We’ll always be who we were

I can remember being a person who had self-control in certain emotional situations where others didn’t.  Then a season of life came during my 40s where I lost that sense of self—where I gave in to those emotions.

We can easily begin to believe that we lose touch with those parts of ourselves we were justifiably proud of.  I’ve had counselling clients who have also said, “I really thought I’d lost that part of myself,” when they were shown that those parts of self hadn’t disappeared.

We all need a certain reminding that we’ve not lost those parts of ourselves we cherish.

That which we identify with—even if it seems a long way back, and even if it seems we can no longer connect those dots—can always come back into view.  It’s not gone.

What was part of you that you still cherish is still part of you, it just might need rearranging in who you are today.

For me, all those years I resisted actually giving up and throwing my hands in the air, watching on as others did, didn’t serve me as well as being placed in situations where I was pushed too far.

Being pushed too far by life and finding that I really do have limits that are beyond my SELF control has shown me an empathy I need to see the plight of others in real terms.

Yet in falling into a state of being that others see as a weakness, because they have no empathy for situational matters, means I lived in a place of believing I was ‘less than’ and perhaps even ‘not good enough’.

I’m glad to have been there, because that kind of demoralising state of mind really affects a person.  It intuits within us such a strong sense of doubt when we’re in that place that we begin to lose who we are.  We’re then tremendously vulnerable to the exploitation of others, because we stop speaking up for ourselves and others.

Perhaps it says more about others who judge us according only to what they see and not according to how we feel in challenging situations.

Empathy in situations where people are behaving emotionally is the first step to them being understood in WHY they’re responding certain ways.

Clawing our way back to a stronger sense of self—especially to reclaim certain character traits that are inherently part of who we see ourselves—is vital in the makeup of who we are.

If you feel you’ve lost part of who you are, and you’re grieving having lost that trait, be encouraged that that part of you is probably still there, and it will shine again, just in different ways.

You will always be you.  And you are beloved.

The Bible doesn’t say you won’t be tested beyond your ability to bear

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
— 1 Corinthians 10:13

One of the passages taken most out of context is the one set out above.

How can it be that this is misconstrued to say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle”?  But this is what comes out of the mouths of certain believers, believing it’s biblical.  Well, it isn’t!

What the verse is saying is true: God doesn’t TEMPT any of us beyond our capacity to endure, and yet we all fall into temptation from time to time, but no temptation is beyond us.  We have a way out.  There is a way to endure temptation and respond in the right way so to not become ensnared by sin.

It’s about not confusing temptation with testing.

God won’t allow us to be TEMPTED beyond our ability to endure.  We all know the nature of temptation—we usually have many warnings to back out and go another way.  The way we know this is through living a life of giving into temptation for an extended time.  We enter the temptation as a risk-versus-return transaction.  It’s a calculated risk where we wager morality against the opportunity of getting away with it.

We slide further into freedom and further away from responsibility never quite understanding that freedom wanes as responsibility does.  Freedom without responsibility is bondage, so the irony is it’s no freedom at all.

No human being is beyond temptation—and blessed are those who humbly accept this fact.

The one who says “I’m beyond falling into temptation” hasn’t understood the biblical truth that pride precedes a fall.

But the one who is tested by loss, who is thwarted for a time in paralysing grief, is so far from pride, temptation is the farthest thing from their mind and barely a distant risk; simply surviving is their magnum opus.

The majestic irony is the one who is broken by their circumstances probably wouldn’t fall into a temptation unless to do so would meet a basic need of human connection.  Such a temptation wouldn’t arise through greed or lust or sloth, but through the void of loss, which is due to the need of love.

To say God won’t allow us to be TESTED beyond our ability to endure is to put the suffering of broken, fallen world and a frail humankind into God’s own hand.

This is because, quite frankly, people are tested beyond their ability to endure every single day, in every street, town, city, state, nation, and continent of the world, throughout history.  There is just so much suffering in this world.  God understands.

Jesus himself was tested beyond his human ability to endure.  Jesus broke down, and he shows us via his compassion that this humanity is beautiful, and never disdainful.

To be broken through what should break anyone is not a pretty thing, but it’s a human being folding under the stress and hardship that would make any reasonable person fold.

Temptation is a real thing and it’s one test that we can endure if we’re wise and humble and honour the truth.  But loss and grief and mental illness WILL test us beyond our ability to endure.

