Recovery Having Disappointed Someone

When being in two places at once won’t relate,

Because we know it never does,

What can we do to re-inflate,

The relationship that’s abuzz?

We ensure we make up some way,

Creating a turn of trust,

We certainly go beyond what we say,

We take action beyond what’s discussed.

***

If we are apt at pleasing people, and to a point we should be, we will have some awful difficulties in disappointing people. Yet to live this life is to disappoint people. We cannot go far at all before we betray and frustrate and overwhelm people by intruding on their expectations of us. It’s not our fault, but it remains a reality of life.

This issue is bound to either cause to be perplexed or it could liberate us.

We have the option of remaining at odds with ourselves because we cannot stand to disappoint people or of accepting the fact in advance of the time that those who meet us and love us will often end up most disappointed because of us. We must be especially cautious of those who love us, because where there is an extreme of affection there is likely to be just as much an extreme the other way, too. Some people end up behaving like they have borderline personality disorder—love us then hate us, all within a short period.

We have the option: will we be determined to be frustrated and dismayed and feel forever guilty or will we accept that people will say we hurt them when, in fact, they hurt themselves? This shouldn’t be a hard choice.

But then there is this situation. When we must disappoint someone, because we cannot possibly please them, even if we want to, what are we to do?

The imposition of action is our only option.

This is not so much about making up as it is about understanding relational dynamics; that all relationships are about currency: of two forms: 1) The sort that operates like money, where we must invest in order to manage trust. To withdraw too much in our relational bank accounts makes us bankrupt to the currency of trust. 2) Trust has to be managed and made relevant now; it’s no good having had a trusting relationship—it must be current.

Acknowledging these two forms of currency compels us to do whatever we need to do to restore and maintain trust; to redeem the redeemable moment so the relationship has hope for the future.

***

We cannot please everyone all the time. It is an exercise in futility to attempt it. We best plan what we might do to recover situations when we disappoint people. We have the choice whether we determine it is worth it or not. And trust is always the major currency. No relationship is irredeemable. We can redeem a relationship by rebuilding trust.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

When Grace Turns Karma Upside Down

“You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that ‘as you reap, so you will sow’ stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”

— Bono

We have all done a lot of stupid stuff. We are sinners. Yet God loves us. Nothing can separate us from the love in God, in redeeming us by the Saviour’s love. This ‘love’ defies all our logic.

It is impossible to get our heads around grace.

Grace takes what we can understand as ‘karma’ and turns it upside down, confusing any semblance of civility we might otherwise have. Love becomes a rocket, fuelled exponentially, its flight based on the rules of an unknowable Ruler. It overwhelms logic every time logic gets close to understanding life.

Science is enshrouded in knowledge, yet it’s never nearer to the Source of all knowledge.

The closer we get to thinking we’ve got it all together in life, the closer we get to being very legalistic, and the further we are from actually knowing what life is truly about; that life is about relationship and that God requires us to be just, merciful and humble (Micah 6:8). Grace is about relationship.

Karma is as karma does, perhaps.

We can expect it to work when we see it work, but ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’ is a long way from the understanding of how life actually works. It explains some of life, maybe, but it doesn’t explain how an All-Righteous God can forgive a sinning humanity.

The wisdom of God makes humanity’s so-called wisdom a mockery—and without effort. God doesn’t even need to try. Yet, we do try. We are wired to try and discover what it is this life is about; to ‘discover’ God, even if we don’t believe.

But grace just confuses all our logic and effort.

***

Grace makes a mockery of the concept of karma, simply because the love of God located in the cross of Christ cannot be pigeonholed in anything any human can understand. In grace there is no cause-and-effect. Grace is a higher justice, a higher concept of virtue; the highest and purest love. Love, by fact.

Love, as defined through grace, is incomprehensible.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Never Doubting Your Worth

“Let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.”

— 1 Peter 3:4 (NRSV)

It’s the quickest, most effective way to a depressed and debilitating result. Comparisons with others, or deriding ourselves for all manners of failure, rejection or embarrassment, are the prime vehicles to questioning our worthiness, as is dabbling again, devoid of God, in past or present guilt, shame or sin.

We can be our own worst enemy when it comes to doubting our intrinsic worth. We quickly forget that our worthiness has been defined, long before we were born.

Our Worthiness Has Been Defined

Let’s not forget who bought us; if we believe Christ, we are one in him; we are won to him. We are hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

An unfathomably high price was paid for us—Jesus died so our sin would not be a barrier excluding us from fellowship with the Father. Sometimes we need to be reminded of this.

