facing disappointment

At times I have looked back on my life, and found it a bit disappointing.  Disappointment is hard to cope with.  I suppose I didn’t expect to be divorced;  I didn’t expect that my husband would reject his Christian faith and drag me through a terrible marriage of conflict and emotional abuse; I didn’t expect to be the sole breadwinner for the family;  I didn't expect my life to produce poverty in such unequal measure to my hard work.  I didn’t expect to lose a child.

It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with my disappointing life. I have railed against God.  I felt that I sowed good seed, but harvested weeds. I sowed faithfulness and gathered betrayal.  I treated others as I would like to be treated, but discovered it provided people with opportunity to bully me.  There was so much call on all my resources for years on end, that eventually, I felt like a wasteland of broken reeds had grown up inside me;  watered with sorrow and blighted by strife.  At times, ignoble, faithless thoughts raced through my mind and caught like fouled fleece on the brambles of my heart. I doubted God’s provision for me.  I took my eyes off the example of Jesus and thought God owed me something for my obedience to Him.  I had always tried to do the right thing, and felt hard done by when everything seemed to go wrong.   

I looked for the wrong things from his hand and was disappointed and disillusioned when He didn’t provide them in the way I expected.  I asked for financial help;  there was none.  I asked for another husband and the chance of a relationship with a good and decent man, but instead, a married man preyed on my loneliness.   I asked for safety and provision;  I got bullying at work and the threat of my house being taken away.

It has been hard for me to realize that God will not give me back the fruitless years;  the years I harvested weeds;  the years the locusts ate. 

He gave me instead, His own self.

My ragged, faltering faith still declares that God is good.

My life was lumbered with these stones of inappropriate expectation. To throw off their weight,  I had to learn the way of acceptance;  acceptance of how things are;  of being content whatever my situation;  of giving thanks in all circumstances.  Difficult lessons.  But God doesn’t promise life will be easy;  he promises that He will always be with us;  strength in our weakness;  victory over evil;  to soar like eagles despite the weight of our disappointment and difficult problems.

This faith life will not let me go.  This barely understood, mysterious, unfathomed Spirit of God which long ago claimed my soul is a restless, defining, cleansing current, ever washing my grudging, faulty humanity in it’s refining tide.  It is the tide of God’s purpose;  ever wanting my soul to be as pure and full of love as His own. 

I would never have made room for it, if my circumstances were as replete and comfortable as I thought they should be.

overcoming Agoraphobia

If you have ever suffered from anxiety or fear of going outside the sanctuary of your own home, this blog might help:

For many years, I lived a life marked by conflict and angst.  It began, really, when I was 16 and my mother became very ill;  I had just started my first job and I was suddenly thrown in to working, looking after my younger brother and keeping house for the family.  It resurfaced after my first child, a son, was born.  I realize now, he probably had some features of Asperger’s Syndrome and obsessive/compulsive disorder. . He was a child who demanded a lot of attention;  constant attention.  He was always contrary, hard to manage, very talkative and always wanting attention. I literally battled with him all day, every day. If I asked him not to do something, he would do it anyway. I tried to reason with him.  He would ask me over and over why he couldn't do it and I had to answer him, all the time. I just didn’t realize that anything was wrong, because he was my first child.    

I had two other children.   Then my marriage began to fail.  My husband had always been an emotionally abusive man, although I didn’t realize this for many years.  He became very difficult to live with. My home life was very stressful.  There was so much walking on egg shells all the time because I never knew when my husband would pick a fight or be cruel. Other times he would be just charming, but I knew he could change on a whim.  It was all part of his need to be emotionally abusive and manipulative. I began to dread him coming home from work. And there were all the normal pressures of children, especially my son, who was a handful.

Every year was the same and I began to live in a constant state of anxiety;  of being in the flight and fight syndrome all the time.  When bad things happen, your body releases adrenalin to enable your body to either fight the foe, or flee from it. Eventually, my adrenal glands were pumping out adrenalin constantly, and I began to experience the symptoms of a nervous system working in overload. I began to have panic attacks. I would experience absolutely real terror, for no apparent reason. It would come at any time, but I began to fear that it would happen when I was away from the safety of my home. They did, indeed, come out of the blue, regularly, when I was out. I literally could not walk down to the bus stop to collect my kids off the bus, without the terror accompanying me

Then, I began to fear the feelings of panic themselves, and so descended deep into a full blown agoraphobic state.  Agoraphobia means fear of open spaces, but it really means fear of going out because you think that when you go out, you will have an attack of panic.

My life took on a hellish quality. 

Then, I read a book called “Help and Hope for your nerves” by Dr Claire Weeks, a lady psychologist.  It’s still in print, I believe, though it was written decades ago. The advice is very practical. It’s available from fishpond: http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Hope-and-Help-for-Your-Nerves-Claire-Weekes/9780451167224

There are many sensations associated with being in an anxiety state.  There can be feelings of “strangeness”;  of feeling unreal;  feeling like something terrible is about to happen;  (impending doom); indecision; feeling jittery;  dry mouth;  pounding heart;  rapid breathing.  I used to feel like my head had a sort of “nervous tic” inside it, on occasions.  These are all symptoms of an overstressed nervous system.  But I began to fear the feelings themselves.  I began to realize that I had put myself in this cycle, by adding “second fear” to the first fear of all the genuine worries and strain I was under. 

It is the fear you have to address.  Face the fear and it will go away.  It’s like a big black dog growling at you.  You have to face it down, growl back, and it will go away. It’s always your body tricking you into thinking something is amiss, or something terrible is about to happen, when actually, it’s your body’s natural reaction to stress!

So, when the panic comes, say to yourself “it’s just my body doing it’s thing;  it’s not life threatening;  it’s not pain;  it’s just a normal reaction to my abnormal amount of strain and worry.  Let the feeling come;  try not to run from the feeling.  Let the feeling come and feel the fear, but do not run from it.

Let the feeling come and say to yourself “it’s just a feeling and it will pass”.  It ALWAYS passes.  I’m not saying this is easy while you are doing it, but it works.

