Redemption of peace within sea billows of sorrow

NINE years ago today, about 11:30AM, our world changed, for disaster had struck.  Not only were we to lose our precious Nathanael, but we had an uncertain storm-tossed journey ahead of us—it ended up being four complete months of days and sometimes harrowing hours of tortuous minutes.

As that massive storm approached, dark melding into dark on the far horizon, clouds of uncertainty combining with clouds of tempestuousness, building dark upon dark, with peels of thunder and lightning flashing all around us at times, we staged ourselves for danger, faith and many prayers carrying us through that four-month series of crises.

Each of these years since that time, we have had Mum with us.  This is the first year I’ll speak to Mum, and she won’t answer.  Mum and Dad shared stillbirth with us; they lost our sister, Debra Leanne on September 21, 1973—50 years ago this year.

Even though I wrote enough to compile a book of that time that we published in 2018, there is still so much that most people except those closest to us do not understand.

I wrote about it, and continue to this day to do so, to open the eyes of people’s hearts to pregnancy and infant loss.

One-in-four pregnancies end in loss.
So much heartache needing healing.

JULY FIRST each year is special.  The pain felt in 2014 is very different to the redemption of peace within the sea billows of sorrow that roll wistfully now.  There is something irrepressibly healing in the sorrow that can only be redeemed in the peace of the Lord.

Today we are invited to sit and ponder our grief and to ask the God of the universe to show us the way to peace, even as grief threatens to tear us apart.  Peace doesn’t come overnight, but that journey of a thousand thoughts and million feelings along the way starts with that first, most bravest step today.  And it continues by humble patience and solemn acceptance of faith as each storm rises up within us, often when we least expect it to.

IMAGE: by Helen Roberts (Heartfelt) Mum with Nathanael, the morning after he was stillborn, October 31, 2014.

You got through what you got through, now go on!

You got through what you got through, now go on. 

God got you through that season where you nearly gave up all hope of being rescued.  Indeed, there were times throughout that season where you did give up, but God didn’t, and kept urging you to get back in the saddle, to get back in the game, to keep going—and you did—each time.  

You didn’t give up then, 
so don’t give up now.

You battled long and hard, probably for more than several months, and indeed, for most of you, it is the case that it has been several years, and in some cases, a decade or more.  For those reading this who are amid the battle, don’t give up.  

God’s got you. 

God is with you and He will carry you 
all the way out of hell 
if only you remain as faithful as you can, 
so keep going, and don’t give up.

It cannot be stressed enough that you got through what you got through for such a time is this.  You kept going through the mire and the mud, you knew it was all hard slog, but you could not give up, and now you’ve been delivered to this.  The best really is yet to come.

What your “this” is, is particularly special.  Don’t undermine it.  Don’t fail to see the goodness and grace that has been bestowed into your context.  Don’t miss it.  Search now, in the peace of the moment, knowing you’ve gotten through the hardest of times.  And you’ve got the resilience and the resources to get through the hard times to come.  This is no cliché.

Don’t lose sight of your precious context, that God cares, and He will bring you through, if you do not give up, even as you may now feel more alone than ever.

“Do not grow weary, despondent, or lose all hope, 
in your doing good deeds and relating well, 
because you WILL reap a harvest of blessing 
at the proper time—at God’s appointed time—
if you do not give up completely, 
and ultimately keep getting up and keep going.”
—GALATIANS 6:9

These words of the apostle Paul 
urge us on amid a despairing battle.

Our sole task is to find God’s hope amid the struggle, because if we have hope we have the fuel to propel faith.  Sometimes the faintest hopes are the most powerful.  Don’t give up.  Even if everything around you, and in you, says, “It’s no use,” don’t give up.  The wisdom goes counter to reason.  

To get through hell 
we must keep going.  

It’s okay to take a rest along the way, 
just don’t give up.

There will come a time when you will look back and say, “I don’t know how I can say this, but it was all worth it,” but that can only be said when you’re out the other side; out of the hell you’ve been in or are in.

When we hold to this kind of hope—that everything can be reconciled in the light of Christ—we can get through anything.

Hold onto your hope;
don’t give up.

