Power to bless or possess

One way or another, and never both at the same time, we use power to bless or possess.

To bless or possess: to bless, others always appreciate. Such love seems to involve a personal cost to us, but truly everyone benefits. To possess, others never truly appreciate, and yet, whilst it seems to serve us personally, this too has an inevitable cost — on everyone.

To bless is a blessing to all.
To possess is a curse to all.

We need to be ever vigilant. This paradox is true: the more vulnerable we are, the more susceptible we are to using our power to abuse another person’s vulnerability.

Yet the paradox continues in the fact that a person who sees their lack, who is genuinely humble enough to always be living a life of contrition, because their lack is not lost on them, the person who faces their vulnerability and accepts it, is in the box seat to bless, because they’re mortally aware of their capacity to endeavour and strive to manipulate and to possess.

Becoming and being a safe person
is never something that we can bank as done.
Indeed, being a safe person
is principally about becoming.

The unfortunate reality, especially for the abused, is that the more vulnerable we are, the more capacity resides in us to abuse. Whether we wish to or not. This is why the authoritarian family structure operates as it does. The excrement flows downward. Power runs deep. As one person oppresses another, the oppressed person oppresses the next one down the line, and so on and so forth until the family pet gets it.

I think the following equation is true:

The higher our vulnerability +
the more power at our disposal =
the higher likelihood we abuse people through possession

When Power Blesses

We all have the power to be kind, compassionate, patient, gracious. Why is it that we think that these aren’t powerful? In every human being resides the power to bless. Such is the fact that we are made in the image of God; the God who blesses. And it is easier to bless than to curse, for in the blessing we too are blessed.

This is where the power that blesses works: it gives love and wherever love gives God multiplies.

So why is it that there is a paucity of power that blesses?

When Power Possesses

People ought never to be possessed. People never appreciate being possessed. And when I talk about possession in this way, I mean when people feel they are being controlled or owned or subjugated in some way.

No matter who it is, no matter what culture they are from, nobody appreciates being at the whim and the will of another person.

A key feature of the downfall of possessing others is 1) their resistance, and possibly worse, 2) their submission. It’s a perfectly normal and appropriate response for someone who is being abused to resist such an abuse. But what a scary reality for all concerned when the abuse runs unabated in silence and secrecy.

To bless or possess. Make your choice now. Take the right path. Commit to it. Don’t go back on it.

It comes down to the word vulnerability. Vulnerability is a crossroad. Vulnerability is the opportunity to go just as easily one way or another: to bless or possess. Be vulnerable but be honest. Be weak and know your weakness. And yet, see the beauty and wonder and majesty of serving others because you can, never needing to possess them as you bless them.

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The cruel reality of sleeplessness in grief

Three days without sleep sent me to a breakdown. It’s said two weeks with sleep deprivation can send someone into the land of clinical depression. Months of sleep deprivation, and we had four months of it with my eldest daughter when she was an infant, creates a sleep debt that possibly takes triple that length of time and more to recover from.

The breakdown I had, when a lamentable grief hit the abyss, out of nowhere news that made the worst news unimaginably worse, emerged out of one night when I just agonised. The following few days my mind was tormented by fearful thoughts that swarmed relentlessly, each quiet night so noisy in my mind that the seconds lingered like despair.

Grief creates paradoxical issues around sleep. Patterns of tiredness change as the mind swings into convolutions of circular thought that are not easily arrested. Preoccupation is the order of the season as loss wrests every echo of peace, producing emptiness of soul.

Anxiety keeps us awake and
depression makes us want to sleep.

Indeed, being asleep when we’re in deep grief or depressed is the only sanctuary — to be unconscious. At times of incredible mental and emotional stress, sleep may only occur when we’re too exhausted to stay awake. Grief and exhaustion are co-combatants in testing our sanity in loss.

But sleep when we’re exhausted doesn’t arrest the sleep debt we’ve accumulated.

One thing I’ve become convinced of over the years is the wellbeing sleep provides. And the research seems to back this view. Studying sleep in my occupational safety and health career helped me to understand just how debilitating fatigue is. The mind is our strongest ally in the quest for mental health, which converts to emotional and spiritual health.

Our mental health is significantly compromised
when we run into sleep debt.

So what sort of advice works? I know dieticians and other health professionals suggest going to bed before 10pm or not more than 3-4 hours after the evening meal, so we don’t consume foods that are more likely to be stored as fat before we sleep.

