What’s going on in a counsellor in a counselling session?

Whilst I can’t confess to know what goes on within other counsellors as they counsel their clients, I can share with you what goes on within me.

There are a range of thoughts and feelings I experience in a typical counselling session, from the practicalities of keeping on eye on the time we’re using, so there is maximum value for the client and so we don’t run overtime and disrespect others, to the delicate nuances of intuiting what is actually happening in the room. Counselling is a very cognitive and ‘felt’ experience.

Counselling is a very mysterious craft that none of us ever masters. Sometimes it’s a single word that someone will say, or it’s the way that they will say it, where I have to discern within my spirit to pursue the moment or not. There’s certainly no perfect practice, which is emblematic really of the tenet of human improvement—accepting our imperfection is a key part of the journey.

The thoughts I think

I don’t know about other counsellors, but I use ‘balloons’ with which to trap and track thoughts. Once I find I’m holding about three or four balloons at any time, I find I need to either give feedback or ask questions.

My key task is to hold and absorb the information given to me, which demands my listening, memory and encoding skills, together with managing my own thought processes, which are effectively prayers, where I am asking God ‘when, how, why, etc’. My thinking is at least binary.

I find that when I am listening, I’m in kind of recording mode, being careful not to miss any of their words and intent or heart behind the words. This is where the skill of quick interjection comes in handy. To be able to be honest when I’ve missed something, or where it is possible I have misunderstood something, clarity is a must.

The quick interjection can be a simple as a single word or two framed as a question. I have found that people always enjoy the process of my checking, because it proves to them that I am both listening and interested; that there is genuine curiosity in my process and care.

The second part of my process is the process of managing the time and space and of being a good steward. This is mostly about wisdom, but  more than occasionally it's also about faith as well, to take a risk with the time, to venture into an area that I think could well be explored for the benefit of the client and my own understanding of their needs.

This is where I find discerning the moment is impossible without actually asking God, “What, when and how, Lord?” “Show me, please.” And God never fails to show up, almost every time in surprising ways.

The emotions I feel

Counselling involves me in all of my emotions as I ride the emotions of the person with me on this journey of empathy. It’s one of the most exciting yet daunting features of counselling; the emotions are a big journey. Having courage goes with the territory.

Whenever someone sees counsellor, they intuitively know that they need a fellow pilgrim. I am never fearful of what I will experience emotionally, because I have learned that the emotions are not to be feared. I have learned that the emotions carry us to a deeper, more transcendent, life, and that such an experience of life as this has far more benefits than costs. So I try to feel everything that the other person feels, or is vulnerable enough to feel. In a sense, I cannot empathise enough!

Sometimes it’s a case that there’s not much emotion at all, and that makes me curious. Sometimes I’ll wonder if this is me. In counselling, the counsellor is as much reading themselves and learning themselves as they are learning about the other person and helping the other person. This inbuilt humility in the process makes it work basically every time.

Also, my own feelings need to be attended to. Like when I’m feeling vulnerable or threatened or frustrated. What’s that about? When I’m attentive, I get a glimpse into what’s happening in the room. Sometimes my emotions can be a mirror into what the other person is feeling but are as yet not conscious of. If we’re humble enough in the moment, which means we’re being courageously open and honest about our weakness, we can learn a great deal.

~

Counselling’s greatest reward is when the people in the process witness the victorious human spirit rise and conquer its foes. And those foes are many and varied; some that were simply unknown and some that are dark and sinister. But as we walk together, we watch them made known in the light and then fall into the darkness. And into freedom we continue by faith.

~

My role is to ‘travel with’, and it was a journey with my eldest daughter that commenced over 10 years ago when she was a mid-teen that taught me this, even though I’d been counselling people before that.

My role is not to provide advice, or to give wisdom, nor is it to cajole or direct, though this is sometimes what happens as a result.

My role is to imagine with the person as to where they’re at, and once  we’re there, to help them negotiate their way toward the goals they seek. It’s all about them.

Photo by MINDY JACOBS on Unsplash

Nah… No! DON’T Go Around Breaking Stuff!

We all have our triggers. Something I read today provoked an inner sense of disgust, even though I know the motives behind what was written, and what was shared, seemed innocent enough.

