Understanding and Accepting the Hard Things of Life

Could it be that the point of life is to learn to understand and accept the hard things?

If we learn to expect less of people,

We are less hurt when they let us down.

If we can accept that that’s where they’re at,

Perspective is grown and peace is ours.

Grace is known as a gift of favour,

To benefit those who are undeserving.

Peace is experienced as a reality,

When we covet humility.

Some people will not appreciate us,

But we are free to appreciate them.

Enjoy a good turn and give it away,

Keep the kindnesses flowing.

Play the game of life right and fair,

And God’s rewards will ultimately be yours.

Allow your grief to teach you,

He is a true and reliable guide.

Don’t think too much of yourself,

Or all your friends will vanish.

Make room in your heart for those in your life,

Whether they are family, friends, or enemies.

When your heart is full of love,

It can no longer be full of pain.

Pray in a way that if someone were listening,

They would know something of the God of creation.

Be courageous enough to wonder aloud,

For vulnerability among the mature is a blessing.

Place your bid before the Maker of Life,

And he will make a purpose of your existence.

Engage in the setting up of plays,

Planned moves have their value eventually.

If you are unafraid of hard work,

You will never fail in endeavour.

Learn the paradox of being,

That there are a plethora of reverses in life.

Don’t blame God for what is possible,

Thank God that only he can deal with the impossible.

Enter the cauldron of battle valiantly,

And you will find no reason for fear.

Sadness is everyone’s basic right,

Don’t let your shame cheat you of real emotion.

Send love by mail and don’t forget the stamp,

You don’t want the letter to fall short of its address.

Appreciate the person before you,

No matter their appearance or disposition.

Nine lives are far too many for a cat,

Only one life is needed if you choose the Lord.

Fall in love with the amazingness of grace every day,

Do this and this grace with knock you clean off your feet.

Beauty is nothing to do with outer appearance,

It is the shimmering splendour of a soul aglow.

Never think that life is unreal,

Life is only ever real, as far as we are aware.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

When Grief Teaches Resilience

This is not... a grief article. It’s a celebration for the resilience that the Holy Spirit gives us as we ask. Yet, it’s precisely through grief that the Holy Spirit will gift us with resilience. There is such a thing as the most palpable quiet and stable strength that is wrought only through treading faithfully our weakest moments. And faithfulness is defined by God, not the world.

Outcomes of transcendence are painfully borne.

Yet, the more we journey the more we realise that our feelings bear up better under the same pressure; indeed, God is allowing even more pressure to come in. It’s offensive to the Western world that God is a Refiner’s Fire. We have only benefit and not inordinate loss by accepting this. It is a key component in constructing the machinery of our resilience. As we supposedly “consider it pure joy to endure trials of many kinds” there is something incredible that happens within; a purging, purifying, yet harmonising process.

Abiding is the characteristic glue of growth. Abiding with the Holy Spirit – which so many times is about going against the world – is the key to purging and purifying.

***

As the storm carves its way,

As we bear pressure night and day,

Something comes on in,

To deal with and despatch our sin.

God is proving us to be true,

As he continues to make us new,

This pressure it will spend,

But his energy he will lend.

I hate the clichés diluting the truth of God’s revelation as it filters through as the emergent light every desperate soul needs. Many despicable things are said about ‘strength in weakness’ by people who perhaps have little true understanding (i.e. limited life experience of actual surrender when confronted by the elements of loss).

Strength in weakness is a thing to be lived, to be noted; it’s a thing to be affirmed. It is not designed as a neat ‘n’ tidy cliché.

This pressure it will spend us beyond what we can, alone, stand. This is normal. This is life for the disciple. And the opportunity is just a matter of time away for all of us. It is intended to drive us into the heart of God! Will we go? – That’s the key question.

But his energy he will lend – this is strength in weakness. He will give it for the moment and for the moment, alone. This strength is bounteous, but we must rely on God every moment.

***

Strength in weakness,

Better known as meekness,

Per life’s stormy way,

Better to have little to say.

As hope makes its way known,

Through God’s strength as it’s shown,

Somehow day is made of night,

But only by God’s gracious might.

There is little to say other than to convey love. No ‘advice’ is worthy of God when God is dealing graciously with a soul in grief, intended for resilience, part the way through the journey. And ‘somehow’ is such a powerful word as to be inexplicable.

When God’s might is experienced at the point of abject brokenness untold gifts of revelation are given.

Grief teaches resilience. It softens. It strengthens. It fires divine resolve.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Relational Peace From the Inside Out

This may be the greatest relational position of heart to acquire:

“I can neither harm nor be harmed.”

Imagine that, as a position of personality, nurtured within – acknowledging now that any of us can graduate above our present personalities, in spite of what we’ve learned – for the betterment of us and all we come into contact with. If we are committed to the above, and we can achieve it, we live a happy life and so do others, so far as their interactions with us are concerned.

This peace we discuss – to remain committed to neither harming, nor being harmed – is, first and foremost, an inside job. It has next to nothing to do with other people.

Nurturing Quietness And Kindness Within

How are we to be neither harming nor susceptible to being harmed in the overall context of our relational lives? How do we deal with the bullying element, for instance?

We know that certain personalities may attract bullying; those susceptible to harm. It is fascinating the link between those who were once bullied and those who sometimes end up becoming a bully. We can theorise that if we are susceptible to harm, we, as a human reciprocal response, have then the potential to harm others.

In protecting others, we need to work first on ourselves.

