Placating the tiny, fiery conflict moment common in marriage

Living in lockdown, working from home, sipping coffee, I look outside, and see my wife tending to the new camping trailer we are putting together.  It’s our new pride-and-joy as we plan a holiday journey to the place I grew up mid-year.

She’s putting bits and pieces into it, working out which bits go where, and generally making a home for everything, and my heart is moved to notice what she’s doing for us.

She comes inside, and I move towards her as she begins to cut open a hard plastic case holding brand-new kitchen knives.

I start to talk to her, gushing a little at her propriety, and then she goes, “Ouch!”

Two little lacerations on her thumb, and she is instantly annoyed!  (Note to self at this moment: “Not good!”)  Saying nothing, I go immediately in search of bandaids, knowing straightaway that my attempt at vocalising love is in vain because of this incident—that, due to my distracting her, I have caused.

I secured the bandaids and fixed one around the thumb that she’d cut.  Neither of us are game to say anything.  Still a long pause.  Talk about liminal space!

“I was going to wash all these bits and pieces [100 of them!], and now I can’t because of this stupid band-aided thumb!”

Without one word, feeling pretty sheepish by this stage, I move straight toward the sink and start running hot water.

No word of a lie, 15 minutes later, and I have washed those 100 dishes, as the mood within our house gradually settled.  100 dishes penance for trying to love my wife with a kind word ...

BUT, massive barney avoided! 

Oh, how that would’ve been a different story in the first years of our marriage. And there have been plenty of times throughout our marriage where either of us would’ve taken offence, and a flashover of marital conflict would’ve boiled over.

I could easily have been offended about her complete disregard of my compliments.  And at other times I have been.  But had I taken offence I would’ve completely disregarded how frustrating it must’ve been for someone to insist on talking at the wrong time—when she was focused on a fine motor task using sharp blades.

I had to swallow my pride, and at the same time admit, whilst it might have been sweet to notice something nice, it was hardly the time to say it.

I also had to admit that it’s okay to have made the mistake, to do a good thing but at the wrong time.  The cut thumb was momentarily painful, and band-aided meant annoying inconvenience for her for a day or so.  But anyone can make the mistake.  For me, that was about not feeling stupid and for Sarah it meant forgiving the mistake.

We managed to avoid conflict on this occasion, and on each occasion we do we gain confidence in our marriage, even as we have a laugh with each other.  We did use it as a point of humour about quarter of an hour later, but it required me to get over myself in the initial moments.  I had to get over my pride and make space for silence, appreciating that it was my distraction that caused the incident in the first place.

Marriages are truly make-or-break out of negotiating these very banal situations of marital working together.  These small moments and wee hours and the little things that are significant.  And marriage and family are FULL of these moments, each of which need to be negotiated.

Managing or regulating our emotions; it’s both an individual and mutual responsibility in marriage.

Appreciating people’s differences as a way to kindness

Fear, resentment and offense are never far from us in this life where outrage is as far away as a phone, TV or computer screen away.  But we want peace.  So often we want what we cannot have because we don’t sow peace consistently as a thread throughout our lives.

Before you stop reading, commit yourself to reading the whole thing.  As I write it, I recognise my own need of it.

What?          Kindness.

Somewhere along the hallways of this life—every single day for that matter—there comes the opportunity to appreciate the differences in others instead of being threatened by them.

I don’t mean we’re necessarily in fear of people when we see or hear something we don’t like, but it does threaten our sensibility and it distracts us from what would be our focus.

We jump into the fray because we feel we need to put something right.  Next thing we know, we’re up to our eyeballs in emotion.  Hearts fire up in an instant, sweaty brows, pursed lips, tension all over.

There are the obvious conflicts that we all become engaged in that separate us, one from another, because our views diverge.  Instantly it seems in the social media world we are at odds and at loggerheads with those who simply have different opinions.

Sure, some of those opinions are abhorrent and even at times criminal, but we win no one over by shouting at them.  The opportunity before each of us to converge begins with our own agreement to converge within ourselves.

