A funeral closer to my own

I had a vision at the funeral I went to last Friday.  The words appeared resplendent in my consciousness: “You are one funeral closer to your own.”  Speak of a humbling moment that spoke gratitude deep into the fissures of my heart.

Not just a sombre thought, but a wise
and self-compassionate thought:
every funeral I go to is
one that’s closer to my own.

Death is not something that any of us should be afraid of, principally because it is inevitable, and those who believe have a hope for a beautiful life beyond this one.

Death is beautiful if only we can imagine another reality beyond death and loss and grief.  See how in transforming our perception we retrieve hope out of despair?  

The spiritual life conquers every fear
this side of the eternal gasp.

The spiritual life sees realities beyond the constraints of the physical life.  It is unencumbered by the things that we see and hear and feel.  The spiritual life is open to all possibilities that are otherwise invisible to this world’s eyes. 

The value of this spiritual concept
is undeniable in the here and now,
as well as over the lifespan
as we look back at the end of it.

Perhaps overall this is the only thing we really need to master in his life, given that death and loss and grief are challenges that would cause all to stumble.

Loss is an activator for life and grief is its teacher.  But the nemesis of the life of learning is entitlement.  Entitlement is nestled in all of us.  It looms largest when we kick against the goads.  When we insist upon a control we don’t have.

Entitlement insists we have
control over that which we don’t.  

Once our ego of entitlement—that which insists we have control over that which we don’t—has been dealt with—that is, it is destroyed—we can live, at last.  

See how it is that loss was the activator of this process, and that it was grief that taught us?  See how life emerges out of death?  See the wisdom in the notion of resurrection?

Grief teaches us to hold life extremely lightly,
and by this feather-hold we live grateful.

And gratitude unadorned is true life.

We are all on a journey toward our own funeral.  Live with that concept front of mind and we live wisely numbering, and thankful for, our days.  Loss and grief takes us close to these spiritual realities, and that (for me) is the purpose in the suffering that awaits us all.  

Living in the knowledge
that the best is yet to come
is wisdom enshrined
in an indefatigable hope.

Enduring the Traumas of Life

To wonder about the purpose of suffering in this world is a very human dilemma.  Frankly, there is no clean, sustaining answer to the traumas of life.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a purpose to be ultimately derived. 

That’s secondary for me in the present context.

What I really want to focus on is how we endure the traumas of life.

So much of life can feel like we’re just going through the motions, until, as the old song says, “at 4:00 PM on some idle Tuesday”[1] life changes, and suddenly we’re thrust head long into a tailspin, and that is usually a pile on, because with one crisis often comes four or five—a series of unfortunate events.

For me, it was losing my first marriage, my home, everyday access to my children, the need to change jobs, the wrestle with alcoholism, the loneliness and grief, amid the terror of thoughts I had no idea about—as a then-36-year-old in 2003, I’d never suffered before.  And in 2014, losing our son Nathanael to stillbirth came in a season where there were two other equally momentous challenges thrown down as our gauntlet to endure.

It’s a cruel twist of fate when we’re trauma-triggered because when we most need the resources of endurance, least are they accessible or present at our disposal; harkens us to the supports we dearly need that others can provide or loan to us.

I’ll never forget talking with a parent who had lost a young adult child very tragically, suggesting that she epitomised courage in stepping out each day.  Poignantly, she said, “No, it’s not courage, but endurance.”  The more I reflected on what she had said, the more I had to concede that though it seemed courageous to me, it is more about endurance which implies courage and so much more.

When we enter a period or season of suffering, so much of it is irreparable. So much suffering involves loss and grief where we are catapulted into a new reality that we must at some stage accept as our new normal.  So many people I know hate that term, new normal, and understandably so.  I remember back in 2003 a wiser person telling me that I was entering “a journey” [of grief]; at the time I can remember resenting what I had heard.  The truth was too stark to handle.

