I was recently reading the Epistle of a church for whom I do the bookkeeping. The Rector wrote about traumatic events:


“The true problem isn’t the pain of grappling with life, it is what comes if we don’t deal with our emotions at some point.  There is a price to be paid if we take our emotional response to a traumatic event and hide from the pain, stuffing it down deep.”


Father Shawn Williams, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Glen Cove.

How utterly true this statement is. How are you dealing with the situations life slings at you? My favorite saying is that it’s not how we behave in a good situation, but a bad one. That the true test of our character comes with how we respond in a bad situation. And that bad situation may be someone who has mistreated us, or it may be one of life’s inexplicable disasters, or disease, or death of a loved one.

I can truly state that I have back-slid on this issue. Back slid not in how I feel I should respond, but how I have been responding. And I’ve been contemplating this a lot lately, because I don’t like the “me” that has been created, because by stuffing those feelings of mine down deep in regard to larger items in my life, I am responding poorly to the everyday things in my life. I feel like a fraud many days. I talk about health and well being, but I am not practicing that everyday, but only when it suits me. I am not pursuing Jesus with all of me, but only parts of me that cry out for him in those moments when the shame of how I am dealing with things overwhelms me. Jesus is not a Genie in a bottle to be taken out when I need Him, but He is meant to be my daily pursuit. The endeavor that creates the true character is that pursuit, that mindfulness of who I am in light of who He is.