I would be in the supermarket and would feel paralysing fear.  I would make myself stay in the supermarket queue. Let the feeling come, and like a wave, pass through you and leave again. 

Try and “float” the fear too.  So, while you feel the panic, relax towards it too.  Try and make yourself float and relax.  This is very difficult; I’m not saying it’s easy, but if you can relax even a tiny little bit, each time the panic comes, you are gradually desensitising your system to the fear.

While the strange sensations and the feeling of fear are there, try and let your mind concentrate on other things.  Try and take notice of your surroundings, for example.  The fear will be there, but try and see it as a wave, which comes, passes through your body and is gone.  When you do this, you are desensitising your body to the flight and fight syndrome.  If you “run” in fear, you are perpetuating the fear and it grows. You must calmly face it down.  For a while you will be in two minds;   one which is trying desperately to, say, notice this week’s specials in the supermarket queue, and the other with the panic snapping at your head.  Try and “float” the fear.  So, it’s there, but it’s just floating in your body, but, like a wave, it will float away. This is difficult, but it gets easier and eventually your adrenal system will be back to normal and you will no longer fear the sensations. It’s the fear of the sensations, which causes more anxiety.  It’s fear of fear, so it becomes a terrible cycle. This is what you must face and short-circuit.

I could eventually almost look forward to going out because it was a chance to get that little bit better.  But if you could have seen me when I was in the throes of getting better…..  I would be in the supermarket queue, feeling SO panic stricken, but I never left the queue and made a run for it.  If I could have jiggled about and flapped my arms or something, it would have helped, but I had to stand there and try and look normal!

The kids’ school concerts, church etc were torture, because I’d be trying to sit still and listen, but all the while the panic was huge! To stand and talk to people was awful because I’d be trying to keep up a conversation with someone, all the time with the same kind of panic in my body, as though they were holding a gun to my head! Ironically, some people have told me in later years, that I radiate a lovely serenity and seem very calm.  Hahaha!  I’m sure this is because of those years of “training” myself not to fear the fear.  I got to the point where I’d stand in the supermarket queue, feel a bit anxious and I’d say to my fear “come on then!  Do your worst, ya piker!”.  It never did.  I’d soon be thinking of something else, completely relaxed! It’s a gradual progress, but it does work. (I did it without chemical assistance of any kind, but I recommend you visit your Dr and see if he can prescribe something which will take the edge off your panic).

As you get better, and more "normal", you will sometimes experience a sort of "shadow" of the fear.  This too, will pass.  Let it come;  don't let it bluff you. Sometimes, you can feel a bit panicky even years after you are healed.  Let it go.  It will pass. Don't react to it.

I applied the above principles and gradually I climbed out of my anxiety state. The beauty of this “behavioural” approach is that this kind of fear/anxiety can never hold you captive again, because you know how to short circuit it whenever you feel a bit anxious. So, even when my son died, I had no problems with anxiety (grief, yes!).  His estate was contested and this caused me great worry and further grief over a period of 3 years, but I never became panicky;  the anxiety was never accompanied by the fear of anxiety. Incidentally, he gradually overcame his “Asperger’s” or whatever it was.  By the time he died, he was a lovely, steadfast, gentle, caring man. Thank you God.

I was much healed from this terror, by the time my husband eventually left me and abandoned his children.  I had to go out to work, full time, took out a mortgage, and lived very frugally, to support the family. My husband would not pay maintenance for his kids. My father died a few months before he left; then about 15 months after he left, my boss began to bully me, and eventually threatened me with dismissal (if I lost my job, I would have lost my house).  I successfully managed the "fear" factor in this, although it was a dreadful time. Thankfully, he left the workplace before he could carry out his threat, but it heralded the beginning of more difficult years. The work-load, and the worry-load was huge. There was the emotional and practical impact of my divorce. (My life sounds like a bad plot from a soap opera! J) There was much to come to grips with, and this took many years.

Eventually, after the kids were older, I became very depleted, from all those years of work and strain, and this impacted my life too.

But that’s for another blog! Be assured, you can heal yourself from this anxiety. 

So much more than pie in the sky when we die

There was a funeral today, at the church where I work.  Another aged saint of God jumped that last mysterious, triumphant hurdle and journeyed to God’s dwelling place, about which we have such little knowledge and  yet some of us are so sure, exists.  

I always feel the tiniest shred of envy.

Just after my son, Ben, died – for several years really, in gradually decreasing frequency, I thought a lot about heaven.  To be honest, I didn’t really want to be here.   I was just in such pain, not only from Bud’s death;  my suffering came from several other awful things which had happened within the space of a few months of him dying.  Longing for heaven was an escape mechanism. It was  the knowledge of what terrible grief I would inflict on my girls, which stopped me acting on an escape plan. I doubt I would have acted on it, but I can’t  be absolutely sure that if I hadn’t had them, I would have stayed around.  Sometimes, I even calculated how long I’d have to wait to end my life, without them being terribly affected by it’s closeness to their brother’s death. In my bewildered state, I used to think 6 years would be long enough.  Now, here we are 6.5 years past it and I realise it’s not nearly long enough.  If I was to die now, it would still have a terrible effect on the girls.  But I am no longer in so much pain, that suicide is an option.  And I am stronger now.  I don’t think of heaven as much.

But the promise of it is a constant presence.  I am as certain of it’s existence as I am of my own name.  A joyous expectancy accompanies me on my journey every day.

How do I know of it’s existence.  How can I be so sure I will go there when I die?  Because I have lived my life following the commands, the promptings and the promises of Christ, with His spirit-wind at my back.  Long ago, it ceased to be a head-knowledge Religion, and became a friendship with God;  a spiritual suffusing with His divinity, of all that I am, in as much (or as little sometimes) as I allow Him.

Suffering has woven his spirit into the very cloth of my existence.  I don’t just know Him in my head, I know Him as a sustaining presence in the creviced, exposed, ferocious cliff face of anguish.  He has broken my heart several times over, and mended it again with His own fullness.  I belong to Him.  He called me long ago.  And I followed;  through brokenness and travail;  trudgingly sometimes;  angry sometimes;  despairing sometimes.  Still, I’m following. 