Enduring the traumas of life is the hardest skill
to master, because it is a character skill.

I often think of the motion picture “The Revenant” (2015) as one way I have thought grief works in re-arranging our philosophies of being.  For me, something was killed in me in 2003-2004 that no longer needed to die in 2014.  I was more resilient in 2014 for what I’d endured in 2003-2004.

For me at least, enduring the traumas of life puts the rest of our lives into better perspective.  There is a depth of gratitude in me now that has a direct referent back to the traumas I’ve suffered.

I know that I hold life lightly, much lighter than I previously did, and my philosophy of life and death is implicitly spiritual, and therefore sustainable these days. 

WHAT we are in this life is how we behave and
interact with our world and the people around us.

We are here for a short period of time, and the Bible reminds us that we are like grass, we “flourish like a flower of the field… [but] the wind blows over it and it is gone.” (Psalm 103:15-16)

These are some of the things that suffering teaches us, and I don’t know a person who hasn’t drawn significant meaning out of suffering as they had reflected over it at the end of it.

The purpose in suffering is, in fact, enduring it.

There are many lessons to be learned within it, yet the paradox is WHEN we are suffering that is the time we least want to be learning, and least have the resources demanded of such a season.

The unfairness of suffering is that it comes when we least expect it, when we have the least resource to deal with it, when we are most vulnerable and susceptible to all types of peril.

Surely now if you’re in that place of enduring,
hold on and get your support, one day at a time,
endure this time, because better times are coming,
where your endurance will pay handsomely.

---

[1] The full lyric of Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen): “The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4:00 pm on some idle Tuesday.”

So you want a peace-filled existence?

Here’s how.  Counterintuitive I know; go against your better judgement and read on.  It’s this: realise that your life is not your own.  

This is where Christians ought to have the advantage, but 99 percent of us do not apply the gospel message of following Jesus and therefore miss out on the “abundant life” freely available to us.

For a Christian, their life is “in Christ.”  Their life is no longer their own.  Sounds cultish.  But as soon as we let go of all we insist on having our own way, peace comes rushing right in like a king tide.

The testimony of life itself
is that our lives are not our own.

So many things occur against our will and control.  The ultimate truth is my life is not my own in death—it has the final say against our wishes most of the time.  So often death is a crushing reality.  But we face a million ‘deaths’ while we’re alive.

Why would we continue to insist we can control what we can’t?  Instead, power for peace, and not just peace, but hope and joy, comes rushing into our lives when we have let go of ALL our futile demands.

THE TYRANY OF DEMAND

We are fooled into thinking—indeed, self-deceived—when we imagine we can demand anything of life, persons, and situations.  

We can present our wishes but the moment these blur into demands is the moment we’ve lost our wisdom and have entered the folly of futility.

Demands make people tyrants.  And the irony of this tyranny is the self-absorbed concept that “I’m entitled” to demand but others are not.  Think of a demanding person in your life; do they allow others to be demanding to them?  No, they don’t.  They are miserable and they are miserable to live with.

THE CHALLENGE OF ULTIMATE PEACE

There is a consistent way to peace that works—every time.

When we go the audacious way of accepting our lives are not our own—besides the freedom of choice to do the good things we can—we actually come close to perceiving the potential about ourselves we can unlock and mobilise.  

Like becoming free of the self-concept that “I’m a fake,” “my dreams are dashed,” “I’ll never be good enough,” “I can never forgive myself,” “I’ll never live up to their expectations,” etc.  And myriad other judgements for our own and others expectations that cannot be met.  Only when those narratives lose their power will we walk free into the narrative of what-can-possibly-be.  “In Christ” I am more than myself.  If I can agree that I am HIS, I am free of my own and others judgements that all too often prove debilitating.

We stand in our own way far too often when we insist on taking control of situations and people, vouching for and advocating for ourselves.

ACCEPTING & CREATING DESTINY

Some of our destiny is in our own hands, a lot of it actually.  The biggest determinant of our destiny is our attitude toward those things that occur that we cannot change.  