Redemption after 7 years on the road to recovery

My favourite Bible verse, if I had to pick one of the hundreds I love, is Galatians 6:9, which has saved my life many times.  Paul, the apostle, says to the Galatians and to us (in my own words):

“Do not grow weary, despondent, or lose all hope, 
in your doing good deeds and relating well, 
because you WILL reap a harvest of blessing 
at the proper time—at God’s appointed time—
if you do not give up completely, 
and ultimately keep getting up and keep going.”

There was a time, a season in my life, 18-19 years ago, when that was plastered on my fridge, and it stood between me and the dire consequences of the despair my life had become—with little other than my three daughters, my parents, and my family, and my fledgling faith keeping me from doing the drastic deed.

But there has been a different season 
over the last seven years where I have faced 
a completely different ice age of the soul.

The depths of that winter started when winter actually started—June 2016, the hardest month of the hardest year of my life.  I won’t go into why it was so interminably hard, apart from the fact that I was losing a career calling that was only a few years old, yet I didn’t know it at the time.  I was to face seven years of rejection, unable to get back into that craft in any serious role, and yet through it all was a silver lining of God’s indelible hope in the two or three doors He did open—for so many were slammed shut.

During the second half of 2016 I began a rebuild of my life, working initially as a maintenance person at a school I eventually became chaplain at, I was also offered two days per week casual work delivering meals for my ex-wife’s catering business.  Interesting how when I was at rock bottom it was my ex-wife who proved again the friend she is when there were others I would have called friends who weren’t.  Such is life, as they say.

Right throughout the past seven years I’ve nudged burn out so many times because of how hard I was sowing.  Sowing in faith not knowing what God’s next move for me was, I was reticent to miss it.  Yet, the school chaplaincy and the peacemaking work I subsequently engaged in were experiences of great mutual blessing—significant portions of redemption no less.  And yet, to coin the phrase of the U2 song, “I still hadn’t found what I was looking for.”

The church I began preaching at in 2017 to complete my Master of Divinity studies invited us to join and soon invited me to become one of the Elders.  In 2019, I was invited to become Associate Pastor.  For someone who received the call of God in September 2004, I was just so delighted to be invited back into formal ministry again.  God literally saved my life out of the brokenness of 12-months earlier (September 2003), lifting me out of my dark night of the soul that lasted six months, giving me the very purpose that I had received—the love of men and women who showed me the care of God.  My purpose from that moment onward was to care for and help people—to become a shepherd, a leader in God’s church.

Seven years to the week, having ‘regressed’ back to health and safety (an honourable career but just not me like it was 20-25 years ago), after having been exposed to regressing into other job roles I’d had in previous iterations of my life (maintenance, courier driver), I have been given an acting role that proves to me that God has delivered me out of the seven year season.  In recapitulating into all the careers I’d once had, God has shown me I was on my path back to the calling of my heart: pastoral ministry.

Seven years it has been toil and despair 
yet tinged with amazing things that have happened.

Opportunities to serve as a Secretary on a Board, serve the homeless through organised street and church ministry, serve as a leader on a national leadership team for a charity, counsel a few dozen couples and many individuals, conduct a couple of dozen funerals, and spend time invested in my son’s school.  All opportunities I would not have had otherwise.

Ultimately during 2020, I serendipitously joined the State’s fire and emergency services, and have since had Incident Management Team roles at massive bushfires, been a culture strategy workshop facilitator, worked closely with subject matter experts on height safety and rope rescue, and been a lead investigator on high profile safety accidents.

Seven years, and this week I started in an acting role I never dreamt of filling, a role that reflects my calling, a role that others believe I’m capable of doing, a role I’m determined to succeed in, especially because it is a role full of opportunities to serve.  I feel immensely supported, and I want to be an immense support.  Whether it lasts a short time or not is immaterial.  God has spoken.

Seven years.  It has felt like an eternity throughout, and yet because the days are long, but the years are short, now it feels like it was all worth it.  Not that there is an option to bow out when we’re called, but so often I’ve hit the wall and needed to go gently with myself to recover.  So many dozens of times I’ve despaired, you’d only need to ask my wife who has endured so much.

Over 2,550 days, seventy percent of my son’s life thus far, I have felt in various stages of being in the wilderness of the in-between, liminal space land, of not knowing whether it would all work out.

