How to Feel When We’ve Been Overlooked?

Everyone, we can assume, has tasted the ignominy of putting their hat in the ring for higher honours, only to be overlooked when it came to selection time. Resentment ensued.

As I reflected recently over three circumstances like this that have occurred to me, I was surprised (though I shouldn’t have been) as to the similarity of the pattern. Each time I hadn’t expected to be overlooked.

I’d given myself a reasonable chance of claiming the coveted position — not understanding, at an accepting level, that only one person can win.

In truth, we give ourselves up to one of a million guises of success when we deny the harsh realities of the cut-throat world that’s somewhat against us — certainly as far as the odds are concerned.

Dealing with the ‘Betrayal’ and Resentment

In the final analysis, it’s no good us getting bitter and twisted about it. Perhaps we even know this in our heads, but our hearts are still stung?

Transforming the theory into a practiced reality is our goal — so we no longer harbour resentment toward those applying change.

The truth is we’re hurt; we feel underappreciated, let’s be honest about it. Being honest with ourselves helps us process the enormity of what we feel. It’s far superior, as a coping mechanism’s concerned, than resentment.

Blessed Are the Honest-with-Themselves

The quickest way through the choppy waters of disappointment is the direct route. As plain as we can be, we take ourselves to their truth, and we seek first to understand.

There are all sorts of rational reasons this event or series of events has turned out the way it has. We have to wish for their insight — to see like they’ve seen.

It’s easier to be honest with ourselves when we know and accept the lay of the land — how we fit into the overall scheme of things.

We can tell it wasn’t so much a witch-hunt, but an orchestrated attempt to improve for good reasons. No improvement at the larger level comes without compromise for the greater good.

The Cherished Process of Time

One of the hardest things to learn and, therefore accept, is the grieving process — and adjusting to being overlooked involves grieving — takes longer than we like. We ‘arrive’ ‘adjusted’ later than we’d wish.

Disappointments are placed in our lives so we can learn patience; to abide with time, because time has no master but the Lord.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Building Strength to, Again, Clear the High Bar

“The LORD gives power to the faint,

and strengthens the powerless.”

~Isaiah 40:29 (NRSV).

Staying power — both for the shorter term and longer — is a wisdom augury hard to underestimate. It explains the need we all have for vacation. If we loved everything we did vocationally, perhaps we’d not have any problem providing for our own revival. Yet, that still wears thin after a time.

Building and re-building strength has to be the key task of life; the reclamation of it. Life’s otherwise debilitating.

The secret seems to be rooted in planning via wisdom, and resting always in the Lord’s strength.

Can clearing the high bar — the one we find so difficult at present — be any better negotiated than via resting in God now, and planning via wisdom when the heat finally dies?

Besides our fatigue, saving some energy to build our strength — blessed of God — is wisdom. It’s not selfishness. Basic energy and sanity needs must be prioritised.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Fighting and Children – Don’t Blend!

Every parent will shrink at this, but fighting is scary for children... period.

Taken further in, we see that little people quickly feel overwhelmed when more powerful bigger people lose control emotionally. The fury of rage can leave a scornful mark of nervous hopelessness on the child affected.

The trouble is, for all adults, we’re back into our threatened ‘child states’ in a flash. As soon as our emotions twist their way over, in, and through our hearts, we find it a big challenge to resume proper perspective.

Biggest Bang for Buck

It pays for parents — or those in parental (and child leadership) roles — to heed thought on the following two ideas:

1. Anger and children do not mix. Every parent reading this will attest to the damage that can be done to young formative souls on the receiving end of anger. We’ve all lost control and the salience of a shrieking mother letting fly at their panicked toddler mid-shopping-mall is an indelible reminder. Fathers, too, can be physically scary, not understanding their power.

2. Parental awareness of triggers to child states is a key for family safety. It’s not up to the children to pitch in with adult perspective. That’s our role. The best gift we can give our kids is stability — to be that stable and safe base for them to found themselves in.

To Be Mindful Of...

Whilst the above points are bound to prove challenging for many of us, I for one am reminded of the many mistakes I’ve made in my parenting to date. There are more to come...

The commonest emotion articles like this intuit are guilt and shame for the failures of our pasts.

Yet, this topic is not so much about looking back as it’s about ever looking forward, with an honest commitment to make amends (without causing pain) where we can.

Parenting is an idea made by God to help us understand the Divine perspective; that love is a tremendously difficult thing to achieve in this broken world.

God’s design, then, is for us to learn humility and wisdom; to become imperfectly selfless leaders and lovers of our children.

The biggest thing we best bear in mind regarding parental fighting or anger directed at children is to deal effectively with the causes of it, before it spills out boiling over innocent bystanders.

It’s critically important we’re honest with ourselves and others, always. This will require courage to trust. This discomfort is preferable to the discomfort we’ll face after poorly managed conflict; the costs borne of our anger.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Ricardo M. Adobbati, Attorney at Law.

At One with Nature and Time

Hurriedly busied sometimes are we, schedules developed without thought of haste, sooner or later we’re caught in a spree, soul’s twisted, despised and awkwardly chased.