How do I know heaven waits for me?  Because the One who promised it cannot go back on His word.  I have lived with my soul’s ear listening for it, and the gladsome eye of my spirit glancing at it. Every time I feel the love of God pass through me to an unlikely, unlovely soul, it leaves a forensic trace of heaven behind, like a fingerprint on my soul’s window pane. The spirit of God is an awesome, affecting, evidential power.  That’s how I know.

And my lovely son will be waiting.

self-esteem

I nearly had an affair with a married man once.  But I didn’t.  I had been divorced for about 8 years, was extremely lonely and sad, and this man, charm personified, preyed on me. 

I would say I had a dalliance with him – we shared the same social group each week.  But I didn’t ever succumb to more than that.   I’m glad I didn’t.  It would have been catastrophic to my already fragile emotional state.

It took me a long time, but eventually I overcame my attachment to him. It was very difficult. I resisted the very strong inclination to have a physically and emotionally intimate relationship with him. I yearned for a complete relationship;  He only wanted the physical. I think I knew that, deep down, all along. He would have taken what he wanted, and then discarded me, just like, in fact, my husband had done.  I would have been in a worse state than I already was. I hadn't repeated the pattern.

But why didn’t I surrender to his advances?  

Because I had a strong moral code, and this would have been breaking it.

How did I find the strength to resist this man when the temptation was so strong?

I have a very rich and empowering Christian faith.

So, I followed my “intellectual” moral compass and I drew on my spiritual relationship with God, to find the strength to stick to my resolve. I find I have a great deal of self-esteem.  Why do I?

I am someone with none of the generally accepted requirements for self-esteem.  I am divorced. I have no status (in fact, I have what I call anti-status, because I’ve been a single parent, and because of that... a hated welfare recipient).  I perform an essential but mind-numbingly ordinary job; I have no wealth (in fact I have a low income);  I drive a fairly old car and I live in a little brick-veneer house.  In the world’s eyes, I have failed at marriage.  When my husband left me and abandoned his children, I went out to work as a clerk, took out a mortgage, and trod a very hardworking and frugal road, bringing my three children up myself, without any financial help from him.  Six years ago, my beautiful son was killed in a workplace accident.  I am a battler. Despite these things, there has been this rising of self-worth, like a clear calm stream, falling on my battered senses, with the cadence of a serene melody.

How big a part does following our own rules for living, combined with a connection to a higher power, establish an unbreakable self-esteem in the blueprint of our selves – a rock solid knowledge that we have worth as people?

Huge.

How does it happen?  You need to have a moral set of rules, and I guess much of that can be found in Christianity;  do to others as you would have them do to you;  love your neighbour as you love yourself.  But, when faced with a moral dilemma, and you are emotionally vulnerable, you can't consistently live out those rules, without connection to a higher power.  Religion just won't cut it.  You have to connect to God in your spirit.

To resist the lure of this man required self-control, and that's a spiritual attribute - it's to do with the heart and the emotions.  You might think, in your head "this will not be a good thing to do", but can you carry it through when loneliness is like a constant toothache?

My emotions were weakened by years of a very difficult lifestyle - loss and grief and hard work.  The offer of relationship seemed like bright healing balm.

But I knew it was against my moral compass.  I was like a moth dancing around a deadly flame.  

To throw myself on the power of God was to invite Him to live in my heart and soul.  He bestows so graciously and resolutely, the fruit of His divine character - love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness.  And self-control. The desire for this man did not dampen immediately.  It was a battle. But I was able to keep him at arm's length.  A moment's weakness and all would have been lost.  But God promises to keep us, held safe spiritually, by his power.  Gradually, I could see the real man emerge from the distorted lense of my loneliness.  He was a predator. I used to think he was locked in a loveless marriage.  Perhaps he was; but he chose to stay in it's financially comfortable lifestyle.  He was, I think, a "serial adulterer".  Whatever. I gradually dismissed him from my emotions.  The moth, with barely-scorched wings, flew off, her heart untroubled. 

I had earned my own respect.

Safe harbours. Mark 4:35-41

We, all of us, need a safe harbour to come home to, after a long voyage of suffering. For some of us, it’s our physical house; our loved ones; our life partner;  our friends.  These can all be a refuge and a listening ear when the boat of our soul sails through illness, betrayal, suffering, bullying or any other angst.

In the story of the storm at the Sea of Galilee, the disciples were afraid because Jesus was asleep in the boat, but then, he woke and commanded the sea to be calm and the wind to be still.

It’s been my experience that Jesus doesn’t always stop the troubles in my life straight away. He doesn’t always stop the frightening wind of change or forbid the thunder of sorrow. But He is always in the boat with me, standing at my shoulder;  His presence brings peace.  His peace is in the midst of the storm and the crashing waves.  And in the end, all storms have their season, and pass away. And when the storm has passed and we sail again to a safe harbour, our faith has grown strong, anchored, like a mighty lighthouse, in the bedrock of the sea.

It’s the involvement of God with us that is the great overcoming mystery.  Not the head knowledge;  not the doctrine, but the absolute certainty of knowing God is there.  And sometimes, we only really understand that fact, when the great billows rise and the wind howls. This is the wisdom of the Storm story. This is why Jesus calls them out in the boat, at evening.. He knows what storms will blow up in our lives and still bids US follow him into the boat. Otherwise, we’d stand alone, marooned on the rocky shore of our lifeless head knowledge. The sleet of life’s storms would still rain down on us, but if we never venture into the thrashing water, we will never experience the real Jesus;  the overcoming One;  the one who, even asleep, still knows the storm rages.  He wakes to our call.  Every time.

Perhaps that’s why the story is told the way it is – because we know Jesus even sleeping, is still with is, so the sleeping bit is like a metaphor which represents our interpretation of what we feel when he doesn’t stir and answer all our why questions and answer our prayers in the way we want.

