This blog is an excerpt from Fellowship of the Suffering: How Hardship Shapes Us for Ministry and Mission (coauthored by Dave Ripper and myself and released by InterVarsity Press in May 2018). Copies are available at from InterVarsity Press or on Amazon.
Read Part I of this blog series here, and Part II here.
The last blog closed with the observation that there are no easy answers. Choosing joy in the face of chronic hardship or personal suffering is never easy. The journey of faith can often be more like an emotional roller coaster ride than a serene walk in the woods – especially when facing chronic hardship and long-term pain. What follows is my testimony of the variety of emotions that I’ve faced as I’ve been learning to choose joy.
- Anger: “Why, God, are you letting this happen?” From age 12-18, I had been through 4 surgeries, 7 broken bones, and a host of other traumas. When I ruptured the disc in my back at age 42, I ranted at God: “Enough is enough. I’ve done my time in physical prison already.” He lets us rant – often without responding!
- Self-pity: “Poor me. No one knows my sorrows.” After getting diagnosed with diabetes, I saw a pumpkin pie for sale and burst into tears. My wife saw this and said, “But you don’t really like pumpkin pie.” I replied, “Yea, but I couldn’t eat it even if I wanted to.” Self-pity is seldom governed by rationality.
- Comparison: “Why do I have to go through this when that other guy gets let off easy?” It’s easy to wonder with the Psalmist, “Why do the heathen prosper” when God seems to have abandoned us. (Psalms 22, 37, 49, 73, and 88 all illustrate that this struggle was real in the lives of the Old Testament writers as well.)
- Grieving: “How can I deal with this long-term condition and the corresponding loss of freedom?” A friend’s son has had ten surgeries to correct a congenital bone defect in his leg. This surgery seems to have worked, but that young man still faces lots of grieving as he realizes that much of his first 18 years of life were spent in braces or on crutches.
- Feeling cheated: “Is this really the abundant life you promised, Lord?” I remember seeing a T-shirt with the inscription, “I prayed the prayer of the Prosperity teachers and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” I felt the same way: rather than prosperity, I got a chronic disease.
- Discouragement: “I’ve struggled with this long enough. I quit.” In Psalm 73: 2-3 and 13-14, the writer, Asaph, identifies this emotion in himself. He writes words familiar to anyone who has known chronic pain. “My hardships were so great that I almost fell away; I almost quit; I almost abandoned the faith.”
Anyone confronting chronic pain, hardship or suffering will do battle with similar feelings. Family and friends, journaling, reading, and prayer, support groups and counselors all help as we ask God to enable us to deal with our chronic issues and their corresponding impact on our lives.
And over time, we learn to let go of the controls. As I grow and my character is refined, I consciously release my bitterness. I invite God to change my attitude and my perspective on my pain. Some days there is victory; other days it’s just a struggle – all part of the process of learning to choose joy.
Through this emotional roller coaster ride, sometimes the best I can do is fasten my seat-belt of faith, hold on, and trust that God will eventually bring me to the end of the ride where the journey will make sense.