This is a jarring irony. 
By getting out of our own way,
we create pathways for not only peace
but for a gracious destiny to unfold.

What loss is it that we don’t receive what we otherwise would love?  If it wasn’t meant to be ours, why is the rest of our life derailed?  There are so many of these things, so why would we subject ourselves to obvious levels of disappointment and despair?

Being at peace with our world and in our life is up to us.

The journey unfolds when we accept that our lives aren’t fully ours—part of us belongs to others, part of us belongs to the unknowable and sometimes shocking aspects of an ever-unfolding life, and for Christians, there is a beautiful but bittersweet paradox that our freedom comes from surrender.

Giving up what we cannot control
wins for us peace and freedom.

There is no better way to the life abundant.

A little faith in a good hope is good enough

There are seasons in life where there is much prosperity, just as there are seasons where we are being refined.  Being refined doesn’t happen when life is spared of challenges.  The saving grace of hardship and grief and difficulty and trials and every other kind of setback is the hope we have for recovery.

Within a single day we may face the changing of seasons, for example, happiness morphed into sadness morphed into anxiety morphed into relief.  All in the one day or week—a mishmash of emotions of reality.

Within a single day we can also find ourselves cast into a season of refining.

These are seasons where we’re backwashed in a torrent of pain we cannot reconcile, where we find ourselves just battling to survive emotionally and spiritually.

And that season can last months.  If not years.  Hard to reconcile the length of those terms.

And what is it that characterises the particular season where life has plunged into death?

I don’t mean death from a literal viewpoint, of course, or death from an eternal life perspective, either, but I mean death to the old life.  That old life is gone.

Indeed, it could very well be argued by many of us that with the old life gone, a new life becoming, we have not plunged into death, on the contrary, we have been inserted into life; the only true life we were ever destined to experience.

Yet it’s hard, even impossible to the many who have been there and walked the other way.

Many found it all too hard, because the reality is, it’s a living hell.  Those who haven’t been there don’t truly know what such grief is like.  It is many times worse than anyone could perceive it beforehand.

And yet, what becomes most apparent, especially as we journey together with hope-filled others who are on that same distressing journey, we are living our faith better than we ever have done before.

Nothing says “faith” better than living bravely amid loss.  And nothing compels faith more than a hope in a realistic expectation for recovery.

There are many hopes we can pin our faith to, but not all of these are true and wise and realistic.  If our hope sails on the wind of convenience, of dreams that won’t come true, of expectations that are overblown, such a false hope will end our faith journey at some point.

But recovery is inevitably a good hope, because our expectations are based solely in what we will do as individuals.  See how this is a good hope?  Where we have agency, we have power, and that power is for change—the change we’ve always wanted to live into.

See how the hope of recovery is not contingent on other people or in situations that may not come true?  The hope of recovery is simply a hope that in recovery, by faith, we will survive, we will adapt, and inevitably we will overcome.  Recovery is a simple, achievable hope.  So long as we keep doing the basic things, we advance upon the path toward the objective.

A little faith in a good hope is all you need when you have nothing else, provided that good hope is based in the premise of reality.  Indeed, that’s the definition of “good hope.”  Good hope, as opposed to false hope, will see a person succeed on their journey of recovery.

~

The astounding thing about these conjoined concepts, faith and hope, is that hope will lead us by faith to the goal, even if that is years away.  Indeed, it is compelling, from a spiritual viewpoint, that the only way to genuinely live—the abundant life, I mean—is by such faith.

Isn’t it both interesting and paradoxical that we only start living by faith when we enter struggle street?  We don’t need faith beforehand.  Why is it that many are disinterested in God?  They either don’t need the divine presence, or they had a negative experience of “God” through a negative example of church or spirituality.  God is completely reframed to the positive through loss and grief when we recognise we need something completely external to ourselves.