Here is what was quoted; maybe I’m overthinking it:

“Don’t pretend.

Cry.

Scream.

Break a few things if you need to.

God is not afraid of your darkness.

Actually, the Spirit is masterful at creating from chaos.” (Carlos A. Rodriguez)

I get it. I understand what the author is trying to say. But I just can’t get past that middle sentence: sorry, it’s not okay to break stuff. The trouble is when we break stuff we break things of value, to us or to others or to us all, and sometimes when we break stuff, we break people.

And, am I allowed to say this, when people break stuff it’s scary. I know, I know, when we are in the darkness it is scary, but we don’t need to make it scarier for others than necessary. There are far more appropriate ways of finding solace in God, and finding a healing that only comes from God.

I wonder how many people read those words, and that sentence jumped out of them, because they have a background in family or domestic violence. I wonder just how many people have been traumatised by violence, because what is it that traumatises us? Violence!

People breaking stuff.

The general thrust of what the author is saying certainly has merit, but why give license to those who might weaponise their anger to promote their own ‘healing’, when that healing, done in this way, can potentially wreak havoc in lives around them; certainly in loved ones lives.

I have seen too many times people break stuff in anger only to regret it minutes later, and they spend months and even years repaying a debt they cannot afford to repay. What about those who have to repay others’ debts? I’ve seen people break ‘stuff’, and that stuff be people. One woman per week in Australia is broken; I don’t mean to the point of needing to be healed. One woman per week in Australia is permanently broken. Her life is ended. She has been killed. Because someone broke stuff!

It isn’t okay to say that maybe you should break some things if you need to. This plays far too much into the hands of our self-centred spirituality these days. When it’s all about me. I’m sorry, but if you need to to break stuff to feel better you’re doing it wrong. Sure, if we have broken stuff, and so many of us have in the past, we do pay the consequences, and beyond that need not feel guilty, given that paying the consequences should amend the guilt.

For the person reading this, especially the man, who has power to break stuff, to break human bodies, to destroy possessions, and to shed fear abroad in the lives of those close by, please do not go and break things ‘if you need to’.

You don’t need to.

Speaking of the ‘No’ Test, thought of the ‘Yes’ Test?

Do you know the ‘no’ test? Ladies should. Early in a romantic relationship, and especially as the relationship ‘lands’ at a time when conflict begins to rise, a lady should ensure she is able to say ‘no’ when she feels like it. Not to be nasty, of course; but, if she cannot be herself, what use is there being yoked to a man—and be who he wants you to be without you being who you know yourself to be and need to be for yourself?

So, the ‘no’ test is important in every relationship—for both parties—so both parties don’t lose themselves in some toxic liaison with forever consequences, i.e. codependency!

But the ‘yes’ test is just as important.

The ‘yes’ test is all about asking a seasonal question—lingering on the question for a season. A length of time. Can I say ‘yes’ to the rest of my life with this person? With all I know of him after dating him over a year. (Perhaps asking this question deep into the second year will prove more effective.) If you don’t even get to this point—in other words, the relationship is untenable before this point—good! You haven’t wasted your time.

Even though we live at a time where there’s far more ‘enlightenment’ about equality and fairness in relationships, what is surprising is also on the rise—the opposite spirit of narcissism. And even in younger people, younger men, it is surprising how attitudes to women haven’t changed in a sector of our society. It’s just like the perennial problem we have with racism. Or Islamophobia… and every other Phobos. In some quarters attitudes have not changed.

Ladies, please take counsel. There are men out there who will be positively charming, who will sweep you right off your feet, just like has never happened before to any woman (oh yes, it feels this way for just about everyone!), but give it time and a darker side may well rise. The more charming he is, the more connection initially, the more of a surprise it is when the dark side rises.

There is only one hope for men like this: for me it was the Twelve Step Program nearly 16 years ago. I had to learn something very profound; a learning that took a few years investment. It has paid handsomely. It wasn’t so much that I disrespected my wife (though I had!), it was more that I could not be honest with myself. A program of recovery teaches you to be honest with yourself. Man, you reading this, if you feel it’s her that’s being nasty to you, work out whether it’s you starting it or whether she’s safe—if she’s not safe, then get out. But if you’re starting it, stop! Accept your contribution to the conflict, own your behaviour, including your anger, and do not be violent!