The truth of 1 Corinthians 10:13 is it was never written about those situations that happen to us.  It was written about those situations we make or allow to happen.

Having just seen a video where a father must say goodbye to his 7 or 8 year old daughter in Ukraine, them both sobbing inconsolably, with the mother there too, reminds us that the unfathomable is real.  It’s never too far from any of us.

The sacrifice of love is never wasted

Paul in Corinthians says, in effect, “I can do the most impressive thing possible, but if I do not have love,” it’s just noise, he has nothing, and he gains nothing.  It’s not just that everything without love is a waste of time and effort.  The fact is the very best achievements and accomplishments are nothing without love.

Imagine the very best things that have been accomplished and achieved in the history of humankind, but without love.  Wars.  From one viewpoint, greatness was accomplished due to an invasion.  Without love.  Worse than nothing.  Incredible harm and trauma.

Grounding this message in the reality of our day-to-day relationships, nothing that we do in the sacrifice of love is wasted, even if it feels like it’s a waste of time and effort.

To ensure we never get discouraged and therefore cease our good works of love, we need to sustain those good works through the affirmation of prayer, like, “I know, God, that it seems to me to be a waste of time that I’m kind and patient and gentle when others aren’t, but I know you see and that you’ll turn it out for good eventually.”

Love always lags.  The love of absorbing someone else’s hurtful choices, for instance, doesn’t feel good at all, but if they’re capable of love, the grace we show will never be a waste.

Love always lags in that it can take days or weeks or years to get a return on our investment.  That investment is not about being treated well as much as it is about encouraging others to the higher standard of dignity of love.  Love is an investment that believes its actions can eventually influence others for good.

Time and again (though not always) people come back to acknowledge such undeserved favour bestowed on them.  Yet those who do not come back prove our love is to our credit.

When we can smile for the simple fact that we loved when they didn’t it means we really understand love is something we give as a choice with no requirement for reciprocation.  

Such love also attempts to understand WHY people don’t love or seem to protect themselves.

Such love is about the only genuine freedom there is.  To choose to love is a power that can change the world because no evil can overcome such a choice.

But such love is the ultimate sacrifice.  Jesus is the exemplar of such love which is the greatest faith.

“I can be patient and kind and gentle with you, and your response can’t and won’t change how I treat you.  When I choose to be loving toward you, no matter how you treat me, I have more power than you and you know it!—especially when I smile genuinely from my heart.”

Love is a power that overcomes.  No reaction to dissuade us from love works if we keep loving in the faith that nothing of love is ever wasted.

To love and keep loving is a way of protecting our heart, but inevitably we’ll need some love in our lives to support us and to sustain our love.

It takes a lot of courage to keep loving in faith that it won’t be a waste of time.  Such courage, such humility, such vulnerability is always good for us.  It broadens us in the strength of character to keep loving without condition because it’s only unconditional kindness, patience, gentleness that meets the stringent test of love.

Enduring those moments that nothing in life prepares us for

As I entered a meeting recently, I got talking with the host who reflected with me a moment in their life where life stood still; a terrifying bushfire reality where people and property losses were a clear and present danger.  The moment came and fortunately went in a matter of minutes, everything unscathed.  Everything was at the mercy of that moment, people’s survival, and entire properties.

Just as that particular moment stood still, so did the moment of remembrance, as we just stared at each other.  Stuck in the moment.

Moments like these take our breath away.  They leave us unequivocally vulnerable.  We realise just how small we truly are.

Such moments put all of life into better perspective.

One of those moments for us was preparing to meet our deceased son.  Like many parents who’ve had stillborn children, there might be a few moments or a few hours where the numbness of loss is wrestled with, amid the utter impossibility of reconciling such a moment.

Yet what must be wrestled with, with some resolution I might add, is the meeting with the little one.  I’m not sure there’s a more bittersweet moment than meeting the one you’ve been desperate to meet but meeting them in the most devastating way.

It’s an example of a moment that leaves an indelible reminder on your soul.  We kind of asked ourselves if we had what it took to endure a moment nothing in life prepares you for.

Like the diagnosis of your disabled child, or your scammed of your life savings, the sudden death of a loved one, or your betrayed in a way you could never see coming.

Not all moments are equal, but many moments are just simply earth shattering.

