Category: confusion

Growth in the Troughs of Life

This post has been floating around in my head for almost two weeks now, and I had fully intended to post it here at Broken Believers last weekend, but just didn’t get it done. In retrospect, learning of the great trough our dear brother Bryan is going through, I realize that either I should have made the time or the timing of posting it today is part of God’s design. All I know for sure is that it needs to be posted.

I recently purchased a new book titled The Soul of C.S. Lewis that consists of one-page reflections on various quotes from many of Lewis’ best-loved writings followed by a Bible verse. The book has 10 different contributing authors, and each essay is not attributed to an individual author, but they are all wonderful. Today I want to share a little about one of those essays, along with my own thoughts on the topic at hand.

The Lewis quote that begins the essay is from The Screwtape Letters, one of my favorites of Lewis’ fiction. Although fictional, there is a great deal of truth about the struggles and potential downfalls of the believer in Christ to be found in this short collection of letters between Screwtape, a high-level demon, and Wormwood, his nephew who is a low-level tempter in the minions of Satan. The quote at hand is:

“It is during such trough periods, much more than during peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.” Screwtape, chap. 8, p. 40.

The trough periods Screwtape refers to are the low times in life that for some are manifested as periods of deep depression. Many a strong Christian has experienced such troughs over and over throughout their lives. I have experienced them to differing degrees myself, and our dear Bryan is experiencing just such a trough now. They are certainly no fun, and we often wish we could avoid them altogether, but experience tells us that is not possible. Perhaps it is not even truly preferable in the grand scheme of things as God sees it.

In the essay based on this quote, the author writes:

“Although the emotional peaks are bright and lovely and certainly more enjoyable, that doesn’t mean that the trough is the wrong place for us. The truth is that God is often most at work in the troughs—the hard places where we feel most desolate and alone. Sometimes when we’re trying to clamber back up to the peak, God may be calling us to stay awhile in the trough.”

“At these times we often feel full of confusion, fear, and sadness because we cannot see God’s hand at work, molding us by the very things we wish to escape. It is often only afterward, when he has moved us to a different place, that we can look back and see how he was working in the midst of the difficult spots.” The Soul of C.S. Lewis, pg. 115.

As I read this essay, I was reminded of Psalm 23. This well-known and beloved Psalm begins and ends in the peaks – “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” and “I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” But in the middle is a definite trough – “the valley of the shadow of death.” I’m pretty sure there is no trough deeper or darker than this valley. But – and this is the important part – we don’t travel that valley alone. God is with us in the valley of the shadow of death, He is with us in the troughs of life.

The valleys of deep depression are not signs that we have been forsaken by God or that God has given up on us. He is walking with us through that valley, using every step of the way to help us grow in faith and grace, so that we will be able to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So let us not try to clamber out of the troughs we encounter ahead of God and by our own power, but let us instead walk close by our Lord, following in His footsteps to see where He will lead. He is our Light in the darkness of the deep valley. May we stop to see all that He is illuminating there.

Jesus said, “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” John 12:46 (NIV).

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Broken Prayers From the Edge

I lock the doors.  Close the curtains.  And let God have it.

I clinch my fists in a maddening rage as my hands tremble violently.  Within moments, my fingers ache from the intense, white-knuckle tightness.  And my forearms cramp up.  The blood rushes to my head.  And my eyes burn and burn and burn from the tears.

I speak, then shout — and scream.

My voice becomes raspy as I rant.  And soon, my throat burns.  My heart is aflame with grief and rage, so much so that my ears can no longer understand the words coming out of my mouth.  Before it’s over, I will blow my nose several times and wipe my eyes often and much.

I am broken — and I am praying.

I start with the loss of my friend, JD, a man taken far, far too soon.  A man who left behind a wife and two children.  I tell God that I do not think it is fair for his children to grow up without a father.  And then, I ask God why He didn’t take me instead, that I want to be with my children, that I don’t have any here for me.

“All I do is suffer and I am sick to death of it!!!”

And then, I rant about all the believers — never the broken — who paint a picture of life with Christ as a portrait of perfection.  Their grandiose testimonies have made me feel like God has something against me, like grace is a joke for people like me because my life has been so hard.  My brokenness is not the result of one trial, nor one tragedy — but a lifetime of unbearable loss.

“And it just keeps happening!!!”

I rattle off the names of those I’ve lost in just the past five years:  Jerry, Britany, Virginia, Rob, Terry, Nancy, Leroy, Art, Kim, Greg, Melody — and now JD.  I tell God that I am the anti-Midas.  Everything King Midas touched turned to gold, but I feel like everything I touch turns to dirt.  I am cursed.  “God has raised His fist against me.”

“How am I supposed to go on?  How?”

And then, in that moment, all of my rage and all of my grief and all that I am burns and burns and burns for The Almighty.  I am a man of faith — and, even in the midst of this monstrous mess my life has become, I know that He could end every ounce of this despair with a simple whisper.  A sign.  A something.  Anything.