Faith comes to the fore at the time of trial.  Until our lives have been turned upside down, we have a little reason to rely on God.

Yet the truth is God will be found when we need him most.  “Ask..., seek..., knock” and the knowledge of God is granted, but we are disinterested until we’re interested.

It is faith that will get us to where we need to go, yet it is a true hope that we need to have faith in.  If our goal is simply a content life, where we can be a blessing to others, that hope is a real hope that anyone can attain.

Living the Blessed Wisdom Life

Wisdom in this life is determined by taking responsibility for our life and allowing others to take responsibility for theirs.

In sum, this is the internal locus of control, staying within OUR control.

It is staying within our sphere of influence.  It is accepting and embracing the limitations of our control.  It is accepting that we can do what we can do, that we should do what we can.

What I think, say, and do – all of it – is MY responsibility.  Nobody else can be accountable for it.  Nobody else is responsible for that which is within only my control.

Just the same, I’m not accountable for what another person thinks, says, or does.  That’s their choice.  I cannot control what you think, say, or do, but you can.  I can affect and impact on others, but it is their choice how they act as it is mine how I act when others affect and impact me.

When we stay within our control, we master the moment, and we live our best life in the moment, and joy, hope, and peace come into view.

Does it simplify life too much to say that there is one main goal and that this is it?  I don’t think so.  If only we can accept the things WE cannot change and change what WE can, we live The Serenity Prayer.  We need serenity in our life to do these very things, just as doing these things gives us serenity.  When we have these, we have self-care.

In too many respects, we make life more complicated than it needs to be.  If we truly want to succeed in any endeavour in life, it is good to come back to this unchanging truth: 

Be responsible for what WE alone are responsible for.

The challenge is to live out of this paradigm and attest to its power.  When we stay in this paradigm, we soon find the cogency of its power.  We live it out.  When we stay in this, we find the freedom of having been freed of needing to control what we cannot change and of accepting the control we have.  This simple wisdom elixir of living this out solves many mental health maladies or significantly helps us manage them.

If we can see that this one thing leads to the successful life, we redefine for ourselves what true success looks like — as a spiritual truth.  Then we realise there’s nothing more powerful.  This simple truth sets us free, and it is the key to gratitude, hope, joy, and peace.

The healing in a sorrow entered

It’s beautiful when you experience the solemnness of sorrow by entering it.

Those who grieve know there’s no avoiding it, unless by dissociation we avoid the threat of pain.  The pain is not in the sorrow but in the ravages of loss.  The sorrow will heal us if we enter it.

And when we enter the sorrow, we connect with eternity, God.

When we plunge into the purity of our sorrow it doesn’t break us, it mends us.  By entering our truth, by allowing the overwhelm to penetrate and break through the crust of our fear for submitting to it, the truth of our situation sets us free — to be taken deep into the heart of God.

People don’t need God until they need God.  And when we need God long enough, and we habitually enter our sorrow, we learn that God is real, that God will do what nothing else will or can.

Faith in these ways gets us, even as we get it.  These words make sense to the one who gets them.

By entering the purity of pain, by honouring the truth as it is in our lives — that loss has ripped our heart out — we are ultimately healed. 

By faith we are held there in grief for long enough to learn through repetition.  We are terrified of the dread of it, mortally fearful of the pain of it, but we cannot learn this spiritual competency of entering sorrow without being held there — for months, sometimes years.  Somehow we are given a foretaste of healing that keeps us going through the hell of it, in faith.  And this is good enough for us, because we cannot change our circumstances. 

Those who need this are there and they know.  This is for them, perhaps not for you.

Think of it this way: there is something that we all ought to feel and know and touch and experience in this life, but nobody wants to go there, because it feels worse than death.

8 years ago, just three weeks before I was to enter another tremendous season of sorrow that lasted a long time, I called this the revenant blessing (<< hyperlinked).