Tug of war is our spirit, bespectacled with dis-ease, we and life — of want to quit, desperate to appease.

Suddenly knowledge — the fight to attend, want of desire to break on through, courage designed with which to contend, battling for peace without further ado.

Slowly but surely night breaks for day, hopes are renewed upon evidence of sun, then we confidently accept what may, nothing in fear do we forlornly shun.

When we’re at harmony with nature and time, sits us we do relaxed and free, spiritually fluid we can but climb, upon wings of delight with which to agree.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

The Science of Agreements

Contracts are the way of the world. Even the Old and New Covenants are contracts. These are commonly written parcels of collectively accepted wisdom. But, often, they’re verbal — informal instruments of understanding.

There involves the conveyance of trust — the upholding of respect. Yet, either or any party is able to freely renege on the deal in accord with either morality or immorality.

Agreements are tenuous, and at harmony only with personal insight.

Is there a better manifestation of God’s free will as it’s issued, for use, to humanity?

Agreements are the goal of decision-making, a quest for harmony, and every moment has its share of tensions proffering them.

Accepting the Prevailing Truth

There are many things forever beyond us. One of these is the common folly of trying to order the compliance of other people.

We will make our “agreements” with them, but they may find them disagreeable, the way they’re re-churned, or they might even operate off differing premises.

Communication, as in the Tower of Babel story, is making a mess of our goals to conquer our worlds, for communication assumes separate entities are involved. We all see differently.

Accepting difference, indifference, passion and ambivalence is part of the wiser life.

Nothing in the communicative world remains static for long.

Using this Science to Best Effect

Winston Churchill said of Russia in 1939, [It’s] “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

The status of foreign policy is one thing. Another, altogether, is this enigma of agreement; of he-said, she-said.

Our best platform is in seeing the presence of the vast communicative chasm, yet having the understanding to surmount it. This is accepting other people’s realities — the way they see the world (their worldview) — and using that, as well as ours, in envisioning solutions we can all live with.

Agreeing – Where We Can

We cannot always agree with people or situations we find ourselves in. Especially where the truth lags, where it’s not respected, and we struggle in our indignation.

Disagreeing well, then, is an art of combining discernment, courage, and wit. Nothing helps a disagreement get over the line better than good-natured and well-intentioned humour.

But, honesty and transparency, then, are the golden keys for satisfactory agreements.

How can we expect people to read our minds? Enigmas we’re not to be.

Besides those difficult to negotiate with, and these are usually few, our best chance is via sensible reasonability, communicated plain and simply.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

When Blessing’s a Curse

Beauty has an irony about it. It looks great, but the person enjoying their looks will also ‘enjoy’ the notoriety of stalkers and gawkers. Likewise, living in the rich Western world brings many comfort blessings, but the irony is we’ll have the health problems that go with the overbalance of such ‘blessing’.

Attractiveness is a bane for the attractive person, apart from what they see in the mirror, or the admiring glances they find welcome.

I heard a missionary to Malawi mention once that he used to ask the locals to pray for his Australian friends; “they have so many temptations,” he would tell them.

Such blessings are tied to the need to establish and maintain self-control if they’re to be enjoyed.

It is easy to see, here, a paradoxical sense of Ecclesiastical theology. Great things, and privilege, are not always what they seem.

When we feel particularly deprived of blessing it does us well to remember this eternal truth.

***

Having said the above, it’s still up to us to enjoy our blessings; the gifts God’s bestowed on us.

Even better blessed are we when we strike a blessed balance in our use of such blessing; enjoying them in appropriately scarce quantity, so they remain special.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Comic Relief versus Real Matters

One internet search using the term, “U2 One,” and I find myself playing about ten clips, mostly interviews... Bono, Bill Hybels, Sir Bob Geldof.

Suddenly... smack! An important fact is broached: 30,000 people a day dying from poverty. That works out at twenty every minute; one every three seconds.

Our lives are often comic relief — despite the difficulties we face and pain we endure — compared with the really poor and oppressed.

That is not making light of your horrible circumstance. But as I consider mine, I’m likely to be bothered and concerned — even in minor ways — by little things in the realm of mighty things. This is okay if I consider my insulated square — my two cubic feet — the space I take up.

But the world doesn’t revolve around me, or you.

The world is a cosmos bigger than any of us can comprehend.

This is a big part of our problem; it’s a personal problem. Each of us has our own world we deal with. These microcosms are, to us, macrocosms. We can’t see more unless we break this ‘personal’ mould. But we need to do it repeatedly.

***

The question we best ask ourselves is:

“Compared with the issues of life and death elsewhere in the world, would my issues — in comparison — be comic relief to them?”

Sometimes they wouldn’t be. But, equally, sometimes they would.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Getting What We Want – in Marriage

“But I believe that there are marriages where you can have your pool table and she can have her scrapbooking room or garden or whatever it is. But when everyone has what they want, it’s not funny. There’s no conflict.”

~Brad Garrett.

