The hard way now is the easier way in the long run

It’s a truth that fits into so many realms of life: doing things the hard way — the proper way — the painful way, initially, is the easy way in the long run, because it’s the way it’s supposed to be done.

There’s no wisdom in delaying the inevitable.

There’s no wisdom in denying the undeniable.

There’s no point in pretending things are as they aren’t or aren’t as they are.

Facing the pain of ‘what is’ seems inordinately hard, but it’s actually a lot easier than the alternative — to pretend things are different than they are.

FACING can seem impossibly hard.  It isn’t.  Please believe me.  I’ve seen it in so many who have learned to face their hard truths.

When you face your hard truths with the right kinds of support, you can endure the undoing of guilt and shame as you bear the fleeting pain of it — though at the time that pain will feel anything but fleeting.  But, BEARING.  Yes, these are burdens that grow us in the confidence of courage — truth to tell in a million different ways!

What beckons is freedom.

The blessing of facing our pain, our hardships, our truth that can’t be denied, is freedom — the only true and genuine freedom any of us can and will ever know.

Freedom is a possession for facing truth and holding ourselves amid the realities of our lives.

Verily, as Jesus says, “The truth will set you free.”

But to continue the façade is to continue in a bondage we’re never relieved of.  That kind of sowing brings just more pain.

Going the hard way — the diligent way, the way of integrity — is the easier way in the long run.

Going what seems the easy way is always the harder and more impossible way in the long run.

But the truth is, few ultimately decide to go the hard way which is easier in the longer run.  Again, Jesus calls this the narrow way.  He calls us to enter the narrow gate.

And if we do this, the truth — facing our truths — will set us free.

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Facing the inevitable realities nobody can avoid

I’ve had the experience often enough to know the life that comes from death: a man or a woman clutching at a wooden cross, clinging to life by a thread, deep into a journey of palliative care therapy, agonising over regrets and begging God’s forgiveness.

On death’s bed, but, for the first time, approaching real life.

People such as these — ready to be forgiven — needing to be forgiven — usually receive that forgiveness, because they need it so badly.  People such as these represent every single one of us when we’re honest.  There are always things we’d like to have a do-over for.

God’s forgiveness in Christ was done once, for all — and it is claimed, for all people who want it, for all eternity.

Facing the interminable status or fact of death forces us to stare over the precipice with a longing that we ourselves cannot quench or satisfy.  We can deny the truth no longer.

Life is where dreams go to die — dreams, in this case, are those events in all our lives that we wish were just dreams, that are actually nightmares — things others did to us or things we did to others, from unkindnesses to much worse.  God can only heal us as we face what wasn’t a dream, but a nightmare.

We can pretend all we like, but it doesn’t help us when we’re about to face God; a prospect none of us can deny this side of the eternal divide.

Am I trying to scare you?  Those scared by this, those who take this seriously, are those prepared to do what can only be done in the land of the living.

Those who mock will not listen and they will face the truth on the other side.  There is nothing sadder, because for every moment of turning away, of refusing to face, we remain captive when we could otherwise be freed.

~

An enduring memory I have is of a late seventies man, ravaged with cancer, living his very last hours, and tearfully and fearfully regretful.  It was holy ground I stood on as I walked into his hospital room that Saturday afternoon years ago.  I relied prayerfully on everything I did and spoke — reverence and awe for the moment.  The fear of the Lord was in and about the room like it was palpable.  The Spirit had come close to this man.

There in the room with the man and I were a couple of family members who were silent and sorrowful. The man could only be comforted by them for a short time.  His real peril wasn’t physical.  It was intensely spiritual, and he was doing, or had done, business with God.

He didn’t need much from me other than a reassurance that his business with God was done, it was good enough, the assurance of divine forgiveness.  I prayed as I was led, believing in my heart that this man was God’s.

I learned a couple of hours later that the man had passed away peacefully.  I was in awe of what God had had me experience in that room with the man and his family members.  It was as if I’d done nothing, I merely cooperated with the Spirit who had filled that room.

There is a place like this for each one of us; a place where we come to meet Truth.

Not a truth we can devise, convenient to our own plotting, but a truth that is incontrovertible — a truth we all tend to shy away from.

The purpose of life is achieved when we face that truth.  That truth matters.  Justice on earth is peace in the heavenly realms.

Of course, God gives each of us a gift for seeing the wisdom of this; God’s Spirit lives in us, guides and protects us, and justice and compassion then become our way.

