Surviving the Unthinkable - "Christian" Resilience

“Trauma, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” – George Everly Jr., John Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness

Bombings, shootings, car accidents, freak accidents, tornadoes, hurricanes, mudslides – in a single moment of time, the journey on the path of life suddenly plunges us over the cliff into a dark abyss of timelessness where we have split-second choices that occur in slow-motion and affect the future course. 

At first, we feel helpless, out-of-control.  Some of us panic, others go into denial, some take action and give orders, and others are paralyzed.  These reactions can be normal, even good, to get us through the crisis.  Or they can bring us to our demise. 

After the crisis, we may be flooded with emotions or become catatonic, not wanting to feel at all.  Bouncing back is a process.  Resiliency is the ability to cope, to adapt to the trauma or stress, and to become stronger as a result.

According to Amanda Ripley, award-winning journalist for Time magazine, people who have resilience tend to also have three underlying advantages:

1. A belief that they can influence life events
2. A tendency to find meaningful purpose in life’s turmoil
3. A conviction that they can learn from both positive and negative experiences.¹

She claims that these beliefs act as a sort of buffer, cushioning the blow of any given disaster.  Dangers seem more manageable to these types of people, and they perform better during a crisis as a result.

If this worldview leads to resilience, what leads to the worldview?  Ripley points out that it is not an easy answer.  It’s not necessarily the yoga-practicing Buddhists.  Rather, it is people who have an abundance of confidence.    It is people who have a sense of purpose.  Surprisingly, it is people who might be perceived as annoying, self-absorbed or arrogant.

As a follower of Christ, God gives us a built-in sense of resiliency that grows with our faith: 

1.  We know that God works through us to influence life events.  God hears our prayers, and we can trust the outcome to Him regardless of how it pans out.
2.  Life’s turmoils may seem random, cruel, and senseless, but God can turn something apparently senseless into something meaningful, to fulfill something bigger that we currently cannot see or understand.
3. Because we know that God works all things together for those who love Him (Romans 8:28), we know with conviction that God teaches us through both positive and negative experiences to transform us to become more like Jesus . 

Our resiliency may look different from the world’s resiliency.  It’s not arrogance.  It’s recognition of our weakness and our need for Jesus for every breath that we can live the life He purposes for us. We are God-absorbed, not self-absorbed.  

Our resiliency comes through faith, not through our inner strength.   Our resilience comes from leaning hard on God, depending on Him, seeking Him, relying on Him for strength, because we know that in our weakness, He makes us strong.

¹Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why, Crown Publishers: New York, 2008, pages 91-92.

It's Not Fair!

God is fair. God is just. God is good.  I really truly believe this with all my heart.  But I’ve been known to ask, why do you get more than me?  Or why do I get more than you?  I’m not just talking about possessions or money.  I’m talking about talent, health, opportunities, strength, personality, ability to connect with others, etc.

Why does one get perfect health while I get a rare liver disease?  Why am I born an introvert with a heart that wants to be an extrovert? Why do I get to be born in a Christian culture while another is born into in Islamic culture in Afghanistan? Why do I get to be a mother, but another must struggle with infertility?  Why do I get a childhood of relative ease while another struggles growing up jumping from one foster home to another? 

God isn’t giving away the answers quite yet.  He doesn’t have to, even if it seems unfair.  But He has a reason.  Just read the parable of the talents, where the master gives varying responsibilities to each of the servants according to their abilities.  God is not obligated to treat us all equally or give us all the same things.

So some have more than me while I have more than others.  That’s how life is – a sort of pecking order – some above, some the same, some beneath.  This reality leaves us with three choices:

1.  We can use what we have or don’t have as an excuse for why we do or don’t do something.
2. We can waste away our lives playing the comparison game, complaining about the some that others have that we didn’t get.
3. We can gratefully accept what we have been given and do everything we can with it – give it all we’ve got.

 So rather than asking “Why don’t I have that?” or “Why didn’t got make me more like that?” or “why did that happen to me?”, I resolve to ask more often “what” to do with what I it, instead.