Many times I continued onward without hope, and Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” truly resonated as an anthem verse, especially every seventh day on average in the past two years.  And yet, also in the past two years I’ve experienced peace that transcended my understanding more than ever on those other six days.

Life is an adventure, and we learn nothing 
in the comfort of not being challenged.

It is normal to despise the process of feeling crushed,
but looking back, afterward, redemption is the sweetest.

I hope in your reading this reflection you’re encouraged to keep going if you find yourself in the in-between.

IMAGE: one of my Incident Management Team roles, introducing COVID-19 safety measures during a bushfire community meeting in regional Western Australia at the height of the pandemic.

Joy, hope, peace, hidden in plain sight

Even though there is very little between the appearance of happiness and true joy they can be worlds apart, and it all comes down to the heart.

When a person strives for peace—seeking it for all their worth—but they cannot find it, often it is the case that they’re trying too hard.  When a person is burning out, they crave peace more than ever, but they’re trapped within an unrelenting lifestyle.  They may attempt to make all sorts of adjustments that seem reasonable and logical when a complete attitude change is required, because transformation and step change is required.

Ironically, everything we ought to know that needs to be held lightly is usually held too tight.

Joy is a gift that can only 
be enjoyed without pressure.
It’s the same for peace. 
Peace comes with letting go, 
with accepting what we cannot change. 
Hope is not hard if our expectations are realistic.

One of my favourite quotes is by a devoted Christian missionary who died in his 20s.  Jim Eliot once said, “A person is no fool who gives up what they cannot keep to gain what they cannot lose.”

There is incredible wisdom in this pithy saying. 

The key to be learned is that only as we let go and insist we don’t have control over that which we would love to control do we stand to be at peace.  That’s right.  

Give up on striving for peace 
and suddenly peace is in sight.

It’s the same for joy and hope, and indeed as I’ve often said, peace, joy and hope coalesce.

Joy comes when we focus on the simplest things to the exclusion of the overwhelm we could otherwise get lost in.  The overwhelm comes from chasing joy in a myriad of different things that would, of themselves, never deliver any joy.  For hope, we subconsciously chase higher expectations on things than are possibly delivered.  Our idealism betrays us.

Many things in this life promise joy, hope 
and peace, but end up just being hoaxes.

Centrally what this is all about is the heart.  What on earth am I talking about?

Women will often understand this quicker and better than men.  Men tend to be pragmatic and fixers of things.  Men might typically ‘organise’ themselves some peace, but may be very quickly undone when they find themselves in situations where they cannot control outcomes.

This is a concept that breeds hope, 
joy and peace without any effort: 
when there is nothing left to lose, 
there are few expectations, hope, joy and 
peace suddenly come sharply into view.

What is the key facilitator to this attitude that procures peace, hope and joy?  It’s just that.  It’s a heart attitude, and just about the only way to this place of being is, paradoxically, grief and suffering, i.e., when we experience unrelenting loss.

Grief lays siege to the idea 
that we are in control over our lives.

Grief teaches us that our default thinking is wrong; 
we are not in as much control as we think we are.

Grief withholds external peace, hope and joy.
Grief insists that we find peace, 
hope and joy from within.

The greatest thing about adversity is that it teaches us to look deeper into the source of real peace, real hope, and real joy.  Adversity causes us to search passionately for that which cannot be found any other way.

Grief is the antecedent of action.  It forces us to find what we’re looking for in places we don’t know exist.  Such pain undoes us, but in the unravelling we find ourselves.  Grief causes us to go deeper in our understanding, deeper for answers, deeper for peace, hope and joy than we have ever been.

Being frequently broken by an experience that is void of peace, hope and joy we wonder why our lives have become so hard.  And yet it’s not until we have been to such a place that we find the truest peace, hope and joy we have ever known.

We only get what we want in life when we 
refuse to insist on having what we want.

And, dare I say it, this is the Gospel life.

The direct way to this life is God.

When sorrow finally finds adequate expression in words

In the age of computers, still nearly twenty years ago now, I had a typewriter.

