Category: complexity

Different Ways to Fall Out of a Tree

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Imagine climbing up to the top of a very tall tree. You work your way up to the highest point– you can go no further. The view is completely glorious, it’s more than you hoped for. You want to post it on Facebook, so you dig into your pocket to get your camera-phone. You suddenly slip, and because your arms are occupied getting your camera, you fall. And you fall fast.

As you plummet, you realize that you’re hitting every branch on the way down. The smaller ones break, and the bigger ones, well– you just bounce off. The trip down is very fast, and perhaps even a bit illuminating.

  1. First, you think of death.
  2. Then you think about the pain each branch causes, and wonder about your imminent arrival on terra firma.
  3. Perhaps you consider how stupid you are, and how you are going to explain it.
  4. Lastly, I suppose, you wonder if you have clean underwear on, like your mother always told you to wear.

This is how my life has gone, the last 20 years. This metaphor is a good way for me to process things, and to find some understanding. I now believe that some of us go through life sideways, or horizontal. We careen off of every branch on the way down, and it seems we are hitting branches that we didn’t even know were there. Tree limbs are snapping, as we are dropping.

Others who are wiser (or maybe more experienced,) try to fall more vertically. As they fall, they use their hands to try to slow their descent. (This does work!) They will take their fair share of jolts, no doubt. But their journey to the forest floor is way less traumatic. They may end up in the hospital– but not in emergency surgery like the first guy.

It sometimes seems like every trouble I have faced I have gone into it sideways. I have broken a lot of branches on my way down. I suppose I’ve entertained some who have watched me plummet, and seen me careen and spiral my way to the bottom. These have been some painful times, I have inflicted considerable amount of bruises on myself.

People who go through life sideways will invariably suffer. They seem to hit every obstacle and trial that could be in their flight path. The existence of pain in this life cannot be disputed.

“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

John 16:33, NLT

Jesus understands. Especially if you are one of those people who are “trial magnets” going through life horizontal. (You just seem to collect them.) My hope for you that as you break your branches on the way down (for maybe the 100th time). You will try to plummet vertically. Not that it is any easier, life will hurt. But perhaps it won’t be as agonizing. And I suppose that would be a good thing.

“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,”

Jude 24

Just hanging on!bry-signat (1)

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kyrie elesion.

The Oblivious Find His Mercy

sshot4f7069193810fI have had a strange life. 

There were times in one of the mental hospitals, where I was very much disconnected from the real world.  I went through weeks of “not understanding,” I wasn’t able to mesh with the routine around me.  I sincerely thought I did, and I wanted to very much.  But the ‘gears’ wouldn’t come into alignment. Mental illness made me a stranger to what was real.

Struggling with mental illness will very often take you into places you have never, ever dreamed of.  As a matter of plain fact, you’ll hardly will grasp what is real.  And that is when you sink into insanity.  (At this juncture, only God can restore you.)

My heart goes out to those who are lost in their own minds. 

But certainly also to those ‘loved ones’ who are completely muddled. They so want to explain what is happening.  Those of us, ‘on-the-slide’ down, must realize that we are affecting all those lives of those who are nearest to us.  This is not a guilt-trip, but a simple acknowledgement of what ‘falls-out’ on the recipients of our twisted confusion.

“My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.” 
— Anne Lamott

The point of this is we must accept that there are places in our minds which are “no man’s zones” where logically none can go safely.  Those of us start to transgress that ‘zone’ and we become casualties.

Destruction rules in us, and we are undone.  All you want to do is to escape from what is hurting you.  Maybe that is why abusing alcohol and drugs is so prevalent among hurting people.

I do want to encourage you who are waiting for a dear one, a loved one to emerge from their confusion.  They are lost, and have disappeared into the fog.  It’s hard to see them anymore. Your heart breaks because of their condition.  But you must trust in the Grace of the Father.  You really have no other options.

“We are workers together with God, so we beg you: Do not let the grace that you received from God be for nothing.”

2 Corinthians 14:1

ybic, Bryan

 

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Related articles

The Depression Epidemic

Why we’re more down than ever—and the crucial role churches play in healing.

