When All You Should Do Is Be Gentle With Yourself

I am doing the best I can with what I have
in this moment and that is all I can expect
of anyone including me.

Reflect over those words. They are words of high wisdom in several circumstances of life. Situations like the moments and days after sudden news, at times of imminent loss, when the unanticipated moment is cast forth, breaking-in to our experience. On whole days when, we may feel we should be over the grief, but it assails us as painfully as ever. At times when we’re overwhelmed for some reason, whether that reason can be explained or not.

At times like that:

I am doing the best I can… we only have the present moment and the attributions of our best perception with which to adapt to. We’ve made an assessment of everything we have and we give it all the best we can. We’re all doing the best we can given who we are.

… with what I have in this moment… the resources we have at any time can often be improved as we draw on any energy reserves we have. But when those energy reserves are already maxed out, where we have what we have and nothing more, it’s time to back off the pressure and be gentle with ourselves.

… that is all I can expect of anyone including me. It is. We cannot expect ourselves or anyone else to ‘snap out of it’ just because it makes us feel more comfortable. Sure, a person might respond to that sort of pressure out of fear, but it’s nowhere near the best way to deal with emotions that cannot bear reality.

The Wisdom Between ‘Truth’ and Suspicion

Image: The Telegraph, UK.

With fake news littering social media, legitimate news is a currency in high demand for those who care for genuine truth.

Many millions of likes, comments, and shares have driven unnewsworthy material (literally, stories) into every social media users’ newsfeed. This has caused every user to confuse fake news for real news, and vice versa, often with the added insult that sensational stories (the more untruthful, the more sensational, as general rule) have dominated the available space, gaining maximal coverage. And because social media algorithms favour popular stories, fake news has proliferated unimaginably.

The issue of fake news has caused some to become increasingly suspicious, and especially cynical, but the opposite is also true.

Fake news is written and propagated to favour our biases, so ‘the system’ knows how to pique our interest to rally us or to rile us; to generate an emotional response from us. From this context, what a torturously despicable playground social media has become!

The object of this short piece is to explore the wisdom that lies between the perception of truth and the temptation toward an attitude of distrusting suspicion, granting that there’s a role for appropriate suspicion, which is a type of wisdom I’m exploring.

An overweening desire for too much truth can lead us to be too suspicious. We may discredit truth because we don’t like what it’s saying. It doesn’t agree with our partialities. That’s the opportunity to hold ourselves to short account, but that can be a bar too high at times.

The opposite is also true. Too often we’ll be tempted to elevate material that agrees with our biases to the halcyon position of ‘truth’. Sometimes our prejudices are so strong, our thinking is deceived, and our secret predispositions are allowed to emerge, because we love the overall message of the ‘truth’ we believe and, therefore, espouse.

In this post-postmodern era, the strength of bias is very strong. The way the world couches information nowadays, it’s sometimes impossible to discern the difference between truth and a lie. Truths are exaggerated making them false. Falsities are sprinkled with truths to make them influential. Discernment is the task of wisdom; the object of truth.

A key task of life is to find the wisdom that is true to life. That wisdom seeks truth by balancing instinctual suspicion with a fair open-mindedness. That wisdom also discerns when suspicion bends into bias, when, through humility, thinking can be corrected.

Why Faith Makes So Much Sense

Wisdom vindicates faith, which means that, only from the aspect of hindsight can anyone see that, by their faith, the best behavioural responses were worth it.

Only as we look back with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight do we see the wisdom in the action of faith; just like we’d see the folly in the fearful, false and unloving action of unbelief.

Faith makes so much sense when we look back with hindsight. We trusted in good things to occur. We believed enough to do the right thing. We decided that even if things wouldn’t turn out one hundred percent of the time — and rarely do they turn out with such unerring reliability — that it was worth the pitch. Faith, it was decided, was worth the risk. And, much of the time it isn’t a risk, as it is vindicated by wisdom.

It was worth it to forgive, because the person reciprocated to our grace.