The mystery and the blessing of the storms of our lives are all mixed in together.  It feels messy to us.  Life is messy, complicated, unexplained.  The blessing we finally learn from our wave tossed journeys, is the blessedness of the presence and therefore the peace of Jesus, even while the tumult rages.

The truth is that we live in a world which is defined at times by injury, loss, illness and death.  We all face our own storms and this story tells us, not so much why they happen – I’m not sure we can ever know that – but about how we can behave in the midst of them.  Of course, the disciples were afraid.  We also are afraid when terrible things happen.  And I think, it’s OK to cry to God, as the disciples did “Don’t you care?” Maybe that’s why this story records their reaction.  It’s like God is reaching down the years, saying to us “it’s OK to ask me why, or even why not”. But in the end, Jesus is the voice of calm, and he calls us to trust him over our fears.

Can we cultivate so firm and deep a trust in the wisdom and sovereignty of Christ that we do not fear following Him into the boat at evening, to go to the other side? The paradox is that until we step into the boat and until the storm arises, our faith can never be that firm or that deep. When we are in the thrashing unsafe boat and realize that He is still in control, our faith in His ability to either calm the storm, or calm our spirits, becomes rock solid.

Lord of the storm, we know that you are sovereign, and that ultimately you are Lord of tumult and darkness;  you are the victor over all that holds us in it’s thrall.  Yet, when our own storms crash in on us, we find ourselves afraid, like the disciples in the perilous boat, and we ask “don’t you care that we are perishing?”.  You know that when we face uncertainty or anguish we feel exposed and vulnerable.  We are tempted to abandon our faith in you. Forgive us our bewildered and stumbling trepidation and send us your peace.

Injustice and bullying

In the movies, justice pretty much always wins out in the end;  the man always gets his girl;  the baddie gets his come-uppance and it nearly always ends happily ever after.. In my experience, this almost never happens in real life;  very often, it’s injustice which triumphs.  What do we do when injustice happens to us personally.

 

God gives us guidelines on how to behave when injustice happens to us. 

Some years ago, I was bullied in my workplace.  In fact, I hate to admit it, but I've been bullied in just about every place I've ever worked. I suppose I feel it makes me some kind of tragic wuss. The meek are indeed blessed. But they are also easily bullied.  What we do and how we behave in the face of injustice will probably depend on our personality, our value system and whether we have some kind of backup.  I didn’t have any backup;  I was on my own.  The  thing I found with workplace bullying,is that people are very often cowards, when faced with injustice inflicted on someone else. They will not speak out;  they will pretend it doesn’t exist; they don’t want to get involved; they will just keep their heads down.  Another aspect of injustice, is that the perpetrator will always pick on someone already vulnerable.  When this happened to me, I chose to flee, because I had no backup;  because I had several other awful things happening in my life at the time;  because I’m not a fighter and because the people bullying me loved a good fight and I knew I couldn’t win. So I left that workplace.

But the fleeing or the fighting aside, we still have to deal with this injustice in our own souls and hearts and minds.  Unless we deal with it, we can become angry and begin to carry a grudge.    Fight or flee; whatever the outcome,  ultimately we have to let go of the resentment and hurt it has caused, if we are to live victoriously, lovingly.  Resentment held, will pollute the rest of our lives. But how do we deal with it?

We must, in our own time confront what has happened to us.  Meet it head on.   We have to embark on a journey of coping which will end when we accept what has happened to us and lay it to rest.  It’s painful doing this. But never confronting the hurt, or pretending it didn’t happen, keeps it alive, because it festers away inside.   If we run from the awful feelings, anxiety can set in.

We can cry out to God about the injustice of it; God is big;  he can accept us however angry we are;  however victimised or hard-done-by we feel.  When our emotions are plundered and battered by suffering, he can meet us at the foot of the cross, and take it from us.  Conjure up a mind picture of yourself taking the pain of injustice, and giving it up to him.  He is well acquainted with suffering, and will not turn away.

On a practical level, we can talk to others, either friends, family, trained counsellors.  We can confess our failure to God too, because there will be times, in this grappling with injustice, when we behave and think in ways which are less than noble.

Be careful though; dwelling on injustice, without attempt at healing, bringing it to the surface of our minds, constantly nursing it without the light of Christ’s mercy to heal and banish it, breeds resentment, thoughts of reprisal, and prejudice.  We have to deal with whatever injustice has befallen us, then pack it away in the tin trunks of our hearts, and go on. We have to allow God to heal us;  to surrender to his way of doing things;  to be obedient to his Word, ie bless those who hurt us; pray for those who spitefully use us. Pay back evil, with good.  I didn't say it was easy! This is especially important with people who are close to us.  When I was bullied at work, after the process of fleeing and crying and healing and taking up my life again, I could leave those people in the past.  But it’s different when the people we feel have wronged us, are those of our families or friends.  And the sting of injustice felt in families, can often be traced to some sleight over material things, or money.

When I was a little girl, in a small rural town, we used to visit my mother’s sister and brother in another small rural town half an hour away.    In my aunty and uncle’s little weatherboard cottage , there was a beautiful red cedar dresser.  It had belonged to my grandmother, and had been passed to her son (my mum’s brother).  It was huge;  it took up almost the entire wall of their little front room, and reached almost to the ceiling.  It was ornate;  the patina of it’s ruby lustre was just lovely.  It was a thing of elegance and beauty.  On one occasion, on the way home, my mother said “I wonder what will happen to that dresser when my brother dies?” He was 21 years older than her.  He eventually died, and the dresser stayed in his house until his wife also died.  But then it transpired that the dresser had been given to a family friend.  My mother was dismayed at the thought of this beautiful possession not coming back to the family.  She felt it should have come to her, or at least her sister.  She grieved over that dresser, but not a word was said to the friends;  she simply accepted that this was how it had been disposed of, and she didn’t let it cause fights or words between the family or the friend. She did not let money or mere chattels come between relationships.  It wasn’t spoken of again. Graciousness is a good stratagem in soothing the sting of injustice.

