50 reasons to be grateful in the past 7 days

I’ve engaged in listing 100 reasons to be grateful before—a few times in fact.  This time I’m going to do half.  I will prove 50 reasons can easily be done, and I’m going to prove 50 reasons for gratitude can be gleaned out of reflecting over just one week.

I’m going to list these in terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: 

PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS

1.             I am thankful that I had a warm, dry, clean bed in each of the four motels I slept in this week.

2.             For the clean water, and in many cases, bottled water, that I enjoyed and that kept my body hydrated and healthy.

3.             For the hot showers I had and the hot meals I was given whilst I was away from home.

4.             Although my days were often 14-16 hours long, with travel and interactions and covering my business-as-usual, I did get an hour of downtime a day and six hours sleep most nights.

5.             I am most thankful for the rest I’m getting now after a very full last six days.

6.             I am thankful that I know I need to rest to sustain my energies, that I won’t allow myself to burn out.

7.             For the amount and quality of the food I consumed, I am thankful that I got enough to eat but didn’t consume too much.

8.             For the loveliest steak I think I’ve tasted in a while (at the Iron Clad Hotel in Marble Bar), I appreciate this experience.

9.             That my body, as far as I’m aware, was sustained healthily this past week.

10.          For the warmth in the milder north, I am thankful.

SAFETY NEEDS

11.          I am thankful that in my week of travels, my family have been kept safe.

12.          I am indeed grateful that during these travels of 2,000 road kilometres and 3,000 kilometres by air that apart from one flat tyre it was incident free.

13.          For the safety and welfare my job intends to provide others, I am thankful.

14.          I am thankful for the life training that has been given to me to risk assess and keep myself safe.

15.          For the times I did take a risk, I am thankful that there was no incident.

16.          For the amount of corners and bends we and I negotiated safely on the roads.

17.          That our tyres and suspension and steering and brakes keep us safe.

18.          For the applied knowledge of the safety I know in the situations this week.

19.          That none of our party experienced food poisoning, snake or spider bite.

20.          That within my family, nobody died or were seriously ill this past seven days.

BELONGING & LOVE NEEDS

21.          I am thankful for the fact that my family missed me and I missed them.

22.          For the love and laughter I enjoyed on the road with three colleagues, and for the bonds of mateship forged!

23.          For the many conversations that were had in the nights meeting brigades, groups and units, for the character of fire and emergency services people.

24.          I am thankful for new friendships and connections.

25.          I am grateful for serendipitous meetings, one of which in the past seven days could only have been orchestrated by God.

26.          For being inspired by several volunteer leaders who wear more than one hat, in particular to meet and get to know an incredible 34-year-old nurse who often juggles 3-4 roles and who always thinks of others.

27.          For the young lives who are touched by Cadet programs.

28.          I am thankful for a work colleague who I can watch and admire for his skill and heart.

29.          I am grateful I get the honour of supporting four wonderful people in my work context.

30.          I am thankful to be home.

ESTEEM NEEDS

31.          I am thankful that I have made it to the end of a big week.

32.          I am thankful for the faith I showed in stepping out each challenging step this week.

33.          For the people who helped me achieve what I did, and for those who trusted me to help, I am grateful.

34.          I am satisfied for the feelings of accomplishment I have enjoyed this week.

35.          For the work set before me, to preach a message at church on wisdom, I am thankful.

36.          For the validation I received from others and for the validation I was able to give others, I am thankful.

37.          That I don’t need to be perfect in my world to be accepted brings me delight.

38.          That more than a few times this past week I marvelled at others’ accomplishments, including meeting and working with a two-times World’s Toughest Firefighter!

39.          I am positively amazed that neither did I lose or break anything nor did I forget anything of significance this past week.

40.          I am super thankful that I was “enough” this week, and for two individuals in particular, perhaps I was “more than enough”.

SELF-ACTUALISATION

41.          I am thankful that in the past seven days, even though many moments were challenging, I am actually living my best life in the role best for me.

42.          As I got news that I would be going to the School event “A-Z of Growing Up” with my son, I realised what a privilege it will be to attend, and how wonderful it has been to go through the transition to adulthood with my fourth child.

43.          I am grateful that the last seven days is a capstone of the last seven years.  It took seven years to reach this point.  I’m glad I kept going!

44.          That in talking to one of my daughters, I realise I am free within my relationships with my children, that we offer this freedom freely to one another.

