Hard Day at Work?

If you had the sort of day that sees you miffed for want of justice then you fit with most of the rest of the world in your ‘right now’ moment. We all have them.

Yet, that sort of flippant everybody-has-those-days response doesn’t empathise much does it? Surely we can do better.

Hard days happen for some of the following reasons:

D You got some bad (some might call “constructive”) feedback;

D Hurt people hounded you and somehow you’re implicated;

D Change is being foisted on you, even though you’re actually doing a great job;

D The workload—which was once an exciting challenge—has ground you down;

D Nothing went right or to plan;

D You felt tired all day and just couldn’t think straight;

D Trying to get work done, you were interrupted by noisy colleagues.

Of course, the list would wind on and on.

The point is, there are many reasons for despairing at the end of our working days. It kind of makes us feel better that with a new 24-hour block of time a fresh start is mandatory. We can put yesterday behind us.

Resolving the Bad Day

It would be little help to leave the ‘hard day’ where it is in Complaint Land.

Many people drown their sorrows in a few alcoholic beverages, which every now and again wouldn’t be bad. As a standard coping mechanism, however, it leaves much to be desired, not least our health, besides not actually fixing a thing.

Others take to coping by getting comprehensively distracted on things totally estranged to work.

And still others will talk it out with a spouse, a mentor, a friend, or process it with themselves—something for which journaling is good for.

Some make an intention of having a laugh about it—or sinking into some comedy.

Whatever method we use the test of how effectively the day’s resolved is by how well forgotten the issue becomes. Unresolved issues have their way of combining and therefore recurring.

“Everyone Has Bad Days”

Recall this is where we started. Again, to hear these words does little to help the person feeling frustrated and upset by their day. But it’s still an important fact to bear in mind.

How good is it to find an example of someone who’s had an even worse day than we have? We don’t have to look too far. Turn on the News.

Self-pity is the dangerous temptation for us when we dwell over horrible days. It’s better to understand, and accept, that—besides bad seasons—for every month we’re alive we’ll have a day or two of bad happenings.

Whilst everyone has bad days, the key is recovery. Putting the bad day behind us is important, but not as important as owning the bad day in the first place—it happened, but it’s not the end of life as we know it.

Tomorrow’s here quick enough.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

When Fear Masquerades as Anger – What To Do About It

We all get angry, though most of us will instinctively deny the fact, for it’s shameful to lack that sort of control. Some people’s anger is so well cloaked it lays dormant until just the right trigger exposes it, as they fly in a moment to incalculable fury.

Others are more even paced in the frequency and discharge of their frustrated emotions.

The Physiology of Anger

Behind the anger is fear; for whatever reason.

Anger, we should also know, is a substitute emotion. It presents when we’ve passed over the base emotion disclosing our inner, even childlike, fears. (We have, until the day we die, these core emotions of a child. Included here is our woundedness and our propensity for fun.)

Anger attempts to protect our fear, but the response is ironically awkward, unguarded, immature and rebounding.

Anger, then, is secondary to our inner fear, and the ‘beautiful’ very certain sign of what we’ve just missed. Even better to note the signs of these boiling emotions—registering interest in those intrinsic emotions before the vitriol spills over the edge in the effect of our noxious words and belligerent actions.

It is posited here that anger is predictable. We can cater for it before it’s too late.

Knowing Thyself

This is where knowing ourselves—and particularly the length of our fuses—helps.

But not just that; we must know our triggers-to-anger and we should also develop re-channelling strategies so we don’t miss the vital nuances of our child emotions.

It’s the adult within that placates the child deeper inside us, not denying the child, but validating him or her, for emotions always present for legitimate reasons. The more adult we can be, the more blessed our life outcomes.

Knowing ourselves is accepting ourselves—it’s not much more complex than that, really.

Revisiting Our Propensities and Bouts of Anger

If we venture back honestly over our last week or fortnight, we’ll have no problem identifying a situation where we either felt tempted to get angry, or we let fly.