Thoughts on Not Wasting Your Life

Living a meaningful life – it’s about living life with a single passion for God and displaying His excellence in all spheres of your life.  John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life and the related Bible study as well as the Lecrae song by the same name have been a favorite theme of mine over the last six years.  It’s about not living life on trivial diversions or living for comfort and pleasure. It’s about not living a life that counts for nothing.  We are to live with a war-time mentality, risking our lives to make the treasure of the Gospel known.  When we reach the end of our lives, we don’t want to say “I’ve wasted it”. 

If I continually ask myself if I’m living a meaningful, unwasted life, I often feel like I’m failing.  I’m not leading any Bible studies right now.  I’m not serving in any capacity in my church right now.  Sometimes I’m not even there for my friends or my family as I think I should be. I haven’t shared the good news of the Gospel with anyone lately.

Even though I want every minute of my life to count for something, to serve God wholeheartedly, my flesh can’t keep up.  My failure fills me with guilt.  While trying not to “waste” my life, I have caught myself succumbing to the following risks:

·        Doing too much – leading multiple Bible studies at one time until I burned out,

·        Focusing on what I am doing in the church more than who I am being in relationship to God and the people nearest me,

·        Serving to justify my own existence or to validate my worth.

If I sit down and watch Funniest Home Videos on TV, am I wasting an hour of my life?  Maybe.  Maybe God nods and says it is good to sit and relax and laugh a little bit.  But maybe sometimes He is telling me to just be with Him instead.  If I ask Him in the moment, I think He will lead my heart.  The key would be in remembering to ask Him.

On the other hand, Ken Gire has challenged me to think about the whole concept of evaluating a wasted life.  Sometimes to understand the life we have lived, we need time to “sort through all the memories, to re-mat them with perspective, reframe them with forgiveness, hang them in a place where they catch the light just right so they can be seen the way they were meant to be seen” (Relentless Pursuit, 143).

The thief on the cross surely felt he had wasted his life when he came to realization of who Jesus was and put his faith in Him.  But who knows how many people are in heaven now through the example of the thief and realizing that yes, they can make the decision on their death bed to put their faith in Christ.  My grandfather is one of them.

So how do I live my life so that it is not wasted, without continually evaluating and being consumed with guilt that I’m not doing more?  I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that, but at the moment I think the key to the answer is in I Corinthians 10:31 (and Colossians 3:23), whatever you do, in your work, in your rest, in your relationships, in your finances, in your parenting, in your church, in what you eat and drink, in every single thing that you so, do it to reflect and display God’s greatness and to show you treasure Christ.

Linking up with Finding Heaven.

What Kind of Blogger Do I Want to Be?

I’ve struggled with knowing what to post lately or what kind of blogger I want to be. My last three posts have been strictly book reviews because of the forced accountability that comes from publishers who provide copies of new books with expectation of a review in a timely manner. 

A book review blogger is not who I want to be, though it is something I enjoy periodically.  A humorous or light-hearted writer is someone I’d love to be, but it’s not who I am.  A technical writer is more in line with my profession, but it’s not what I want to blog.  Devotional blogging just comes across too corny and shallow for me.

Yet something in me compels me to write, and blogging forces me to go beyond journaling.  The process of becoming a better writer is much too snail-like, but when I look back, the trail is truly visible. The trail in front of me is too foggy to see, but I know it exists. It’s a gradual transformation, just as my faith journey is gradual.

While I was in seminary, I was certain God had called me to write. My surroundings fade and time disappears when I am studying the Word and organizing information and ideas.  How God wants me to link my passion with writing or blogging is a mystery in progress. 

Gradual transformation, sanctification, growing in faith, becoming more like Jesus, walking so close to God that I can see His hand in everything everyday and trusting Him so much that nothing shakes me – this subject is my passion.  The books I review, the things that I study, and the words that I write revolve around this. This is the blogger I want to be.

God's Plan

"God has a plan for your life," I told my daughter nearly every night ever since she was a baby. I wanted her to know that God had a purpose in her existence and to feel her sense of worth. 

One night when she was four years old and I was tucking her in bed, she asked, "Where is my plant?"

"Your plant?" I questioned, furrowing my forehead in confusion.