If we are to work on ourselves, making every effort to develop strategies so harm does not befall us, we do so by nurturing quietness and kindness within. By doing this we halt the cycle of inner violence, given that our submission to tyranny becomes an attack on our self-structure. And if we stop the cycle of inner violence, we stop the cycle of violence toward others. The more self-respect we have, the more respect for others we have.

We have to understand that none of the abuses that occurred to us were our fault.

We also need to understand that those that abused us were, themselves, earlier on, subjects of abuse. They have hurt us because they had been hurt. Surely, once we allow God to heal our hurts, we begin to have compassionate empathy for them. Nobody asks to be abused. And it becomes a repeating cycle.

Forging Relational Peace From Its Centre – Within Ourselves

There should be no complex way of saying this.

Peace with others commences from peace within. If we neither harm nor can be harmed we have found a safe place in ourselves.

We take care to ensure we provide safety for ourselves; the key benefactors will then be others.

Sometimes our relationship outcomes are dependent on how we respond. And how we respond to others reflects, in unconscious ways, how we respond to ourselves. It is right to question our anger – not to judge it, but to enquire of it; to learn about what is going on deeper down.

If our relationships are chaotic, and there is much conflict, we can expect the same environment is mirrored within – a chaotic and conflicted environment within both produces and is affected by the chaotic and conflicted environment from without.

We are mirrors of our world. The world appears to us as we see ourselves. If it is a harsh place, we have, perhaps without understanding, nurtured a harsh place within. If it is a place of beauty, it is beauty we have nurtured within. What do we wish to see?

Whatever we nurture within is what bursts forth. Whatever of the incoming world is accepted within, that is what we are becoming.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Why Enduring Grief Heals More Than the Loss Suffered

In grief, the counterfeit life of denial cannot stand. The voice of grief insists on being heard. And if we insist on covering our ears and closing our eyes to the obvious reality we will not only never heal, we will remain less mature than God wills us to be.

I can report this as a real experience: where we respond to the truth of grief in our loss, and we simply endure it, coming back to God each time, something very special happens. We are not only healed of the painful nuances of the loss, we are found to learn resilience and the meaning of life.

The meaning of life is to become mature, to grieve well, and to do the will of God.

Enduring the grief of loss is a worthy pastime for a single, solid reason: by endurance, our hearts are softened to compassion, and our minds are sharpened to perceive compassion. We learn so much in the pit of despair; in the chasm of calamity; in many senseless days survived, with hope retained for meaning at same stage.

When we are opened up like a steel can by the losses we experience, God wants us to remain exposed and vulnerable enough to call the tough time for what it is. God knows there’s no sense in denial and we know in our heart of hearts that we are only robbing ourselves of coming to know ourselves as we could.

One loss grieved well is learning for the losses to come. But there’s another vital truth we need to understand. The more we get used to the reality of life – that life is often so far from being desirable – the more our realities won’t bother us. The more we hold God’s will up as our only acceptable standard, the more we are not bothered as much when things don’t go precisely our way.

Getting things our own way is just not the point of life.

When we live life as if getting our own way is paramount we are childish, and there is no leadership for anyone reliant on us in that.

But just one bout of loss that was grieved well opens the doorway for how we are healed.

***

By grieving our losses well God is showing us how to handle life. A loss grieved well is the utmost preparation for life. Grieving losses patiently and compassionately teaches us about life.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Why Christian Counselling is the Best Therapy

Carl Rogers (1902–1987), the father of relational or client-centred therapy, having seen his method and read him, was very Christian in his approach to therapy – he served his clients. So valuable was his client’s experience, it was Rogers’ very platform into their world:

“Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person’s ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me.”

Out of such intrinsic ‘unknowing’ interest in the client’s experience, the counsellor is in the perfect circumstance to build relationship, open space, demonstrate genuineness, warmth, and empathy, and to nurture trust that’s assured of safety. And from there is the starting point. But where it ends is a journey that both counsellor and client travel together – in the Christian setting, replete with openness to spirituality, theology, and psychology.

Such a model might have appearances of entwinement, and of course it’s not that. Because the Christian counsellor is a servant to their client, they know the client sets the agenda, but that, in that, the counsellor always adds some value wherever they go.

A Christian counsellor will not judge or condemn an attitude or behaviour; they are moulded by their own experience, and the power of love for acceptance. Only where there is first, acceptance, is there room to entertain what might be challenged and grown through.

With a Christian counsellor, a client should never walk out hurt. A Christian counsellor so values the relationship that there is the option of apology for a mistake made in therapy. There will be such an appreciative approach in the counsellor that the client has a positive experience or no experience at all. Certainly, if nothing else is gained, relationship is enjoyed. In this way, the counselling relationship is utterly unique. There is power, but not in the traditional way; the Holy Spirit’s power is present when the counsellor’s power is vested in the client by their servant-hearted attitude.

Christian counsellors believe in faith, hope, and love, in healing and restoration, and that is precisely what they hope to encounter with every client, every single time; something transformational – in both of them.

Even if a person were not of practicing Christian faith they would benefit from such an approach. The exemplification of the fruit of the Spirit should be in the Christian counsellor – they exude joy, peace, love, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, generosity, and self-control. Such ‘fruit’ compels an attitude of grace toward the client, which is seen as flexibility, and that is love. The client cannot lose, ever.

***

Christian counselling goes beyond keeping the client in a holding pattern. Through the relationship, which is inherently accepting, the client experiences hope for healing. The relationship is genuine, warm, empathic, and wholly giving. The philosophy is that the client cannot lose, ever.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Photo: from Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counselling, by Mark McMinn, Ph.D.