A lot of what we experience in life just seems like a long, slow, and sometimes painful process of trying to get things right. I am reminded of this frequently. Every time I feel like I have all my ducks in a row, they fly off! Life can seem hopeless when you are looking at a difficult problem that does not seem to have any solution.
It can seem hopeless because during the time we are in a crisis. The crisis consumes us, and our perspective is skewed. We don’t see long range. All we see is the mess in front of us. If we have been through these kinds of crisis’ ourselves (which I have, many times in my life), it is easy for us to want to give advice to someone else in a crisis, and say things like, “It is going to be okay. Things will get better.” I mouth those same words to others periodically. People have said those words to me when I was in crisis, and it seemed trite to me at the time, because the immediate situation seemed hopeless to me.
I honestly don’t have any quick, easy answers for people in crisis. When I was doing a residency in Chaplaincy at Alamance Regional Medical Center back in 2006, I remember one day when I was working the Emergency Department. A young man who had just came back from his third deployment to the middle east was found dead in a pool of blood in his bed. I don’t know all the details of what happened, but, as the Chaplain, I had to go in and try to help his wife and mother in some way. The wife was literally on the floor on her knees, screaming and crying at the top of her lungs, and pounding the floor with her fists. When I walked in, and saw her, I had absolutely no clue what to do. Giving her some Bible verse or something like that just seemed like a pointless and insensitive thing to do at the time, so I just said that if there was anything I could do, please let me know, and I just sat there for a long time. They eventually left. I did nothing but pray.
As I think back on these things, and a lot of my own crisis’ I have had to wait, and pray my way through, it does indeed seem like things take a long time, and much of life is just waiting, in faith. But I have come to realize that this process, although it is hard, is what forms us. Patience is one of life’s hardest lessons to learn. However, if we truly do believe that God has given us eternal life, and I certainly believe that He has, it does put things in perspective. With that hope before me, I can endure anything. Many times, in the flesh, I do not like that process, but I know in my heart of hearts that love and patience is what God is working in me, and I am a better man because of it. I hope and pray that you can somehow get a hold on that, and that it would transform you. I have often said that if it were not for my faith in Christ, I would not even want to go on living in this world. But with that promise before me, I get back up and keep going, no matter what the day throws at me, because I know that no matter how bad the crisis seems at the time, it is temporary. “This too shall pass…”
Danny's Stump 