"Yes, my plant!" she insisted. "You keep telling me God has a plant for my life and I keep wondering when He's going to give it to me."

She is 15 years old now, and whether God has a plant or a plan, she still wants it now.  She wants to see the blueprint of her life all mapped out - college, career, husband, family, etc.  At least she is firmly convinced that God has something in mind for her.

Or is that such a good thing? She is so firmly certain that God has a plan for her life, that her choices that she makes now will not necessarily impact that. In fact, she says that maybe God wants her to make specific mistakes so she can be more usable.

This thinking is totally foreign to me.  When I was a teenager, I never really felt for certain God had a plan for my life, and if He did, I was pretty certain I kept messing it up. I figured He gave up on me. I know better than that now. This is why it seemed so important for me to let my children know that they were significant to God and He had a plan and purpose for their existence.

It's hard trying to teach the balance between God's sovereignty and our responsibility.  Just because God has a plan doesn't mean it will be fulfilled when we deliberately choose our own way instead of His. Maybe it would have been better if I had said that God had a "dream" for her life.

God has a dream for how He wants us to live and how we become a greater reflection of Him. But sometimes we resist. Sometimes we can choose sin. Sometimes we think our own way is easier or we'll miss out on something if we go His way. Sometimes we can turn our back on Him and the dream might never be realized. Then we miss it.

But I also think that when we've missed it and we turn back to Him, he weaves our mistakes into the plan, His dream, and can change them into something beautiful. The biggest key is in our turning back to Him.  Still, the road might be more difficult as a result of our choices.  But for God, nothing is wasted.

Just when Satan thinks he's winning, God graciously takes the defeat and turns it into a magnificent victory.  Just like the cross.  Except in the cross, there were never any "mistakes".  Jesus was obedient to the very end. God knew before He created the world that there would have to be the cross.

So how do we live God's plan for our lives? I think that no matter what is thrown our way, He wants us to lean hard on Him, depend on Him, follow His ways. He wants us to know Him and His ways more by studying the Scripture and listening to the assurances He places on our hearts. He wants us to talk to Him and to listen so that we can see from His perspective. He wants us to believe Him, trust Him, and to obey Him.  He wants us to love others and to show them His greatness. 

If we are doing these things, then we are living His plan, no matter where the road takes us--even if it doesn't fit the neat little map we have pictured in our minds, even if it's through the valleys of the shadow of death.  It's always worth it to obey the Father and trust Him - just like Jesus.  If we do, in the end our joy will be full and complete.

How to Prepare for the Journey in 3 Easy Steps

Be prepared in 3 easy steps? If only it were that easy!

I am preparing for another big event in my life – something I dreamed for, longed for, and prayed for over the last 2 ½ years, something that seemed wild and impossible, something that required difficult circumstances to bring it to fruition.  I know God placed the desire on my heart way back then, but I also know that if I am not spiritually prepared, it could shatter my world into pieces.  It is complex, delicate, holds so much promise but also much potential for heartache.  

I so desperately want to be prepared. 
I have 3 weeks. 

Is there something systematic I can do? A certain book of the Bible I should study in depth for this season? A Bible study that will prepare me? A list that I can check off so that when I’m done, I know I’m ready for all that God has in store for us?

As far as I know, there is no system, no list to check off.  The Holy Spirit has been repeating to me that there is only one thing I must do: depend completely on Him -- keeping my eyes on Jesus.  How?

•  Pour out your dependence on God daily

•  Continue in conversation with Him throughout the day

•  Be open to Scripture He lays on your heart to meditate on or memorize

•  Turn your uncertainties and worries into gratitude and worship

•  Meditate on His character, His ways and His promises

But what if I also practiced these through the humdrum activities in my daily life?  How much do I miss by not paying attention to what God is doing when I'm on auto-pilot? 

If I can turn these preparations into habits in my life - all the time, every day, every moment - then maybe I can be in ready-mode for anything. If I do, I will open my eyes to what God is already doing, and be a part of it.  My life will be fuller and richer in the routine and mundane of daily life as well as the life-changing events. I want the abundant life! 

Photo from  http://freeartisticphotos.com