There is little quibbling about this point. Satisfy the streaming urge within the individual and there’s likely to be peace vested for the more important tasks of life.

Yes, that’s common sense.

But how many marriages rail at this very point?

The commonest sticking points could well be the same prattling things we were supposed to iron out in the first year or two.

The Beauty of the Better View

Better views are afforded the couple spending time identifying and quickly meeting these basic personal needs.

Those things out of the way, and their collective perspective opens; a marvellous — though mutually exclusive — vista becomes apparent. They sit together on the park bench of life happily content with existence, and each other, as they’re personally disposed.

***

Until this time there’s always the unpredictable threat of conflict. The marriage is never safe.

Strive for the better view. Get past the basics. Meet those needs, for they’re easy to pinpoint and satisfy.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

The Healing Report

It’s true that some are miraculously healed whilst others languish in the hellish remains of the old life — despite, at times, either their New-Life status or status estranged, still, from God. There is nothing to judge or be envious of, one way or the other, for God’s the one that produces the miracle, not us.

Healing is a mystery.

It sweeps through the body, mind or soul and does its work, independent of what we think or are prepared to do on the subject, though many healings are ‘magically’ assisted by our obedience.

Healing is God’s portent, not ours. Science cannot claim it either. No, God possesses it; the power, whys and wherefores.

Four Types of Healing

There may be other categories of healing, but four broad ones are: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Physical healing, beyond the sinner’s habits, is highly dependent on external help. It’s amazing the correlation between sinful practices and physical effects — for easy instance, poor diet or overeating with obesity — but many physical ailments have nothing whatsoever to do with sin.

Mental healing is a matter of retraining our minds. We all have mental scripts that need to be re-written and programmed in. Changing habits is characteristic of this need.

Emotional healing is about dealing with our past, present and future — in courage — by attending to the baggage-of-bad-experiences that clings, producing guilt and shame. Everyone needs healing at this level. All people have brokenness to deal with.

Spiritual healing is “salvation,” in a word. That is, being reconciled to Father God; in, and through, Jesus Christ our Lord. It’s often the gateway to other healing.

Healing’s Three Results

There are those who are healed instantly — without recourse for further lapsing — those that enter healing, but always have their maintenance work to do, and, finally, those that remain ostensibly unhealed, as they wait patiently (or not) for it to come about.

So far as healing is concerned, there’s a sharp correlation to faith, but it’s not only those with “faith” who are healed; and some with faith are not healed as they’d otherwise like.

Accepting the Phenomenon

The grip we have on many things is tenuous. Life and circumstances can’t be controlled to the extent we’d like to them to be.

Such is healing.

This is why we make such a big fuss about it when it occurs. It’s why it’s miraculous — all of it. In some ways it’s explainable, many ways not.

Add to all this the phenomenon that healing is not just a once-off event, but it’s a story that enfolds us to a history, one with its own bends, climaxes, dips and dramas.

Accepting the phenomenon is health and vitality. There’s no sense in not accepting it. That is, we cannot define or cage this thing, healing.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Helping Hearts Heal.

Struggling to Love Because of Guilt?

Human beings do things because they want to do them; introduce the concept of guilt — of external need to do the thing — then healthy desire goes out the window.

We struggle when there’s external compulsion to do things.

Extrinsic motivation is unsustainable and, depending on our cultural bias, it can rebound horribly.

One of the biggest cons of the enemy is to inflict guilt on us — whether via ourselves or through others — convincing us to do things we don’t want to do, when we have a choice in the matter. The outcome is never a blessed result, even if it works out okay.

Anatomy of the Threat

Christian people, and those aligning with Christian ideals, must be especially careful of the propensity to say yes beyond the discerned will of God or the determined needs of the situation.

Telemarketers and most salespeople are skilled in the ‘art’ of persuasion and their abilities to negotiate, using guilt if necessary, give them reliable results. They merely utilise common attributes of human psychology, but for evil, unloving purposes.

Some people and situations, likewise, produce for us stimuli that’s designed to coerce us into making certain decisions — those we’d not normally make if they were our choice.

So, the threat is a prevalent one. It invades our daily lives more than we realise. To live free lives we must accord ourselves the freedom of escape from such guilt.

Rejecting the Guilt-Ridden Advances of the Enemy

It’s always the enemy that’s behind coercion when guilt is the chief weapon used.

This enemy is identified as the devil that wants us oppressed by our own minds.

Guilt is a veneer; a fabrication trying — and usually succeeding — to get us to do things via unloving ways, for unloving reasons, by holding “love” as the subject for ransom.

Guilt is saying, “Do this thing this wrong way, but it will work out, because it’s for love.”

But love doesn’t work that way. Love is not simply an outcome — it’s also the means to the outcome. Guilt has no part in it. Indeed, love is most action-oriented.

***

The end of the matter of this discussion is don’t fall for guilt — the masterstroke of a cunning enemy.

We best stand our ground and do things because they’re right. We don’t gain, nobody does, in doing things out of guilt to achieve a loving result. These plans commonly backfire.

Garner love to do this thing. If there’s no love, reject point blank guilt’s advance.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.