How do you walk through hard times?
Do you rise up? Deflate? Pray? Commiserate with all your friends? Get drunk? Get high? Ask for advice from a trusted advisor? Get quiet? Lose temper? Cry? Scream? Get counseling? Ask a doctor? All of the above?
I recall mentoring a young Wellspring gal who told me the reason she came to realize she needed God was when she met with her doctor, told him of her depression, and he said "Here, take these. I'm on them. Most of my patients are too." She figured that if everyone was still on them, they must not be enough and if the doctor was on them, he must not know the cure. (Good logic.) Later, her child-like joy while learning about Jesus was so contagious! (Side note: Her mother—whom she later found out was not her real mother—was on the last plane out of Cambodia. She was an infant literally tossed from one desperate mother to another who was running up a plane gangplank to leave before the massacres that followed. I cannot even imagine.)
Quite a bit of the mentoring and coaching I have done over the years seem to be centered around dealing with suffering: the aftermath of consequences that bring on #suffering, suffering at the unjust hands of others, and the suffering that seems to come with life/death. It seems that we have not been taught how to suffer well.
There are excellent books on this topic and I highly recommend getting someone to walk with you closely, but this post will cover what I have seen over and over will get anyone through hard times.
Note: In comparison to others (which I don't recommend), I do not feel I have suffered much at all. I think of others I have counseled and if I call my own trials "suffering" it feels a little, I don't know, goody-goody. However, I know that the purpose in MY suffering is to make me look like Christ. The purpose of YOUR suffering is to make you look like Christ. If we switched bodies and lives, neither of us would look like Christ because what you face might be easy (or crippling) to me and visa versa.
When my first husband divorced me, when I lost my first child, when the man I loved (whom I later married) broke up with me for the third time and dated the woman he thought was the woman of his dreams, when I broke my neck in a car accident, when I lost my second child—the list goes on—these are the steps I took to get through the suffering (in no particular order):
I reached out for the authors I knew and loved (Andrew Murray in particular and I'm forever grateful to Christy Brian for reading to me from our favorite book while I was incapacitated).
I reached out for my mother (she is ALWAYS a source of comfort and perspective).
I reached out for my sisters (whom I trust implicitly) for perspective.
I reached out for prayer and deliverance from my pastor, Sharon Mullins, and those above me in authority.
I reached out for one song that spoke directly to my time of suffering (e.g. "Held" by Natalie Grant, etc.) and played it over and over and over until it became a prayer.
I reached out in my #imagination for a "worship picture" I could escape to and hold on to Christ.
I #asked leaders I trusted for perspective and help to embrace it as a blessing that would lead me closer to Christ.
I fasted.
I got alone.
I let myself #mourn.
I spent time on my knees, mostly saying "Oh God! I need you!" and not much else.
I recall that at the worst times, I needed to get on my knees sometimes more than once in an hour. At work, I'd shut the door, get on my knees, cry out, lay hold of enough of God to get up, then open the door and work a bit more until my mind threatened to careen out of control again. Then I'd repeat. After a while, the space between was longer and longer. The vocabulary changed. The #intimacy was like nothing else I've experienced.
If we are suffering WELL, we will actually—in a way—miss those days.
Grace suffers well.
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