As we reflect over our lives, those of us who have endured some of these moments that were too momentous to comprehend have had the eyes of our hearts opened.

The traumas we’ve endured have not so much damaged us as they’re awakened us to the suffering possible in this life.  There’s nothing quite like meeting someone who’s been to your kind of hell and back, like those who’ve been through divorce, child loss, the loss of a partner, the loss of a parent, the loss of a dream or a living, etc.  Instantly there’s connection.

Enduring a moment that nothing in life prepares you for is but a preparation for the rest of life in and of itself.  We’d not wish that sense of inner panic that can’t go anywhere on our worst enemy.

We survive those moments of horrific heart terror because we don’t have an option but to endure them.  It’s a trauma and yet the trauma is but part of the overall assignment of recovery because the grief is horrendous.

But there is something we gained in meeting our son, Nathanael.  The fact that he was no longer alive didn’t dim our love for him one iota.  We soaked up each second we had with him before his funeral.  Every second was a gift because time was finite.

Many of those moments involved pain that nothing in life could prepare us for, and yet each of those moments were beautiful in their own right, as much because we only had a certain time.

Moments that nothing in life prepares us for, where there is no escape but to endure them, once endured, are a huge part of the broadening of our life experience, and we’re deepened and made more mature as a result, and more capable of enduring future grief.

The man who ‘stood in the gap’ for me

Just about every human being has genuinely asked the existential question, “What is the purpose of my life?”  For me, the answer is easy.  Our purpose, as individuals connected to life through the thread of humanity, is to stand in the gap for those less fortunate than we ourselves are.

Here’s the case in point.  I was bullied and abused as an apprentice in the 1980s, back in a time when it wasn’t questioned, and when I found solace in alcohol and other drugs.  Interestingly, I’d resisted the temptation to drink and drug with my friends as a 17-year-old, but the influence of the workplace was instrumental in me giving in.

We did what we did back in those times without a lot of thought.

I really didn’t think too much of the physical and psychological harassment that was dealt to me.  It definitely had an impact on my formation, though, and I did fear those situations, but I blamed myself for being “hopeless” when there were plenty of other reasons I lacked confidence and competence in the third year of my four-year apprenticeship in 1986.

Enter the man DJ.  He was only a few years older than me.  He’d arrived from Perth as a tradesman to come to work with us in the mechanical maintenance department of the Water Authority in Karratha.  It was January 1987.

Looking back on this time, there were a few men I was working with who never had a kind word to say to me, and they talked constantly behind my back, not to mention the practical ‘jokes’ they did that would be health and safety incidents these days.

Others in the team remained silent, probably for fear of these men.  One of the men was our supervisor, who, at that time, had little good to say about anyone.  (I’ve since befriended him.)

To think that back in this time a lot of effort was put into bullying a person to teach them lessons—sadly, I know that this phenomenon hasn’t changed.

DJ had been around about a month, and then one Friday night when beers were being had in the workshop after work, when I wasn’t there, he apparently hushed the group and gave them a lecture.  A couple of the guys had been talking and laughing about a situation where they’d torn strips off me verbally, and I imagine DJ had had enough.

Apparently, word has it that you could hear a pin drop when he said, “This young guy who is in our care, who will be a tradesman this time next year, will never amount to anything if you guys don’t get off his back.”

I learned about this months later when the trade’s assistant (TA) allocated to me confided this.  For some strange reason I couldn’t work out why I’d been given a truck and a TA and was given jobs hundreds of kilometres away—I was being trusted to get engine and pump overhauls and mechanical seal change-outs done when I’d never been trusted before.

DJ had stood in the gap for me.  Standing in the gap is a biblical principle from Ezekiel 22:30.  It’s where just one person is sought to defend the good and do what’s right.  The power in such an action for one person to stand in the gap is compelling.

If you’ve ever been sidelined or abused or bullied or neglected, you knew all it would take is for one person to side with you, to stand in the gap, and make a difference by standing against the injustice—yet, like in Ezekiel 22:30 so often we find NOT ONE person has the courage and integrity to do such a thing.

The power of one person to speak up, to act, to stand for justice, to execute mercy, to walk in such humble kindness, to honour the truth!

That one challenge where DJ stood in the gap for me broke open the opportunity I needed to shine.  Everyone backed off and before long I was excelling and proving all the nay-sayers wrong in the best of ways.  I had earned their respect.  Because of one man who had the guts to simply say what needed to be said.