It takes enormous faith to submit and to let go.  Yet that’s all that’s required of us to enter the eternal.  God does God’s thing, has done throughout eternity.  People have been doing this for thousands of years.  It is there for us too.

How?  When crushed, be crushed.  When overwhelmed, be overwhelmed.  When teary, be teary.

There’s no rocket science in it, which is why we make it a hard thing.  “Surely there’s more to it!”

No.  Go into the purity of your truth, and by entering truth the path to healing commences — a moment’s healing to begin with, perhaps the following day in a few seconds of gratitude.  Months and years of this practice gives us access to eternity now. 

Search it and find it.  It’s there for the partaking.

An Authentic, Enduring, Transforming Recovery

The earliest days of my recovery from binge drinking were heady.  That was 7,500-odd days ago.  

Even though I never for one moment missed alcohol, it was in fear and trembling that I counted one-day-at-a-time in my journey to sobriety — acutely aware that I was one temptation, one sip, away from a relapse.

With each day following the last, again and again and again, more confidence was built that I’d not return to what was for me the ‘demon drink’.

But recovery isn’t only about staying ‘dry’ — and AA majors on this through the Twelve Steps.  

The steps aren’t a bandaid of abstinence, they are a program of life for transformation — into an inspiring life of ‘making amends’.

There is no better protection against relapse than cauterising the need to drink at its source by living a life of power and gratitude.  This life is one of dealing with all fear, guilt, and shame.  “Life” in all its abundance.

But there are still the initial days and weeks of getting sober, and that’s the stuff of wing-and-prayer.

Authentic recovery is both enduring and transforming.  It must last and the changes we make must last.  Both dimensions — time and growth — are needed for authentic recovery.

One thing we must accept as we do the maintenance steps 10-12 is that we cannot do another person’s recovery for them; that is THEIR work much as it was our work that we did or are doing.  We cannot make it easier for anyone.  

But one day at a time it works IF we work it.

Victim or Victorious? Life’s most pressing choice

Of all my nearly 60 years on the planet, living this life, the most important practical thing I know is the concept of CHOICE.

Agency is another word we could use. The agency or choice of going the right way. The right way is often harder but easier in the longer run.

Our response to the things that happen to us in this life.

The. Most. Important. Thing.

Being Christian, a pastor, a chaplain, other Christians will say, well, what about your faith, Jesus, God your Saviour—isn’t THAT the most important thing?

Faith does us and others no good if we
continue to choose to NOT follow it.

Faith says, “There is only one good way to respond to life’s injustices. Have faith. Respond well. Own what is yours to own. Repent as and when needed. Keep doing good. Let go of what you can’t control.”

One way of interpreting Galatians 6:9 is, “Let us resist despair and keep doing good, for at the right time we will achieve our goal if we don’t give up.”

Easier said than done? Of course!
But, doable… and most of all, it’s n e c e s s a r y... to succeed.

I know from raw hardship and pure hell that at times life can crush the choice out of us, but one thing we can’t deny is we must still respond well. We MUST find a way to defy the logic that says, “I’m doing things my way.” “My way” is almost always the selfish and foolish way.

We all face a battle with our attitude, the tussle of flesh versus spirit, good versus bad, and the temptation to get back or get even, taking the law into our own hands.

The good always serves us in the long haul and we know it,
but it doesn’t usually FEEL good.

The choices we make otherwise to take control of situations we don’t have control of always leads to poor choices that inevitably have consequences.

None of us can afford the folly of playing the victim. We must choose to respond as a victor to become the eventual victor. 

Being the victim makes life miserable.
Being victorious of attitude brings hope. 

Will we operate out of the victim and give ourselves over to self-sabotage? Will we continue to blame others and suffer the consequence of throwing away our only power; to change ourselves? 

Or will we choose to respond as if we are already victorious? Because inevitably that response does lead to victory.

Victory over temptation in the short term.
Victory of a legacy that serves us
and others in the longer term. 