Learning about what led to those emotions makes for intriguing intelligence. We can use such information to plan to prevent, or circumvent, the next time.

Noted with special interest is what fear drove the anger. This is an intriguing study.

If we became angry with an inconsiderate spouse, chances are we’d be fearful of becoming (or being) the doormat if we just accepted what they did. If it was children not doing their homework, the fear might be them failing academically and being disciplined or disadvantaged for it.

Predicting anger is planning for it; denying it’s not helping anyone.

Our main objective should always be to prolong our deliberation, so our higher mind has time to rescue the reptilian brain from regretful action. If we’re to get angry, let it be a reasoned choice... in other words, for healthier indignation.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Getting Through Difficulty the RIGHT Way

Many people we can safely call “resilient,” but not all of these persevere through their difficulties the right way.

Not all people care for themselves appropriately.

When pressure mounts there’s a whole raft of responses; many are those that turn their anger in on themselves in unhealthy ways... this isn’t the right sort of resilience; we can’t welcome it.

Not all people care for others when things get tough. Some steamroll the mass, or the unassuming person in the way, to get where they need to go. Anyone can be flippant in their approach to life, shrugging their shoulders as they laughingly thumb their noses without a care for the consequences of their behaviour on others. This isn’t the sort of resilience that’s becoming.

Not all people care for their wider environment, or for God, as issues climb above the sensible. And life’s untenable so often.

So, what’s the right way to get through difficulty?

Holding All the Important Balls in the Air Simultaneously

The key skill in life is handling difficulty with resilient aplomb.

That is, to be able to caringly despatch the right amounts of certitude whilst dealing with difficult situations, all to achieve good outcomes.

It’s hard to achieve all this—the treatment of issues and the right way of dealing with them. But it just won’t do to ‘handle’ the difficult issues without care. If we did that we’d create even more issues—we’d just shift the problem.

Instead, we’re to achieve both the handling of the issue, though skilfully, through the exercise of discretion and foresight for induced risk.

In other words, it’s best that we keep all the balls in the air simultaneously—the visible issue-related balls, as well as the see-through balls of appropriate care; those discerned fittingly for the occasion. We cannot ignore our duty to care and expect things to land well.

Our goal is to handle all our issues sensitively; appropriately. That’s the right way.

Wisdom is the perception, acquisition, and delivery of the right way. Folly is the short cut ignorant of needs.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

How Attractions Lead to Affairs

Lewd acts of unfaithfulness—affairs bring out the worst in our humanity. Reeking of perfidious secrecy, those party to the betrayal are in awe of the excitingly evil power they wield—some are thrilled by it, whilst others are shocked scared of it, though enticed all the same.

But what is not seen, or attended to, is the foresight of what’s coming when the news of the affair breaks.

For many people, however, their attractions never reach any level near that of an affair, but the potential is always there.

Affairs happen, as do the thoughts that get people to making their forlorn decisions—assuming here that affairs are foolish and full of inherent danger. Nobody ever wins out of an affair situation, not on the relational level or moral count.

The science of the affair can be understood as a process: made possible with attraction, commencing and developing with interest, and consummated by intentioned decisions to go that way. Sin is a process—from initial fleeting deceit, to more obvious signs where foolish justifications are made against the directions of truth that should otherwise prevail upon a sensible mind.

Affairs Are Made Possible with Attraction

These days it’s easy to see social-networking affairs happening. People might be half a world away, yet the attraction is generated, some communication is noted as interesting, glances are swapped, and given an ongoing mutual interest, who knows where from there.

More locally, the showing of interest to people who have something missing in their lives—those who are therefore looking—is likely to ‘hook’ interest.

If we don’t want to engage in an affair we should show no interest.

Affairs Commence and Develop with Interest

Showing an interest in something or someone is a deliberate act—one we decide for. No one tricks us into this.