Worth is a thing no longer in contention. Not one single person alive, or dead for that matter, is of less worth than Christ dying for their sin. That is a concept so marvellous that we could consider it every conscious minute for the rest of our lives and still not comprehend the fullness and magnitude of it.

No matter what we do or don’t do in this life, we are unable to shake or de-shackle from this fact. This fact is beyond all our deeds; what we think and say; or even how worthy we think we are or aren’t.

God has defined our worthiness by the measure of Christ.

We cannot argue with the logic of God, for if we do, our defiance of God just leaves us confused and lacking in spiritual sense.

Accepting the Work, On Our Behalf, of Jesus’ Obedience on the Cross

If we can put thoughts of our unworthiness to bed, seriously settling for the inherent worthiness in the glory of being human under God, we begin to live a more spiritually peaceful life—a peace that transcends our understanding.

At the simple transactions of recognising God’s grace we are afforded a simple blessing: the knowledge that, because of what God has achieved, we are worthy.

When we accept the work of the cross, the obedience of Jesus to the Father’s timing for that once-for-all-time redemptive act, the record of history in the Bible, and these by faith, we do feel worthy and we know our worthiness.

Accept the work of the cross.  Accept the unique worth contained in being you.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Exposing Anger's Darkness to the Light of Enquiry

Anger, it seems to me, is a control issue. When we are out of control, we flounder; anger is a response of resistance to frustration. Given exactly the same scenario the next person would respond the same way. Once we have accepted anger is a legitimate response, we can begin to work with our situations to improve them; to plan better; to practice more effective responses. Let’s go beyond guilt and shame for our anger and work to help ourselves out. In that, others are blessed. That’s got to be a good aim.

There are many good reasons for reconciling the irrationality of anger.

Where we can understand these reasons we can accept them, and, of course, we can go on into a better location of mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Surely this is God’s will for us. Surely we please God supremely when we grapple with the truth and understand ourselves to the core, so we are better for others’ lives.

Anger is surely the invitation to understand from whence it comes.

Anger is surely the barb of the soul piqued and jaded and prompted no end toward working until there is a solution—even if that sometimes is mere, yet powerful, acceptance. Still, like too many others, we accept our anger by our justifications. We don’t significantly employee the process of enquiry.

Why are we angry? What is our anger telling us? And is it satisfactory to remain the way that we are? These and many more questions are relevant.

When anger surfaces there is a current, that might as well be a stream of hollow discontent, bubbling well below the outer crust. It might as well be volcanic, and for all we know the internal ructions spell a potential eruption of unprecedented proportions. This is why anger is so dangerous, for we just don’t know when it might get out of control.

Hence the reason we explore it proactively.

When we ask ourselves questions of query, and we don’t protect ourselves against the answer, we may find God is revealing to us truth that may hurt initially, but is destined for our good.

Whatever is challenged in the light dispels darkness.

When we hold something within ourselves—in this case, the irrationality of anger—and expose it to such a light it cannot help but be transformed.

***

An attempt to understand anger may be just what is needed as we invite light to shed truth on the darkness. When we do not fear our anger, but instead we explore it, without shame or guilt, we may invite God to heal us both of using its damaging energy and the damage it can cause.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Being Free to Love Everyone

“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody;

it saves so much trouble.”

— RUDYARD KIPLING (1865–1936)

We too often don’t realise how simple life can be kept; God designed life such that we would place him first (Psalm 37:4; Matthew 6:33). Whenever we do this we are affirmed about the essence of life. Whenever we get it wrong—elevating anything else over God—life gets complicated.

It’s like the relationship status, “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated” makes for more of life than was ever ordained by God. ‘More of life’ is what tempted Eve in the garden. We neither needed more of life than what God gave us nor did we need the complications that come from ‘more of life’.

One salient example of when we demand more of life is when we demand other people be like us: the source of bigotry, jealousy, striving, ridicule, ignorance, pride, and arrogance. When we insist people be like us, we see evidence more and more of the worst of them (from our shrivelled perspective).

Allowing the World to Be As It Is

We only appreciate beauty when we see it. What seems obvious is a powerful truth when consider the opposite: we miss very much beauty in life when we are looking for more.

But why would we want more when we have everything already in God?

Then we come around to the truth that we are embattled spiritually. Since the moment Eve listened to the serpent and Adam looked away our hearts have been fought for: a titanic battle in the heavenly realms.

God will say, “Look to me and I give you everything you need,” and Satan accuses God, saying, “He’s lying; He knows you need more.” But God does not lie.