And that brings me to the next coping skill.  We must forgive those who visit injustice upon us. To forgive is the very bedrock of Christian faith.

Some of you may remember the case of John Button. In 1963, at the age of 19, he had an argument with his girlfriend, Rosemary.  She got out of the car they were in, and walked off in anger.  When John Button caught up with her a little while later, he found her, in the darkness, lying dead on the road.  He was convicted of her murder and spent 5 years in gaol. A year after his conviction, the real killer, a serial murderer, confessed to her killing, but he was not believed, even though he stated this many times, including a written confession, just before he was hanged for the murder of other people. John Button spent another 5 years on parole, and it took 37 more years before his conviction was quashed.

But Rosemary’s mother could not forgive him.  For years after, even in the face of the other man’s confession, she continued to blame John Button, saying “he took my daughter out, and he didn’t bring her home. It’s his fault she’s dead”.  She clung to that emotional decision, until her death. Her unwillingness to forgive was heaping more injustice on John Button, and it imprisoned her too.  It added to the pain they had both suffered.

When people have hurt us, we cannot really forgive in our own strength.  That’s why God tells us to pray for them. We may not always be able to do this with conviction and a heartfelt surge of goodwill towards them, but we can say to God “I don’t want to pray for this person but I do, because you’ve commanded me to”. And the way I do it is this;  I distance myself from the emotional side of things, step away, and I pray just with my mind.  Our hearts and emotions have to be a bit suspended from the hurt of it. But when we can say this, something close to miraculous begins to happen. It may take a while;  it may take some painful searching and honest reflection, especially if the injustice is very big and has impacted us terribly.  It may take years. There will be times of anger and railing against the injustice of it, but God will create in us something we can’t do for ourselves. He will give us victory over the hurt and the injustice;  our forgiveness will dissolve rancour;  our resentment will be replaced by goodwill;  for angst we will be given peace. Over time - and remember that once God has begun a good work in us, he will bring it to completion…the final healing may not come until we are resurrected with him in heaven, but the promise is that he will do it;   over time, constantly bringing these terrible injustices to His light shining from the cross, allows us to forgive.  And as this transformation occurs, you will be changed, as the bible says, from glory to glory.  You will have taken into your heart, the very divinity of God’s character;  the wonderful wings of His overcoming Spirit.  Why do you think those verses about praying for people who use and abuse us are in the Bible? Is it to make life hard for us?  No, it’s because God knows if we cling to our injustices, we become slaves to them. They become like big river stones in our pockets, weighing down our spirit-life.  He knows that injustice and forgiveness have to be bed fellows.  He knows that the sister of forgiveness ,is graciousness, and that the one who overlooks a transgression seeks love. He knows that for justice to prevail in our lives, even if we’ve experienced the gravest of inequality or prejudice, we must forgive the perpetrator.

Because on that glorious resurrection day, the Christ won’t ask us “how did you treat the dresser in your life?” or  “How much was that dresser worth?” He will ask us “how did you treat the person who denied you the dresser?  Did you forgive that person who used or abused you?  Were you noble and loving in the face of injustice?  Did you speak out for others who suffered injustice? These are the things which are important to God.  These are the things which will clothe us through eternity.  God’s kingdom is not about stuff, or how much of it we accumulate in our life;  it’s not about status or whether we get back in kind what we give, or about always winning or coming out on top in an argument.  It’s about servanthood and self-sacrifice;  it’s about love and forgiveness, in the face of injustice.  That’s how justice prevails.  And God, who is just, will give us our reward in heaven.

dungeon of my own making

The journey to self-pity, can take you unawares, travelled a thought at a time, down the steps into a dungeon of your own making.

I caught myself doing it recently.  It came after a conversation with an acquaintance.  She was telling me how strict her father was, and how much he ensured his family did all he told them.  Her father did indeed sound formidable.

My dad basically ignored us, unless we made too much noise.  He was gruff and disengaged from us.  He left all the parenting to my Mother. He was a good, hardworking bloke; a product of his own upbringing and the social norm of the time. And if he wasn’t the perfect father, I know he did his best.  I worked my way through my upbringing – good and bad – years ago.  His example gave me a lot of strengths, but there’s no doubt his parenting also had a negative impact on me.  It influenced who I married.

So, when she told me about her father, I thought “at least he took an active interest in their welfare. Not like my dad”.  One step down into the dungeon.

She married her husband because he was so unlike her father.  Her husband is a good man and she’s had a happy marriage. I married my husband also because he was so unlike my father.  But, I thought, ”my husband turned out to be cruel, manipulative and selfish. In the marriage lucky dip, she got a good prize;  I got a terrible, terrible one”. Two steps down into the dungeon.

I could have kept going;   comparing myself to someone who is better off than me.  In the past, this is how the thought life would start and I would get resentful, bitter, angry, powerless and unhappy. The impact of my bad marriage would eat away at me. But because I’ve gone down this path before, I’ve learned to recognise the signs.

I could have kept going.  The next thought would have been “Poor me. I didn’t even have Grandfathers as good role models”  The next one would have been “I married a terrible man, and when I finally have a good man in my life – my son – God allows him to die”.

I could embrace all that and trudge down the steps of the “why” and “poor me” dungeon, but I choose not to:

a)              Because I’ve been there before and it’s too easy to get trapped down there, peering out through the tiny dusty windows and wondering why I can’t soar like an eagle; and 

b)              It doesn’t do any good.  It doesn’t change anything.  Once you’ve worked through all the things that have happened;  once you’ve faced them and fixed them if you can; to keep going back over it, is self-destructive.

I had to make the journey into the past. I had to discover why I married my husband  (and to be fair to myself, I don’t think anyone would have picked how bad he would turn out to be).  I had to take the journey and discover who I really am; what makes me tick;  what my innate blueprint is.  I had to look honestly at my life and acknowledge how far below my expectations for it, fell. I had to find and confront all my own weaknesses and in the process, discover many many strengths too.  The expedition to self-awareness can be difficult and confronting.  But it’s also very empowering.