Narcissistic men don’t want to set the example in repentance—actually, correction; they cannot. Ladies, if you’re in a relationship where there’s even a sniff of abuse—and please think beyond physical or sexual abuse into emotional, verbal, spiritual, financial abuse and neglect—look narcissism up. Do your research. Narcissists cannot stand being called narcissistic. They will explode or get you back or throw it back at you (or all these and more in stereo!) if you even mention the word ‘abuse’. But a guy who can transact with these terms—who can see his fault—who is honest and quick to own it—this man is a keeper.

The ‘yes’ test is this: can I truly say ‘yes’ to everything about this man—given what I know now, i.e. it’s not about your hopes for him to grow—for the rest of my life?

Forget about your hopes for him to grow. Growth is a future thing. It is not a now thing.

If his behaviour is to change, it will take at least a year of seeing it consistently before he has any credibility. Most of all, his attitude must change. He must, like every other adult person, take his own responsibility. If you can, he should too.

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One Thing ‘Old’ People want to say to Young People

One of my uncles turned 80 and when asked how he felt he simply remarked he felt like a twenty-year-old, but with creaky knees. As I talked with some of my cousins, they noted the same phenomenon. And as I reflected, at nearly 52 years of age myself, I found resoundingly, I feel the same way.

As we get older, provided we look after our health, we don’t feel old. We may look older, but we don’t necessarily feel old. And this is an important thing for young whipper snappers to be aware of.

You may be 20-something or 30-something and think that people in their forties, fifties, sixties and beyond feel old because they look older. No, the good news is life gets better with age!

Now, if you’re ‘aged’ and you don’t agree, that’s your prerogative. But let me caution you; you can feel youthful if you want to.

But most of all I want to say from someone ageing gracefully by God’s grace, you don’t need to feel old just because you’re older. You may not be able to do the things you once did, but with your health in check, you can feel as my uncle does—like a twenty-year-old!

So, if you are young, the best is yet to come!

I’m so happy to enjoy the privilege of age. Honestly, it’s a blessing not afforded to everyone. The older we get, the more legacy we can leave. And the best thing, as we diligently sow for our health, if we have it, we truly don’t feel old even if we look old.

Now, I am aware that some people have conditions that make it impossible for them to identify with what I’ve written here. Respect to them!

Photo by Kelley Bozarth on Unsplash

When Justice Rains Down from Heaven

What would happen if all the secrets in the world were suddenly made known? If every abuse was brought out into the light. If every good deed done in secret was revealed for God’s glory, so that truth would be known and each and every survivor would receive their immediate and owed vindication.

What would happen if suddenly nobody could deny, ignore or refute the truth? If every abuse suddenly had the spotlight shined on it. If every abuser was suddenly naked before every peering eye. Like a cataclysmic spotlight that shone in every evil place, brilliantly, simultaneously, so the wicked had no place to hide.

What would happen if there were no more secrets? If nobody who had to keep their secret felt they had to keep it secret any more. If everyone who kept a dark secret was found out. If all the evil was purged at once from the earth.

What would happen if there were no more future abuses? If the truth had rained down forever and secrets were impossible to keep hidden. If justice was now irrepressible. If sin had no refuge anymore, and everyone actually lived as if they were in the full Presence of the fear of God.

What would happen if those who suffered horrendous abuses were suddenly seen and heard and believed and supported and loved and cared for? If they saw their noonday vindication, and could hardly believe it for the fact that it had arrived in the fullest array of reality. If in real life, in real living colour, raw emotions of release and peace were felt at last as it were promised from long ago.

What would happen if those who long thought they’d never have a charge to answer found themselves bereft of defence and completely forlorn of excuse? If evil personified was finally arraigned in a fashion that was such a  rabid justice that the survivor only felt pity on them, such was the swiftness and severity of the consequent punishment. If the survivor of abuse was dramatically and miraculously relieved of the effects of their trauma. If they were healed in one agile movement of grace.

What would happen if everything promised from creation’s beginning came to pass this instant? If heaven fell to the floor of this moment’s eternity and completely transformed the existential cusp. If justice came amid eternity’s promise.