“If You would just speak, this madness would end!”

With the last tissue, I tell God that I am convinced He wants me to suffer — alone, in this maddening agony.  I tell Him that I have given up on Him, that I cannot take any of this any more.  That I am broken.  And my heart is dead.  My pain is too great, my anguish too deep.  And that I will never serve God again for as long as I live.

“I can’t do it!  I can’t do it!  I just can’t do it!”

Three days later, God spoke to me through a dream.

“In my dream, I had a vision…”

To learn more, read “Safe in the Mouth of Danger.”

 

Love,

The NorEaster

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Lonely, or Just Alone?

“Loneliness was the first thing that God saw that was not good”

John Milton

Are you lonely? It really doesn’t matter if you are married or single. Frankly, those who have a spouse can be powerfully affected by a sense of loneliness. (They obviously are pressured to suppress this.) But they truly feel very much alone.

When we find ourselves affected by this issue, we think a lot about being alone. We become an ‘island,’ isolated and separate, and the intense figure of this is the ‘castaway’ of those who, somehow end up completely alone on a deserted beach. 

There is nothing ‘romantic’ or ideal about this experience.

After a week, we start to feel the isolation. It creeps in on us, expands, and begins to ‘feed’ on our perceptions. And that can poison us.

To define it, to be lonely is the absence of human relationships. But to be alone is to be without connections.  They can overlap sometimes, but they are very separate issues. The unmarried 40-year-old could be free from loneliness, and the person who is married (with several kids) feels quite lonely.

We cannot attribute our ‘heart issues’ to our response to isolation.

Some will thrive, and others chafe. Many derive a sense of well-being by becoming married. Essentially they choose the fallacy that this may just solve their feeling of loneliness.  If I cut my hand, a band-aid will not heal the wound, it can only help (on a superficial level,) but the healing comes from within us.

There is a definite need to see the unique situation and understand how it does fluctuate. Things will move and our attitudes may change. We can cross back and forth, and that is quite understandable. But embedded sadness over being alone can be disastrous to a full and amazing life with Jesus.

“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.”

John 14:16, NASB.

We certainly need each other. That is ‘how we roll.’ But what is necessary and for certain is, “We are not alone, never.” The deep presence of Jesus can be profoundly close, and all we need is His nearness and our awareness, and it’s going to be ok.

There is so much we can do.

The first is to get real about the issues that are involved.  Go ahead and acknowledge the struggle you encountering.  Secondly, we need to admit the sin of harboring this, and even letting it to take control of our thinking. Thirdly, to actively turn away from sin, and then focus on Jesus as our dear companion and friend.

These three are just focal points. They will often take very different adjustments for each person. But they are definitely a starting point. Even as you work through this, allow the Holy Spirit to be your faithful guide.

 

Joy Comes in the Morning

“I will test you
with the measuring line of justice
and the plumb line of righteousness.
Since your refuge is made of lies,
a hailstorm will knock it down.
Since it is made of deception,
a flood will sweep it away.”
                                   ~Isaiah 28:17

The ways in which our Father tests us certainly can seem clandestine to closed eyes.  Most of us familiar with our own trials and tragedies would agree that these excruciating circumstances are spiritual tests.  I know I’ve had my measure of the mire.  I have lost three children — one to an abortion — and I have also lost three precious people to suicide in three years, and several more as well.

There are times I can scarcely comprehend the magnitude of what I have lost.  Some days, it is a hourly struggle to remind myself of the goodness of God in the midst of my oceanic anguish.  I pray constantly for the blessing of relief — even through the maddening rage of my grief — and I have a handful of blog subscriptions (including this one) that help me stay focused.  Many times, the words I read provide the precise encouragement I need.

I have devoured The Book of Job many times, and God’s speech always gets me at the end.  But, recently, I realized that Job’s three friends not only failed Job, they also failed in the eyes of God, who tells Eliphaz, “I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7).  While the focus of the book is obviously on Job, that verse made me realize something very significant.

When so many bad things happen to just one person, is God testing just one person?  Is The Almighty so short-sighted?  Wasn’t He testing Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite as well?

Is not the same true for us today?  When we see our brothers and sisters enduring their own fires, isn’t God testing us through them?  Do we understand the magnitude of our Father’s love so very well as to serve Him so gratefully by serving others?  The purpose of loss is not suffering, but to learn compassion for those who are suffering.  In that sense:

Injustice is the measuring line of justice,
and suffering is the plumb line of righteousness.

Such evidence demands a verdict.  For without injustice, we have no need to demand justice.  And without suffering, we have no means to express our faith in gratitude through service.  Through my many trials, the times I have experienced the greatest joy has not been when God has taken away my pain — but when I have ministered to others in pain.

Granted, serving others does not remove my anguish or my struggles, but it has been through my suffering that I have come to understand the suffering of others with profound compassion.

And that brings me a wonderfully excruciating joy.

“Weeping may last through the night,
but joy comes with the morning.”
~Psalm 30:5b