45.          That I have borne witness this week to three people in my family who have reached levels of self-actualisation who I am very proud of.

46.          In looking over at my wife, I realise I have all I need in a life partner.

47.          In reflecting over the presentations I have made over the past week, I really believe in the message I’m giving because I’m actually living it.

48.          In one situation this past week, I have been able to help someone reach a level of self-actualisation in their life.

49.          The text messages I received this week (and often receive) from my eldest daughter affirmed me in ways that I never dared imagine.

50.          Perhaps most important, I realised this week that I do not need to achieve any more in life to be fulfilled.  My life is full already.

~

Gratitude is amazing.  It connects us with a minefield of positivity that isn’t fake in any sense.  As empathy is the link to the deeper life, gratitude is the bridge to resilience.  When we are able to be grateful despite our circumstances, we are the epitome of a resilient person.

Grief is a long and lonely ordeal

As I reflect on one year since Mum passed away, I know it’s been a year, a full 365-days, and it’s neither the feeling that it’s been that long or even that it’s been short.  But I do know from this vantage point, having lost a parent is partly both a loss and a gain of the self.  Part of myself is gone, no longer to be touched and heard and felt except via the memory.  But part of myself is invited to go forth beyond Mum’s existence.

I guess as look back, one year on, apart from my own family, Mum is essentially forgotten.

That might be harsh to say, but my Mum lived for her family, and unless others remind me that they acknowledge she is gone, she does feel forgotten, and that doesn’t seem fair, even if it is inevitable.  She will never be forgotten by those who have her blood and that’s the main thing.

When I say that grief is a long and lonely ordeal, I mean that it doesn’t end.  If I go on another 30 or 40 years (and I hope I do), I will ever miss Mum.  I know this because Mum outlived her own mother nearly 32 years and never stopped missing her.  And believe you me, Mum was very comfortable going to that feelings place.

Grief is a lonely ordeal in that it is long and there is an inherent inability to resolve it.  All anyone can do is accept that loss involves losing in the permanent sense.

I see so much courage in my family as they live on beyond Mum’s loss.  Each has their way of coping and moving on with their life.  But each of us is pragmatic enough that we can talk about Mum and relate old stories that make us either laugh or ponder.

But one thing for sure, though grief is long and lonely, it is trustworthy, it is no foe, it is a safe space for one’s enduring sadness.  Perhaps this enduring sadness is best for taking us to the eternal spaces where there are no answers, just more questions.

Depths of sorrow take us to nether places and those regions are sublime and unfathomable.  Though death takes us there, life is ever copious because of the living depths we are invited into and to partake of.  These spiritual realities are vast and safe, and linger on the palate of the soul.  One can live there. 

Whatever, however long and lonely grief is, it is well with my soul, because it must be left to eternity.

20 years of sobriety and new life

This day 20 years ago I had the first waking clue that my life was about to be upended in three weeks’ time—my 13-year marriage was about to end overnight.  My daughters at the time were 11, 8, and 5.

It hadn’t been an overnight process for my then-wife; it had been months in the making.  In those days I was wedded to my job as a safety and security manager for a global-brand oil company, travelling the vast country at the whim of my employer and to satisfy my clamorous ambition.  In those days I wouldn’t do marriage counselling—didn’t think it was required.  I was sorely mistaken.  It’s ironic now that I’ve counselled over 50 couples as a couple’s counsellor.  It’s also ironic that in those days I managed an alcohol and other drug program, breathalysing truck and train drivers when I was the one who had the problem.

20 years ago today I was still trying to understand how I could control my overuse and abuse of alcohol.  I used it to destress from a work life that had a course of its own.  In those days I didn’t have the capacity (or desire) to feel my emotions—instead I loved pleasure and would numb my feelings and feel the euphoria of tipsiness, tobacco, and top it off with a little marijuana.

Pleasure was my weakness.
It dominated my second 18 years.
But not my third 18...

These days, and for the past 20 years, I’ve been stone-cold sober, and it has been THE BEST life.  Not only have there been no regrets, but there have also been unequivocal joys, amid many realms of gratitude untold.  Not that life in the past 20 years has been without pain—separation, rejection, loneliness, divorce, career transitions, workplace trauma, child loss and grief amongst others.