Oh what a day that would be!

Hope upon hope. Justice comes. It is coming.

And though this life hardly presents upon our perception that these wishes are realities, they are in fact eternal realities that are realer than even this life’s experiences.

Would you accept their apology if they never changed their behaviour?

There are two kinds of narcissists; those who never apologise and those who pretend to apologise, all the while knowing they have no desire nor will to change. As far as east is to west, the pattern narcissist can never change; they never wish to; they never see the need; they never can because they never see their wrong. Harsh words? They possibly sound harsh.

But the only hope anyone has
if they need to change is to change. 

Sometimes what people need most of all is for people to doubt their ability to change, so they are motivated to prove the doubters wrong.

Let’s talk about resistance versus reluctance to change for a moment. The person who is resistant to change, who needs to change in order to relate respectfully with others, but refuses to is a hopeless case who cannot be honest or trusted. Notice how I used the word ‘resistant’ rather than ‘reluctant’—most of us are reluctant to change, but resistance to change when one must is another level of stubbornness below and beyond help.

The question that this article asks ought to be on all our hearts as we ponder the success or otherwise of our relationships.

Too many of us have become ‘yoked’ to people—partners, bosses, family members, friends, pastors, etc—who fell short of a standard the common person might expect in terms of reconciling wrongs.

I love the idea that we as contributors to conflict ought to own 100 percent of our contribution to the conflict; not 80 percent nor 100 percent of our own and 20 percent of theirs also. The best relationships feature protagonists prepared to own 100 percent of their individual contributions.

If someone cannot own what they did wrong, and they cannot be honest to this degree, they have no hope of reconciling the matter with the one they hurt. But even if they do agree, and they do apologise, how do we feel if they accept they did wrong but cannot or will not change?

Will that be acceptable? Well, we do need to ask ourselves if it makes a difference. We need to be ready to deal with more fallout if their apology is as thin as their words are and we’ve trusted them again. Perhaps we’re ready to forgive the fact that they harmed us, but we’re not ready to trust them to the extent of another foray. Maybe it’s fairer to say that we’ll wish them best and keep our distance from now on.

Perhaps we see that there is no sense for repentance in them at all. Then what do we do? If there’s no repentance—absolutely no insight for the damage they did—what are we to do? Surely we must protect would-be targets of such a person—as far as that depends on us. We should expect not to be listened to, because people go headlong into all sorts of affairs of risk.

But the real issue we’re discussing pivots around whether an apology in and of itself is enough. Maybe we can agree that a central part of an apology is promising to change and delivering upon that change.

In this way we could say that an apology that falls short of the action of change is no apology at all.

Certainly we could say that the original offence is more than doubled, and even compounds, if there’s no apology; and, where the apology is given, but  action falls short of being sustained, that it never was an apology to begin with.

There is at times a cost borne on empaths who forgive and forget too easily. It would be best to wait and see and give a person a long opportunity to prove that they’ve changed. That process takes more than just a few months. In the meantime, we have to live our lives.

Photo by Francisco Gonzalez on Unsplash

One Thing Survivors of Abuse Wish Everyone Knew

“Just a friendly reminder that abusers don’t abuse everyone they come in contact with, so placing doubt on victims based on your experience with that person is irresponsible and unkind. Thanks.” (credit, Give Her Wings)

How do you like that? Some people, perhaps many, might not get it. They may think this is witch-hunt language. But please remember though; this is not about the abuser.

It’s about the victim of abuse, who would prefer not to have any sort of spotlight on them at all—but finds they face daemonic dilemmas because of the evil that was cast against them. And even if it was about the abuser, please remember, those who profit through abuse have mastered a suite of skills in image management.

I have personally had friends (good friends) tell me that my abusers were fine people; or, that they’d changed. What I hear them saying is, my experience of the person or persons we both know is invalid. Without my experience of abuse I can agree; strip away the wickedness that was done and I’m with them. But I cannot undo what was done, as much as I would if I could. And, if ‘they’d changed’ how is that even remotely relevant to me unless the person who abused me sought me out to reconcile and restitute matters?

I’ve had many people come to see me in a professional capacity who have been gaslit and never knew about it until I showed them what it was. They knew they’d been harmed by others they knew who hadn’t even abused them, purely through their belief in what an abuser had told them, and convincingly so.

