Thought Picnic: Adversity Reveals True Love

Finding Clarity

I have just stepped out of the shower to warm up because I was out in the cold for an extended period. My moments in the shower can be thoughtful and meditative; the washing of water seems to include an invisible internal cleansing of the mind, allowing clarity to emerge.

On the last day of my 59th year, it has been slow and perhaps somewhat lazy. Though I intended to do certain things, I was caught between youthful rampage and ageing progress; my voice reduced once again to a slur, revealing fatigue and lethargy, yet my mind was in overdrive.

Reflecting on this year, I decided to focus firstly on caring for myself, leaving behind situations and complications that caused unnecessary anxiety and stress. This was especially true in my different relationships and the communities to which I belong.

When Family Comes Last

Regrettably, family was last, with respect to friends, church, support groups, and work. In all those areas, I still maintain some influence and respect. I can offer advice and anticipate a degree of consideration, even if my nuggets of wisdom were not always valued.

With family, I had become like a clashing cymbal. I am contacted for a viewpoint, but they have already made up their minds. It was as if my perspective no longer mattered, and this was inadvertently displayed through many significant situations within the extended family network.

I had to decide that there was no point in being the dog barking in the dark. I will not become like Ahithophel; it’s not the end of my world or the world itself.

Having faced two bouts of cancer, I see similarities between the support I received then and now. Apart from my other sibling abroad, there was none. My transactional credit waned during periods of adversity and ill health; now, it counted for little beyond platitudes. The mere fulfilment of all righteousness could not be achieved through a cursory glance.

Adversity Reveals True Love

It brought to mind a song by Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey from the 1960s, “Ọ̀rọ̀ ṣeni wò, kálè mẹni tó fẹ́ ni.” This translates to, “May a momentary adversity reveal those who truly love us.” Perhaps I am truly loved, but love must be active, tangible, experiential, and felt. Somewhere along the line, that familial connection was lost in its journey to me.

My focus on other relationships became a source of strength: the unconditional love of Brian, the prayers and counsel of my best friends, my neighbours, and at church where everyone was concerned about my wellbeing, and at work, where professional support systems and the understanding of many who have been touched by cancer in their own families meant they appreciated some of what I had gone through.

Peace in Letting Go

Then I no longer need to hold anyone to account. They have their own lives to attend to, and the deliberations leading up to any decisions made contrary to other counsel are their prerogative, over which I should not arrogate the power to control. It is essentially none of my business.

However, the radio silence I have self-imposed since August has been a source of peace and rest, whilst I devote my energies to regaining full strength and vigour.

I keep all of them in my prayers, supplicating for their wellbeing, health, prosperity, and peace. May the goodness, peace, and blessings of the Lord continue to abound in grace and mercy with lovingkindness towards us all. We are signing out of 59 at midnight, by the grace of God.

In a moment of critical self-evaluation

The Job mystery in every life

It has become a canon of development and growth, to understand the event of trial and adversity whilst seeking to make a way towards a better story and good report that becomes the grist of testimonies further on.

I cherish much the counsel of those who attempt with all feeling and compassion to walk the shoes I walk, through the rough patches with the immediacy and urgency to help relieve me of the burdens that at times seek to crush and fail to impact, strengthening sinew and muscle of spirit, mind, and body as each day passes.

To those to whom I have not given an ear, much as I appreciate their concern which comes from a good place, persuasion is a lot more than hard talk or tough love. Our humanity in its fragility responds best to encouragement with the light of hope to lead toward a desirable destination. It is not one of vague optimism but of practical consequence, where words are followed by an activity that buoys what to some might seem a sinking ship.

Those beside on your side

In friend, I have found more than the material that suggests one is not in this alone; in lover, the amazing embrace of support and the constant expression of faith and confidence, much of which one might struggle to believe, but pictures are created in the mind of what is both possible and achievable.

In mother, a soothing and comforting voice almost like a lullaby that wafts in the ears of a toddler being rocked to the shore of peaceful and blissful sleep. Then a steeling up of belief that you are both able and capable, to which I promise was made, you have a son who will not throw in the towel. We are fighting this to the end for triumph beyond anticipation.

Blog - Thought Picnic: On mother today and everyday

In parson, counsel and pastoral support came with such Christian compassion and engagement, with advice and reference, help and prayer. We sometimes forget we live in a wealthy place of a community we rarely access and understand enough for the neighbourly succour that exists not for our inconvenience and essentially more for our safety.