For a while, after I’d looked honestly at my life after my divorce, and counted all the shattered dreams, I could only see negatives, and I started to live in the dungeon.  I got depressed. It was only the realization that my negative thoughts had made me depressed, which gave me the impetus to break the cycle and counteract negative thoughts with positive ones. 

So, for example, when I thought of what the life-long impact of marrying such a man was, I would deliberately think “Thank you I’m not still married to him”.  And when I would think “I didn’t have a Uni education and now I’m trying to be a breadwinner on a Clerk’s wage” I would counter that with “Thank you that I at least have TAFE education and I have a job”.

So, the antidote for self-pity is thankfulness.  This is a Christian principle.  “Give thanks in all circumstances”  is what the bible says. It isn’t easy. I am glad I learned this approach before Ben died. Because in those early days when grief was a savage unabated roaring, I was able to say:

Thank you for Ben’s life;

Thank you that God chose me to be his mum;

Thank you that he turned into such a strong, steadfast, gentle man;

Thank you that we had a good relationship;

Thank you that he loved his sisters and me, and we loved him.

Some of these things are like “negative positives” or at least neutral;  they may seem like hurling lighted matches into a snowstorm.  But when you are dealing with terrible stuff, the tiny positives are bigger than they seem.  Viewed as intellectual thoughts, they probably are small.  But they hold emotional power. They are like toeholds on the sheer cliff of grief. You have to climb this cliff, so you need all the help you can get. 

And thankfulness for seemingly small things, is essential climbing equipment.

Managing anger

For many of us, when bad, unjust things happen to us, one of the responses we feel is anger.

Anger is a most difficult feeling to deal with.  It can be extremely destructive, not only damaging the people around us, but destroying our own peace and happy state of mind too.  Anger and happiness do not go together.  I have found the only real way to deal with it is to tell God you are angry and why.  He’s big enough;  he can bear it.  Give it to Him;  tell him you don’t want it any more. Of course, that involves making a choice;  deciding that you no longer want anger to be in your heart.  While ever you hold on to it (bear a grudge) then God cannot take it from you.
 

For me, I became so unhappy, so bogged down in negative thoughts that the anger and self pity became like a great stone I was carrying around inside.  I wanted it to go away.  I didn’t want anger to have it’s terrible hold over me.  I surrendered my “right” to be angry, to God, and eventually, as I continued to do this, he eventually began to dissolve the anger. I’m not saying it’s easy.  I battled on trying to overcome it, being on an emotional see saw for years, but finally, I got so sick of my selfishness making me so unhappy that in the end, surrender became easier.

I realized too, that caring people can be angry because of the very fact that they care.  When you or loved ones suffer abuse or injustice, part of the caring is .... anger.  Seems funny put that way.  It's hard to deal with anger because it's an emotion;  if it was just a intellectual thought, you could just put it off.  But you feel anger in your soul and your heart and God is really the best one to deal with that. 

Seek counselling too.  Talking about it to someone else, preferably neutral, is good. Dealing with anger which has resulted from someone else's treatment of you is difficult too, especially if there has been no repentence or resolution from that person.  But you still have to deal with it, and when you hang onto the anger, you are letting that person win over and over again. You are letting that person rule you and your happiness.

Let it go.  Make the choice to face the anger, decide to let it go.  Then walk that path, gradually dropping the stones out of your pocket.

leeches and small boys

Disasters happen.... It was a very small disaster;  of no great significance, except to those concerned.  (some might find this true story a little gross! But it's nothing very awful.)

I have a memory, snapped years ago and preserved, like all our memories in the unchangeable sepia photographs of our minds.

My husband was the only teacher in a tiny school near Mudgee NSW.  There was a fairly large complement of kids in those years, scattered through the grades like dissimilar pebbles in a conglomeration of the rocky outcrops from which their surroundings were made.  They were all so different and yet they were all the same;  lively, likeable products of their farming origins.

It was hard, harsh country, almost on the snow line between Mudgee and Bathurst.  At first, to my unknowing eye, it was a poor, stringy landscape, a meagre substitute for the fertile rolling hills of my childhood farm. I learned soon, that the sheep which roamed it’s flinty hillsides, produced wool which would eventually, with prosperous regularity,  be made into fine wool suits;  elegant garments which would rest, cloistered, in the quiet and dignified atmosphere of some of London’s poshest menswear shops, waiting for elegant, dignified Englishmen to buy them.

But I digress.  I must hurry on and tell you about this disaster.

The summers in [ privacy thingy  ], which was the name of the villiage, would fling their brief, baleful heat at the countryside before retreating, beaten by the altitude into an almost autumnless winter.  The local kids would fill the brief  summer days with boisterous stints of activity at the local waterhole.  It was a fairly deep pool,  with rocky sides defining it’s spring-fed depths.  Even in the heat of summer, the water was cold. It was a pretty spot, partly overhung with Eucalypts, where the water was dappled by the filtering sun. As well, there were flat rocks in the full glare of the sun and the kids would stretch out like lizards on them.

On one occasion, we sat draped about the banks in clumps of wet humanity.  After a bit one of the kids called out to me.

          “Hey Miss, come and look at these.”  This was from Chris, a fair-headed, sun-freckled boy on the verge of the turbulent adolescent years.  He was all bravado and postering;  a leader amongst his peers.  I picked my way along the bank to where a group of boys was propped together like old-fashioned hay stooks, looking at something held by James.   Into my hands he  tumbled a bundle of little skinny sticks which were all roughly the same size and colour;  almost identical.  I turned them over in my hands. “Where did you get these?” I asked, puzzled. 

          “On the rocks, down in the water, all over” they pointed and threw generous arms out to indicated how wide was their catchment area.

“But what are they?” I looked down at their newly-silent, squinting faces and fell right into their game.

Chris was quiet for a moment, gathering everyone’s full attention, then he said “Well, actually, they’re these”.  He took me over and began to explain the gory process.  Aparently, as is the grissly inclination of small boys, they were in the habit of collecting leeches, impaling them on slender sticks; turning their bodies inside out on the sticks, putting them into the sun to dry and then extracting the sticks, so that the dried leech body remained, forever rigidly repenting of it’s parasitic lifestyle.