An affair situation cannot develop if the attraction is left where it is—acknowledged, owned up to, and left behind. Equally it’s a decision, or a series of them, aligned with a morality adhering to truth. That is, to disembark from the forlorn vehicle.

But at some point one decision is made to act on a fanciful idea. Perhaps it’s seen as an exciting risk; one full of potential new and wonderful experiences to be had. If we’d go that way, interest is now the way to it.

Seduction commences first in the mind, well before the bedroom.

What has to be set in process is the detonation—as in a bomb—of a pattern of decisions; one decision propagating those flowing from it—one made in order to go all the way there.

Affairs are Consummated by Intentioned Decisions

Nobody ‘finds’ themselves in bed with someone other than their life partner by accident. It’s a series of decisions—a pattern of immoral allure—that got the person there. They’re maybe torn by many different flickers of emotion which only confuses their situation.

Emotions feature against sensible thought at this point.

From initial attraction to sin-made-real-and-undoable is a succession of informed choices. Where the information comes from, however, is in no dispute. Truth doesn’t take us there; only a lie—the wrong information—does. The mind is seduced to the wrong information; a fairytale—one never ending well.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s easy to be attracted to someone else other than our life partner.

The world is full of beautiful and charming people. But tarrying interest that catches up upon the attraction, and denials of attraction, are our danger signs... now to flee.

Wisdom is not getting anywhere near the interest-showing stage.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Steve Baccon photo, courtesy of smh.com.au.

Coping with Guilt After Irredeemable Loss

Let’s face it, most loss is irredeemable. That’s the fact that makes it impossible to reconcile in the shorter term—that we can’t do anything to ‘fix’ this now. We cannot go back to undo or redo what was done.

What we have to understand, however, is this is a normal human condition.

It’s both normal to not reach our potential, making mistakes and occasionally upsetting people, and to want to repair things post-loss. To be left hanging and not able to do what we’d love to have the chance to do can be torture.

The Goal of Adjusting to Loss AND Guilt – Acceptance

Even though the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle ends in acceptance—the person experiencing loss finally accepting life has changed—it’s not a straightforward linear process getting there.

There are shards of anger, denial, bargaining intermingled with splinters of stability, promise and testing as the process of adjustment turns cyclic—without predictability as to what’s coming next.

But acceptance is finally reached—and never before time. We can actually become prone to thinking we’ve reached acceptance when it’s a mirage of same, particularly if we’re expecting to be at acceptance stage.

For guilt it’s the same, provided we have a logical premise to begin with: that is, guilt is not what we should be feeling, despite its presence.

Here we’re simply applying the Grief Cycle to the guilt we might feel—that is to understand a logical starting point is necessary, and then allow the mind to slowly come to accept this logic.

But sometimes we can struggle to attain an image of logic to fix onto.

Whatever Was Done Was Done With the Best We Had At the Time

Getting to a conscionable place in terms of dealing with guilty feelings is our first and biggest challenge.

This is where counsellors help. They get you to share your story and then they apply a logical outsider’s perspective on what they’ve learned of your story.

To an outsider, we’re never as ‘guilty’ as we think we are. Our hearts, morphed by God in love, cannot help feeling guilty, for we could’ve done better. We can all do better. Not one day goes past when any of us gets life perfect. Mistakes happen, and so does sin. Perfection is a tool the enemy uses against us.

We don’t always operate with full faculties, be it tiredness, irritability from pressure, hormonal fluctuations, adjustment to change, or simply the baggage we carry through life.

We’re predisposed to thinking badly on occasions and this ripples into the lives of others.

Accepting we did what we did with what we had at the time is the maturity of acceptance, the disposition of humility. It’s a blessed place that everyone can inhabit.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

The ‘How’ of Forgiveness

“We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.”

~1 John 3:14 (NIV, 2010).

The ‘Why’ of Forgiveness motivates the how; it shifts our thought onto making it work for us because there’s a purpose to the action. Whenever we want to know how to do something, the reasons why will point our way there. Simple intuition will provide the intent to search.