We are more than apt at taking exception regarding what others say or even how they present their views.  But what if we delayed our response for a moment, and simply asked some deeper questions.

Why does this person have this view?
How did they develop such views?
What and who has influenced them?
Why do they feel they’re right?
Why do I feel I’m right in the opposite way?
Why are they so forceful?
Why am I offended?  (No, I’m not!... yes, you are... no, I’m not!  Stop it.)
Why did they seem so convinced?

Curiosity gives us a breather.

If only we pause, take a moment, be still for a minute or four, we stand to receive more—more perspective.  But that requires the shutting down of all the noise in our lives.

It’s worth it.

Kindness becomes an inside job when we begin to appreciate difference in people.  When we respect the person who has a different view to our own, it’s easy to be kind.  And in this is peace.  All it takes is a heart of empathy—to step into their shoes.

To think as they think doesn’t mean we stop being us.

It’s when we expect others to think, speak and behave like us that we get frustrated by them, that we can’t influence of change them, and hence ultimately become outraged.

Reverse roles for a moment.  Think of the last time someone shouted at you to change.  Did you?  Or did you give them the bird?

Kindness has to be an inside job if it’s to be sustained.  Nothing sustains kindness like empathy.

Why do I write this?  I want more of this for myself, so others have a fairer time of it around me.

Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash

Healing one of the biggest regrets of my life, a 30-year process

The more I look back on my life, the more I recognise it took me so long to come to my senses.  In my opinion, overall, the truest biblical truth is “there’s nothing new under the sun.”  As life is cause and effect, if you do certain things, you can expect certain consequences.  If I took a while to come to my senses, I need to extend grace to everyone else who takes a while to come to theirs.  The normal flow of life is kids grow up at home, many leave the home for a time (can be 20 years) like the prodigal son, then they return home when they come to their senses.

This article is a mix of present reflection over a time of my life 30 years ago, originally written 22 years ago.  There are many messages in this story; goals met yet also failure, folly, regret, vanity, risks taken

The rest of this is what I originally wrote, interspersed by thoughts of now:

I took up weight training when I was twenty and soon found I was a natural.  I had a determination that was founded through a combination of natural persistence and a reaction to some adverse treatment from my apprenticeship (if you’re interested, here’s part of that story).  I would often be walking home from the Disco in Karratha at midnight or so, thinking “I’m going to show them!”  ‘Them’ was sometimes my peers, sometimes people at the Water Authority where I worked as an apprentice, and sometimes it was myself.

I would sometimes want to prove to myself I was capable of better.  I regretted in some ways that I’d not given cricket a go in Perth when I was encouraged to enter grade cricket at 16 by my ex-first-grade cricket coach, Ralph Gurr.  He obviously saw potential in me, and given time, the right breaks, and of course the right connections, I could have played first grade cricket.  Like everyone who plays cricket, I dreamed of playing first class or Test cricket.

Football was the other passion.  As far as football was concerned, I always had good ball handling skills.  I’d worked hard to develop them.  I was one of four (out of 130) in the Karratha Junior Football Club to receive the gold award for skills when I was 15.  But I had one major problem.  I didn’t read the play as well as the most talented footballers.  My two brothers could read the play well and had excellent skills and even longer kicks than I did.

I had a real strong desire to excel in some kind of sporting endeavour.

This is where bodybuilding fitted in.

When I started, I developed strength very quickly, and even before I left Karratha, I could squat over 150 kg and bench press over 100 kg for reps.  As with most things, the more you get the more you want.  I remember doing workouts with a friend and I think I used to frighten him with my 100% attitude.  I certainly frightened my father when he saw me doing calf raises with 200 kg attached to the home air-conditioner.  Looking back, I was an animal when it came to weight training, which is fine for getting results, but does little to consider the other people affected.

This is the ideal segue into the topic of taking anabolic steroids.  When I started training, I never considered I would end up taking them.  I really didn’t need them, to be perfectly honest, because I was getting great gains both in body size and the weights I could push.