Being free to love everyone is only a possibility when we reject the complicated life and we opt for the simplicity of what God ordains for all our moments.

What is Life?

Once we realise that life is about God and that God placed us here, principally, to relate with others and give him glory we get the simple life.

This simple life—where we can appreciate nature, spiritual things, simple friendships, etc—where we can let many things be just as they are—and appreciate them without any effort—enables more of the life where we see beauty; particularly the beauty in all others. Then we experience less trouble.

***

Why would we want more when we have everything already in God? This simpler life is all we need, where we see beauty all about, and we have no room for judging things different to ourselves. When we truly begin to love diversity we know God is biggest in our lives. We are putting God first, like we were always meant to.

And strange as it seems, this simpler life means we get on with people so much more. We are no threat to them as they are no threat to us.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Opening the Heart to Grieve

“Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.”

— Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

Life involves us in grief, but it is up to us how we will grieve. We choose our path. And varying levels and depths of acceptance and rejection we align to. Sometimes we wholeheartedly grieve. Other times we run as fast as we can in the opposite direction. Grief, we can say, takes courage; it takes time; it takes great patience. And it requires openness.

But grief is never more normal to life, because we are constantly losing and gaining and losing again. We grow attached and then things are ripped from our grasp. How are we to otherwise contend?

If we care, life will hurt. If we commit to love we will be forced to grieve.

The Necessity of Grief and Reinvention of the Identity

It does us no good at all to close our hearts to our grief. We save ourselves no ordeal; indeed we create an unnecessary ordeal by closing ourselves off to what is our truth.

Opening our hearts to grieve means we enter a journey toward the transformation from dead versions of ourselves toward more relevant editions that we are becoming. Not many of us welcome that idea; that we are called upon to reinvent ourselves.

But that is life. This inconsistent and unpredictable existence requires us to adapt.

If we don’t adapt we don’t overcome. And if we don’t overcome we really shrivel and die. When we tackle our grief, notwithstanding how ambiguous or complicated it may be, we develop resilience through acceptance.

Reconfiguring the identity never seems a pleasant task, but the way life forces itself upon us we often appear to have no choice. Yet we hardly perceive the limitless options to improve our lot by the exploration of new identity.

Becoming More by Becoming Something Else

The concept of transformation requires openness of mind and heart. When we can let go of what grieves us, even fleetingly, we can begin to imagine new life. A new version of ourselves is envisioned. It is strange and liberating that we can do this.

God gives us power and mastery over our destinies of identity. We are the ones that rewrite the scripts. We gain our own permission. We please ourselves. And God is pleased at our volition to accept the offer of new life.

This new life is no negation or betrayal of the old life or of those gone. All the more it is a testimony to the old life and to those gone that we may live again.

***

Our grief is not the end of our lives; it’s the beginning. Beyond our depressions and times of anxiousness for the changes coming we have hope for new possibilities and a broader life than we’ve previously had. Life after grief can, in fact, expand.

When we open our hearts to grieve, we welcome the divine transformation of who we are becoming in the midst of our new reality. The more we open our arms, the better it will be.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

What Men Do On Retreat

WHAT DO men, nature and the outdoors, sports and games, conversation, food, and messages of encouragement and accountability have in common: I’d spell it, R.E.T.R.E.A.T.

Run: to depart from the rat race for a few nights to regain a sense of what manhood is in the context with which we live. There’s nothing wrong with running when we know what we are running from, and when we run in order to gain balance.

Enjoy: fellowship with other men from the same church but from different walks of life; to really get to know them. Enjoyment is known in doing what we would not ordinarily do—in doing something intentional about the regard of our health and wellbeing.

Training: we want to continue as disciples; in the footsteps of the disciples of Jesus, to be trained in four messages—to dare to be: different, discerning, disciplined, and be Jesus’ disciple. Enduring messages help in God’s transformational process as we continue to be open to the Spirit’s leading.

Real: if a person cannot be real, who on Earth are they? It’s even worse to be a man and not be real, because there are women and children relying on us men to be real—and to be safe in that realness. Men’s retreats are an opportunity to be real and to reclaim our realness.

Eat: graze together. There was one thing that the Early Church did that helped them bond together so much in the love of Christ—they broke bread and ate together. Food disarms us and lubricates the social machinery enough to ensure people relax so they can grow together.

Aim: to aim higher than before. Not to get down on ourselves for missing the mark previously, there is the opportunity to set a higher mark and look, within the optimism of hope, that, in the Spirit’s power, it can be achieved. Retreat is about reviewing our goals and asking God to help us go higher.