The victorious life is one good decision leading to another, in series with more good decisions, that leads ultimately to victory.

When life turns south, we are all tempted to wallow in the role of victim. It’s the default. To have the insight to turn victim into victorious, that is courage, faith, strength, selflessness, wisdom, all rolled into one. Simply because we had the humility to be honest.

The truth sets us free (John 8:32).

Freedom’s peace is in the last place we look

Just about everyone fights to achieve peace.  Ironically, we all tend to go about it the wrong way.  The tension arises in our insistence that we have it our way when life doesn’t work like that.

My favourite work is probably spending time with individuals broken by their life circumstances.  It usually corresponds with their rock bottom.  

It reminds me acutely of my own rock bottom in 2003—a rock bottom that lasted a year or more because of my life circumstances at the time.  Endurance was and is the lesson.  Having believed it would take place—I would not have made it if I didn’t have that faith—I praise God for the rescue availed to me.

That rescue is as simple as this:
“The truth shall set you free.”  

If that truth means we are trapped in freedom’s opposite—bondage—we see that the rock bottom descends farther down the more we ‘insist’ on refusing to take hold of our freedom.

L.I.S.T.E.N.

There comes a time in all our lives when our life is screaming at us to listen—to take heed of what our life would tell us if only it could speak.  

But of course, our life can and does speak to us.  How ‘fortunate’ or ‘unfortunate’ are we at present?  How is our approach to life working?  If we’re in an angry, bitter, resentful season, is that serving us and others?  And what are others in our lives saying?

There is a tragic irony at play in those whose lives are going to rack and ruin.  I know from direct lived experience.

When we most of all should listen,
we are least likely to.

Those who can listen to WHAT their lives are telling them—yes, that’s us—no matter how ugly or uncomfortable that message is—demonstrate the humility to grow.  They exhibit a growth mindset.  

Those who refuse to listen continue to lose what little they have; they create damage and contribute to disorder rather than invest in the fabric of life.

Here is an acronym to help:

Listen
Intently
Solemnly
Totally
Even
Now

Listening intently, solemnly as if it is all that matters, with the totality of our being, each moment, even now, staying in the present.  One moment at a time.  In faith, we are on the right track to that peace we seek.

Those who listen tend to succeed in life
because listening is central to humility.

“For those who exalt themselves will be humbled,
and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
(Matthew 23:13)

But we don’t typically take much heed of the direct path to success because we think taking control is what works.  

But this negates the fact that in life
there are so many things beyond our control.

The person who accepts what they cannot change—others, and many situations—and who changes the things they can—themselves, and their own responses—ultimately succeeds because these two are wisdom that leads to serenity.

Freedom’s peace is in the last place we look: the place of letting go when we prefer to clutch hold of our control so tightly.  The only thing we ought to clutch hold of tightly is what WE are responsible for.  Everything else WE ought to routinely learn to let go of.

Blue sky above grey clouds

 

One of the easiest things to forget on cloudy days is the presence of the hope-filled blue sky above.

Likewise, it’s so easy to forget when we are encumbered by grey cloud emotions that what exists beyond it is a blue sky more hope-filled reality above it.

There is a blue sky above, on the sunny days when life is easy, and also on those harder, darker, cloudy days and seasons.

We often need to be reminded. I know when I have suffered my darkest days, it’s almost like I have no insight for that blue sky above that reigns resplendent as an ever-present irrepressible reality. I so quickly forget that the blue sky exists beyond the cloudy circumstances of my life.

Isn’t it a cosmic irony, when we most need to see the hope-filled blue sky above, we are encumbered by this darker grey cloud that drives us into an oblivion of despair.

The opposite reality is also true, because we see people full of hope when we are in the grips of grief, and it can feel harsh and isolating when people rejoice when we are mourning.

The sky is always blue, no matter what  
I otherwise feel is true.

The sky is blue, no matter what
I’m going through.