The way the first course of steroids I took came about was bizarre.  I had helped a bodybuilding partner out with a loan, and the only way he could pay me back was through the provision of oral and injectable steroids.  I was certainly curious at this point as to what gains I might get from taking them.  I was approximately 88 kg at the time, and in pretty good nick, but I felt I could use an edge. One night in February 1989, I had my first injection in the buttock with 1 ml of Primabolin Depot.  The inventory of the first course of steroids I took was:

7ml             PRIMABOLIN DEPOT
7ml             DECA 50 (NANDROLONE DECONOATE)
80 tablets    PRIMABOLIN ORALS

The main changes I noticed throughout the next few months was an increase in energy and my poundages for squats increased.  I also put on some weight, but nothing substantial.

I did have one frightening experience at home alone, as I injected myself, and feeling paranoid about getting embolism by not getting the air bubbles out right, and I began to feel faint as I injected.  I did faint on that occasion.  There is paradoxically kind of a rush you get from doing this sort of activity, and I’m sure it’s part of the curiosity that gets you taking them in the first place.

The second course I took facilitated the first real noticeable gains I had experienced in a year, and this course started in June 1990 and ended in August 1990.

I took:

10ml           DECA 50 (NANDROLONE DECONOATE)
10ml           TESTOSTERONE CYPIONATE (TESTOSTERONE DEPOT)
100 tablets   PRIMABOLIN ORALS

During this period, I increased my squats, front squats, leg presses, bent over rows and deadlifts.  My squat at 160 kg for five reps went to 180 kg for 10 reps in two months.  I could squat over 220 kg for a single deep rep.  My deadlift went from 140 kg for eight reps to 180 kg for eight reps, with a maximum single rep of 227 kg.  I bench pressed 150 kg.  I could front squat 160 kg for 12 reps and found that easily turned heads in the gym because it’s a hard movement to do with that amount of weight.  I used to do these exercises with the strictest form as I was trained under the gym owner, a former national champion power lifter.

I trained during this period with a bloke called Richard who is 6 foot 4 inches and of comparative build to me who was a chef in a French restaurant in West Perth.  We were both supplied steroids from the same source and would often help each other administer doses, because we are both quite new to it.

One thing that was bound to happen eventually was that I began to overtrain, which just means I was training too hard and too regularly and wasn’t giving myself the recovery time I needed.  Added to the steroids were anti-inflammatories to try and relieve the pain from the tendonitis I was getting in my lower lumbar spine.  The trouble was I wasn’t disciplined enough to stop the heavy weights, well, not until I got really sore. I learned the hard way.

My third course, which started in January 1991 and ended in March, consisted of:

10ml           DECA 50 (NANDROLONE DECONOATE)
10ml           BOLDEC (BOLDENONE)
10ml           TESTOSTERONE CYPIONATE (TESTOSTERONE DEPOT)
100 tablets   PRIMABOLIN DEPOT ORALS

Although I knew what I was doing was wrong, it was acceptable to me at the time because Mal, the gym owner, advocated it.  He would say, “At your stage Steve, you need an edge.  Being natural has its limitations.”  Being a mentor of mine, and the man I trained with every Saturday morning, I felt led to trust his judgement and go against my own reticence, because I had told myself that that second course would be my last.  I was married by then, and we were planning to start a family.  Mal wore me down, because I’d committed to representing the gym in a State bodybuilding competition.  I paid about $200 for the drugs, receiving them from Mal’s hand in the gym office.  One of the drugs (Boldec) was a horse steroid.  Not only was I paranoid about causing genetic issues in having children, but I was also paranoid about getting caught.  And to think that my eldest daughter was only conceived about eight months after I stopped taking them caused me no end of anxiety for years.  I can only thank God, that to this day, I haven’t had to deal with any adverse effects either from myself or from my kids.  It’s only now as I reflect I see, without making excuses, that I was manipulated.  But again, as there’s nothing new under the sun, you spend your life around certain things and they become you.

Yes, there is nothing new under the sun.  I recognise the folly of a man in his early 20s, and I understand that it takes years of adulthood for many of us to finally mature.  I recognise some things in my fifties that I had little appreciation of ten years ago.  I also know that the 1990s were a completely different time to the 2020s.  It seemed more normal than you can imagine today for people weight training to take anabolic steroids.

