"Even in the darkest of circumstances, when life is
not what you ordered, you can learn to begin again."
--
Jan Eves, a remarried widow with five
children
Several years ago, I endured one
setback after another: medication problems, relationship issues, and personal
projects that failed to materialize. These piled up and resulted in a major
faith crisis for me.
Month after month, I battled
giving in to despair. Sharing my inner pain with a few friends and my therapist
helped. But, except for two friends, most changed the subject, or simply gave
trite "spiritual, judgmental" answers like: "You shouldn't feel
that way...You need to read your Bible and pray more..."
Feeling isolated and
misunderstood, I read whatever I could find to keep my hopes alive and buoy my
spirits. To stay afloat, I read numerous books, articles, and poems by people
who had made it through the dark nights of their souls.
Some of their words infused my
heart with a new optimism. Reading their stories and perspectives jarred me
into being open to some new opportunities for my life. Out of that tortured,
lonely time, I wrote a book, Abandoned and Betrayed by God: Surviving a
Crisis of Faith to offer help and hope to
fellow strugglers.
Finding new hope in life to
replace your traumatic experiences can be a valuable exercise that keeps you
moving through your dashed expectations to the other side. This is not always
possible. Your pain
may be too deep, and you may be wise to see a therapist for insights and
support. However, most of the time, after a while, you can begin to think in
new terms about your future.
Recall
Your Past Successes, and God’s (or your Higher Power's) Past Interventions
Unquestionably, when you are in
the midst of any kind of critical time, it’s easy to be so inundated with your
current problem that
mental-spiritual amnesia blots out all your previous personal successes, and awareness
of God’s working in the past. Catching brief glimpses of His actions can make a
huge difference.
The Simon Wiesenthal Foundation
in Los Angeles is dedicated to keeping the memory of the WWII Jewish holocaust
alive in order to prevent future atrocities. Its motto is:
“Hope lives when
people remember.” (italics mine)
You can use your memory in one of
two ways: one is not helpful, the other will
make a huge difference. The first way you can use your memory is simply
to do what comes naturally in difficult times. You keep recalling instant
replays of all your failures, hurts, and unfair treatment, focusing your anger
at life, people, and God, and how they've misled you and orchestrated your
broken dreams. Unfortunately, this
use of your memory can keep you locked into in the bad past, trapping you in
self-pity, bitterness,
and cynicism.
Whenever I started doing instant
replays of the events that I
felt caused my inner misery, I noticed how quickly my thoughts turned
negative. I soon sank into the spiritual quicksand of despair. All I could do
was obsess over my losses and dread the future.
Sadly, some
people have worked so hard and are so fixed on their goals that when a setback
wipes out their plans, they collapse in self-pity, anger, substance abuse, or
other mechanisms to numb the pain of their loss. This doesn't have to happen.
The second way you can use
your memory will instill you with hope and endurance. This way takes deliberate
effort to change your focus. It means calling to mind the instances when God has
acted on your behalf, as well as through the difficulties of other people whom
you know. This mental exertion can give you strength to gut it out through your
terrible upsets and give you hope that things will eventually get better.
Strangely, reasoning with my
memory actually helped my outlook become more upbeat. When I chose to think
about past instances of God’s faithfulness to me and others, I was able to hang
on, do whatever I could to survive, and wait for Him to intervene. I thought
through that since I’d lost hope in the past and still recuperated, I could
recover from this testing. If I could be
rescued once, then I believed, I could be delivered again. This mental exercise
actually helped my attitude to become more flexible, more optimistic.
Visualize
a New Outcome for Your Life
Periodically, I
pondered how I might move beyond my wounds and even use them to help others.
It may seem too
simplistic, but ultimately, I found all strategies, sooner or later, meant that
I had to give myself adequate time to process my pain, and exercise my faith in
new ways.
Professor Kathryn
Greene-McGreight, authored, Darkness Is My Only Companion. In her book, she shares her struggles with serious
depression and mood swings, and candidly described her reactions to God’s
seeming absence in her life of pain:
“…even in my abandonment, I remembered even if only foggily
that God had good plans for me (Jeremiah 29:11), plans for welfare and not for
evil, to give me a future and a hope. It
was painful to remember this, and I had to keep reminding myself over and over.”
(italics mine)
Visualizing a different outcome
for your life can be a useful tool in moving forward through a difficult
personal crisis. Obviously, surviving any
kind of setback is a highly individual matter. There’s no simple formula. You'll
probably need to try a number of routes until you find a path that works for
you.
The Bottom line for me and
countless others: Life is all about recovery. Living in a broken world as a damaged person means that life is a series of new beginnings!
And rebounding from devastating losses and
ruptured faith is, at core, an attitude-faith issue that requires resolve,
discipline, and perseverance...as well as input and support from others.
Yes, I and countless others have
found that it's never too late to begin
again. And no matter what your circumstances, if you are willing to work at
accepting reality (but not necessarily "liking" it), changing your
outlook, and redeeming your shattered dreams, there's always the opportunity to
start over...and over...and over.
As you consider re-tracing old steps, or taking new ones,
please ponder these...
Words from sideline “Watchers, Wannabees:
"Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating, and
absolutely useless until we choose to use it!"
--
From Richard Bach's book, Jonathon Livingston Seagull"
I shot My Arrow
Spring is past
I shot my arrow into the sky. Spring is past,
I hit no thing. How it did fly. Summer
is gone.
I hit no thing for I did not try. Winter is here,
I just shot my arrow into the sky. And my song that I was meant to sing
-Author Unknown Is
still unsung.
I have spent my days
Stringing and unstring my instrument.
-Author
Unknown
Words from “Try-ers,” Do-ers…
"When it is dark enough, men see the stars.” –
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If you don’t
learn how to flex, you’ll always be bent out of shape!”– (Author unknown)
“Behold the turtle—he makes progress only when he sticks his
neck out.”
-J.B.
Conant, former president, Harvard University
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to
lose sight of the shore.”
-Author
Unknown
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out
how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of the deeds could have done
them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose
face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and
comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great
devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows the
end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at
least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those
cold, timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“Man’s finest hour, his greatest fulfillment to all he holds
dear, is that moment he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies
exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.”
-NFL
Coach Vince Lombardi
How about trying these suggestions for making a new start:
·
Recall God’s past interventions in your life or the
lives of others
·
Visualize a new outcome for your life
As you step out, may you discover:
healing
for your hurts,
improved
energy,
a
new openness for possibilities,
rejuvenating
adventures,
faith-stretching
experiences,
deep
satisfaction,
and the fresh fun of
laughing at yourself and life!