BUT.  I have not one single regret for having QUIT drinking all those 20 years ago.  Not one.  Not one hangover have I had.  Not one embarrassing encounter to regret because of my drinking.  Not one single thing to cover up because of my drinking.  Not one day where I would need to change a narrative or manipulate a plan just to drink.  Not one seedy morning.  Not one day worrying about my overuse and abuse of alcohol.  Not one day feeling paranoid driving to work because of the alcohol I consumed the night before.  Not one single day of agonising when and how I was going to wrest control from the demon drink—and the drink was a demon to me.  Not a day concerned about the health consequences I was reckoning for myself in bathing my organs in a carcinogen.  

Not one.

In the genesis of my recovery from alcohol I spent 11 months in AA, attending 159 meetings, most weeks attending 4-5 meetings a week.  In many of those meetings I shared my story in the 10-minutes generally allowed, so many times saying, “Hi everyone, I’m Steve and I’m an alcoholic.”  Sharing my story like this, honesty was applauded because that is where the power is at.  The last six months of my time in AA I was secretary of the Kwinana Town Group.  I opened up each Thursday night and set everything up, tea, coffee, biscuits, welcomed newcomers, invited someone to chair the meeting, the last to leave having tidied up.  

I was so grateful to be free, 
free from the drink and any resentment, 
to have benefitted from age old wisdom, 
to have had the opportunity to serve.  

In a paradoxical world, service is freedom.

My journey as an “AA” started the night after my marriage ended.  I needed the fellowship of AA more to get through the grief of losing my wife, home, and family as it was than I needed AA to recover from alcoholism.  AA connected me with its tenets: RECOVERY (in my case, not only from alcohol, but more in terms from grief), UNITY with others especially wiser men and women I needed, and SERVICE—I learned a servant heart principally from AA not the church.

20 years later and I look back on a couple of decades with a grateful bittersweetness that comes from a period of life that has had countless astonishing ups and myriad calamitous downs. 

Yet, by faith, especially as I look back, 
God has been with me every step of the way!

Even through the rock bottom sleepless pain-riddled nights crying myself eventually to sleep because I missed my wife and kids so much.  Even through those jarring moments of panic in broad daylight as I bore the stark reality of my seemingly hopeless circumstance.  Even as it was so clear that one life had ended and another life that I at times resisted had begun.  Even as I existed solely for God, my girls, my parents, my family.  I had little of the material world left, and the paradox is there was freedom in that.  Not much more could be taken away from me.

Even though I’m often overwhelmed with my workload these days, I am so grateful that my life has turned out, that I DID recover, that I arrived at many forms of reconciliation.

20 years ago today, my parents had no idea how much they would be called upon to listen to a broken son.  But they never missed a beat, as they have always been, right there in the thick of it for their entire family. 

It’s a year since Mum died, 
and in honour to her, 
I say, Thank you, Mum.

~

My message to you in this: 
you that perhaps may be struggling today;
hold on by your faith and hope that things 
will turn for the best, because they will.

That’s the message that my 
Mum always communicated.
Hold on, you will make it through.

~

Today also marks one year since we 
learned Mum had just days to live. 

Rest with Jesus and all 
our lost precious ones, Mum, love you.

2 key decisions to direct our daily destiny

I’ll never forget one of my pastoral mentors saying, “you cannot formularise faith,” nearly 20 years back now.  There’s no magic bullet, no secret to life.  There are just too many nuances and exceptions to rules to be considered. 

But this doesn’t stop us searching for some ‘holy grail’ that can help us master this journey called life.  It is inbuilt in many of us to search for the ‘secret to life’.  I believe God put that instinct inside us.

Here is my attempt to formularise a way of thinking that helps.  It involves fully exploring two decisions and holding the tensions between the two.  They are two opposites.  Two equally occurring truths.  Dichotomies if you like.  Bridging the tensions is wisdom.

These two decisions are:

What do I have control over and how do I take the initiative?
~AND~
What do I not have control over and need to work to accept?

Life’s destiny is often rooted in both questions, sometimes it is more of one and at other times it is more of the other.  Knowing what’s in our wheelhouse from that which doesn’t concern us is crucial. 

I’d venture to say that wisdom is in the hands of those who answer both these questions the best they can as they journey life’s path.  I’d also say that these two decisions must ultimately be borne on a person’s operating philosophy for life—their modus operandi.

Simply put, to enrol in this wisdom it must truly 
become CORE to our inner belief system.

To achieve this wisdom, 
it must become part of who we are 
and intrinsically part of ALL we do.

