How to Cope

One thing that I have learned over 43 years of military service is coping strategies. Having lived in different countries and cultures with language barriers, you learn to develop these early.

I understand myself to be a reasonably efficient person, with the ability to work well with and manage others. I am also a reasonable manager, or I would not have got to the position of responsibility that I now hold (but am about to relinquish).

I have coped with personal trauma, real trauma and death, complex situations, some during operational deployment, or training for them (albeit, none in recent years). I have always been able to cope.

In the last 12 months, I stepped onto a roller coaster. The roller coaster in question, was a faith journey, which has spun on dramatically escalating from a twinge, an idea, a confirmation that there was a God and that he wanted me back, to joining a Christian Congregation, being confirmed and now testing a vocation. Why have I not coped particularly well with this?

Perhaps it is the total unpredictability of it - perhaps it is God's will to keep me on a hook, perhaps it is just my human inability to see and discern what is going on inside and outside myself. I just don't cope - I go from day to day, with a prayer, with joyous occasions, with new enlightenment coming from small things, people, events, pictures, reading, viewing and participation on the internet in church and research. I am struggling to balance everything and to cope. I don't get time to think before something else comes along to disturb the peace, with I believe that I have got to.

What I do know, is the excitement, the longing, the constant nagging inside saying to me, I am here, this is the way, just follow, be patient, keep seeking, keep your eyes open, be alert, welcome all, and crucially, I feel that the love that is God's presence in my life.

Wow, perhaps I am coping after all.