One question you might have is, what were the side-effects. Well, on the third course I took, I definitely experienced roid rage, I say to my shame now.  When my mother interacted with what I wrote 22 years ago, she believed I had little insight as to the effect of my moods on others—and especially my wife—at that time.  I’m glad Mum was brutally honest.  Only as I read now, having not picked this book up much in the past twenty years, do I get the feeling of how I resembled back then what I’ve grown to advocate against.

Yet, if there’s hope for me, and I did change, through the grace of God and a program of recovery, there’s got to be hope for anyone prepared to turn their life around—and let’s face it, if not for the grace of God go I... the end of my first marriage was the catalyst for change; I didn’t turn my life around, God did.  Some may wonder if my testicles shrank—no, they didn’t.  But the impact of these substances on my mental health was obvious.

And I guess that’s the main point I want to make.  I’d only just married and the most important thing to me was bodybuilding.  Getting a body I could walk onto stage with cost others so much and I never knew it at the time.  And yet, all through my life, if I’m honest, the issue of body image has never left me; a thorn in my side as the apostle Paul would say.  I’m glad my life took a different turn and I only ever competed once at bodybuilding.

This has been a long article.  I’m just glad I get to share how foolish I was, which is a reminder to me of the grace that has been extended to me by not only God but by others who loved me despite me being me.

Surviving the dungeon depths in depression

Today I heard a leader vouch for the need of support for mental health by himself admitting he’d recently felt the bark of depression nipping at his door.

Like he testified, I’ve occasionally had my wife suggest, “I’m a little worried, are you in a depression?”

The fact that this leader had the guts to be honest inspires others to be real.  We can’t get better until we’re real and, in fact, being real is the very start of getting better.

Let me share with you just a few moments in the dungeon depths of depression—where the grief buries itself amid the dread evoking despair that seems fathoms deeper than you previously thought possible.

The first experience is waking.  Yes, waking.  Not waking from a nightmare but waking up to the worst dread you can imagine, immediately.  It’s the complete opposite to waking up out of a nightmare to realise, actually, everything’s okay.  Those who’ve grieved will know that the elusiveness of sleep in the rawness of depression.  You truly just want to sleep—just to get some relief from the searing pain—but so much of the time you can’t.

The second experience is spiritual attack.  Out of precisely nowhere, just when you think all is going well, it’s perhaps 10:27AM and you suddenly think, “This day’s feeling good so far,” then WALLOP . . . a thought descends, or the recognition that there are still many waking hours to survive, or there’s the perception that time has slowed immeasurably—minutes feeling like an hour, an hour like an entire morning or afternoon.  What creeps into this kind of moment is a panic attack.  Not all spiritual attack works this way, but this is definitely an attack on our spirit.  I’ve had more than one event like this where darkness descended for hours within minutes—one of these I sank within the hour into catatonia.

The third experience is the moment of recognition.  “I’m depressed!”  For some, it’s a horrible time where the anger directed inward reaches fever pitch.  Personally, it’s usually been a rock bottom moment of mental self-harm upon which I receive the revelation—as much as if my soul yearns for an answer to the question, “What on earth is wrong with me?!”  To face such a moment is the first step on a momentous journey out of the dark night of the soul.

The fourth experience is of support.  When someone is present, shuts off their urge to advise or even talk much, and they just attend with eye contact, body language, time spent, meeting whatever needs are present.  There is something in this presence that seems easy, light, compelling, positive, healing.  I’ve learned as a wounded healer that it’s about chucking my own effort out the window.  For me as a pastor and counsellor, it’s about relying on the Spirit.  This is the discipline of not thinking—yes, that’s right, it’s about being so present as to not be preoccupied with one’s own thought.

The fifth experience is of trying with all one’s might to do physical things, like certain tasks and exercise, and finding them absolutely impossible.  It’s like there is a physical barrier against you.  You can’t even go through the motions.  Defeat lurks and crushes every dream of achieving anything, which only serves to make you even more depressed.