It was worth it to forgive, because, though they haven’t responded yet, one day they might, and besides, God is pleased. That’s enough. That’s wisdom. That’s faith moving forward in the present with the audacity of wisdom to be experienced in a future present.

Faith makes so much sense for the simple reason that what is done in faith works out well more of the time.

Have you noticed the interplay between faith and wisdom on a continuum?

The more faith we invest in the present, the more wisdom vindicates the action in a future present. Faith moves in the faith that a present action will redeem a positive result in a future present.

Faith is worth it because it is the foresight of wisdom.

The more faith sown, the more wisdom reaped.

If It’s Part of My Story, It’s Part of My Story

The Day we laid Nathanael to Rest.

If it’s part of my story, it’s part of my story. However unfamiliar it is, it is part of my story. No matter how uncomfortable I am about it being part of my story, it is my story. I may hate it, but what it is, is true, no matter how hard I find it.

Being that I’m the only one who can live my story, and that this part of the story is real, must mean it’s mine; and, that it was always meant to be mine. And, though that’s tough to swallow, I know that if I experience anything, it is therefore mine. The experience is mine. It can be no one else’s. What was never theirs, is never theirs. What was can be made no different.

If it’s part of my story, it must mean something. It must have some significance in the building of me. It must have relevance in my meta-story.

It must have some purpose, because if there was no purpose, what has happened to me would be meaningless, and because life has no point where life is meaningless, I choose to believe there is meaning in what I’ve experienced. There is a consequence for the choice I’ve taken — life, and life abundant. Should I choose to believe in meaninglessness, I would have no hope of living a life I could otherwise live. So, I choose meaningfulness from what I’ve experienced, because that is good for me and everyone connected with me, and because it honours God, because it is the best.

As I contemplate concepts of experience as reality, I enjoy the choice of acceptance.

Losses of Depression – When You Can No Longer Feel

Depression is a wakeup call to get better as soon as possible. But getting better is no longer as simple as we’d like it to be. There’s a process ahead, requiring more strength than we can contemplate. We’ll need help. Counsel. Support. Pharmaceuticals possibly. Self-help strategies. Faith. And any other strategies and assistance that come helpfully into our orbit.

One of the greatest challenges in the battle for mental health is the weakness we experience because we can no longer feel. What a dreadful satire life is when we plummet to this influx point.

Yes, an influx. The dam barrier of our personal sanctity is breached and privation ensues.

What replaces the ability to think is an influx of thoughts that constitute a fog. Awash with noise near and far the mind knows not how to direct the heart to feel, and the heart, like an orphan, loses confidence, and our soul loses touch with hope. Soon feeling is a foreign entity that used to represent who we were. The identity is mislaid. Connection to what we valued, but we feel irrefutably disconnected.

Good mental health occurs when the mind is strong enough to think logically, yet supple enough to engage in vulnerability, allowing the heart to feel all the varietals of reality. The mind nurtures the heart, and the heart, via instinct, informs the mind of truths the mind may not discern.

Working in unison, the mind and heart, our thoughts and feelings, are designed to govern our being; the operating system for representing our soul. But in mental ill-health the mind is weakened, the heart is directionless, and the soul is in crisis.

But recognising you can no longer feel is an important realisation. It explains so much. Because we’ve lost the capacity to feel we’re not only unable to feel our sadness, we’ve lost access to feeling, even seeing, the joys of life. Even in depression we want to feel connected to our feelings, unless it means being overwhelmed by them.

Knowing what’s missing is a key to the steps to be taken ahead.

Part of the way forward is to begin feeling again. It sounds so simple. It’s not. If we overextend we find we’re flooded in a deluge of feelings we cannot regulate with our mind.

Revelation is what we need. We need God to break through into our minds and instil us with belief and, from that, confidence. Faith can help a great deal in becoming curious enough to search for ways to feel.

There are many losses we experience in depression. Recovery is about reclamation and reinvention. Learning to feel again without being overwhelmed is part of that recovery.

DISCLAIMER: it would be irresponsible to suggest that the general nature of this article is a solve-it-all for all depressive conditions, especially the depressive disorders. My motive for writing is simply to generate awareness, bringing the discussion into being, and, of course, assist the afflicted, of which I’ve been.