But the ‘how’ is also about process. There must be some understanding of the steps to be taken. The following are some considerations:

Take Note of the Enticing Effect of Offense

Defusing resentment is an obvious key allowing the floodgates of mercy and grace to release and wash us with compassion, opening up within us the forgiveness we’re extending to the perpetrator or the transgressions in question.

Just knowing the nature of offense is good. It’s an enticing thing, to become offended by something someone does.

This knowledge is power. It helps us to go back to the events in question and understand where and how the conflict started. Despite what they did, there is never as much malice intended as we thought there was.

When we now consider the important ‘why’ of forgiveness (from the linked article above) with the theory of hurt that creates conflict lacking motive for forgiveness, we can begin to see the discreet steps toward a lasting forgiveness are taking shape.

The ‘How’ of Forgiveness is Simple

From here, forgiveness is simpler than we think it’s going to be.

As we note the nature of hurt and our temptation to hold a grudge, there’s a better understanding of our role in this concept of relational restoration.

Acts of forgiveness are very action-oriented. Thought is brought to bear on the issues, as mentioned above, and then the act of forgiveness—a decision taken or the act of words said or written—can take place.

The act of forgiveness is keeping us to account. It’s not just us that know we have to do it; it’s preferably shared with revered others.

If there’s a commitment made to forgive someone, and there are others that know such a commitment is made, it becomes more real in our mind and heart. Suddenly we’re holding ourselves to account—and being more honest with ourselves—for there’s fear that if we don’t hold ourselves to account, someone else will.

John’s proclamation at top is simply this: if we refuse to forgive when we can—and we always can—then we do not love, and therefore we remain in spiritual death.

It should only be life that interests us.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

COULD BE WORSE

“Could be worse,” was the beautiful thought of the man still grieving the loss of his wife.

They’d been married twenty years.

He wakes from his slumber, just like every other morning, and the miserable pain of reality again sets in, as he considers his moment, sitting on the side of their bed. The terror of déjà vu is all too real.

Yet, he knows so keenly now that the world limps along with him. There is so much suffering. His anguish has been the ironical patch of blessing, bridging the scarred layers of his heart, to be open to it, and to be open to the pain he sees all around.

He sits vacillating between two vastly different poles: self-pity and peace. But the burgeoning movement of his heart is ever toward the latter; that’s the truth he clings to now.

It could be far worse. To this he is uplifted to live out his day with integrity and compassion, connected to a humanity that needs him as much as he needs it.

He trusts God.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

When Nothing Awakens Us to Something

Anxiety is such a quiet and unassuming nemesis, manifesting itself as if it weren’t even there. When we think we have a handle on it, up it pops to say “Yoo-hoo, here I am!”

When all’s not right at home-base, we’re forgiven for concern; intuitive creatures given to dilemmas are we.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Lord, why is it so that ‘this’ can awaken,

The sense of fright within that’s hardly even there?

A stimulus that resembles a shop-front break-in,

Warrants the justice that awakens with a blank-held stare.

Reminders plunder the basis of reason,

Come back to them we must each and every time,

For without logic we clamour for a season,

No matter how we conquest by manner or rhyme.

Anxiety’s treason is a hard-understood blight,

Leaving souls out to dry – indiscriminately so,

Without cause to even remotely suggest flight,

Stammers the predilection for the person to grow.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

How do we sympathise with such an invisible enemy—one that the ‘sensible’ believer amongst us doesn’t even validate (revealing them to be a sort of false teacher)?

There is no easy answer to anxiety—the predilection to consumed thought, or maybe the presence of shy awkwardness, or a physical symptom or the like.

Halting Anxiety’s Stammering Flow

Even though logic and reason appear quite forlorn in the presence of anxiety, they still bode us well in combating it.

We go without defence when we fight anxiety without these portents of the sound mind. We must come back to sense and good commonly-held rationale, and often. It needs to become a trained instinct.

This is often how the minutes are managed, however fatiguing that process can be.

