I am not a daring person. All I’ve ever wanted is a safe life. Extreme sports have never been attractive to me. I haven’t wanted to do anything spectacular. Safety and comfort have been my main aims.
Everywhere I look there is concern for mental health. ‘Psychological safety’ is a term that has almost become ubiquitous. According to the world I should be aiming at a safety. I should be coddled and wrapped up and feel secure. My desire for safety and the worlds urging are on the same page.
It appears to me that God has had other ideas. My life has been a series of terrifying tightropes. Using all my strength to stay balanced. One wrong step and I fall. My goals and what I live are two different things. Yet God keeps tossing me off the cliff and I am left hanging on by my fingertips.
Maybe safety isn’t the goal.
Maybe comfort isn’t the aim.
Maybe we are all wrong.
The idea of resilience has been hovering around for years now. How to make people more resilient is the big question in education and medicine. This newer idea of Psychological safety and the idea of resilience are at odds.
There is only one way to build resilience in people. Let them fall and then pick up the pieces. Resilience is a by-product of suffering. Plain and simple. No magic pill. No shortcut. No painless way. Resilience is the scar covering the wound.
Based on my own life experience I will say I feel the most successful when I remember where to feel safe. I can feel safe in God’s hands regardless of the storm. Nothing around me is safe, the world isn’t calm. I need to turn to God for that.
The image that always comes to mind is our little boat flaying around in an awful storm – no help in sight. The winds and waves more than we can handle. We feel desperate and alone. Yet, when the picture zooms out, way WAY out, the tiny boat is floating in a great rumbling sea and holding the whole works are God’s impossibly large hands. He may not have me, but he has the whole storm.
The only way forward is through the storm. God is my safety!
Mark 4: 39-41 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves,
“Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this?
Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
Roberta Writes 