The sixth experience is being trauma triggered.  Post-traumatic stress is the real deal of facing what can be called flashbacks, where sometime evokes the panic, the mental, emotional and spiritual pain of traumatic events, as if you were right back there in that moment.  Parts of the mind go AWOL and other parts of the memory feel supercharged, and there is the complete lack of control over the triggering experience.  What follows is the debilitating state of both the worst kind of vulnerability—“like WHERE did that come from?”—together with such beleaguering fatigue you feel absolutely smashed.

The seventh and final experience is one where you begin to string two good days in a row together. Having been in a place where consecutive days of darkness swallowed all your hope, you begin to realise a pattern of emerging out of hell.  Like always, you’d take even one day’s respite, because each dark day really feels it’s from hell, and it’s unbearable.  Emerging, getting two good days, then one bad day, then another good one, a bad one, two good ones, you begin to discover what you can do to support your own recovery.

Photo by Sarah Wickham, Busselton, 2021.

Living life backwards to ward against enduring regret

“Late last night,
I heard my screen door slam,
And a big yellow taxi,
Took away my old man.”
— Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi (1970)

Isn’t amazing how the innocuous image of a big yellow taxi taking your husband away is buried deep in a song that has as its chorus, 

“Don’t it always seem to go,
That you don’t know what you’ve got,
Till it’s gone...”

Perhaps one of the greatest life lessons comes to us by the word, “Regret.”  And we’re all touched by it.

We all spend time and effort and money and focus on the wrong things (and people) as compared with those we’d be wiser investing in.

The tragedy is in the time that won’t come back — when it’s just too late.

BUT, I would argue this point; there is no better way of learning a lesson than learning the hard way — not to do it again.

As many pastors, businesspeople, and many others will attest, the call of our work can send us away from the very people we may lose; after a plethora of opportunities to say no, it can really be that just one more yes creates an irreversible chasm.  Those who lost their loved ones instantly or over time, and only as they look back do they see the pattern.  It’s pain!

Life lived through the lens of a loaned regret motivates us to do now what can only be done now.  So ‘later’ — a seriously bad later — never comes.  Life ought to really be the investment into such things.

It may seem miserable, but to lament what may well prove to be a future regret motivates us to do the harder work now so that life in future will not feature that sting of enduring regret.

What might our lives be saying to us now in terms of what regrets we might be sowing up for ourselves in our unwise use of time, effort, resources and focus?

You are not alone in this.  Everyone faces the same challenges.

Who in our families is missing out?  How might we shift our focus to reorient our passion and intimacy to our loved ones?

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Generosity – the Gift that Gives Back

“A generous person will be enriched, 
and one who gives water will get water.”
—Proverbs 11:25 (NRSV)

“Those who are generous are blessed, 
for they share their bread with the poor.”
—Proverbs 22:9 (NRSV)

Sitting in my office at work nearly ten years ago, enjoying a brief glimpse out my window at the beautiful harbour view, God asked me to count the objects on my desk: 31.

Thirty-one tools of the trade, 
some of which are essential for doing my job; 
some others just make it easier.

The simple fact is, by position and provision, I was mightily blessed; still am. 

When we consider our Western lives—presuming the majority reading this are blessed, like me, in their comparative westernised richness—including those in the East, or wherever, who live like modern Westerners—we have little to want for from a material perspective.

No one blessed in such ways deserves it more than someone who isn’t so blessed—born in less fortunate circumstances, perhaps in a poorer country or without the family or support structure many of us take for granted.

Like, how many, due circumstances completely beyond their control, would envy the things none of us deserve?

Healthy Comparisons

There are not too many comparisons we might make that are healthy; comparing ourselves with others, for instance, is a recipe for envy.

But one good comparison to make is our blessedness with others’ relative paucity—it breeds generosity.

That sort of comparison is, it could be said, not limited to financial or material means; it extends into all circles of life. But material blessing is in present sight.