I have found a 10pm curfew hard to maintain, but rewarding when I do. For someone who rises before 5am, I really need to be in bed around 10pm to get close to five full cycles of sleep — each cycle being around 90 minutes. And I find a 20-minute nap vitalising during the day.

Of course, shift workers may laugh; those working during the night know full well the challenges to wellbeing in being awake when the body and mind need to be asleep.

It can be overwhelming in grief to even contemplate a solid sleep regime. You feel driven by a never-ending ebb-and-flow tide of thought and emotion. Stability might sound good, but it can feel unfathomably out of reach.

Perhaps the best gift we can give ourselves as we wrestle with our grief is to invest in our overall health — sleep, diet and exercise — through applying good professional advice. But we also need to accept that this at times can seem a bridge too far.

Best to hold the goal in tension with the reality that it can seem too much.

One day at a time keep hold of the hope for health to combat the debilitating effects of grief.

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Lessons in the abuse I suffered as a young person

Picture of myself as an 18-year-old (1985) pulling a bore pump.

A body covered in untreated sewage, held down for a spontaneous ‘haircut’, legs wrapped in blisteringly hot tape, and spending three days in an industrial bin looking for something that everyone, including myself, knew wasn’t there.

Just four memorable instances of abuse I sustained as a late-teens mechanical apprentice. There was also an underpinning of daily verbal abuse for three years to add to the physical abuse. (Thankfully, my fourth year as an apprentice was pleasant.)

All of it normal in its age
and nothing to raise an eyebrow about!

Yet, that was how it was in the 1980s in remote Norwest Australia. Men grew up tough, and there was only one way of making that so. Apparently. As if toughness were an admirable trait. Of course, sexism (among possible other isms) was rife and you lived with it, either as someone who engaged in it or as someone who suffered from it. And all seemingly accepted it, which is not to say they enjoyed it.

It was a toxic environment, yet I didn’t know it at the time. As my mother used to say, generically, and not to justify the abuse which I’m sure my parents had no idea about, “if you can’t beat them, join them.” So, I did, as much as my conscience would allow me. I took up fierce drinking, and, because I was introduced to it through my workplace as a 17-year-old, I took up smoking marijuana. I adapted to my environment. And I eventually became popular within my environment. I could drink like a fish and I never refused ‘cones’ before going out to many remote occupational environments. It was what you did. I was led that way. Oh yes, it was a toxic masculinity alright!

I had thought all along that the goal was to adapt; that success would come when abuse morphed into acceptance. But I think you can see that this led me down a dark path. Again, not that I could see it at the time. I seemed to thrive in such an environment. At least I was accepted. It was all I had bearing for. It was all that mattered.

Acceptance meant I was free from attack, and when all you know is the anxiety of imminent attack, you go with the flow downstream to the only better alternative reality.

When the ‘love’ on offer is toxic,
you take it with thankful gulps of compromise
to the extinguishment of courage,
and you learn to keep quiet.

Abusive systems never lead anyone to good outcomes. They poison our sense for what is good and right, and then we capitulate out of a need for self-protection. Can you, the reader, ask yourself one question: for that negative or costly consequence you bore, was there an abuse that you either propagated or suffered? You’re probably wondering why I placed the word “propagated” in there. Yes, those who propagate abuse also bear negative, costly consequences, because evil brings good to nobody, and abuse (the wrong use of power) is evil.

Tricks and practical jokes can be a lot of fun, but there are exceptions, particularly when someone suffers as a result. And it usually is one. Where one person is scapegoated, that is they are run off out of town or it is unconscionable for them to remain, an abusive system has made it happen.

There is often an upside to abuse for the ‘resilient’, and that’s what engendered my passion for becoming a registered safety professional; I didn’t want other apprentices behind me to suffer what I’d suffered. It wasn’t right.

Where what’s learned
on the other side of abuse
is called ‘resilience’,
we have made a sought-after commodity
out of what is toxic.

I guess the point I want to make is that even though I knew the treatment I received was wrong I just went along with it because I believed it was the only way through. I persisted within a system that was intent on teaching me the right lessons the wrong way. I knew it was wrong, because from this platform I became the safety professional who sought to protect future employees from this kind of abuse. And I have attempted to carry this attitude through into my ministry for God.

As I consider what I had written in the book of my first 30 years, I see I wrote extensively on these matters, and yet never once used the word abuse. That is remarkable. To think, that even 20 years ago there wasn’t the use of the word abuse in our vocabulary.

What we don’t know won’t hurt us. No, sometimes what we don’t know is very harmful.