Let Suffering Convert to Compassion

Without having been deprived of compassion we don’t really understand compassion’s importance; its basis as the meaning of life, providing purpose which drives us along in our living the abundant life of loving others.

We don’t see the point to suffering until we find that something is being added to us that we would not have if we weren’t otherwise deprived. If not for pain there are degrees of depth we would never know.

God’s purpose in suffering is to teach us what everyone needs through being deprived of it. Everyone needs compassion. But many can only receive it, for it’s necessary that we receive it when we need it. And when we need it, and then receive it, God teaches us that our need mirrors others’ needs, so we’re then able to see their need, and at the same time we’re equipped to give it.

But not everyone who suffers receives the gift of compassion. Some push it away. Others never quite understand that it’s in weakness that we’re blessed with another’s strength; that it’s in the experience the vulnerability that we receive God’s love through the love of others. Some turn out cynical and the hope is spoiled out of them. Others miss out and their hope dies, until at a later time, possibly, it is rekindled by a kind soul or souls who love them extraordinarily.

Compassion comes naturally, without pain, to few people. These are especially blessed, but they’re enigmas. Most of us need to be taught through the pains of injustice.

Don’t resent the lesson for the lesson has a purpose. Don’t deny what’s occurred. Be hurt, but don’t stay hurt. Don’t delay God’s purpose by refusing to learn through insight. Sure, it’s tough! But it won’t always be like this. Be determined to learn, and avoid cynicism at all costs. Stay soft of soul.

Pain turns to learning which turns to purpose as we grow in compassion. Learning compassion is one purpose of enduring pain.

Tears of Beauty Beyond the Ashes of Pain

“The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.”

― Alain de Botton

Liken de Botton’s quote with the story of your life, if you’ve risen from the ashes.

That season of brokenness we endured, in the faith that something better was imminent, ultimately, even as endurance was tested dozens of times, proves the above truth right every time.

As we reminisce we cry because God has made that cause of our brokenness the very catapult that has restored us. The foundation of this was our salvation experience; that God proved Himself reliable to be trusted, because we trusted. And because we trusted, He showed us the effectiveness of our faith. That faith of ours, cooperating with His power, made a way for us to be resurrected from the ashes of our circumstances.

We cry tears of grateful joy because what was a miracle — a series of miracles, attesting not to some random magic, but to the reality of the repeatable God — came to be true in our experience. Our faith is sure never to be rocked again.

We have no reason to doubt our faith when faith is the purpose of life, for without it is to deny who we actually are.

There is great hope in the reality of brokenness as God convinces us that what was the worst thing could not have reconciled anything better. The worst thing — the end of one life’s hopes — came to be the best thing — the beginning of a new life’s hope!

Using The Serenity Prayer to Cure Resentment

There is one thing that experience teaches us that mere observation cannot. Experience teaches us through changing us, and most people who are changed arrive at a decision point: will this change me for the better or will I become bitter because of what has happened to me.

At such a fork in the road do we arrive, serially throughout life. Some experiences, however, we could not only have done without, they come to shape and then define us.

Actually, all experiences shape and define. We go one way or the other; toward health or disease.

It’s normal and natural to resent certain experiences; those that take us far outside the control we never would surrender. Enter the grief experience. It’s why our first cataclysmic grief experience teaches us so much.

The end of my first marriage was such a time. The end of my entire world came, and a lot of that initial time I was sure that being dead would have been a better option. But God always has a purpose in grief, not that I could see it at the time, other than to have faith in believing there was a purpose.

And we have to believe to get better. If we cannot believe we’re doomed into cynicism or resentment or denial, or some such tributary of hopeless self-condemnation. But we can believe. Believing there’s some purpose in the grief, even if we have no clue what that is (and we won’t know), is the way to arrive at an eventual hope, through faith, via continual expressions of hope.

It’s Not Too Late – It’s Never Too Late

Turning our lives around in the way of viewing that life-shattering grief experience differently is always as quick as starting at our choice.