Time: spending time with people with similar challenges and having time apart from loved ones helps us gain perspective. Such a thing is room for the senses to consider the truth upon reflection. We are not as bad or good as we often think we are.

***

When men (or any group for that matter) take time for a retreat or camp they stand to be blessed in ways they didn’t previously consider.

Men need time together for reconnection, for training in the Lord, to eat together, to enjoy activities with each other, to become real again, and to aim higher.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Henri Nouwen’s 2 Keys to Community

“Within the discipline of community are the disciplines of forgiveness and celebration. Forgiveness and celebration are what make marriage, friendship, and any other form of community possible.”

— HENRI J. M. NOUWEN (1932-1996)

If ‘community’ is the noun then ‘love’ is the verb. And love is made of many different facets of that of a diamond, where we tend to downplay the disciplinary facets. Community is the name we give to what happens when two or more are joined functionally at the hip, and that occurs when love is made real.

Love, we have to imagine, is no pretty or romantic thing; it is voluminous, even gargantuan, by the way it manifests in intricate ways as the essential vehicle to community.

Henri Nouwen states quite plainly, above, that community is entirely contingent on forgiveness and celebration, and we might even proffer to think that forgiveness is the precursor; that any celebration would be stifled for lack of forgiveness.

We need to know here that if we aren’t prepared to do the work of love involved in forgiveness, we are not prepared to do what we need to do to make community possible. Where we are not prepared to journey along the trajectory of forgiveness we might as well give up our desires for community.

Still too many organisations in this world—and churches are so familiar in this—believe that they can do community without forgiveness and celebration, which are disciplines all their own.

The Discipline of Community

We don’t get community unless we are prepared to be intentional; deliberate in our means toward an end that has been transported in love.

Intentionality, as the Dutch pastor may have been proclaiming, is the bedrock of discipline. If we are disciplined enough in our execution of community we will not pass over the importance of forgiveness and celebration. No, our processes will adhere to these two things.

If we are seriously committed regarding community—whether that is marriage or church or team or a friendship—we are to be just as seriously committed to doing all we can in procuring forgiveness.

Just the same, where we are seriously committed in establishing and maintaining community we will be disciplined to the point of celebrating every communal truth as truths we share—good, bad or indifferent. Community is not about perfection. It’s about seeing things as they ought to be seen by the community as a whole.

***

Communities don’t just happen. Whether it is a marriage, a church fellowship, a team, or a friendship, they work or don’t work according to how much work we put into both forgiveness and celebration. We cannot brush aside forgiveness or undermine the need for celebration, for these two actually reinforce whether we are a community or not.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Earning the Right to Give Advice

“In order to speak truth into someone’s life, you first need to build trust, which takes time; otherwise, the person won’t listen to you.”

— STEVE GLADEN (emphases added)

Earning the right to advise someone is never a fait accompli. There is always stickiness about it, because who in their right mind would allow someone to speak into their lives who hasn’t first earned the right? Most people have an innate sense for whom to listen to, although the sad reality is that some people earn our trust through malevolent means, hence betrayal.

Most of us will be positioned, emotionally speaking, as people who will want to speak into certain people’s lives; our family, our work colleagues, those we supervise.

But it is a horrible mistake for a parent or a boss or anyone in an influential capacity to assume they have the right to advise. Such a right is always earned, no matter the pecking order. It doesn’t matter how high we rise in life, people will always choose whether they trust us and not and that generally takes time.

The Truth in Building Credibility

It takes real virtue and stamina of patience to build sufficient credibility that we are able to speak into someone’s life.

It is good that God has designed life this way; but trust needs to be earned and the ability to speak into someone’s life can never be taken as a given.

It is a great privilege, of course, to be allowed in, to listen, to gain rapport, and to be of help when the time comes. It is a pity, therefore, when people who seek to influence us have no thought for developing this sort of alliance beforehand.

The truth in building credibility is there needs to be genuineness and authenticity in our modus operandi with the other person. Such genuineness and authenticity needs to be built out of the rock of love—a firm foundation for the want of the best for this other person, and, no, it has nothing to do with us or our self-interest.

Earning the right to advise someone requires sufficient attention to be made on the relationship. Are we prepared to invest ourselves in this other person? Are we prepared to prioritise their needs above our own?