The purpose of life is achieved when we face truth. 

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The narcissist’s entitlement mindset

The narcissist’s entitlement mindset is not just self-defeating, it’s also other-defeating as all victims of narcissistic abuse are well aware.

Before I go into detail about the narcissist’s entitlement mindset, it’s handy for us all to look into the general psychology, because any and all of us will be tempted to go the way of entitlement — remembering now that it’s self-defeating.

Anyone who engages in an 
entitlement mindset will suffer,
and they cause those close
to them to suffer too.

Many people, especially the competitive types, are not bothered if others miss out or lose out, so long as they themselves don’t.

If only a selfish person can get their head around what I’m about to explain, their life will go much better — they will learn to put others first, because, very frankly, it’s the best and most sustainable way to put themselves first.

This is what a sensible person with a crooked heart can deduce:

Do to others what you would have them do to you; if nothing more than for the blessings and favour that are returned.

See how someone can be a ‘good person’ without having the heart that underpins true goodness.  Such people can put on their good deeds for show.

Sometimes, and maybe a lot, this is your narcissist.  Though there are many people who do their good deeds for self-gain who are not technically narcissistic.  They’re worldly wise.

The entitlement mindset is self-defeating for this reason:

Whenever a person insists things go their own way, they’re destined for disappointment a lot of the time.  It’s a course in frustration.  And who do they have to blame?  When it’s only really themselves they should blame — their opportunity to take responsibility for what is theirs to own — the constant, predictable and inevitable finger pointing at others leaves them in a fundamentally disempowered situation and weakened position.

This is the external locus of control that always puts the power for change beyond their own reach. Those who can never accept their own responsibility cause themselves and all those who care about them unwarranted misery because they refuse to cooperate with themselves.

Those stuck in an entitlement mindset will make life a misery for everyone around them, and especially for those who are determined to help them — the enablers.

The opposite of an entitlement mindset is the powerful concept of ownership of one’s destiny.  Nobody else is to blame for what they can and can’t do.  They steer their own ship.  Their joy is their own.  And they free everyone around them; there’s no tender hooks or walking on eggshells for others.

But the narcissist is ensconced in their entitlement mindset.  They’re in the bondage of exploiting others and that bondage means everyone else entrapped in their social circle is in bondage too, particularly their enablers.

Joy is as far away as a person’s grasp on their taking their own responsibility.  There’s so much power for peace fully available for those who believe in honouring truths others hold.

The true narcissist has an unshakeable grip on their entitlement.  Their right is to exploit you.  They have no regard for empathy, though the cunningest narcissist weaponises it and parades their care with selective skill, to exploit as is their entitlement.

The entitlement mindset wins neither friend nor favour, yet there are many who insist on having everything their own way.  It ends in utter defeat.

How hard it is for everyone when a person demands they’re always right.  There is no room for anyone else.  The sheer hypocritical audacity of the person who must always be treated as they’re right, who cannot be disagreed with, who must be treated with kid gloves.

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You can heal if you can trust your truth to those you can trust

In psychology’s economy, and also in spirituality’s, healing is simply a process of facing.  What we’re prepared to face can be healed.  Once we acknowledge this truth, then we come to the question of logistics: how will we do such a thing?

What we must continue to deny, however, cannot and does not get better.  And all the while we do this, we find we must constantly distract ourselves from what we fear — our guilt and shame.

See what this is about?  Our healing pivots on facing and conquering our fears, because at the core of our fear is what looks like intolerable pain.  I-can’t-go-there type of pain.

So the first step is to decide we must face what we have so long avoided.  No more dissociation to all manner of distraction — harmless and harmful kinds (although every distraction that has us avoiding the commencement and the continuing of facing for healing is inevitably harmful.)

Once we’ve decided that we’re no longer running away, but are prepared to learn how to face what feels like it will crush us (but won’t and doesn’t), we then need support.  Therapy is the obvious route, but there are good church ministries that are equally effective.  Mentoring, AA sponsors can provide this too.

Essentially, we all need a forum to give voice to what needs to be healed in us.  We need to speak the words.  We need a place where we can begin to express the emotion, where the wounds can be opened slowly, safely, respectfully, therapeutically.  A place where wounds are considered beautiful, where shame, fear and guilt melt away.