It’s never too late to change our attitudes to things. Like the rudder on a massive ship changes its direction, our attitude changes the direction of our lives. And from a simple recommitment comes the power to create the change we desire. From a recommitment we enter the process, prepared to change in adapting to the change we resented.

We have much to gain and nothing to lose by challenging our resentment of every unpalatable experience.

Where the Serenity Prayer Fits In

The short version of The Serenity Prayer is commonly used in recovery, so in the present context it works well:

Lord,
1. grant me the grace to accept the things I cannot change,
2. the courage to change the things I can,
3. and the wisdom to know the difference.
AMEN.

I numbered the lines for ease of working through them.

1.     The experience we resent happened. We didn’t want it to happen. But it did. It cannot be changed. It’s our history. All we can reasonably do is accept it, and we do get there if that’s our goal. So, don’t give up.

2.     We can change if we have the courage to change. And choosing to let something go that we hold a resentment about is something in the domain of the changeable.

3.     Wisdom empowers us to do the thing that leads us away from death by going the way of life. There’s wisdom in accepting experience so it’s not resented and having the courage to replace resentment with hope.

Making Work a Labour of Love

Brother Lawrence said in his Practicing the Presence of God, that “GOD… regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” (Fourth Conversation)

We may know this is true in the awareness of our own experience of the practice of the Presence of God: that when we purge ambition, and focus instead on doing what small things we do with the grandeur of doing them for Him only, we do experience His veritable Presence.

And then we come back to the irrepressible reality: work is hard, much of it goes unappreciated, and the multipronged demands of the world push us clean into the busyness of despair too many times to honestly reflect. As Richard Ashcroft of The Verve says in their song, Bittersweet Symphony (1997), “… it’s a struggle. Life’s a struggle. And Monday morning may be a struggle for a lot of you in a job that you despise, working for a boss that you despise; a slave to money, then we die. God bless ya.”

Everyone, bar none, has the same living challenge to reconcile: to enjoy work. For life to go well we must work. We cannot escape it. And it’s not just paid work that causes us to lament our lives; it’s those family, community and volunteer roles we can’t get out of or that we overcommitted ourselves to. Somehow, we need to make these tasks feel like they’re labours of love, if we wish to do them well for others, and enjoy them ourselves.

Brother Lawrence’s quote helps. If we do every task with love as we perform them, God will fill us with His Presence more and more.

It takes courage to keep going when living the schedule of life seems murderous. If we break our moments down, live in the moment, enjoy it the best we can, remembering God’s there with us, then we make drudgery into joy.

One Day’s Depression in a Deluge of Discouragement

Dark clouds descend like smoke over the highway of our day, bringing spiritual progress to a standstill. Purpose wanes mysteriously. Everything becomes an effort.

From where these clouds came from we have no idea. Yesterday seemed so easy in comparison, and it’s likely that tomorrow will seem like a sweet breeze. But then there’s today. Today; it’s horrid.

One day’s depression — a melancholy that shakes all confidence inwardly, though we remain functional for others — comes as a deluge of discouragement. And it’s not always easy to track why. The day before could’ve been a paroxysm of encouragement.

There is something deeply spiritual in the attack of one day’s depression. We know what goes through our minds, and it’s not good. We experience hearts that are unsteady and uncertain. Though we’re able to put up a good front, we’re insecure and anxious, and this is felt within the state of self-consciousness. As we’re honest in what we’re thinking and feeling we’re disconcerted.

Then, during such a day, where capacity is low, though few detect it, there is the reminder that power is accessible and present.

One day’s depression is a spiritual reality reminding us we’re in a spiritual fight in a war against a spiritual enemy. God blesses us most in the calm acceptance we’re weak this very day. He will save us up for a better, stronger day.

We venture into the Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, Jeremiah, or 2 Corinthians. And we’re encouraged! Our hope is revived that hope will soon return, and we’re patient in the waiting.

We survive one day’s depression best when we accept our vulnerability, knowing hope will soon return.