The abuse we put up with and tolerate for the overall good of the many is personally destructive as well as destructive for everyone. Silence helps nobody and abusive systems set up the climate for generational trauma.

The search for answers in deep anguish

Holding my deceased son and standing amid the conflict of a marriage that was ending were not the most excruciating of times of my life. But pain has been hardest to bear in the lonely, nothing moments, when reality bore strongly, overwhelming my ability to think or function; when my heart felt it would implode for the feelings I couldn’t hold, let alone contain.

These quiet moments my soul did scream!

It’s in the quiet moments
where attack is devastatingly real.

Quiet moments are where chaos reigns.

Quiet moments as these render
our and others’ best efforts useless.

Moments as these are when we search most desperately for answers that will assuage the torment and provide hope. Yet, the paradox is, in accepting that the answers are beyond us, we cannot bear to lose hope, for that reality is truly unbearable. Yes, there is something even worse to imagine beyond our experience of the worst: that there is no answer — no way through this. That is a thought that will send us to our end.

But there is a way through!
Even if we cannot access it right now.

I hope it doesn’t sound too flippant to say that suffering draws us closer to God. That has certainly been my reality. And I hope it is or can be yours. That is the way that God won himself to me. It was when my life was no longer manageable that, from the abyss of despair I reached heavenward for God, and finally recognised God’s hand reaching down to me in the pit, to lift me slowly out of it, even if it wasn’t immediate relief. And the miracle of our encounter with God when one life is ended is that we are ultimately more than ready for a new life to begin. That, essentially, is the salvation experience.

How is it that God can use a situation that was procured to bury us and use it for our resurrection? Even after over 15 years, I still don’t know how to answer that question. An answer is not the point. The point is the answer does come. In God’s time. And certainly, within the realm of reflection.

But the answers we receive are rarely, if ever,
the answers we expect to receive.

Within our finite perception, God indwells us eventually with an unanticipated reality that makes good sense in its own time. But the answers don’t come in deepest pain. And although the answers don’t come in deepest pain, they do come out of the context of that pain. We find our answers are indwelt with meaning not despite the pain but because of the pain.

God doesn’t teach us key principles of his character and faithfulness within the pain, but as we get through it, his character and faithfulness are reinforced because of the pain we endured because we had to.

Do we hope for answers in the depths of anguish? We do hope. But ironically, it’s the hope of receiving those answers sometime in the future that keeps us plying our faith in the interim.

It’s the promise that keeps us going until it is fulfilled.
And that’s enough as we look back.

And that is the miracle of the learning journey called faith. We never arrive. We are kept humble. And in being in this place where we bear pain, we are prevented from becoming conceited. Of course, the apostle Paul talks about this in Second Corinthians chapter 12.

We live and work and have our existence in this life, in this 21st-century day, in a world that is moving away from gospel truth. Yet, just as much as ever does the world need this message of hope within pain. The enigma is how to meet the world need, when we live in a world that is so opposed to the scandalous message of the cross.

There is a good chance
that there are some reading this
who are having their worst days ever.
Days such as these
are unprecedented in our experience.

Truth would have it that we have no comprehension life could ever get this bad. We want it over. And so we balance on a trapeze with these divergent realities within grasp; some that are truly dark, that should never be thought, but often in these situations are, and some are truly full of light, that hold out hope for a day to come.

When in pain,
though the answers don’t come,
hold out hope that they will.

It is my experience that they do.

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Ah, to find home!

Home is where we feel safe and warm and content, perfectly at peace with our lot. Yet, so often in life we find we’re far from home, in anxiety-ridden situations, in dysfunctional relationships, at times in our families, in our churches, and not least in our workplaces. Circumstances such as these build our burden and destroy our peace.

Blur it right to the unbearable edge and we find we’re in toxic environments and potentially victims of abuse or, worse, provocateurs.

But this is about those serene times, chock full with hope and joy welling up to peace, where we truly feel home.

It’s the family that accepts you as you are while encouraging you on your goals of growth. It’s the family that requires little other than the commitment to love and to return that love. For children, it’s parents who model integrity and humility, who know how to be genuinely remorseful and who believe in the fairness of restorative justice. It’s parents who spend time with their children and who are characterised for their reliability, teaching their children the merits of taking appropriate responsibility — not too little or too much.

It’s the church where you’re loved and you’re free to love, to fail, and even to fall, because they’re redemptive in their mindset and that example rubs off on you. It’s where relationships are so committed that issues don’t divide; they’re the source of deeper discussions and mutual respect for differences.

