You must be wondering at my silence these past two weeks.  There are reasons for that.  One, I received notice that a case I had been fighting for, a case I thought I should win because justice and the law was on my side, that case was decided against my favor.  I had a period of self-examination: I always take stock of where I went wrong, where I did not give my utter best and then some.  I also had a period when I doubted the people who populated the legal system and the rules that make up that system.  And then I prayed for my client who will ultimately bear the loss in financial terms.  Then I found out that they knew all along that they were just waiting for the inevitable loss.  They stuck it out because my optimism and enthusiasm filled them with hope.

Then, a few days after I received notice of that loss, I received another notice of a judgment in my favor.  This is the total opposite of the other case.  This case, I thought I would never win.  There was just no way I could win it but my client just wanted to push for it on point of principle and amor proprio.  I took the case on because I thought my client was shabbily treated but I really did not think he would win.  To my surprise, I won; but at great personal cost.  I had used words that offended the sensibilities of some justices and I was sternly warned to be more polite.  One forgets politeness when one is faced with obtuse injustice.  I bristled at that stern warning: if not for my words, the justices would not have noticed the merits of the case.  Still, I was told off for doing my job well.

I also received notice of another case won.  The sad part about this case is that the judgment might be an empty one.  We will have a very hard time looking for properties that would answer for the judgment.

I have a normal-sized heart (only the Grinch had a heart that was two sizes too small).  It overflows when there are too many emotions churning inside me.  I don’t lash out (often).  I have gotten older: conflicting emotions bring physical pain and that is what I have been dealing with.  Unlike children who cry when they are in pain, like a good soldier, I have learned the discipline of suffering in relative silence.

After the pain passed, there were still the tangled feelings I had to unravel and to organize and to file away.  This is the best part.  For this, I need the Spirit of the Living God.  I offered up the tangled mess of my emotions.  I confessed to God that I am utterly unable to make sense of any of it to learn a lesson from it.  I asked God for wisdom so that the suffering will not be a total loss; that the suffering bring patience and wisdom for the next time: there will always be more adversity waiting in the future.

This kind of emotional housekeeping takes time.  It takes a lot of quietness.  It is exhausting because I act as my own prosecutor, defense counsel and my own judge.  The requirements are a sober kind of honesty and an exacting objectivity; a capacity to look at my deeds and misdeeds from a lot of angles and pronounce judgment on myself.  I then repent and ask forgiveness of God.  I ask God for wisdom to reconcile with people I may have hurt.  I wait for the judgment and mercy of God.  For this, I have to be still and know God.

In times like these, I really have no capacity to put thoughts to paper: the thoughts are far too tangled to make any sense.  I am not a professional writer:  professional writers can write no matter what.  I have on my hard disk several articles in the process of birthing but emotional housekeeping is my priority.  I want to keep my accounts with God short and straight.

When I was nearing the end of the process of my emotional housekeeping, I had a conversation with a good friend.  I asked this friend how he can keep the faith with me when I am probably the vilest creature I can possibly know.  You know what my best friend said?  (This is why he is my best friend.)  He said, “because you are the vilest sinner with the most acutely sensitive conscience I know.  Your wrongs grate on your soul.  You also have firm moorings in the Word of God which ensures that standards are always present by which you examine and judge yourself.  You are a sinner who depends on the grace of God to feel whole.”

It is always painful to come face to face with the ugliness of oneself. It is even more painful to realize that the people who love me the most (my best friend, for example) loves me while being fully cognizant of my ugliness within and loving me despite it.  Thank God for the grace of God.  Thank God for the love of God.  There are days when I don’t like myself, and that is just as well.  I am not supposed to like myself, I am supposed to love myself.

Liking oneself means finding the things that are good about myself and reveling in that goodness and relating to myself because of the things I am proud of myself.  Loving myself is more difficult: it means taking stock of myself and noting all the un-loveliness and the ugliness and yet, relating to myself in goodness and kindness despite the ugliness.  Are you surprised?  The Bible says we ought to love our neighbors as we love ourselves: we cannot love others if we do not love ourselves.

And the task of loving ourselves and of loving others becomes even more onerous because we are to love in a “more excellent way.”  The “more excellent way” of loving is the way God loves.  God looks at a man and sees him exactly for who he is: a smelly dirty sinner, repulsive and disgusting.  And yet, God still relates to this ugly smelly sinner in goodness and kindness. God provides a way for this sinner to be clean and to be whole through Jesus Christ His Son.  God then takes this former ugly sinner and adopts him as His son. Thank God for the love of God.

There is a song I love to play on the piano.  I love the melody but I love the words more and these days I play it every day:

“My Jesus , pure was crushed by God;

By God, in judgment just;

The Father grieved, yet turned his rod

On Christ, made sin for us.

Oh love Divine, O matchless grace;

That God should die for man!

With joyful grief, I life my praise,

Abhorring all my sin,

Adoring only Him.”

(My Jesus, Fair by Chris Anderson and Greg Haberger)

This is why I have been silent these past two weeks, in case you were wondering…..