Speaking Out the Grief That Threatens to Remain Unspoken

Grief has taught me my emotional range, but just as much it has taught me a paradox; whilst words are inadequate, words are necessary, even as we attempt to make meaning of something that is unfathomable.

Recently we had a dinner for a peer group I’m part of. One of our number had shattering news to share. As she shared the story of her relative’s family (gofundme.com page here), there was not much that could be said. Two of the three children, it has been discovered, have very short life expectancies. None of us could even begin to resolve what the parents and broader family are going through or how they will cope. We cry foul when anyone is taken prematurely, but when it comes to the lives of children we cannot reconcile it.

None of the following necessarily applies to this family. These are simply ponderings on the speechlessness of grief that requires expression.

Such situations of grief as these leave us flabbergasted, which is appropriate. What could be said? But there is the need to talk about it; to attempt to bring to the surface discoveries of self seeking meaning from what seems meaningless. And even in the event of dredging up unsatisfactory expressions, the mind is engaged, the heart is stretched, and the soul is open, so long as we don’t judge ourselves or others.

Grief that is expressed in safety, without fear for recrimination, is an anguish seeking discovery, for transformation toward healing. Such expression accepts the brokenness resident in loss and never expects communication to reach any halcyon height. And, in that, healing is possible.

Unspeakable grief that is spoken about, audaciously, without fear, is a grief that can be healed, even as it remains, a foe welcomed.

We must own all our emotions, preferring for them a safe harbour instead of stormy seas, and the only way we can do that is to talk about them, honestly, seriously, yet even occasionally with levity.

Our emotions require integrity with who we centrally are.

Depression – Bravery and Safe Exposure for Vulnerability

Mental ill-health is either bigger now than ever or it’s just being reported more — or both. Certainly, there’s less stigma, but the more aware we are of our mental health, the more we’ll feel its bite. Awareness works both for and against us. For instance, noticing the early warning signs of depression helps us respond quicker and more effectively so we recover better. But, equally, the more we think about depression, the more we may be prone to it.

When depression hits there is vulnerability everywhere. At a time when we least wish to be exposed, we find we are, and feeling especially self-conscious, without having the ability to protect ourselves appropriately, we’re easily crushed under the weight of a life that is far too big, at that moment, to manage. It’s like we’re in a chess game and every piece that could protect our king has been taken.

The trouble with this scenario is, because we feel so fragile, we’re likely to isolate and shut out important people in our lives — people who could help — just at a time when we need them most.

Finding safe expression of our vulnerabilities is the way out of depression; the way into healing. We need to problem solve for strategies. And that’s possible only as we speak with caring, compassionate others, who listen and place no time pressure on us to ‘get over it’.

When we’re feeling vulnerable we need a form of safe expression. Such expression must be safe, because when our defences are down we’re most given to self-loathing. Anyone we share with must cherish our openness respectfully. What needs to be appreciated is a person’s bravery to expose their vulnerability, especially when they least wish to be exposed.

In exposing their vulnerability to process their pain, a person afflicted with depression needs to find safe, respectful people to help them.

Enduring the Season of Unprecedented Pain

Death of a loved one is the most obvious loss we can encounter, but, of course, there are many losses that blindside us. Somehow we could not anticipate how gutted we would feel. Such losses bring about unprecedented pain. The pain of brokenness.

Brokenness is a concept that needs no explaining when, within a moment, life changes, and then into a season of soul-confounding reckoning we enter. By a season, I mean months, possibly longer, and certainly with many losses, there is something irrevocable from the moment of loss, onwards.

I recall a colleague of mine some years back losing a directorship in a major company because he was burning out. He couldn’t sustain what they demanded of him. Close to fifty at that point, this emotionally mature man, a respected health professional of over twenty years, had never experienced anxiety and depression beforehand. Suddenly he plunged into an abyss. He lost weight overnight, lost the motivation he usually took for granted, carried fear about with him, and was frequently in tears. He listed in a season of unprecedented pain. He was astonished, given his wealth of experience in corporate wellbeing and psychology!