It’s the workplace that is collaborative, where it’s not one false move and you’re out of here. (And I mean errors and mistakes and not crimes.) It’s the boss who believes in what you bring, in what you’re capable of, and encourages that performance from you so you both celebrate with the smile of victory. It’s the workplace where your contributions matter — and you know it.

There’s a common denominator in all this. Being at home means there’s no throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And I don’t mean that’s an excuse to prolong marriages where abuse runs rife or other toxic situations which potentially need to be ended. But it is about an innate belief in the relationship that bears the traits of faithfulness.

The remedy for life is not happiness, it’s to feel we are at home, safe in our environment, accepted for who we are, primed to thrive. These are the things that bring us peace.

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Bridging the tensions in depression and trauma

When depression was at its worst, I found I was immobile, far beyond my ability to receive the care of well-meaning people. Their care was still important. I still needed it. And I would inevitably recover somewhat into a place where their empathy really did help.

I have therefore found that depression is a fluid state, where some days forward-movement is possible, whereas other days it’s futile. And it is best that everyone (those helping and those being helped) accepts this reality, that for those with depression, cannot be changed. Just like it is also best that everyone understands that forward-movement and empowerment on some days is not only possible, it’s necessary. The difficult thing is discerning which day is which.

Perhaps this is why the wisdom in The Serenity Prayer is so commanding:

God, help me accept the days I cannot change.
Help me be bold on the days I can move and improve.
And give me wisdom
to discern the difference
between these days.

Can you see the tensions in the above precis?

In depression there is forward-movement and backward-movement. Some days there is hope. Other days, pure despair. Neither kind of day can be changed. It is best accepted, not that care doesn’t help. Sometimes, as an adult, it is good to be alone and be faced with ‘how to get through this’, but there is a limit to that thinking. We need interaction to break us past the sinkhole of thinking we can spiral into.

Balancing tensions is about appreciating the global dynamics presenting in your case of depression.

Like most things in life, there is a lie in suggesting there is a single global truth at play in complex intrapersonal or interpersonal dynamics. There are always more aspects to your truth than that. That can be a difficult thing for you to understand and accept, let alone someone else entirely.

For instance, a victim of abuse, a traumatised subject, must receive unequivocal empathy — they must be believed, and it is incredibly important for their future hope and prosperity to do this. But it mustn’t be left there. Not all the healing is contained in empathy, even if it is a powerful start. The victim, and now let’s call them the survivor (of the trauma), must have more than your belief and tacit encouragement. They must also be gently challenged on their journey of recovery — which suggests, and believes for, restoration — and sometimes this feels tough.

There is a danger for every survivor of trauma. They can begin and continue to be sucked into the vortex of victimhood. We need to watch our language. Not cussing. But how are we lingering in disempowering statements about ourselves that sound like we’re still the victim. We need to work to a goal beyond that.

When we keep saying, “[They or the situation] did this to me!” or “[They or the situation] won’t change!” or “How dare [they or the situation]!” especially if we’re still angry, we cannot fully recover. Don’t get me wrong. The anger and incredulity is justified. But vindication comes when we move past feeling like a victim and tap into our agency (which means action or intervention that produces a particular [empowering] effect). Personal power is needed to fully recover, and we need to find a way to tap into it, to access it.

But agency cannot come until empathy is received and remains. Yet if we were to leave it at empathy, agency may never be fully realised. We need both.

As you suffer, can you hold the tensions in these seemingly opposing truths:

You are believed;
it happened, it was horrible, and it is horrendous.
But you can also be more than
what you have experienced.

Balancing the tensions is not one is better than the other or one is right and one is wrong. Balancing the tensions in restoring mental health is all about receiving empathy that validates what was and what is and challenge that propels us to the agency of what can be.

Sufferers MUST be believed,
AND sufferers MUST believe they can recover.

*** This article assumes, for victims of abuse, that you are OUT of your toxic situation. Recovery cannot take place in a situation that retraumatises us.

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2 ways depression descends

Throughout the bouts of depression I’ve suffered, I have found on every occasion it descended like a storm cloud over my entire life.

To be clear, two of my significant depressions emanated through deep, dark life-changing grief. In another significant season it was as a result of an abusive relationship, and not being able to extricate myself from what I had experienced as a toxic situation. And my most recent bout, a few years ago now, was because of work that I didn’t enjoy and wasn’t good at, which indicated how important my work is for my mental health.

I have found depression descends two ways — acutely, without warning, and slowly and subtly over time. I’ve experienced both, the former many times and the latter enough to know.