For us, we’re all in those situations almost daily.

There are times when we say to ourselves, “Better keep out of this,” and it’s truly because we don’t want to put our head above the parapet wall to have it shot or chopped off.

And yet, can you imagine this as your life purpose?  That God has placed you on this green earth to stand in the gap for others who don’t have the voice, the knowledge, or the influence we have?  Jesus did that for each of us at the cross of Golgotha.

To stand in the gap in our contexts is simply speaking the truth in love.

But of course, it would be naïve to think there wouldn’t be consequences in some or many situations.  There are the narcissists who will tolerate no shaming, who won’t respect what’s being done, who will see the challenge to their conquest and then make the gap-stander the fresh enemy.

Be that as it may, perhaps when our lives stand to be accounted for, we might be asked, “Who did YOU stand for?”

All I know is that DJ’s example was a powerful one to me.  And I’ve prospered from his courage shown that day.  I’ve tried to live in that stead.  And yes, more than once it’s backfired.  I’ve suffered some heavy consequences.

But until we’ve tasted defending someone who couldn’t defend themselves, firmly though fairly I mean, in appropriate circumstances, I don’t think we’ve lived our purpose.

Everyone can talk, but can you listen?

I was chatting today with two men in the fire and emergency services setting I work in, and the three of us were lamenting, yet also laughing, about how few people are listeners.  “I listen but then sometimes open up, and the other person so often then rattles on about something completely different, as if they’ve not even listened.  I know I’m a boring talker but come on ha-ha.”

A lot of what we talk about humorously is astonishingly serious.  This conversation was just that.  We laughed but equally we were astounded by how little most people listen.

Part of the issue in this day is the stress everyone’s under; the past two years have been a game changer in everyone’s estimation of life.  Anxiety, exhaustion, elevated ambient of stress, more cynicism, less belief in leaders’ integrity, less faith in innate goodness of people, more mistrust and distrust, and a whole lot more confusion and overwhelm in society generally.

People have less range and less space these days.  It seems.  Yet, flipping the seeming reality on its head, as in what the Kingdom of Heaven does, we can find in our imaginative exploration of things the idea that always works, eternally I mean.

The more we give away of what we cannot keep the more we will retain of what we cannot lose.

So we give up the right of being understood and all the more do we free up space to understand.

As we give up on the expectation that someone will love us, and exist simply to love, we’re granted freedom from bondage—nobody will ever love us as perfectly as we need.

As we worry less about the despair that consumes our focus in anxiety, we find we can just as much procure hope with our imagination; a hope that gradually becomes our living situations.

And it’s the same with being heard.  If we instead become the willing listener, to become enthralled about others’ stories, the weight of our own stories diminishes.  This isn’t to say our stories are insignificant.  The fact is others’ stories are just as significant, and the more we focus on others the bigger our perspective gets.

The more we listen into another’s struggle, the less alone we feel in our struggle.

As a speaker with others listening, we’re never appreciated like we are when we’ve helped ease a burden through the simple presence of listening.

Having listened, and having picked our moment, holding out to comment until we’ve heard all we need to, we’re then poised to affirm and encourage.  Our qualification to speak life comes from our willingness to wade into the abyss that others have shared with us.

It’s one thing to shower a gift on someone, it’s an entirely different thing to BE the gift, and listeners are always a gift to those they listen to.

But if we listen, we listen objectively, with sensitivity, with an ear for what the sharer is concerned about, and we listen without judgement or condemnation or bias drowning out what they’re saying.  We listen to serve the other person.  Then, we bless them.

And if we listen, when someone is opening up to us, we prayerfully listen in such a way as not to harm them with a view they don’t want to hear, advice (unless they’re seeking it), or a judgement out of bias.  It’s an immense thing to be trusted with someone else’s material.  It’s not a trust to taken for granted.  It’s a privilege to be counted trustworthy, so let’s be worthy of that trust.

Bearing the brokenness of loss, fatigue, trauma, overwhelm, and grief

BEARING is the word I’d use for someone who holds a weight stoically enough to live despite one’s pain.  The best of this bearing is the humility that says, “Though this grief smashes me, and though it pushes me to the brink at times, I will continue to live hopefully and joyously when I can.”

Loss, fatigue, trauma, overwhelm, and grief invite us into a journey of truth.