It’s okay.  At that time, I didn’t want the garish IBM laptop that my previous employer had supplied me, with phone and brand-new car (so they could have access to my entire life).  The typewriter did not come with obligations; it did what I wanted it to do.  With diligent percussion obedience it struck ink onto a single sheet of paper with the precise purpose that my emotional fingers conveyed.  So many times that typewriter subserviently acted as the mediator in my grief.

Having become a recently separated father, I’d lost my wife, my home, and worst, everyday access to my daughters.  I was a broken man and there was nothing I or anyone else could do about it.  I had to grieve, to pick up the pieces, to work hard at what I could.

Yet it’s only as I look back now at those sheets of sorrowful testimony that I see just what I often overlooked back then.  I would so often be frustrated by my lack of ability to appease my grief — little did I realise I could not escape what I could not run from, for grief and love coalesce anachronistically in events we cannot control.

The sharper the pangs of grief, 
the more love impresses itself on the heart 
for the loss that craves that love 
more poignantly than ever.

Grief contains those in their lament, 
and if we’re not broken, love shines forth.

Yet, grief reinforces the tragic irony 
that this ‘state’ cannot be fixed.

Such a realisation makes grief a hundred times worse in a moment.  And yet, out of these courses, stronger we somehow emerge.  Eventually.  Years later.  At times when the worst realities of all are realer than we could have ever imagined, somehow, we are given a supernatural portion of weakness to survive the tyranny.

There is truth in the idea that, for us to grow, 
something must just about kill us.

In the bitter throes of lonely reflection, alone enough to come face-to-face with my inescapable lack before God, I would sob and type, type and sob.  Even as I would sob, more emotion would come, and that would bring words that chiselled themselves onto the page.  Many of those pages were tear-stained relics of a time when grief threatened weekly to rip me apart.  I’d previously never contemplated that I had that many tears to shed.

Grief awakens us to unheard of realities.
Loss spills forth into stark bastions of aching numbness.

Looking out the window I’d wonder what had become of my life, which, until a short time earlier, had seemed so easy.  And yet this wasteland that had arrived on my doorstep, that insisted on residing in my life with me, was in the final analysis a friendly witness to what God was doing deep inside me.

Some of the newest minutes and seconds were utterly foreign and the hours were often from the pit of hell — hours that were entire days in and of themselves.  One hour could undo a day.  And some days were straight from hell itself.  But I had to find a way of expressing how I felt.  And that deep wish became a miracle manifest in the words that stay with me today.

There were literally a hundred or more heavy days, where my fullest expression seemed never to help, yet, by faith, I continued to engage in the truth of my losses.  I had no choice other than to do what I felt was the only thing that helped.  And realistically, I for one had no choice other than to engage in the grief because denial was not an option for me.

Then I found the truth in this:

Immersed in adversity, faith paddles tenaciously, 
and, in the pool of ambiguity, 
faith swims upstream toward the unseen origin of hope.

~

Rarely, if ever, does sorrow find adequate expression in words, but on the papers I have kept, I see now how those journals did help.

Although sorrow is the hardest thing to capture in words, we must attempt to engage, to make meaning, to traverse the chasm between grief and healing.

When we are suffering, especially when we are suffering, that is the time to engage, to commit to the earnestness of the journey and not flinch in one or more of many manifestations of denial.

I found for me, even as I peer back to those times nearly 20-years ago, there were many ways that I was provided for and protected even though I didn’t always see it at the time.

Faith in the time of trial can deliver us into the clutches of life itself.  We don’t see it at the time.  We see it later.  The key is to keep striding if not stumbling forward. 

Times of trial we may discern something giving us power or peace to carry on, and we don’t know why.  Rather than interrogate the feeling it is best to simply be thankful.  Gratitude does coalesce with suffering, as the time of trial delivers us to humility.

That faithful typewriter delivered me upon a miracle; precious words to that meant much.

Why it’s so hard to talk about grief or mental illness

My nearly 16-year writing career shows that I’m very comfortable sharing quite intimate details of my life, especially my experiences with grief, to a public audience.  My objective for sharing is I want to lead others in hope, in a faith method, and to model vulnerability.

But, and this so often happens, I’ve been curtailed by well-meaning friends who either want to rescue me or give me advice—the latter is ironic given that I’m a pastor and counsellor and I’m the one trying to help others.