Dan G. Blazer | originally posted 3/06/2009 at Christianity Today

crossredThe church is God’s hospital. It has always been full of people on the mend. Jesus himself made a point of inviting the lame, the blind, and the possessed to be healed and to accompany him in his ministry, an invitation often spurned by those who thought they were fine as is. We should not be surprised, then, that the depressed populate not only secular hospitals and clinics, but our churches as well. Yet depression remains both familiar and mysterious to pastors and lay church leaders, not to mention to those who share a pew with depressed persons.

Virtually everyone has experienced a “down” day, often for no clear reason. We might say we “woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” are “out of sorts,” or just “in a funk.” Such polite references are commonplace in America. Yet as familiar as melancholic periods are to us, the depths of a severe depression remain a mystery. We may grasp in part the distress of King David:

David
King David putting pain in his Psalms

“Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak”

(Ps. 31:9-10).

But most of us have no idea what David meant when he further lamented, “I am forgotten by them as though I were dead” (v.12). Severe depression is often beyond description. And when such deep and painful feelings cannot be explained, they cut to the heart of one’s spiritual being.

Humans are intricately complex creatures. When things go wrong in us, they do so in myriad and nuanced ways. If churches want to effectively minister to the whole of fallen humanity, they must reckon with this complexity. Depression indicates that something is amiss. But what? And what should churches be doing about it?

For the remainder of this article:  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/march/15.22.html

 

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The Hidden Blessings of the Long Struggle

freelancing-struggle

by Jonathan Coe

It’s a familiar story. A person has become a Christian in recent years and is engaged in spiritual practices–prayer, Bible study, meditation, church attendance, fellowship, tithing, and/or the sacraments. They have listened closely to their pastor or priest and have developed some formulas that are supposed to help them overcome the problems, sins, and weaknesses in their lives.

They’ve heard sermons and/or read books that have titles that start with “Three Steps,” “Five Keys,” and “Four Ways,” that are supposed to lead them to the abundant Christian life. They see progress in their lives but are discouraged because they still struggle with certain sins, problems, and/or weaknesses. Some feel like they can’t overcome the very deep negative legacy from the unhealthy family they grew up in.

Church leadership would do many believers a service by teaching them about how God can bring good out of their protracted struggle. No, it’s not God’s will for us to habitually sin , but God, in his tender mercies can work redemptively in this long and frustrating battle against profound sin.

One of the first good things that can come out of a long battle with a character flaw or problem is deliverance from a formulaic Christian faith. “Do these three things and your problem will go away” you learn from a best–seller, but your problem doesn’t go away. The fallen human heart is a complex and formidable thing, and these canned approaches are a little like taking a squirt gun to a forest fire.

When people experience sustained adversity, their lives feel out of control, and they will often grab on to formulas to give them a sense of righting a ship that’s taking on water. Unfortunately, they end up trusting in the formulas more than God himself.

Faith in formulas will always eclipse faith in God.

The Christian life is more about a restful trust in a Person than embracing a set of principles (no matter how spiritual those principles may sound.)

The New Testament is clear on the centrality of faith (not self–effort or formulas) in the overcoming life:

When asked by his disciples what they must do to do the works God requires, Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe on the one he has sent” (John 6:28, 29). When describing the person who overcomes the world, the Apostle John said, “He who believes that Jesus is the Son of God” (I John 5:4, 5).

The failure of formulas is a good experience because it drives the believer to faith in the living God. In this faith, there is a wonderful exchange: I give Christ my pitiful attempts to live the victorious Christian life and he gives me his transforming power to overcome sin. However, this exchange may not happen overnight; it may be a process that takes years.

For those of you in a long struggle, please be comforted by the mercies of God that endure forever. If he can forgive a murderer and adulterer like David, he can forgive you and me. Please take the advice that Winston Churchill gave the British people during World War II: “Never, never, never, never give up ” or listen to the lyrics from a U2 song called “Miracle Drug” : ”There is no failure here, sweetheart/ Just when you quit.”

Even better is C.S. Lewis from The Business of Heaven:

“I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious, provided self–offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. don’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home, but the bathrooms are already, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and to give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of his presence.”

I say Amen.

ybic,

Jonathan Coe

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Bryan’s note: Jonathan is a very old friend. He deeply loves Jesus. He is wise and he is aware. He is a writer, blogger, and a house-painter. (He is also a Dodgers fan, which I suppose he can find forgiveness for). I am made a rich man by knowing him.