~

Let’s assess these two questions in turn:

1.              WHAT DO I HAVE CONTROL OVER?

How (and when) do I take the initiative?  This is the courage, action-oriented diligence of wisdom.  This is what the psychologists call the Internal Locus of Control: 

The belief that one has control over the outcomes 
that are important to his or her own life.

For those who are arranged by the externals of life, who don’t feel they have control over the outcomes that are important to their life, a radical disempowerment is experienced.  

Sure, one of the biggest challenges is the paradox 
that we are not in control of many things.

But there are a good many things that ARE 
within our control; those we must own.

The opportunity here, therefore, is to DECIDE what will be important to us.  Will something that is well out of our control be important to us?  Or will we keep our interest and concerns to those things that are always in our control?  These are the things we think, what we say, what we do, where we invest our energies, what our focus is, etc.

Whatever is important to us 
must be within our control.

The degree of our success is 
the measure of our maturity.

See how we’re merging the things that are personally important with those things that are well within our control?  This is wisdom.  If we were to consider those things that are out of our control as vitally important to us, pressure builds, anxiety runs, and we waste our precious and finite resources of energy—on the wrong things, things we cannot affect.

What is important, overall, are those things that are key to our success and the success of those we know and care about.  We must take responsibility for those things that WE must personally do—to ensure our personal success and the success of others who depend on us.

Regarding those things we think, say, and do,
over these things we must ever remain true.

~

2.             WHAT DO I NOT HAVE CONTROL OVER?

Opposite to the above is the restraint to accept what we can never change.

What do I need to work to accept?  There’s stuff in this for us all.  This is in essence the other part of wisdom; this is where the virtue of prudence looms large.  And this really is a massive part of wisdom that is impossible to master—it can only be practiced imperfectly.

The quest of living ‘by faith’ 
posits acceptance as surrender.

That is, in having faith in God, let’s say, we release our grip of control to our higher power such that our refusal to stubbornly insist on having things our own way would help us lead lightly.

But ‘letting go and letting God’ is easier said than done, and besides, we don’t always know how best to apply this philosophy and practice of surrender.  Sometimes we surrender when we shouldn’t.  Sometimes we fail to surrender when we should.

Being able to resist controlling that which 
we cannot control is sensible living.

The key is being cognisant in our instinct and our early order decision making, right at the point where we might otherwise be triggered.

The truth is, accepting things in theory is a different thing to accepting things in practice.  Wisdom is applied intelligence, it’s not just knowhow.  Being able to let things occur that we don’t like isn’t easy.

A prior commitment to surrender is crucial, and this is all borne on the humility of the heart, which is a character trait that takes years to develop.  There are no shortcuts.

This is why wisdom is applied intelligence 
that makes a fool of the theorist. 

Humility is the bedrock of growth in wisdom.

~

This article can easily be summed up in the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, 
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Enduring the Conscious Agony in Grief

I wrote the following poem and accompaniment ten years ago, which was also ten years after the time I was experiencing the conscious agony of grief in the grave hues of the dark night of the soul.

A poem called, “When I Awoke, All There Was, Was Pain”

Dark clouds they emerged from the horizon,
As if the enormity of despair weren’t nearly enough,
In my unconsciousness there was serenity,
But now I’m awake ‘life’ returns and it’s tough!
In slumber there was no hell that suffocated me,
But now I lay here bewildered and glum,
Times like this I wonder why life came to be this way,
Times like this I just feel so totally numb.
Then years wore on,
And I got over my grief,
I went from strength to strength,
Because I found my relief.
But one reflective moment,
In my mind’s eye,
I’m back there on my bed,
Feeling like I’ll die.
I’ll never forget,
The sorrow of pain,
To lay their speechless,
And feel I was going insane.

The pain of grief is torture – as is manifest in waking up to reality, yet again.  In that living hell which is the panic received in awakening to the nightmare that life has descended to, there is hope, but only in God, a God who comes close by faith.

But there is no answer that comes close.  The only thing we can do is wait-out or out-wait the pain – to endure it – and the only way we can do that, with sustainability, is to go to God and go to the people of God we can rely upon.

But it won’t be easy.  It will be the hardest thing we ever did.  But we can endure it by simply enduring it, a day at a time, a moment, one moment at a time.  We must allow the pain to break us and in that, let God reshape us.  There is no sense in kicking against the goads.  The goads are to our advantage if we don’t resent them!