The acute form is scary, and it leaves you anxious for just how subtle it creeps into the present moment collapsing your hope and crushing your self-esteem. I can recall times where things seemed okay, say in the morning when I woke, but by mid-morning the shroud of contempt would descend within an hour or even minutes. Or, I’d get through the day, and the still of evening would reveal my lonely inescapable reality. Instantly at these times I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning in a paradox of emotions — not able to control them, yet unable to feel them apart from the pain. Utterly untenable and unfathomable. It’s probably the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced because it is completely an inside job, where your world feels like it is imploding, worse than dying. That’s how it feels.

When depression descends gradually over the weeks or months, it is scary in a different way. It comes with a great deal of confusion, which is deeply disconcerting. It’s like you’re searching for answers and they just don’t come. Something’s wrong, you know it, but you can’t do anything about it. I always found unexplainable bouts of either irritability or worthlessness (both at different times) was the tell-tale sign I was in the fog of the black dog. Sometimes I’ve seen in others unresolved grief that remains dormant within them, which turns them inside out, making them into who they weren’t, but there is good news…

The good thing about depression symptoms is they indicate where we’re at. I always found it more a relief to acknowledge: “Wow, yes, that’s it; I’m depressed!” It was always a relief to acknowledge that I needed help. It was always a relief to my wife and children also when I put my hand up and said I need help.

The fact that we can say “I need help” of itself inspires hope, because it is an admission that we believe help is available. Having made such an admission, life and hope and purpose isn’t far away, but of course, this is also dependent on other conditions. For very many people, there are chronic conditions that envelop them. For very many people their mental health is just part of the picture, and it becomes but an effect of other more intrinsic causes. 

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Care therapy for those in chronic pain

Anger can be a response of empathy when we’re helpless, as much as futility can be the countenance of the faithful. Horrendous thoughts for self-harm are melded within the boiling pot of the most resilient of all people when pain afflicts. Chronic pain transforms the bravest of souls and sends them cowering into corners never previously imagined.

All this and more is up for grabs for those dealing with chronic pain — whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual, and much of it a conglomeration of these.

Dichotomies and paradoxes float with sadistic buoyancy in the realm of unrelenting anguish.

They exhort us not to prejudge.

If you are angry without reason, without sense, without caution, with brutal candour, because you’re stricken with a cavitating, gnawing nemesis, you are not alone. It is enough to try the perspective of the gentlest saint.

There ought to be no judgement cast against those caught in the whirlpool of life without mercy.

Those who cannot escape their own self-recrimination ought to be stopped with love, listened to, graced with God’s presence in you for their encouragement, and cared for as they define care.

What is for them a living hell has no answers, so there ought to be no questions added to their burden.

There is such a thing as a full-octane living hell, and many there are who live it.

If it is your lot to be the bearer of such pain, do accept the best I can give: prayers. I believe prayer is a power beyond worldly precedent. If it is your lot that you care for such a person, every ounce and sinew of strength be yours, in the wee hours, in the temerity of the torment you endure for their sake. Hold on with all the hope you can muster.

There very much is the place for asking Almighty God, “What point is there in this?”

I feel certain that through such unheralded paroxysm, a peace is being sought after and will be attained.

Strive for it with stillness of gait.

Wait on it with a tenacity that does not give up.

And, trust God even more. Such is the enigma of life that such a trial is manifest for such a purpose.

Holding on when you cannot let go

Recently we had news that anyone with parents in their 70s could expect to get. Suddenly I’m more aware of others who have lost their parents in recent times, and how that must have hurt them so indescribably deeply.

I was sitting in a cinema with my wife a few nights ago when I suddenly became aware of that feeling that I cannot let go. I cannot just let my parent die. And yet, they will. There is nothing I can do to change the fact; it will happen. And now it is our time to prepare.

But preparation, in itself, is folly. It’s like a new parent preparing to have their baby. Once the baby is born everything changes. Once a parent dies everything, too, changes. No longer do we have access to this person who brought us into the world and who nurtured us and who we’ve shared all our lives with. All we have left is their memory.

It is so easy as a funeral celebrant to facilitate a beautiful celebration of a loved one’s life, so long as that loved one isn’t your own. I can empathise with people in their loss, but I cannot touch the pain they feel, until I experience that pain directly, viscerally, interminably, in my own being — when it is my own pain. This is why ministering with people in loss ought to keep us humble. Their pain is not ours and all our hearts can do is go out to them; to be in awe of them in the pain they bear.