The motive for such a comparison is genuine compassion, for there is much neediness in the world and so much rank wealth—the distance between the two (the relative rich and the relative poor) would be hard to parallel.

When Is Enough, Enough?

The nature of accumulation is to gain more and more. How much relative wealth is too much relative wealth? Again, comparatively speaking, though the vast majority of us are nowhere near millionaires, we might still have more than we need.

When we accumulate more and more, redefining with growing blessing our level of comfort, there comes a point where that material blessing has our spiritual blessing ebbing away.

The material blessing is a test; 
where we have enough, 
can we give some away?

Better, without much thought.

A miraculous thing happens when we start to give away what we don’t need—and the limits of need are much lower than most of us readily contemplate. 

Not only are we freed of much clutter—mental, emotional and spiritual—we get to feel how God feels, as a sort of provider.

The best thing about such generosity is the desire grows 
according to the blessings of God that are felt; 
we quickly realise nothing, 
not any wealth on this earth, 
can touch us like God touches us when we act these ways.

The responsibility for generosity is a role for the comparative wealthy; that’s most of us. Indeed, everyone has something to share.

Nothing can quite produce the joy of seeing someone deliriously happy than the kindness of generosity.

Adapted from an article I originally wrote in 2012.

Photo by cyrus gomez on Unsplash

The courage to face pain that cannot be seen

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also harder to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say, “My tooth is aching” than to say, “My heart is broken.”
― C.S. Lewis

Many more people in life will either try to deny their internal pain or express it inappropriately through harmful, hurtful, violent anger than face it and bear it.

We all know it feels impossible to bear this internal pain.

The one who denies it, who cannot face a truth that stands forever at least an arm’s reach away by their denial, admits they can’t yet face their truth by their denial.  Why do they deny?  We can all reflect on this question, because we’ve all been there.  It’s tough.

The one who reacts to their pain by spewing vitriol all over the place, or by harbouring such dissension that they stonewall others, or they violate others (especially more vulnerable others), is also denying direct access to their pain.  Rather than internalise it, they express it by harmful behaviours.  The pain that was meant to be relieved by facing just becomes a fuel-de-force and the opposite of the goodness of healing ensues — trauma.

But there is a way to deal with this more common variety of pain.  That which is in us all, no matter how well attached we are, just needs to be faced, but that requires courage.

Physical courage is one thing, spiritual courage is quite another.  As physical pain is generally easier to bear than spiritual or mental pain, more courage and faith is required.  But these are not impossibilities.

Until we’ve been in the place where we’ve faced our pain, we don’t really know what courage is.  But we’ll also know a courage that comes from facing and failing, because facing our pain is an art and a discipline that takes practice and commitment.

And the humbling thing is it can never be perfected beyond courage.

Courage is always required to face pain.

Face it and change it, for everything can be faced

It’s a great big fat lie that human beings cannot change.  The truth is, we’re constantly undergoing change, life circumstances are constantly in flux, and everyone’s changed a myriad of things about themselves.

Change, as a function of intention, is a function of facing.  Anything we can be truthful about that needs changing can be changed.  Face it, endure the pain of change, and there before your eyes is a state of transformation.

This is the whole premise of recovery programs — face and feel your truth; that truth that you’d prefer to deny and drown away with the drink, a drug, or anything else that manifests a turning away.

Everything can be faced, and the truth of this matter is, we’ll all have things that we must face in order to overcome what could swallow us in an oblivion of later regret.

The point is, get it done.  Get it faced.  Get that ugly, unsavoury truth in your face.  Don’t continue denying and running from it.  Do what can seem impossible, so you can realise what so many know as a fact; no truth has the power to crush any of us.

The fear of facing the thing is often infinitely worse than facing the thing itself.  That fear of facing the thing threatens us with something of a mirage, a fabrication, a lie.  By allowing that fear its maintaining hold, we hold ourselves apart from winning what was always destined to be ours.

The humbling thing about this truth is there are always truths that every single one of us is afraid of facing.  The big question therefore is, what’s the thing?  What’s holding me apart from freedom?  What am I denying?  What am I afraid of?  What’s delaying my healing?  How can I find out what I’m avoiding?