The common experience for the survivor of abuse is an almost unequivocal lack of support, or a total lack of support from those who really mattered.

But it’s not just what the bystander says. It’s what they don’t say that’s possibly the most damaging. If you’re a bystander, what you’re being told may seem fanciful and off-the-wall, but your trust of another person’s experience is foundational for their support, recovery and growth.

What God is asking of you is hold on in faith, believe the person in faith, add your hope to their despair, listen and do not judge; don’t vouch for the other person’s this-or-that. That’s not your role in this instant.

Your role is to sit with the person you know has an even mind and a fair heart overall. Your role is as a steward as you hold them and their experience. Your role—if you have the guts for it—is to still the moment, guard your speech, pique your ear, harden no part of your heart, and aim to be God in skin.

The person who has suffered abuse has either legal recourse or they don’t; either way, they just want support. If there’s no legal recourse, there’s no need to defend the abuser, because you can simply hold one person’s experience of this person as a truth without them being marred. You’re not marring them, are you? So don’t worry about it. Now, if there’s legal recourse, the person may still face (or has faced) the matters they’re accused of.

Do you see how defending someone who has allegedly abused the person in your presence is irrelevant at best and irresponsible and unkind at worst? Do you see that some of the people you know, who have never abused you, can possibly have abused others? It needs to be held as a possibility.

One thing I find is true is that the abused person sees something post-abuse that people, until they’re abused, don’t readily see. Abuse opens our eyes to evil in this world. We begin to believe its prevalence. Until we’ve suffered abuse, we don’t really know what people who have suffered abuse are contending with.

As someone who has experienced systems of abuse, I want those who abuse people to learn what it feels like to be abused.

This is not to say that I want people to suffer abuse, but what I do say is that we often cannot possess the empathy required until our own hearts have experienced the schism of abuse. Then, we’re all ears, all heart, and more even handed.

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Please respect my body, mind and soul

As I held my son’s body safe on a boat recently, God showed me something incredibly important. Those hands of mine, in that moment, had much power; power for safety to hold his body from falling into the water, and power to damage him, through inappropriate hand use and positioning.

To some of you, this will seem dangerously obvious; the image I set before you won’t be lost on you at all! But it’s not something as a father that I’d thought of much before. As I think back to my days as a father of my now-grown daughters, I don’t think it ever occurred to me, and yet the world’s focus wasn’t on sexual abuse at that time.

I have never abused anyone sexually, nor have I ever suffered sexual abuse, but somehow it’s always on my radar now; the use of my hands and my observations of others’ hands. I’m easily suspicious of people’s actions with their hands. I have learned something important about how subtle sexual abuse is—or at least how subtly it can start.

What God showed me in this vision was the heaviness in the nuances and subtleties of physical abuse that occurs sexually—those odious transgressions that can seem to sneak up on the victim as they realise just the depth of betrayal a person’s hands (or body) have delivered on them. It’s a mind that believes they’ll get away with it that does such a thing; or, a mind that doesn’t care. Either way, it’s evil.

Every vulnerable person’s prayer is that their body, mind and soul would be respected. And we’re all vulnerable to abuse. We may not know that we’re vulnerable until we’re in a situation where we’re taken advantage of.

Any of us at any time can find ourselves in a situation where we might be taken advantage of; where a perpetrator of abuse would take a power they ought not take and execute a control they ought not have.

Beyond the grooming which is deeply and darkly spiritual, sexual abuse is promulgated initially as a physical betrayal, but it grips us viscerally, takes command of our mind, and rips up our soul.

What everyone deserves—and I do use the word ‘deserve’ cautiously—is respect for their body, mind and soul. Everyone deserves the right of appropriate touch. Nobody should ever be touched or handled in a way that leaves them feeling crossed. Every single touch or contact with others ought to carry with it the kind of permission that leaves you in no doubt whatsoever that the other person feels absolutely respected. Most of the time there is no need to touch another person. So why do some people do it in situations where touch is marginal at best?

Perhaps the greatest blessing we can give people—anyone we interact with—is to ensure we respect their body, and in that we respect their mind and soul. Of course, we ought also to appreciate we’re all far deeper than merely our bodies. Our minds and our mortal soul needs respecting too.