I write to help people with the help I’ve received.
I don’t write to be helped.

It is frustrating when people can’t simply read, reflect, be moved, or move on, but they feel they need to reach out and offer a way out of the pain—when, of course, they can’t.  It is emotional bypassing because of THEIR discomfort and not ours, especially when we can SIT in our discomfort.

Sitting in the discomfort is the ultimate 
in spiritual skill when enduring any sort of pain.

Sitting in the discomfort is something many people find incredibly hard.  But ironically, grief teaches us how to do this when we have nowhere else to go but to face the reality of our losses.  The masterstroke and genius of grief is it teaches resilience through adversity.

This is something many people do not understand.  Because they do not understand, they need to rectify the situation for us when we really don’t want them meddling suchlike.  

Those who do not understand cannot be reasoned with; they may have no concept for the “resilience” we really do have.  They have no resources for understanding this, besides they may have their own motives (e.g., makes them feel heroic) for reaching out and insisting they help us.

When Jesus said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about,” in John 4:32, He was remarking about eternal life, and it was a ‘knowledge’ that the disciples knew nothing about at that time.  Just the same, when we have been through mental health struggles or deep grief, those who haven’t experienced those adversities may struggle to relate.  We have food they do not know about.  This is because grief takes us into the eternal reaches of otherness that this world cannot grapple with.

But those who have not wrestled with their 
grief or mental health struggle cannot understand.
They show this via their ignorance.

It is the domain of those 
who cannot sit in their own discomfort 
to offer us swift escape from ours.

The issue here is not just a lack of understanding.  The issue is also very much about the vocal minority of people who insist on “fixing” our “problems” for us.

The key frustration is it’s the last thing most of us want.  We know that it isn’t possible to simply “fix” grief and mental health challenges.  We know and accept this because we know through experience it’s impossible to shoot a magic bullet and slay the dragon.

The paradox that is operational in all this is this: 
the weak are the strong, and 
the supposed strong are the weak.

A person who pretends they are strong by insisting our struggles be fixed, denied, or avoided, cannot bear to think of our suffering, and they certainly can’t enter ours or their own struggles.  They appear strong but are actually weak.

Yet, the person who can bear their weakness, who has learned they can bear it over the months or years, knows that if this can’t kill them it will make them stronger.  Those who bear their weakness and refuse to fix, deny, or avoid it are strong.

See the paradox?  
“WHEN I AM WEAK THEN I AM STRONG,” 
says Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:10.

It is so difficult for those who are suffering grief or mental illness to share because their vulnerability won’t be respected and revered.  This, when in reality anyone coming close to a person suffering grief or mental illness ought to know they step on scared ground.

Those in their struggle are tired and have precious few resources.  Do they waste these resources on those who do not understand and have no interest learning?  No, they don’t.

They know they have experience in life that is like the food Jesus spoke of.  Some people have no idea about the food that opens up another world, because this food involves pain, and they are not about to go there.

Be encouraged all you who are heavy laden because there is access to a rest there that those who have never experienced such heavy burdens do not know exists.

When we have been to hell and back, or perhaps we are willing even though we are only halfway through, we have the desire to share our hope, and the new faith that’s birthed.

We want to pay the wisdom 
we have learned forward. 

Most human beings want to spend what they 
received in their suffering on helping others.

It is sad when there are pockets of our life who resist the love, support, and encouragement we are offering.  This is especially the case when these people pretend they have all of life together.

But, as they say, such is life.
Those who will be helped will receive.

Grief, marooned in the middle of two worlds

Living in grief is like living in two worlds at the same time.  Eternity is awakened in us even as we walk this physical life where others have absolutely no idea what is going on deep down inside us.

The deepest grief is a place where the only one you’ll find is God.  Nobody else has any idea what you’re going through.  Even if you have the cleverest therapist in the world, they don’t have a clue, and you’ll know it because they’ve got the integrity to tell you:

Statements like, “I’ve got no idea what you’re going through,” and “I can’t imagine what this pain is like for you” give you the real sense that you are SEEN.

It’s not necessary that a person steps into your shoes in the deepest pain of your grief.  But what is heavenly healing is when the person knows they’re on sacred ground around you.