We all carry wounds of grief at the very least.  Many carry the deeper scars of trauma.  Many also bear the burden of biological conditions that were met with challenging family-of-origin situations.  Not a person on the face of the planet is immune from the need of healing.

We all need others in order to heal.  Others who will free us of the guilt and fear and shame we all carry.  This means those that help necessarily never guilt or shame those they help, and they always have a way of speaking agency and confidence into the person they’re helping who’s battling disempowering fear.

The trustworthy bear the traits of those who are unconditionally safe all the time.  Simply, they do no harm, because theirs is a role of joyful, willing, humble service.  This is why wounded healers are often preferred, because not only have they been there — to their brokenness — but theirs is a commitment to a lifetime of healing, because if there’s one thing facing shows us it’s we’re all broken.

Wounded healing is about cherishing that brokenness.

Anyone who enters the very serious process of healing with a trusted helper can expect that as they face their demons, the support they’ll get will only help and that it will never hinder.

This opens us up then to the responsibilities on the helper.

The responsibility the helper bears is the burden of integrity.  Wherever there are any signs that the others’ healing isn’t being supported as it should, there’s the need in the person helping of honesty, confession, repentance, the seeking of forgiveness.

Humility always puts the more vulnerable person first.

The person being served really is cherished that much, because it takes immense courage to learn how to face fear, guilt and shame that their healing must be supported at all costs.

A word to the wise: don’t rush into the process of selecting helpers.  Test them out.  This process is about you, not about them.  Any shred of feeling that you’re not safe is a hunch to act upon to protect yourself.  Not every helper is worthy of your trust, and the biggest betrayal anyone can experience is abuse from someone you trusted because of who they, in their position, promised to be.

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The main thing we get wrong about anxiety and depression

Society at large, and even individuals who should know better, get mental illness wrong to this main degree: the individual who suffers the malady is pathologized.  It’s all too easy for an all-knowing world to look on and think it knows what’s going on within the one who battles anxiety and depression, but this world forgets the SYSTEM that is suffering.

Suffering is always circumstantial.  A person is tipped into crisis, and they respond in generally one of two ways, resilience or capitulation.  Often resilience occurs after a period of capitulation, but not always, and sometimes capitulation occurs after resilience, or staying strong for too long.

Anyone who has responded via resilience will have felt the echo of grace impelling them forward — if they’re honest.  Few people can take credit for strength to respond well.  It is so often a grace that is given — an inside job we cannot explain.  This is known when the person, having been ‘strong’ all their lives, is suddenly brought to their knees, and the event is catastrophic.

Now, Christians especially have been known to peddle the unhelpful myth, “Your true character comes out under pressure.”  It sounds good, but it’s unhelpful at best and harmful at its worst.

The truth is, when your world has crumbled you cannot be expected to respond well, nor consistently. With support and many resources, you can.  Help is needed.

Someone has their home burned to the ground, and in their weakest moment, when grief sets in — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, the most shocking case of dread — as it will very often, and an onlooker has the audacity to say, “This will make you stronger... you’re only as strong as your weakest response.”

There are so many levels of loss in that one event that it would level every one of us.

Much of what we see as anxiety and depression is loss and grief and change disguised.

What is seen is the symptom — the shocking dread or the listlessness that can’t be shaken.  We completely negate the cause — those life circumstances that would challenge any one of us.

Those who are not beset by such challenges may go on and deny the reality as much as they please, but the fact is some do SEEM more ‘blessed’ than others.  Some will say, “You make your own fortune, and wisdom will be the best part of it.”  It’s true to a certain degree.  Well, until it isn’t.

If the main thing that everyone gets wrong about anxiety and depression is, they don’t cater for how circumstantial grief and loss are, anyone who gets entrapped in the circumstances of loss and grief will soon find they’re convinced.

I can tell you now, there is a precipice, a divide, between one half of humanity and the other.  Once loss grips you, it changes you in an instant, but until it does you have no idea.  And many who have no idea truly don’t understand how fickle life can be.

Those who don’t understand may one day be blindsided by a grief that switches on within them the struggle of anxiety and depression.

When it occurs, it’s a gift of insight bestowed through pain.  Nobody wants it.  But it does awaken a soul to the depths of grief available for anyone trapped within its truth.

The best thing about having been blindsided at least once; the eyes of the heart are opened, empathy becomes tangible, the life course is deepened, and you begin to feel the fullness of the true abundant life that is eternal.

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