As we respect each other’s bodies and entire beings, viewing each other as the creations of God that we are, we agree to live freely all the moments we’re given, and in this expanse of freedom, we have peace, hope and joy in loving one another.

So, our very first living duty is to respect the being of other people. And others’ first duty is to respect ours. This is first and foremost the respect of our body, our mind, our soul. To love one another is the respect of body, mind and soul.

The Bond of a Toxic Bondage

It isn’t always easy to break a toxic relationship. The toxic binds are strong, which is no wonder why people cannot easily extract themselves. Understand this and you can support someone who’s a victim of domestic violence. But fail to understand this and we become complicit in victim blaming.

One or both parties may desire such a breakage not occur. It’s easy to see how a damaged party sees something in their partner that makes their hearts break for them, even if others close by are left scratching their heads.

And, of course, there are many perpetrators of violence who are otherwise charming and emotionally engaged at times, but who prove through their actions that they cannot sustain a way of living which is tenable for safe, reliable, trustworthy relationship.

For the perpetrator of violence—and let’s be clear, there is not just physical violence, but emotional, verbal, spiritual, financial etc—there is a clear need of supply in their relationship with the oppressed. They need the relationship to continue and sometimes will go to extraordinary measures to ensure it continues. Some perpetrators of violence will pretend it doesn’t bother them, but it always does. Their weaknesses they parade as strengths.

Toxic situations of relationship certainly can occur through both parties firing off each other, but there is always one who will take matters too far, and violence is the poignant example.

The bond of a toxic bondage is strong, like all matters accorded to a bond we liken to love. Such a bond is hard to break, no matter how obvious it seems it’s broken and damaging to the increase. Such a bond is strong because it’s habit-formed where two people are enjoined in their identity—this is all the more tragic, because the victim of violence must enter a complicated grief just to extract themselves, and that’s often just the start of the challenges that beset them.

There is a bond of a toxic bondage. The toxicity that emerges between two people, usually because one is abuser and the other is the victim—even if the abuser gaslights the victim by saying they themselves are the victim—is a bondage, which is not the same as a bond. The bondage is a toxic cycle. The bond could be good if it weren’t for the cycle of bondage.

For the victim there can be the appreciation that this is complicated and such complications mean ending a relationship they may not want to end is problematic. In some ways because they don’t want to end it. In some ways because the partner may not want to end it. In some ways because of the habits of identity they’ve nurtured in each other—that the pain of staying together, whilst painful, may seem less painful than separating.

But my experience is toxic situations just get worse, despite hopes partners may have that the situation would improve, and where there is abuse, the situation will not get better.

If you are subject to a pattern of violence in your relationship, your relationship is untenable. Be wise, bite the bullet, enter the grief, and hope is inevitable. But sustain the pattern by staying in it at your own peril. Get support. Get people behind you, and get out. But stay safe.

The only recourse the perpetrator of abuse has is the successful completion of a program of recovery (12 months to two years) where transformation has occurred to the end of sustained behaviour change.

It really doesn’t matter how great the good parts of a relationship are if abuse features in any of it.

Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash

Two very different Mother’s Days

On the same day, in the same family, two very different experiences; one joyous without a care, the other full of turmoil and grief.

Not that all mothers who ‘should’ be joyous are, for some experiences of Mother’s Day are hellish even when we have every reason to be grateful.

We feel a very close bond with mothers and fathers who have lost children, or who haven’t yet had children, or have struggled or do struggle to fall pregnant. Mother’s Day can be agonising for them. There is an emotional emptiness borne within them that makes their heart’s sick, and there is nothing we can do to help other than to validate the lonely, grievous experience and to sit there with them if they would allow us.

Like all “Day’s”, there are those that hate them for what they themselves are reduced to, for the pain they bear, alone and unacknowledged, and for the hopes that once again lay dashed on the rocks of a hard life.

Then there are those who feel guilty for the joy they should feel, because there is some sense of confusion for what should be felt, but isn’t. That’s a whole other story that can, at times, feel grossly unfair—“I shouldn’t be feeling like this! I don’t understand!” This is all too normal!

