When Being ‘Real’ is the Only Deal

It is well. In the present season, with all its uncertainty (and its tragic sense of certainty), we ask ourselves, “How are we going, really?”

All we can do is take life as it comes. It’s all any of us can or should do. But we didn’t just arrive at this point without having done some significant grief work through previous seasons of life. Many moments of irreconcilable sadness we have met. Even my earliest experience of a well-met loss was a great training ground. With the carpet of life pulled from under me, my only choice was to rely fully on God. And because that rug was pulled so far away from me I had to learn how to live without it; I learned to live by grace alone. Reality was no longer the villain, it became my safety.

Many people run from reality. It is too harsh for them. Many realities are too harsh, but when we learn that every reality can be endured, patiently, with grace, in temperance, then we have a priceless spiritual gift that underpins our mental and emotional health.

Being real is the only ‘deal’ we should ever be interested in. As the truth makes its way over our consciousness – as it involves us emotionally – and as we attempt to reconcile it – we have the choice to run and hide or to face up to it. We dare not be the aggressor, but why also should we submit?

If we stabilise ourselves – especially in loss – knowing that strength will come, as we rely on God, we brace for a faithful reality with a faithful God.

We have nothing to fear in life when we analyse life.

If we do not fear the losses that will come against us, those we imagined, those that blindsided us, and those that were simply too incredible to conceive, we know we have plied our faith well.

Suffering is relative to the work we have put in, as well as our theology; if we see suffering as something of a proving process we resent it less. We receive it with more grace. We have the ability to be real.

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Where God wants us so far as loss is concerned is at a point where we can reconcile reality. When we can handle the truth, and yet we are also broken in sadness, then we have the correct basis for grieving well.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.