THE FIRE OF THE CYNIC AND THE RESULTS THEREOF:

The Great Wall of W.E.W.

• 1 Timothy 6: 6-7 “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.”

  1 Peter 5:6 “ Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that He will exalt you in due time.”

• I have a saying...”we all have a brick wall with our name on it”, meaning at some point, all of us come face to face with difficult realities or situations we cannot easily solve with our brilliance. WHAT??? You’re kidding, right??

  Deep sigh...NOPE.

• Indeed, there is perhaps even more than one brick wall in our way!

• Perhaps this is the “Great Wall of W.E.W”...the loner-ville and curmudgeon view of “ it won't work, no reason to try, it will fail”, which I absorbed mightily from my hard-nosed Dad. Not all his fault, as I suspect he got it from his own Dad long ago and growing up during WW1 and youth in the Great Depression. I did grow up and I did leave home ( shoved out just after High School graduation at 18) and I did stumble out in primordial chaos, the world to learn, do or die, learn by mess!

• Cynicism carves a big rut in the pristine tidy road of success (my extreme sarcasm here...)

  As I slowly grow in faith and trust in God’s mercy and care for me (experientially, not theory,) the leftovers of years of cynicism are stubbornly resisting my stern pronouncement to “ depart, you, into outer darkness, begone, foul brigand “, to which cynicism stares me down, impolitely reminding me “ hey, YOU started this party with your sharp tongue long ago, yes?”

• Dang.

• Despite my stellar history with positive thinking and attitudes (more sarcasm,) I do recognize the danger of cynicism seeping beyond its borders and making a worse disorder of things.

• Yes, I know about the condition of the world, I know the price it has extracted with me ( lack, limitation, sorrow, grief.) It is very heavy and not very nice and I’m not a kid anymore!!

• No way out but THROUGH. I also have a very dogged Papa God, my Heavenly Father in all this decades-old W.E.W. mess, and He refuses to give up on me.

• God does not stand over me with a stick.

  He does not condemn or castigate.

  He persists, relentlessly. No One is more relentless than God!

• Having lived a little longer than I...God just may have a bit more direct experience than little old me. He just might recognize dangers that disguise themselves so cleverly. Mine fields, anyone? Hazards hidden in plain view?

• Being a cynic darkens your view, both of self and others. I don’t know what drew my Dad into this mindset, likely his own unhealed broken heart, but I definitely absorbed his view. After parent’s marriage crumbled and Mom died of a stroke overnight in my early teens, I was left with a very unhappy Dad. While he did not formally mistreat me and did provide the basics for me, he did not feed my heart or soul. He did not want wife or children. I can understand that Dads perhaps don’t know much about teenage girls! We had our definite arguments!

• During the height of the Vietnam War and major youth rebellion, this fomented huge distress. I absorbed that distress into my wounded, grieving soul (Mom dead, brother died in Vietnam) and piled on the emotional armor, both of negativity, anger and a darkened view of “hoooman beans”.

  Not the best strategy for a flaming success!

• The price...”the great wall of W.E.W”... a blockade of “back off” combined with a high intelligence and yet a failure view of the world and my tiny place in it.

• Cynicism closes doors before they open.

  Stark stuff indeed, this is.

• I do not know why God is diligently nudging, digging me out of this pit...I keep telling Him, I’m not likely worth all this effort...

  He just smiles gently, hands me a pen and paper AND a shovel, while giving me the most wonderful hug...

  Unfair advantage!! Repeatedly!

• The core path of the Christian faith is experiential, the direct grounding of how God works in us through the sacrifice of His beloved Son, who loved us and taught us and took our punishment onto Himself on Calvary, over 2000 years ago. He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven and from his seat at the right hand of the Father, daily Intercedes for us as Believers, sons and daughters of the most high God! God takes you as you are on any day and slowly, gradually shapes you with His wisdom, mercy and love.

  One more step, W.E.W...you might just make it another step out of the dark...with an Advocate like God!

• I would not suggest playing poker with the Father, Lord Jesus, or Holy Spirit. You know my pithy clever little snark-saying that opened this writing piece, that we all eventually “ meet the brick wall with our name on it,” as if that is an impenetrable thingy...well, guess what Holy Spirit asked me on Wednesday?? “What is brick made of?? Not impenetrable...malleable with right substance. Don’t be defeated by surface things ...ask for help 1,000,000 times a day.”

• Well, OK, I think I can do that...1, 2, 2 1/2, 3, 999,999...

  Wendy Elizabeth Williams Friday, April 3, 2026. Good Friday in advance of Resurrection Morning Sunday!

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