That’s when you know they’ve got you, 
and that’s when you know they get it.

The moments we experienced when we first learned that Nathanael had died were beyond this world.  For those minutes and hours we slipped into eternity with him.  Not there with him like we’d always yearned, but into another world entirely where sounds and sights in the here and now passed away for a time, and God’s sweet presence nurtured the ground we walked upon.  Even when we had nothing and no tools to grasp what was occurring.

How do we communicate what it’s like to be swallowed for whole moments and seasons in another time continuum altogether?  I don’t know, but I feel captivated in trying to find words to express all of it!

Living in two worlds just about does our heads in. 
Talk about being betwixt and between!

What answer do we have for a loss or series of losses 
that throws us headlong into the hell of our time?

Consigned to the deathly lurch of satisfying our contemporaries and holding the thin threads of our former lives, we skate between realities never knowing if we’ve even got what it takes for the present moment let alone one hour into the future.

Anxiety upon dread upon the living panic 
of “I cannot do this.”  Friend, you are seen!

There are many who will read these words and seriously 
ponder, “What on earth is this man on about?”

Grief changes you in a molecular way.  No longer do you see as you once saw.  The old life is over and there’s no turning back.  The more you pine for it, the worse the terror gets.  And yet you cannot help it.  To go ‘back there’ is all that’s palatable.

All that appears in the present and immediate future is horror, uncertainty, all-too-much reality, the frightening concepts of time and tasks, sorrow like you previously never knew existed.  Oh, what quadrupling pain!

And yet, for so many of us, GOD.

God lingered there.  He was there and was waiting, knowing that tragedy was about to strike.  His grace was there, always there, at the ready.

Brought to a place where two worlds merged, suddenly in grief is a never-ceasing prayer, and an eternal compensation is that you find yourself obeying God without even trying (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  There are silver linings everywhere in grief, but the enemy hides them from us until we insist upon the looking, searching, scouring.

These two worlds that smash together and stay permanently fused—at least for several months, if not years—are God’s eternity merged with time itself.

The only solace is that God is there.  God or a drink.  God or a drug.  God or some other distraction, idol, addiction, or senseless denial of the incontrovertible.  How flipping useless to walk opposed to reality.  Flow will have us crushed by the reality of it, and living!

Learning to live in these two worlds simultaneously is tricky; it’s designed to break us over and over again, and each time we find ourselves bundled against the rocks of our grief we somehow find, there it is once more, the GRACE that picks us up and dusts us off—to emerge into the loving arms of hope for one more day.

... one more day.  
The secret to living in grace is one day at a time.  
Simple as that.

We are kept between these worlds, straddling both, never able to escape either, for a good and godly reason.  That is to learn a new way of existing, in the eternal reaches of this life now.

Seriously, though we cannot have back what we had, what has come is eternally better.  But it takes time to see it and embrace it.  The paradox is, we must allow our grief its time of human wrestling, the anger, the bargaining, the depression, the acceptance, the denial, as a soup or washing machine, thrown about chaotically for a time indeterminant.

But we do emerge.  We are deepened.  

Somehow, the worst for the best.

I just hope this helps in some small way.

The mental health breakthrough

Sometimes (i.e., not always) our mental ill health is about our lack of insight—we just don’t see mentally, emotionally, or spiritually as we would like.  The proof on these occasions is when the tempest breaks and that build-up of low pressure that precedes a storm, ebbs into a shower, or in other terms, we allow the truth of our emotions to spill forth in honesty.

The mental health breakthrough comes in the moment of insight, which is the precise intersection of truth and humility—our willingness to accept truth, whatever it is.

Insight is the intersection 
of truth and humility.

The mental health breakthrough could be that prayed for moment or day that equilibrium returns after days or weeks of exhaustion, confusion, or unexplained anxiety.  Overwhelm, fear, anxiety, and not coping with stress have double impact.  They expunge the joy, hope, and peace from the day.  They also burn precious reserves of energy that can take days, weeks, or even months to restore.

The mental health breakthrough comes as a solution to the mental, emotional, or spiritual impasse we’ve experienced.  The malaise that we may have been thoroughly sick and tired of, but ironically may not have seen as clearly as we’d have liked.