I am thankful for the encounters of death and loss and grief I have had that in some ways equip me. But I also sense that in losing a parent I will be completely undone. Part of me struggles to hold on when I cannot let go. At this very point in time I feel as if I cannot let go.

It is all part of the grief process. What is overwhelming and impossible, that is the grief process. It takes us beyond our ability to cope. And somehow, over time, we learn resources that help. And in time, with the help we get, and our own openness to learning, we recover.

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The word that changes everything

Circumambulation. It’s a big word. It means that we continue, throughout our lives, to return to similar circumstances, which elicit similar emotional responses, albeit it in different situations. Many of these situations we can find perplexing.

But this article is not about the word, ‘circumambulation’.

Circumambulation is about how instinctively we return to our understanding until our understanding changes.

This article is about the word, ‘until’.

Sometimes we’re continually thwarted by life’s events. Sometimes we go along merrily, privately thinking what’s wrong with others ‘who respond the wrong way’. Sometimes we wonder when we’ll learn, so frustrated are we with the steepness of our individual learning curve.

Sometimes we just never understand until
something happens that changes our perspective.

We may not believe in autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (believing they’re just poorly behaved children with bad parents) until we have a child who is diagnosed with it.

We might wonder why a friend is still grieving the loss of a partner, parent or child until we are thrust into a similar position.

We may think forgiveness is easy until we encounter a situation where reconciliation is impossible.

We might judge individuals who divorce, thinking they should’ve worked harder on their marriage, until marital infidelity or unforeseen forces rock the foundations of our own marriage.

We can think of men (or women) hooked on pornography (or anything else) as weak or immoral until we find ourselves drawn down a rabbit warren of sin in ten minutes of boredom ‘on the net’ ourselves.

We may think someone is whinging excessively in bearing physical pain until we or a loved one face the same excruciating reality.

It could frustrate us that the person’s child with special needs is drawing attention to themselves and should be quiet, until someone dear to us has their own child with special needs.

You might be a ‘resilience convert’, thinking that it’s what everyone needs, that the weak need to just toughen up, until you or someone you love experiences trauma, and find how impossible it is to ‘get over’ the things that might trigger that trauma response.

Someone loses their job and you can see their fault, regardless of how the situation truly was, and you view them as unwise, even stupid, until you suffer the indignity of losing your job. Or, you think someone is overreacting about being in a ‘toxic’ workplace or relationship, until you or a loved one experiences that same kind of preposterous situation.

If you ever feel certain mindsets or emotions or spiritual things are easier for you than for others, then you may be gifted. Or, you may be deceived. It may be a case that you haven’t had a particular kind of life experience. Could it just be that you might be wrong? If so, wonderful!

See how the curve balls thrown at us in life forge the resources of empathy and compassion in us? Exposure to suffering has the benefit that we’re no longer so cocksure of ourselves. See how suffering loss and change and trial and despair can grow us up?

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Love New Year?

Perhaps it’s the first time I’ve felt this! I said to my wife, again probably for the first time ever, that I thoroughly love this time of year. This year.

She asked me why. I told her that it seems so peaceful, with many of the set activities of the year still in recess, with the anticipation of events and opportunities still unknown, even as I sit in this liminal space.

I think I am so used to that ugly kind of liminal space where a dream has been dashed, and I’m in a kind of nothing holding pattern, that I’ve forgotten the glory in a different kind of liminal space — where hope is pregnant, where joy is apparent, where peace is affective.

Sure, it might be that the new year holds unforeseen pain, and indeed, that it could cost us dearly. It might be that you enter New Year languishing in grief. For all we know the new year could be an annus horribilis. Queen Elizabeth II had one of those years in 1992. Mine was 2016. And I’ve heard so many since, remark about their 2017 or 2018 years as theirs. Once we’ve had one it leaves an indelible mark.

But thankfully a hard year, even a tough decade,
doesn’t characterise the rest of our lives.

What we can say without the shadow of any doubt is this, in the words of Denzel Washington, that “ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship.” Whatever the world and our life situations throw at us this year, we just need to keep throwing our best selves into them. We maintain our goals, because they are precious to us, and if we keep working, and if we keep believing, we will achieve success.

Like any year, especially at New Year, there are virginal opportunities, because our hope has been freshened up a little. The sheen of our countenance glistens. And if we can bear the quietness of January, and just be at peace, knowing good things are coming, we may rest content in the most harmonious period of the year.

It may well set us up for the rise we’d long hoped for;
perhaps for something far beyond any dream we had.

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