A process of self-discovery

Personally, I seek a way to the light, a better understanding of self and purpose to gain focus and advantage in the issues that beset me. In the things of old that once were a source of strength and the search for the new in revelation and exposition of why we exist at all in the settings and situations that we are. Besides that, how else would one be so uniquely different and storied if you do not do crazy things? Each man has to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

So then, my dear ones, just as you have always obeyed [my instructions with enthusiasm], not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation [that is, cultivate it, bring it to full effect, actively pursue spiritual maturity] with awe-inspired fear and trembling [using serious caution and critical self-evaluation to avoid anything that might offend God or discredit the name of Christ]. [Bible Hub: Philippians 2:12 Amplified]

Reference

The story of Job, a biblical figure [Wikipedia]

Walking in the dreams of your mind

The solitude of the sleepy world

When I dream, the people invited to participate in the dramatic and theatrical expression of my mind as I sleep probably do not know that they are in that script and if they are, they are most likely playing a different perspective from the one that gains my focus.

Even so, when I have dead relatives in living colour conversing contemporaneously until at one point my consciousness interfered and told someone who came to pick me up that they were dead and should not be here. Immediately, they got back in their car and drove off.

The mystery of individuality with the uniqueness it engenders along with the way we believe suggests a clash in many spheres of life, wherein the ideas I may present will elicit the admonition in other words implicitly telling me to come to my senses, yet like Nicodemus in The Chosen, “I have never been closer to my senses.” Even if from an observer’s point of view, I am crazy and bordering on demented.

In my hearing and wearing

I have many friends from whom I take long and considered counsel; their views are sometimes as distant as the east is from the west to what I have going on in my mind. We must at certain times have the courage of our convictions despite the contrary wisdom being proffered.

For all intents and purposes, each man has to walk their own long hard road and climb to subdue their own mountains; the succour and comfort you get along the way is rarely from those walking in the same shoes on the same path. What we endure affects people differently. I know the pain of cancer and probably my pain threshold, but I will not compare my appreciation of pain to that being suffered by another, be it a headache or something considerably worse.

Let me ply my course

When I came to the conclusion that involved the decisions I have made, it would be uncharitable for anyone to think that anything was done without due and considered contemplation. Coming to the harvest to reap knowledge rarely involves knowing who tilled the ground, sowed the seeds, watered the grain, pulled the weeds, and kept away the pests until the crop was ready to be harvested for the barns.

What you see today did not begin in some instant just measure in the few hours past, the crying of the soul, the pain in the heart, the weariness of the bones, the loss of sleep that presages a sense of peace at the point of acting has already taken its tenuous toll. The force of hope trundling on like a perpetual engine fuelled by life and living.

There is at least one who seems to understand where opinion should be silent and support should be unstinting, and for that alone, I am grateful that I am no stranded in the wilderness of threat, danger, and a forlorn absence of direction. The story remains the one you tell of what you have lived.

Thought Picnic: We lose when we have none to question us

Who can speak to you?

I think of this a lot, the danger of primacy, the curse of being at the pinnacle of power and authority with a court, courtiers, or acolytes who pledge fealty and extraordinarily little truthfulness and honestly.

More and more, I realise than a man needs to be answerable to another man, it behoves us to surround ourselves with people who can challenge us, question our motives, withstand our opinions and persuade us of alternatives in direction and decision. At the very least, if we are not to be dissuaded, we should be able to defend our positions with conviction, courage, and truth.

No place is lonelier than to be where you are out of the reach of checks and balances. Where reality is bent to your will and none that see you can say what needs to be said to bring a sense of reflection and ground one in the incontrovertible essences of existence, that power is transient, life is not immortal, and deeds with their consequences are rarely forgotten.

Honest counsel is more than gold

Through history into the present day, you wonder what better decisions to change the course of history might have been visited if kings and queens long gone were better advised, generals and leaders did not rule with terror and an iron fist that even the truth was trammelled and out of reach in their counsel and counselling, if my own father was subject to the scrutiny of some of decisions and actions.

Yes, these thoughts occupy my mind when it comes to myself, the things I have done that with better insight and advice with counsel, direction and mentoring might have saved me from the foolishness and stupidity of my ways. Yes, much as it can be bruising, I desire friends and partners that will be honest and unrelenting in their engagement to make a better person. I will deploy my wiles and caprices, but they can and do put a mirror up before me that I can see myself clearly.

Seek to listen to glisten

We would normally say, we are our own greatest critic, that is good, but have people around you who can critique rather than criticise, who can appreciate with all its caveats, yet not excoriate. We need iron to sharpen iron, the forge to heat the iron, the anvil to shape the iron, none of which in its processing is easy work, but the result is a fine tool or instrument for the task in hand.

I know I have such friends; I ensure that my ears are not clogged with earwax so I can hear and listen, understand and comprehend, working towards a better representation of myself. I hope also that I am equipped, courageous, able and persuaded to offer the same to help my friends be the best they can ever be, either in giving them the assurance they need or the persuasion that is required.