I told you it was a disaster.  But only for the unfortunate leeches.

an interaction with a saint of God

I always love the interaction I sometimes have with an elderly gent of my acquaintance;  a saint of God;  one of Nature’s Gentlemen.  He has a self-effacing and gentle personality which manifests itself sometimes in a slight stutter if he gets nervous or stressed.

He’s a man of very modest means, evidenced by his very ordinary house, in a less-than-desirable suburb.    I had occasion to call on him recently to get him to sign a document.  When I knocked on the door, I noticed his Christmas wreath still hung on the screen. Well, it’s only April, after all. It was an ancient thing of faded baubles and plastic holly;  probably purchased in the 60’s.  I picked it’s vintage because we had similar Christmas decorations which were hung in our house year after year, until my sister finally said they had to go.  They were for us, as for him, humble markers of a make-do-and-mend lifestyle. All the same, I chuckled gently to myself, at the thought of him putting it there in the time-honoured fashion of Christmas, and then just forgetting it was there for months afterwards.

I could hear him hurrying to the door at my knock.  He was effusive in his apologies for the mess of the place.  “Don’t worry! It looks fine to me….. for a “Bachelor Pad” I quipped.  He chortled gently at the joke.  He is indeed a bachelor, albeit an elderly one.  His house, though, far from being the sleek and urbane dwelling usually conjured up by such a phrase, is full of his wife’s touch; the pictures of their children on the walls;  the slightly jaded furniture showing evidence of his continued care;  the pot plants on the verandah still watered and nurtured.  It’s the same house all his children grew up in;  the same house in which he cared for his wife, until her death 6 years ago, from cancer.  I remember the date, because it was only a few months before my son's death.  My very first acquaintance with this godly man was a conversation about losing loved ones.  I don’t know if he saw the grief in my face, but I certainly saw it in his. I heard it in his voice too, as he spoke of his wife with love and respect; and of how much he missed her.  He told me “the sicker she got, the more I loved her”. We sat in a silent space then, and cried for our absent loved ones.  
I can always sense the noble traces of the spirit of Jesus on this lovely man. Go in peace, saint of God, go in peace

scars and healing

After the resurrection of Christ, the scars of His recently-crucified body were still evident.  He was still in His earthly body after all.

Sometimes the healed wounds of my earthly suffering still cause me pain.  But the still-evident scars on the body of the Christ help me to uderstand that complete healing will only come when I too, am given a new eternal body.

I have always tried to deal with the pain and the angst, then pack it away in the tin trunk of my heart, and don't open it again.  But it isn't always possible.  Sometimes the wounds ache;  sometimes I get tired of carrying them in my soul. 

But realizing that even Christ still bore the scars of his sacrifice, helps me to be gentle on myself and understand that some scars will never be fully healed until that Resurrection morning.

a personal sharing

I was a child of the 50’s.  My parents were farmers.  They taught by example, and gave me an enduring demonstration of honesty, hard work and commitment to “the golden rule”.  I took on my mother’s Christian faith at an early age, and it has shaped and enriched my life. 

In 1975 I married a man who professed Christianity, but over the ensuing years, this façade fell away to reveal a manupulative and emotionally cruel man, and, in 1992, he left, leaving me to care and provide for our 3 children, without support from him in any way.  I went out to work and took out a mortgage to pay him his share of our home.   Thus began some very dark and difficult years, hallmarked by unrelenting hard work, lone responsibility and very frugal living.

I was working full time and I was alone.  I was breadwinner, home-maker, mother and father. During these years, there was the emotional turmoil of trying to come to terms with my divorce; there was the strain of coping with my increasingly hostile ex-husband and his troubled relationship with our children;  there was the death of my father;  there was much upheaval and persecution at work at one stage;  .  There seemed to be no part of my life which was happy or easy.   I felt marooned in a sea of undeserved dishonour and unrelenting difficulty. This continued year after year.

My life was like a little boat.  My children were precious cargo.  And I was rowing through a dark and terrible storm.  All around the waves crashed;  the lightning terrified us;  the thunder muddled my senses.  Still I rowed.  Eventually, my children grew into happy, strong, caring adults.  In 1996 I moved to another place and finally, there were mornings of sunshine and evenings of peace. .

My son, the oldest child, became a cabinet-maker, then embarked on a very difficult learning curve and became a policeman.  One daughter became a midwife and the other, an Occupational Therapist. 

My children and I become a very close family;  a closeness forged by commitment and hardship.   It was the delight and joy of my life, to see them together. They were the best thing I had from my dreadful marriage.

Then, in November 2006, my son was killed in a work accident in Sydney.  He was 27. I have no words to express the crushing grief of such news.   Yet even in those early moments, there was peace;  there was God saying “it’s OK, he’s safe with me.  

For long years after my divorce, it felt like there was a wasteland of broken ground inside me;  there had been such betrayal, such conflict;  so much call on all my resources;  so much unfulfilled hope;  so much disappointment;  so many oft-repeated prayers which seemed to remain unanswered.  God took a long time to heal this brokenness.  But He did.  I had to be healed all over again after my son died.  I am still walking that shadowed path really. God is still with me, and He is good.  But I want to tell you the other strategies I learned as well.

Preface

This blog will be written from personal experience.  I will be adding to it as I am able.  It's all in my head and heart. I have no degrees in psychology or human resources  This blog has been lived.  If you have had awful stuff happen to you and you don’t know how to cope or what to do next, or how to stop being scared, then this blog might help.

 Because I’ve been there too.

I speak of God in this book.  I want to make it very clear that when I say “God”, I mean a higher power.  My aim here is not to advance or preach the cause of any organised religion or faith.  Like people who attend AA, it’s good to have the assistance of a higher power when we are grappling with very complex and painful issues. 