When the tempest breaks and the mental health breakthrough comes, gratitude and counting our blessings is at last seen as possible, palatable, worth the effort.  Motivation returns as insight inflates our hope.  Faith being the fuel of motivation.

When all of life is overwhelm, 
little wonder hope seems vanquished.

Life in balance, however, is a gift of seeing straight 
however hard things are.

With insight, adversity is manageable;
we come to courage and choose.

The moment the breakthrough comes, you’re aware that re-writing the narrative is all before you, but at least you have an authentic, trustworthy insight to draw upon.  You take a big deep breath as you enter a new day with a newfound faith despite its known hardships.

Courage needs humility as much as confidence, 
humility and confidence in equal measure.

We endure difficult journeys 
when we have humility to keep us from self-pity, 
and confidence to keep us from giving up.

In terms of faith, confidence is trust.

A lot of the time, in the breakthrough, we’re just thankful that the ‘real us’ has returned and that the thunder cloud that seemed to hover over us is gone—for the time being at least.

Sometimes we didn’t even see that thunder cloud hanging overhead until the tempest has broken—this, too, is evidence that our insight is returning.

~

Those who have struggled with their mental health usually don’t make assumptions of others’ mental health.  Suffering teaches an innate empathy useful for the care of others.

What’s learned are simple fixes 
don’t resolve complex maladies.

A deeper appreciation of the intricacies of grief 
that can’t be denied tends to mature a person.

~

‘MENTAL (ILL) HEALTH’ OR GRIEF?

We may not ask ourselves the question, but determining the source of our struggle is pertinent.  If we find ourselves in an unavoidable situation of suffering—through any varietal of loss—our problem isn’t confined to poor mental health alone.

‘Mental health problems’ usually don’t function in isolation.  Circumstances conspire against us, and the grief that occurs outbound of loss is an unavoidable process of adjustment.  Adjustment leading to acceptance or forgiveness.

Everyone grieves losses.
Nobody is saved from this form of suffering.

Loss is not limited to losing a parent, 
a child, a sibling, a pet, or a dear friend.

It includes the dreams that are crushed, 
the career we lost,
relational betrayal or breakage, 
the material loss of a house that went up in flames, 
diminished capacities, and disability, etc.

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BREAKTHROUGHS CAN LEAD TO HEALING

When hope returns, no matter what is still ahead in the grieving, insight carries us to the valley of decision.  Will we enter or continue on the fuller journey of recovery?

Gathering our resources on a day when we’re feeling a little stronger, we can calculate our capability, we can plan, we can prepare.  We reflect on who we are; who we’d like to be.

Resources are those things we have at our disposal to help us on our journey.  Some of our resources are within us—our knowledge, our belief systems, our motivation, etc—and some of our resources are external—loved ones who might support us, mentors, and knowledge that we might glean in the present and future.

Notice just now how these experiences of suffering are the bricks on which another person will build their recovery.  Just as we build our recoveries partly on the bricks others are supplying right now through their love, care, and wisdom.  In our suffering, we are learning how we will help the next person, even as we recover.  No suffering is ever wasted.

The mental health breakthrough is a catalyst, kickstarting the hope that takes us further toward healing and wholeness.

Every journey toward healing and wholeness 
involves restorative and fortifying processes.

The restorative process makes sense—we are back to who we are.  The fortifying process is taking inventory for what we’ve learned and how we’ve developed.  The restorative process is about maintenance, and the fortifying process is about improvement.

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The end game in processing grief is reaching acceptance or forgiveness.

Acceptance is a blessing when we can accept 
the thing we cannot change.

Forgiveness is a blessing when we must accept 
a relational situation we cannot change.

Both acceptance and forgiveness 
can feel like mysteries,
but faith resolves them in time,
and with openness of heart.

In effect, loss is something hard that has occurred that we cannot change.

Given that many, many things in our lives occur that we do not like and that we cannot change, learning to grieve our losses by accepting and forgiving them is a key life skill.  The mental health breakthrough is usually the catalyst to help us get started on this work.