***

Sometimes we think we have earned the right to advise someone, but we haven’t put the time and effort in to build trust in the first place. We are better advised to forget about giving advice and work on a relationship that has equal footing. When there is sufficient trust, then, and only then, will we know what advice to give.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Conflict Resolution’s Secret Weapon

If reconciliation has any chance at all between warring parties it relies on many things coming together in unison—so often by the work of God’s miraculous grace. Time and the sufficiency of positive relational transactions are but two of the required elements, but there is also this aspect:

There is no value in taking sides.

Supreme value is placed in loving all parties, in spite of the issues of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.

Sides are irrelevant. When we get beyond side-taking (and it’s something we have to watch so studiously) we give to all parties the fairness they are all due. Everyone has a stake in the truth, as everyone has a stake in the outcome.

Conflict Resolution’s Secret Weapon is simple: impartiality and courage to impart, both and together empowered by love, create space for reconciliation.

But first we must appreciate the vertical reality of the Theological Triplehorn: God has enshrined truth—in the relational context—in Righteousness, Justice and Fairness. These are profiled beautifully in the early-going of Proverbs. (See Chapters 1 and 2, particularly verses 1:3 and 2:9.)

The Vertical Reality Helping All Horizontal Realities

Conflict occurs in human relationships by the tenets of the horizontal reality—we cannot get away from human relationships. These are peer relationships in the broadest of contexts.

When we can focus on the vertical reality by the divinely inspired virtues of righteousness, justice and fairness, we are well placed to remain impartial, for there is nothing to be gained in conflict situations by taking a side or vacillating between one side and another.

We might ask how we do this focusing.

The underpinning desire that must flourish in our hearts is for reconciliation.

When we are naturally grieved because people are not reconciled, especially good Christian people who are known to forgive, we know that reconciliation (by process) has become King.

This is when Jesus has become King in our lives; that we are won to the process of doing whatever we can to merge disparate realities by the modality of harmony for all. When we consider this modality we are using, we find it’s all about God’s righteousness, justice and fairness—and that translates into impartiality in human terms.

***

There can be no side-taking in negotiating and resolving conflict. Indeed, impartiality is the blessing of God over many circumstances, and poignantly where there is disharmony. Love is manifest when we can remain impartial through no effort on our behalf—it’s as if, “There but for the grace of God go I,” into these relationship upsets.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

Unpicking the Lock to Our Secret Selves

Each of us is quite unknown to ourselves unless we take the time and effort to explore and plumb the cavernous depths of our secret selves, taking the opportunity to unpick the lock that lies at the heart of the person we truly are.

This person is a person God loves, unconditionally.

That’s the first thing we need to know. Everything else unfolds from there. If we understand that God loves us and that God has created us for the discovery of ourselves, then we are able to harness the passion it takes to unpick the lock to our secret selves. And this is a thing that we should all want to do, for it is power for life—firstly for us, and then secondly for anyone we would know. For, when we redeem this power—the true knowledge of ourselves—accepting same—we will want it for everyone we meet, for everyone we know, and for everyone we see.

Perhaps it is only when we have truly found ourselves in the midst of the mysteries of God that we truly desire the same thing for the person still lost to that marvellous reality.

Going Deep Inside

Going deep inside ourselves requires an earnest commitment to a path—a commitment beyond any other commitment, beside our commitment to God—to leave no stone unturned within ourselves for the discovery.

When we truly know ourselves, and we can accept these bases of our creation under God, without any judgment or condemnation, guilt or shame, our perception of our existence is transformed immediately, not that it occurs overnight at all. But suddenly we understand what this is all about from the aspect of hindsight.

Going deep inside is the biggest test of our lives, and it goes beyond any external test that has been given us in terms of life. This internal test is purely voluntary, but who would not want to take it when what stands as the reward is the very power for life itself?

Going deep inside is about learning to be raw and honest in an unashamed way.

It is about digging into the truths of our pasts without judgment or condemnation, but with a true desire to come beside all of those ugly experiences and see them as God sees them; again, there is neither judgment nor condemnation. These experiences we had are just that—experiences. All they are there for is our learning. If we add anything to them beyond this we take them beyond God’s will.

And this is just the start.

Upon earnest enquiry, going deep inside, God will reveal things to us—things so basic, yet so pungently powerful—that we will wonder why we didn’t do it much earlier. There is no fear whatsoever involved in this.

***

There is a search to be had before we finish our lives; the search for the hero inside ourselves, in terms of coming to know the person we truly are. This is a journey we make with God; a journey of healing; a journey for life and for power; to be released so we can experience peace, finally. This is Sanctuary experience is quite unknown to most of the entire world, but it’s available to anyone willing to search and discover it.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.