It’s easy to lose ourselves in the drink or drugs or some other way of assuaging the pain.

It’s easy to give ourselves to the hardening of cynicism that makes us ineffective to others.

It’s harder by far to stand in that pain resolving neither to resent it or escape from it.

Inevitably loss, fatigue, trauma, overwhelm, and grief wear us down.  Inevitably they force us into a way of life that relegates our way of life null and void.  We’re forced to come up with different plans and modes of operation.

There’s something that these experiences do to us that softens us and makes us more compassionate and available for others, if only we don’t deny our pain or become cynical because of it.

The only way we ward against the escape of denial and the attack of cynicism is to let the pain have its way in breaking us down, so much so that we reach out for the support we truly need.

That’s right, it’s a process of facing, or of staying there in it, that we realise that:

§     for starters, we CAN do it

§     we learn that we can overcome our fears and our sadness that way

§     in brokenness, we discover that there are even fewer things in life that can break us

§     we find we increase our confidence in life and in our ability to tackle hardship

§     we’re equipped to help others through their brokenness

Loss, fatigue, trauma, overwhelm, and grief don’t have to comprehensively defeat us, even if they do feel like they’re defeating us for a time.  Even when we’re down and out, if we can find a moment of poise, even in being down and out we get the feeling that we have more, including the capacity to conquer more than we ever have.

It takes time.  Recovery from loss, fatigue, trauma, overwhelm, and grief demands of us what we never had before.  It’s character building so pain grows us through the pain.

That shatteringly lonely sorrow of missing my kids

Having a coffee date with my middle daughter, we got to discussing an article I wrote last year about how close I came to suicide on one occasion when my first marriage had failed.  She was so very thankful I got through it—some don’t.

Within moments it was like I was transported back there.  Noticing my willingness to answer questions and be accessible in that grief, her curiosity augmented the space I needed to share into.

I began to share not only of the revelation I got—that I was reminded that I had three dear children that needed me—but also of the character of the grief in that time.

I shared that I grieved solidly for 9 months, almost as if it were a gestation period.  After that time elapsed, it was like a switch went on inside me and I reached an important transition.  But there was one kind of grief that I felt for three years—until I married again.

During those three years, I cared for my daughters on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and every second weekend.  I would look forward to the Friday afternoon, plan dates and activities and visits and time together, but I loathed the barren emptiness I experienced after taking them back to their mother on Sunday nights.

Those nights I dropped them off, I was relieved that they were happy with either their mother or I—I just wanted them content.  But as I drove the 20 kilometres home, I’d often sob my heart out, very often to Avril Lavigne.  (Even now when I hear Avril Lavigne, I’m shot back to 2003-2004 in a flash, and I love it.)

There was just so much sheer core sorrow in having to say goodbye when I felt like everything that was important to me could be taken away just like that.  But it was also the bone dry and excruciating loneliness that I felt being in my own company.

It was just so foreign to be all alone, and to be honest, I hated it.  For six whole months I lamented being alone and would often bewail my very existence, even though I was amid a personal spiritual revival.

Whole weeks during school holidays were another thing altogether.  I looked forward to them with so much expectancy, yet on the second last day before taking my daughters home I was often miserable and moody—which was a form of denial that loss was again imminent.  I would recover on that final day, to make the absolute most of my time with them.  And when I finally did get them home, I then often had 24-48 hours of the worst loneliness anyone can endure.

I’ve actually worked for my former wife, which shows we had a very cooperative separation even though I experienced the most immense grief.  Those first nine months genuinely felt as though I’d lost everything.

Yet, as I was reflecting with my daughter, I couldn’t help but say it, that “those harrowing loneliest of times were what connected me to God—because God was surely all I had left.”  I had the love of my parents, my two sponsors in AA, the pastor and the elders and the people in the church, but other than that and my three daughters, I had nobody and nothing.

The ironic and paradoxical thing nowadays is I pine to go back to this time of my worst grief and lament.  It was formational and foundational, a time like this before or since I’ve not had anywhere near that intimacy.

But had I an hour meter for how many hours I either sobbed or lamented, I’d hate to think of the tally.  Such a brutally lonely season lasts and lasts and lasts, and it’s a situation that cannot be shifted.

But on a night like tonight, when a nearly 27-year-old asks what it was like for me when she was 8, we both feel an enormity of contentedness, so thankful to God for his faithfulness.