Grief is a pain unequivocally unprecedented. A suffering that changes everything.

It reflects the cost of the loss. Losing someone we love, a relationship, our livelihood, or the capacity to function; all these and more leave us feeling absolutely wrecked 24/7, sleep (if we can) our only coherent respite.

Endurance, from a pragmatic viewpoint, is about surviving, when much of the time that’s all we can do. Endurance is made a little easier in reaching out, if we can resist the powerful instinct to isolate. Loneliness adds to an already crushing burden. Endurance also requires some recourse to hope. Being around caring others is vital for enduring such a calamitous season.

Be gentle with yourself as you sit, and go gently as you go. Endure the present calamity, for more reasoned days are coming. While you suffer pain you’ve never experienced before, add no burden to yourself. Hold out for hope, for hope never disappoints.

The Curious Thing About Resilience

Esperance, a small city on Western Australia’s south coast, suffered horrendous bushfires in November 2015. Four people died as a result, and several hundred-thousand hectares of land were burned. Asked if the people of the shire had grown in resilience because of the adversity they’d suffered, the shire president said, “No! We were already resilient.” Councillor Victoria Brown is right. Resilience is not primarily something that grows.

The curious thing about resilience is we do not develop it as much as we display it.

Resilience stands as its own testimony of the strength of faith we exemplified in facing an extraneous hardship.

Resilience is nothing without a test. But suddenly, in the presence of a test, it appears or it’s lacking. It all depends on our response at the time, and, if factors within the situation coalesce, an unpredicted strength comes to the fore. Therefore, we should never write anyone off when life turns against them; they may well rise to the occasion, making that rock bottom incident the catalyst for something incredibly inspiring.

Resilience is a gift given in the heat of the blaze itself. As much as God’s enemy cranks up the heat, God supplies strength through faith to endure it.

This ‘resilience’ is the gospel in play in a person’s life, whether they attribute it to Jesus’ resurrection power or not.

The amazing thing about faith is this: through the power of the Holy Spirit we no longer have to accept that our failed efforts for change are wasted. We can impact anything in our lives that we find unacceptable if we have sufficient belief; through accepting resilience’s offer — a self-imposed exile of sacrifice to display resilience — we can change.

Believe for resilience. When life turns upside down, you’re in prime position to show what you’re made of: resilience. But don’t be fooled that resilience is strength in you being strong; it’s simply a strength that continues to believe in the goodness of God when life is at its worst; a robust strength in unparalleled weakness.

Until a bushfire crisis sweeps through our lives we do not know what resilience we have; how that very event will burn off cowardice for courage amid change.

Only in the moment of challenge is the catalyst for change truly revealed.

One thing we can do when life turns south: trust God despite our instinct to run or repel.

Anxiety – Healing When You’re Living a Reality All Too Real

Like an itch in a cavern fathoms within, never able to find it let alone scratch it, the anxiety I faced for a short season never let go. A constant sense of vigilance, a gnawing of the mind, an aneurysm about to explode but one that never does. Anxiety.

There is an anxiety that interrupts social dynamics, one that makes relationships awkward. That’s not the kind of anxiety in view here. What’s in view here is the conscious kind that we carry about with us; that which we wish we could place in a dumpster.

It’s a loathing, a scourge, a brutalising of our mind, a dread, a heaviness that makes of living reality something all too real.

During seasons of change, of challenge, and of character test, there is a piquing of our conscious awareness, as if material normally stowed away from conscious thought bubbles up from the subconscious.

We’re ever conscious of the adversity, and awakening is the test; for those who can sleep, we would rather unconsciousness.

Living a reality that’s all too real is a serious challenge to conscious living. And still it’s a challenge to seek to overcome. And even if it cannot be overcome, our enquiring into it, to learn more about its source and amelioration is never a waste of time.

I’ve found that prayer helps. Taking moments to depart from conscious thinking is not simply relief, it breeds belief that we can shift mental emphases and feel less dogged. But departing from conscious thinking — surrendering thought for mental nothingness — is a discipline. God speaks and helps and heals in those nothing places.