The final hurdle is empathy—oh, and how so timely!

The Importance of Empathy

The more confusing states of being get, the more people get to thinking they might be mad. It’s ironic that a sense of reason prevails to get them to this place of self-assessment.

What a wondrous skill it is to develop empathy with ourselves... that is, to take our problems seriously enough, but also be able to listen to and understand the reverberant spirit.

This is a skill worth mastering.

At its core it is self-care for self-preservation, and beyond it, deeper still, is the love of God known within by the soul that simply stands tranquil enough to trust.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

The Point Is, They Won’t Care

We all struggle with an elementary fact of life: many people will refuse to care about what is important; to us, to life, to others, to God. Indeed, spun inwardly, it can be seen, we’re our worst enemies—so often we fail to care when roles are reversed.

Accepting this gargantuan truth; that is our task. Then life—as God would have us live it—can commence. From there, we’re afforded the grace for proper contention. We need this in responding to the things that would ordinarily hurt and disappoint us. This is the Ministry of the Right Response.

The Grace of Proper Contention

We know in our hearts that we must contend. But what for; what do we fight for in this life?

Love fuels whatever contention we offer to our worlds, not fear. Fear would light up contention in an ‘eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth’ way. That clearly isn’t grace.

Yet, we do have this fighting instinct in us. So the point is not to fight against people and situations; it’s to fight for people and situations, injecting care.

Another more important point... God cares.

We draw our energy to contend properly in grace because inwardly we’re growing day by day. It’s because we know that God cares even though we see our world often doesn’t.

A Better Point Is, We Can Care

It’s beside the point, the swelling, overwhelming evidence to the contrary—the negligence of the world, including those in positions of authority discharging their duties irresponsibly (in our eyes).

The main point we can care. Advocacy can be our byword.

The fighting instinct raised earlier alludes to a path with a fork in the road—either we’ll fight badly and complain about the lack of care we see, or we’ll take up God’s cudgels and fight the good fight of advocacy.

It’s the weapon of moral value that we wield, for we believe it is right, and ‘right’ is imperative to us.

Against the world that lives ‘happily’ in a pit of varying morality—finding excuse not to care—we care anyway. And when we see others caring we salute them and join their ranks. When that fork in the path is taken we shall see more evidence of others fighting with the grace of proper contention, and bonds will form between us and them.

That is the Church.

We will care when everyone else doesn’t—and there is such a place and circumstance. We need to be on the lookout for it. This is our mandate from God.

Let’s not be fooled by thinking the world should care. We should care.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Peace is Your Place

Choose today to never be held captive to a heart of want or need of anything other than God. Peace is your place.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Climbing and wandering and ceasing give way,

Times as they bear themselves over us,

Peace is our place putting at bay,

The warrant of a flow against that to cuss.

Moments before us too stilted to move,

Bodes us to accept life with a care,

Peace is our place with which to approve,

Taking it as it is – a good thing to bear.

Quiet times seem beyond rattle and hum,

Above the clamour of glare and despoil,

Peace is our place – of want to come,

Plans like this present a quandary’s foil.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

We can go all places to look for peace, when it was in our backyards all along.

Moods of different varieties are tried and still peace is not found by it; seems so elusive.

Yet, try this.

Still. Sit. Breathe mechanically. Re-focus. Obtain bearing for the present moment. Yes, it’s the same as the one just gone, and the one coming. There’s a homeostatic rhythm to life we just don’t see when life’s a flurry. The bizarre thing is, it never changes. It’s been like this since time immemorial.

Look statically around you. What do you notice? With noise emanating from neither head nor heart, the whole world slows. (It’s never against us like we might’ve imagined.)

Now you’re here...

Get used to the fact that the rest of the world around you will rip itself apart in chaotic conquests at times, and you’ve no need to follow them on such a fancy of madness.

Peace is your place, finally.

You earned it. Nobody can take it from you.

Now, thank God for it, hold it, and be responsible for it.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.