I also need to be true to myself.  So I’m telling you that for me, that higher power has become very real to me through the presence of Jesus Christ and his “rules for living”. But if you have had a negative experience with the organised church, then this concept of God might be painful for you.  You may find a Buddhist God or a Hindu God more approachable.  If you are more comfortable with a “creator God” or a “Shepherd God”, then stay with that. I urge you to entrust yourself to a higher power;  the great Being who is the Alpha and Omega;  the intelligence behind this beautiful planet and all it’s wonders.

For me, the loving friendship of Christ has brought me through some of the worst experiences a human being can encounter.  But the purpose of this blog is not to preach at you, or convert you.  The purpose of this blog is simply to help you.

Doubt is not always a bad thing

Doubt can be a bridge between the Jesus we thought we knew, to Jesus as He really is.  If we stay with an intellectual, textbook type Sunday school image of who Jesus is, we have a powerless hard-to-live journey of following Jesus.  If the disciples had stuck to their idea of Jesus as a political King;  a leader of their people, they would never have realized His whole purpose of coming, dying and rising, to take on Himself all of our wretchedness.    It’s the same for us.  If we never question the Sunday school image we have of Jesus, against our own experience and existence in the real world, we won’t come to a relationship with the living, risen Christ.  He will remain a dead, intellectual figure that we really don’t understand at all.  He will remain a “head knowledge” God, without any interaction or connection with us in our everyday lives.

When we are in some trouble or anxiety, and we begin to doubt God’s care or purpose for us, it is not an easy time.  It’s accompanied by fear and turmoil and these things are very disturbing and by their very nature they are tyrannical.  They grip us with such intensity.  It seems we don’t have a moment’s rest.  We have on the on the one side, our picture of Jesus as a loving God of mercy; a generous Father figure;  a gentle shepherd who gathers his lambs and protects them.  And then, on the other side, we have whatever malady or circumstance has happened to us, and we can’t seem to reconcile the two. They seem to be incompatible.  How can God let this happen?  We wrestle with these questions.  We begin to cross the bridge of doubt.  It seems a perilous journey, filled with confusion and searching and conflict and perplexity. 

How can God be loving and caring yet allow our loved ones to suffer?  How can God be a God of justice when we have been blamed for something we didn’t do?  How can the gentle Shepherd allow a little child to suffer in the hands of a ruthless abuser?  Why does God not intervene when something bad is about to happen?  These are the big questions of life.  We don’t like tackling them.  We don’t like to question.  We don’t like admitting we have these dark mutterings in our hearts.  And our responses will perhaps be the same as the people in the Resurrection story. 

We, like Mary, can be overcome at first, with sorrow.  But you’ve got to also be encouraged by her story.  Jesus appears to her and she is ecstatic.  She runs to tell the others.  This can be our journey too, even in the face of sorrow, when we allow the presence of Jesus to come to us.  I think Mary of all the followers was the closest to understanding what Jesus was all about.

Or we can react with fear, like the disciples in the room with the doors locked.  It’s understandable, when confronted with a big life event, to be afraid.  Fear is crippling; it can be overwhelming.  It reduces us to jelly.    How can we not be afraid when we are confronted with serious illness or when our children are in trouble? But the most frequent command in the bible is “Do not fear”. We can tell Jesus we are afraid.  We hear him say to us as he said to the disciples in the locked room “Peace be with you”.  God’s peace is one of the best gifts he gives his saints. 

Or we can be like Thomas, and be honest and say “Show me who you are Lord.  I doubt; I’m hurting; I’m afraid; I’m sad”  And do you see what happens then?  Jesus come to Thomas and shows him the scars.  He says “blessed are you Thomas because you believe”.  He encourages us down the centuries when he says “blessed are you when you don’t see and yet believe”. 

You can’t always believe unless you have first doubted.  And there’s a world of difference between a doubter and an unbeliever.  The doubter is an honest person seeking an experience of God even in the midst of his own perilous circumstances;  an unbeliever is never interested in any kind of experience of or conversation with, God. A doubter is a person struggling to live an honest life, who has many questions of God;  An unbeliever doesn’t care about those things.  And Jesus receives our doubts as willingly and as generously as he values our faith;  he is well acquainted with human misunderstanding and frailty.  Our journey with him will be at times as bewildering as it was for those first disciples.

They cowered behind locked doors.  We too hide in fear, or are beset by doubt, even though we know we have the Risen Christ with us.  But take heart, on the other side of the doubt bridge, our immature, incomplete, inaccurate picture of Jesus will be left behind. We will know a fuller Jesus, a more completely loving Jesus, a wise Jesus who knows what’s best for us, even if it seems He does not.  We will know a Jesus who will share himself with us;  a Jesus who will make our lives a joy to live;  A Jesus who shares his spirit of peace with us throughout all aspects of our journey.

He has given us the HS which is His presence with us. He didn’t condemn Thomas for his honest doubt, and he won’t condemn us either.  In fact, He promises never to leave us;  he promises that we are kept by the power of God.  He promises that he will complete His good work in us. And he says, do not fear, only believe (Mark 5:36). 

When we keep our faults and doubts safely locked away, we don't grow; we are like a seed which never swells with new life but stays a tiny lifeless thing in the infertile soil of untested intellectual faith. But when we honestly tell God what troubles us, He comes into our hearts and fills us with a deeper, stronger, more effective faith. He doesn’t rebuke us, but empowers us with peace, and we are able to answer not just our own questions, but bring resolution and peace to others as well. 

Doubting is not meant to be a comfortable exercise.   When you question things like “does God really care about me, or Is God really in control of the world, there will be turmoil and searching and conflict and perplexity. But if we are to come to terms with the awful things which happen to us from time to time, there is sometimes the need to get it all out before the Lord, and ask and pray and question and learn.  If we are to know God on a deeper level, we must be willing to risk stepping out onto the hard cobblestones of doubt. I can tell you it will not be an easy experience, but it will be one in which Jesus will be with us.

 

I would encourage you to use the figurative fingers of doubt and put them into Jesus’ scars.  Let him show you his real self.  Let him appear to you in His resurrected God-head self.  He will be as gentle and compassionate to you as he was with his first disciples.