Others are on top of the world; a Mother’s Day of the Ages. But soon the day slips into the oblivion of experience and there is even morning that, like birthdays, these halcyon experiences just don’t last.

And, there are so many families where the highs and lows of heaven and hell are experienced on the same day, even under the same roof! All this within the ambit of human experience.

Whatever we feel on Mother’s Day, and especially if your experience is lonely and unacknowledged, my prayer is you feel the love of the Lord of your creation.

He loves you with a love that transcends all human love and all human experience.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Dwelling Safely in the Privacy of Suffering

I like to be honest. I see no sense in putting on a mask. There is no encouragement to the masses in conquest without pain. But this is something God gave me in the privacy of my own anguish recently. I thought it worthy of transparency and sharing.

There is an invective spiritual force that hates us, and the more we draw near to God, the more this force endears itself to our ruin. And if you read that to your distaste, maybe this article isn’t for you. But anyone given to spiritual attack—given occasionally to the censures of spiritual warfare—will agree; it comes in the matter of a soul suffering that punishes our cause of good but for a time.

This article is about staying safe when we’re under the spell of that kind of torment—the private suffering that many are given to, but that so many do not feel comfortable talking about, let alone expressing with candour.

There have been many times in my life when I felt overwhelmed spiritually, to the point of some temporary madness. Not that I was insane. Each time I’ve been very well aware in my own mind that I was still very sane, but that I had far less control over my visceral faculties than I wished to have. This is a scary place to be, even for a short time, because the thoughts we have can be abjectly dangerous, and those thoughts might be acted out.

What do we do when we’re beside ourselves in suffering; a malady not of our own prescription and always a condition that leaves us strewn from even our own understanding?

These are private sufferings we hardly share with anyone. There might be a marriage partner who may know, but so frequently in life many people who suffer in ways that feel shameful or especially weak (not saying it is) never feel they can confide about their anguish. This just gives the shame more power.

It is remarkably normal for any and all of us to suffer in ways that feel inherently shameful. We feel guilty for a whole range of reasons, few of which are genuinely logical.

This needs to be remembered. By far and away the most common thing I do in the counselling space is to reassure people they’re normal. I can tell you that I’ve  felt and done things when I’ve suffered that I’d hardly feel comfortable sharing publicly.

But the fact is these need to be shared openly
such that people could see that
we’re all normal until you get to know us!

Few people go through life without having experienced some kind of dark night of the soul, and those who do have probably been active in their denial.

If we’ve suffered to such a degree that our behaviour is a tightly kept secret, because of the shame it induces, we need to be reminded that this suffering is very common.

Suffering is a common feature of our humanity,
especially when we’re pushed beyond our limits.

What is most important and most transformational at one and the same time is something that should be remembered at the time when we most need it: to hear God say in our lament, “Go gently, sweet son/daughter, this too shall pass, and you will soon be resurrected from what overwhelms you, so hold fast to gentleness as you pass through the storm.”

Photo by Josep Castells on Unsplash

Reconciling the Mixed Fortunes of Life

Rejoicing and mourning in any 24-hour period is within the remit of life.

A colleague of mine said recently, “Heaven is constantly weeping and rejoicing at the same time.” (Thanks, Steve Frost)

I once had a conversation with a parishioner who had one sibling announce she was pregnant moments before another sibling announced their partner had miscarried.

Or, the time it was confided to me (a long time ago) by a mother that they had one child marry, and another child announce they were being divorced the following weekend.

Life requires us to balance the juxtaposition of praise and despair, rejoicing and weeping, ecstasy and trauma, and anyone in a helping profession will find that reality visits their postcode regularly.

Life doesn’t seem fair, but as I told a family member recently, the wheels of justice turn slowly in life, but they do in fact turn. Justice does come to the one who is faithful and diligent amid paralysing despair and hopelessness.

The Bible tells us to “rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn.” (Romans 12:15)

It is my firm conviction that life mystifies us and the best we can do is accept that we cannot control the meld of bad that comes with the good. Sometimes we  can, however, be bewildered as to why good things happen to some people and bad things happen to others. Life doesn’t seem just. But it is eventually. It is ultimately.

When life is confounding in its harshness, we must remind ourselves that all things have their turn, and they do, when triumph looks our way.

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash