how much we may hear that will not shock us. When people’s hearts are filled with compassion God enlarges the capacity for love and acceptance is the default.

***

There are two steps in disempowering the shame of past: 1. Find a trustworthy person (a counsellor or mentor) to share with, 2. And, with courage, make the effort to share. Your testimony will be met with loving acceptance.

***

When people’s hearts are filled with compassion God enlarges the capacity for love and acceptance is the default. Shame withers and is found without substance when it’s met with the compassion of God’s healing grace.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Unmasking the Disguises for Sadness

Sadness isn’t always readily apparent, but frustration, annoyance and anger or pretending to be happy when we’re not may often be. Sadness, potentially, underlies the negative emotions of life. These are times when we cannot control life, and, beyond the logical mind that knows that control isn’t the point, we still want to control it. These are times when we’re devoid of protection to deny; when we’re stripped bare; when we take things honestly but painfully. Yes, when we take pretence away, the soul unembellished, there is sadness. And we can grow to welcome it.

This, we don’t need to run from.

This, we don’t need to fear.

Touching this is part of our healing — an ongoing process with no ultimate destination this side of eternity. We can only hope we remain open enough when negativity strikes, because sadness will often underpin it. Sadness seeks consolation. We can console ourselves and seek the consolation of others.

Digging Deeper Down To Our Sadness

There’s plenty of theory suggesting we have repressed selves where experiences too dark were tidily shelved away, because we had no way to cope with them, or because we were told they were too dirty — causing us to shamefully forget them.

Deep within our unconscious minds, no matter how well-adjusted our upbringings were, resides a meaningful sadness that invites us to touch it. Doing such a thing, however, requires a rudimentary, tenacious sort of courage. Things buried so deep were put there because of the pain involved. But having the courage to go down there — something all of us are capable of — is to be richly rewarded.

Digging deeply down to our sadness, reliving the darkest areas of our lives, redeems a feature of life we can acknowledge if we choose to. Nothing there is rightfully shameful or guilt-inflicting, though we may feel these very emotions. Logically, we spend time accepting those parts of ourselves we’re most sad about.

Other Things Revealing Sadness

Many of our most negative emotions are a cover for deeper sadness; anger, anxiety, even pretentious happiness.

These negative emotions are a trigger for deeper exploration.

When we’re in a mood, instead of allowing it to continue, we can enquire of our state of mind and heart beneath; just to see if the mood reveals a deeper lack, for they often do.

There are times when genuine sadness strikes at a very conscious level; again, we must honour such sadness, allowing ourselves time out — to be gentle with ourselves.

***

Negative emotions like anger, much everyday anxiety, and even showy happiness are often a cover for sadness at a deeper level. Everyone has sadness and it’s okay. Enquiring of our negative emotions to check for sadness, and to be there for ourselves, validates such sadness. We don’t feel so lonely or helpless.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The War of Emotions

“This painting is showing that evil and good combine and can start to make a war like a bush fire; if you have a change of wind you can lose control.”

— The Artist Known to me as “SHOK”

When darkness abides

And sentimentality hides

Life as it is is unfair.

But then without thought

Kindness is wrought

We overcome darkness by Care.

ART has a way of unpredictability about it, like a bush fire, that emerges from within the fissures of the work. What is astounding to one – a work of art – is limp and lifeless to another, but abstract truth is a masterpiece of revelation; to the one it’s revealed to.

The image of the piece above is named War of Emotions. It was painted by three people – one adult, one teen, and one child. It depicts what many of us know to be true about life. Life is very often a war of the emotions, where spot fires of turmoil subsist within isolated areas of our personhood in the otherwise tranquil ground of a good life. But there is also the opposite reality; where a raging inferno besets our suffering souls.

This war of the emotions is a battle between good and evil; the Spirit and our flesh. But emotions such as anger, frustration, and disappointment are not necessarily ‘evil’, because they may be appropriate responses to our life circumstances, especially in a fallen world, living our broken lives. And it doesn’t mean that the emotions of elation and triumph are always ‘good’. So many things revolve around our motives and the circumstances.

So, of a sense, there is the reality that good and evil do combine in our mortal bodies, in producing the effect of our perceived realities. It takes a resilient person who is trying to live virtuously to also bear patiently the evil within them.

This is the importance of the Christian’s theology: he or she is broken within a fallen world context. Grace has saved them from the eternal consequences of their sin, but they still bear the marks of that sinful nature daily. But rather than feel the despairing burden of the guilt and shame of the sinful nature, they exalt the Father all the more through their faith in Jesus of Nazareth – and for what he has done!

***

Within humanity, and within each of us, is a war of emotions that are products of the tussle between the Spirit and the flesh.

It is normal to feel all at sea in our emotions occasionally. There the battle rages below our conscious awareness, and the best we do is accept the emotional chaos. It ought not be judged or condemned. We are strengthened in our weakness, by the Spirit, when we are honest and courageous.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.