WHAT TO DO WHEN WE CAN’T SLEEP FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES

We can’t sleep for the rest of our lives, though in the depression of grief we will tend to oversleep or drastically undersleep.  We are understood and forgiven for wanting to sleep through the dark night of the soul, and not being able to sleep is its own cruel torture.

Getting up and getting on with our lives is about recognising that things can still be done, even though life, for a time, is hell.  There’s no disputing it.  But reality is gracious enough to allow us to plod away and make some headway, even if it feels like we’ve been thrown into the pit forever.

Grief is long, it is dark, it is tough, it is despairing, but it also causes us to reach out in desperation, prepared to hope for anything to pave the way to life.  Grief can motivate to innovate in climbing out of the pit of depression.

If we are wise, we will congregate around people we find supportive.  Just spending time with them, as individuals and in psychologically safe community, with those we trust and feel safe with, will help an enormous amount.

We know we can’t bury our heads in the sand.  There are times for wallowing a while, but there are times also for breaking out and taking a risk.

We know we need to get on with the business of life at some point.  Gently, we set little goals and we receive encouragement for the little things that are a big deal in the context of recovery.

In the shock of grief, in the despair, when we don’t want to wake up, but we know we must, it pays to do little things to survive, and to get close to the people we know and trust and feel safe with.

Bearing graciously the injustices of life

Good things happen in all our lives, yet it’s only a matter of time before the good things we are given are taken away.  The nature of life is just until it isn’t.  We may either be thankful or feel entitled to the good things we get, yet inevitably, we are challenged when injustice strikes, because it always feels unfair.

It feels like it shouldn’t happen to us.

We feel unappreciated, fooled, transgressed.

How are we to forgive these injustices when they occur?

In other terms, how are we to move on having been floored?

Usually it’s a person or people that is behind it, so often there is a target for our resentment.  I’ve always been surprised at how little it takes for resentment to rise, for resentment is common to humanity.

How are we to deal with those things 
that occur that we feel are unfair?

As a truism, whatever we focus on becomes bigger.  We are allowed to feel hurt when unexpected injustices arrive on our doorstep.  Those who love us will understand without encouraging us to dwell in unhelpful spaces.  The normal mental and emotional processing task usually takes any of us a day or two to process what comes as an initial shock to our system. 

We are all human beings, 
and none of us is expected to respond well 
emotionally when we are blindsided.

Allowing ourselves a human response to injustice 
is a way of being gracious with ourselves.

It is the first step towards the ongoing process of graciousness in meeting injustice in a redemptive rather than a destructive way.

Meeting injustice with anything productive is a seriously hard thing to do.  Much of the time we don’t have a clue how to respond, especially when it is anger that we feel which is perplexing to overcome.  We feel that the injustice has forced our hand and our choice is taken away from us.  This is why it is right to allow ourselves to feel the ugly emotions.  To give ourselves that permission without succumbing to judging or condemning ourselves or attacking others.  Without succumbing to fight or flight.

To simply feel the pain of the injustice 
without reacting can be tricky.

We use our higher mind to avoid reacting. 
As much as is possible.

As we engage in sitting WITH 
the truth of the pain we experience, 
acknowledging we cannot ‘fix’ it, 
there, even there, we are growing — 
in acceptance, in maturity, in resilience.

Especially when we don’t feel we are growing. 

Another opportunity we can reconcile with injustice is in accepting that injustices do and will occur, and that none of us escape the plight of resentment that unfolds.  We do not need to feel duped or ashamed or exposed in being dealt a harsh blow.  But we will, indeed, feel painful, awkward, and uncomfortable emotions.  Injustice is the lot of all at some point in time.

But injustice tends to isolate us whereby we feel we are the only ones poorly treated.  If only we can remind ourselves that everyone has their turn at injustice.  We are not being isolated, even if it feels like we are being isolated in a particular way in the here and now.

Bearing graciously the injustices of life, we come to expect that they will occur, and that we will never enjoy them.  We can prepare as much as we can, but like in all forms of loss, there is always a surprise element, and that surprise element is what we feel is the hardest.  

Injustice is loss. 
We will never enjoy it. 
But we can go gently with ourselves.

Injustice may take us to anger in a flash.
Just the same, injustice can take us to humility.

Humility is the bedrock of growth.
See how injustice is an instrument of growth.