Life is perplexing for a reason. That short six-worded statement would seem unhelpful if only we had no way of reconciling it. But we do have a way to deal with what occurs to us; the traumatic events of life that leave their impression upon our bodies and minds.
We know denial doesn’t work, and if anything, it only prolongs the agony whilst we engage in behaviours that further complicate the grief we experience.
We know that raging about it doesn’t work either. Have any of us ever felt more at peace having taken our anger out on something or someone? It can often be a temptation to justify that behaviour, but truly it doesn’t lead us in the right direction.
There has to be another way for adequately treating the losses we experience, particularly those ones that we find have been traumatic. How do we bring our bodies to peace and our minds to a satisfactory order?
Rather than responses of fight or freeze or flight we are invited into function. All we want to do when we’re stuck in fight or freeze or flight is to be able to function again.
Amid the turmoil of loss, it’s such a temptation to panic, to lose it, to say to hell with it all, or to avoid, run, depart. To the worst extremes, temptation exudes power, convincing us its way is right.
So the temptations of attack and escape never work out. The third way is the only way. The third way is to believe in the narrative spoken deep into our heart of a hope that can transpire if only we give God the room to move, to work, to gently and patiently grow something from nothing.
It seems nothing will ever work out. I know this. I’ve been there. I’ve tasted that kind of season twice in the past sixteen years, and both times I had to insist on holding to the vision God had given me of redemption. In both cases, redemption took three years to the day (which I’m not suggesting is the way it will be for others, just that God has shown me divine faithfulness to this level of specificity.)
Let me take you deeper. Both times, my worst year was absolutely foundational and pivotal, but only as I looked back with the wisdom of hindsight. I was fortunate in one sense, that the first of these times I did sense that every time I gave something up materially, I was somehow blessed spiritually — that God was faithful to the degree that I was rewarded spiritually even in the dearth of a calamitous season.
We can only hope when our hope is shattered, because hope is all we have, recalling what the Bible says; faith is the expression of a hope that is unseen but believed upon. It is totally foreign to not believe in our hope, and the effect is it makes us into tyrants of a temptation’s manipulation. So we hope or we despair. That’s not much of a choice.
None of us, backs pushed against the wall, willingly go the third way, which is to reject the overtures of temptation to run and hide or attack from unsteady footing. But we must overcome the grappling desire to have things righted our way, in our time, exactly to the degrees of comfort and satisfaction we demand. Whoever got what they wanted from life simply by demanding it? Life doesn’t work like that.
See how that’s a good desire; to have justice done; to have our day of redemption; to be restored. God wants to restore us, but when we get in the way of the passage of divine grace, we destroy the Lord’s plan — thankfully, our Lord is patient, and none of us have cooperated anywhere near perfectly. Yet it works out for our good and for God’s purpose.
In the between time, we must continue to hunt with the passion of the truth-bearer, honestly sacrificing, through godly sorrow, our own desires for the better will of God, who wants the best for us, but in ways we hardly reckon are even good.
We must stick with God, trusting divine purpose in the madness of moments we have no control over. Sure, we must stay safe and not be around toxic people. God blesses our healing when we strip away negative influences that only goad us into reacting and wrong responding. We cannot recover if others continually assert themselves abusively. We do need a clear way.
Trusting in the reality of our own redemption story is believing upon a hope that seems strangely disconnected from what even seems possible, but which is in fact intrinsically and divinely connected, and which must surely come to pass.
Remember we’re dealing in the realm of God, and God is in the business of doing the impossible. Believe upon the ‘impossible’, be steadfast and true, and God will do it. This is how towers of faith are built. Only by seeing happen what is done that we can’t do.
Simply allow the Lord to do what only God can do, and it will be done, even if it takes a significant period of time.
Be as faithful as you can be in the meantime.
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