“Can someone please help me – I don’t like myself”

Some of you know that I’m involved in a ministry for men called “Momentum Australia.”  Recently our team received an enquiry as follows, and we were asked to comment.  My response follows the enquiry:

“I have struggled to like myself since a child. It basically forced me to abandon myself and look to my ‘betters’ to find out how to be lovable and acceptable. I had given up on me being okay right from the get go. I do know I need God’s view of me. Obviously, to really know I was good and accepted by God is a great thing. I’m 50 now. I’ve known God for 10 years. I do have a clearer picture after 10 years but there are times when it’s as if I have total amnesia and I’m lost again. I often dont know what I want to do because I’ve never valued my ideas or opinions highly. So I’m always left wondering , why am I doing this? As if I had no say. And essentially I felt I had no say. My voice in steering my course in life has probably only surfaced a few times in my life up to age 40. People say I’m a deep thinker but I’m just trying to figure out where I’m valued in this world. So far it was not found in jobs, money, marriage. All of which was very disheartening of course. It seems this is the most I can articulate my position at the moment.. knowing truly that I am good and loved by God is probably more caught than taught so to speak.  I guess I missed that growing up but I’m still alive and learning . I’m learning that I’m crippled by this emotionally . I would say I have been stepping out to follow my little voice more now that I see God.  I am in Mens groups but they all seem to be still at my stage. I’m not happy with just status quo. Someone must be ahead of me on this who has wisdom to share.”

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My response:

First, I feel as if I am not just writing a response you, but that there might be a few people who could resonate.  What you’re describing is actually a common phenomenon, it’s just that we can feel so utterly alone—like we’re the only ones—feeling this way.  Perhaps many of us felt like this one time or other in our lives.  I know I have.

Secondly, I applaud your reaching out!  Your question and your heartache speak for more than yourself!  You echo others.  Others need the same answers you do.  Others have the same question on their mind and heart but don’t have the courage to ask it, so thank you for your leadership in this.

Sometimes it takes a lot of courage to reach out like this, or perhaps you have reached out before, and you still hold out hope that some piece of information will be “the game changer”.  Maybe you don’t care anymore what it costs you to reach out—which is an awesome expression of faith.  You may not be that impressed, but there are people like me you inspire.

You refuse to believe the possibility that your life won’t get better, and I can tell you, as a pastor, that God sees your faith.  He will give you more satisfaction for yourself, or perhaps it’s more peace with yourself that God will give you, or more joy, or more hope.  It’s good to explore each of these, peace, joy, hope.

What does you liking you look like?

I can tell you that different people have different thoughts on the same question.

Other men may seem happier with themselves than you are, but the truth is it isn’t just you and them, or “us and them,” because we’re all different.  The folly we all need to reconcile is that comparison is neither true nor helpful, but as human beings we’re more or less stuck with a comparing mindset, though certain techniques—like a practised gratitude—can help alleviate problematic thinking like comparison and complaint.

I think you know how loved you are, that God loves you infinitely, beyond what you can grasp.  The struggle may be that your head or mind accepts this, or you know it at that level, but your heart hasn’t fully received it yet, in that your feelings haven’t caught up.  Or maybe you’re still on a journey of your mind accepting it?

Yes, I’d venture to say that you’re on a journey.  As a nearly 56-year-old man, myself, I can tell you that you’re in the best decade so far.  I love the sense of leaving-things-as-they-are in my fifties.  For me, it feels like the fifties are a time when I accept, and even prize, my imperfections more than ever.  I think this is important.  I’m after a little spiritual progress and have given up on spiritual perfection.

Another way of looking at this is humanity commonly has three kinds of idols it struggles to overcome—popularity, performance, possessions.

We want people to like us (popularity), we need to achieve (performance), and we feel identified in what we have (possessions).  The Christian life is best when we don’t need these, and our identity is fused to Christ.  That’s a journey for us all.

You know that you’re loved and that you’re lovable, and in the present context, you’re likeable.  You probably know people who like you just the way you are.  Are there elements of who you are today or younger versions of yourself that you like?  What is it about you that God REALLY likes?  This is about discovery because it’s not about “if”.  God likes you!

One thing that is highly likeable about you off the bat is your honesty.  Your honesty is exactly what other men need.  We need places where we can talk about inconvenient truths and awkward facts about ourselves.

None of us likes all of ourselves.  We all need reminding that God loves us.