Find it, face it, fear it less, and freedom comes into view.  You may need help, and that’s okay.

Nothing is worse in life than having the opportunity but refusing to take it.

Do it while you can.  Experience the simplest, purest exhilaration that is freedom.  Nothing stands in the way but you.

The truth can threaten to blow up in our face, but the truth is it never does, not in the long run.

Photo by Alain Bonnardeaux on Unsplash

The ‘liminal space’ in Holy Saturday

Liminal space.  It’s a concept that Fr. Richard Rohr OFM first brought to my attention.

It’s that phenomenon in life when we appear for a time to be stuck in the in-between.  What do I mean by ‘the in-between’?

Rohr says that it is a graced time, but that it feels anything other than graced: God is inherently part of it — our becoming — but we can be left wondering, “How on earth could this be happening to me, God?”

Those who are in it or have been there know this liminal space instinctually.

It is the disordered place, the place where life makes little or no sense, the place of death and of grief. It is the place where dreams go to die — at least for a time, but sometimes indefinitely.

It may seem callous to talk of dreams dying but talk to a person whose dreams have died and they’ll often be encouraged to know they’re not the only ones afflicted.

The empathy within the community of the suffering is life for the afflicted in the in-between.

This in-between time, this liminal space place, 
is where there is no hope, 
and certainly where there is no vision of resurrection.

But hope must die before faith comes alive.

For Jesus’ disciples, the concept of the resurrection could not have been contemplated.  Scattered, they were in disarray, not knowing what to think of what had just happened.  Jesus was dead.  Could they have hoped that it was all just a bad dream or that the Father might raise him as Jesus had raised Lazarus?

For those of us who have lost homes, children, partners, parents, marriages, careers, livelihoods, security, etc — when we’ve been forced into change through grief especially — that heart wrenching time of loss is the liminal space where hope feels as if it’s evaporated into the ether.  Death.

But hope’s a funny thing.  Faith can only begin to germinate and flourish and thrive when it’s stuck in the in-between.  Faith comes alive when a former hope has died.  Faith is the antecedent of a more resilient latter hope, the purpose of God.

The in-between liminal space place, then, comes into our lives for a purpose: a purpose in excruciating soul pain.  It’s the metaphor of Holy Saturday in our lives when death threatens, swarms, overwhelms. But death has not the victory.  Sunday is coming.

Faith is unconquerable when it refuses to give up when the night of hope is still pitch-dark, hours before dawn emerges as a minute crack of light on the horizon.  Faith is an invisible bridge, appearing visible one step at a time, only as we step forward each step.

It’s like, if you’re going through the most hellish time in your life, somehow you just need to keep going in blind faith that the journey will be traversed.  Somehow God works it out.

This is actually the gospel hope operative in your life.  It’s when Jesus comes alive to you.  It’s when he says, “I’ve been there... and I’m there with you now... keep stepping, I am with you,” and it’s really very much like you hear him!

And like with Lazarus, Jesus promises to lift us, to raise us at the right time.  Until then, we have nothing less than the inimitable presence of the Lord with us.  Remember Lazarus was a rotting corpse before he was raised for the glorification of God.  We, too, will be glorified as we wait patiently in the in-between liminal space of our lament.  Psalm 37 pictures this.

As we face the truth that Jesus was resurrected and not just resuscitated, we come to understand that death must occur before resurrection can — there is no resurrection without death occurring first.

We face this truth most of all when we’re in that deathly place.  There is a hope beyond it.

Liminal space is paradoxically the making of our faith.

Father God
Even as you are the author of creation,
you also author for us narratives that seem so foreign and ghastly.
We often wonder what you’re doing,
and our trust in you fails.
Thank you that you authored the concept of life after death.
Thank you that we have hope even when life feels like death.
Thank you that the gospel hope actually activates at this deathly time.
Grace us with the capacity to understand your plan when we’re in pain.
And lead us in your way, everlasting.
AMEN.

Photo by Eliecer Gallegos on Unsplash