How Do We Find Joy in Suffering?

I have been deeply contemplating how we access both joy and hope during deep suffering. This question has been percolating in my soul, but recent personal and global events heightened the need to gain wisdom on this subject.

My daughter attended the funeral of a former high school classmate who overdosed on drugs. This was the ninth loss of a high school friend, by either suicide or overdose, within the last six years. She, her friends, and our community are wrestling with the unsettling, unanswered, and complex questions these tragic deaths have raised.  

Around the same time, I attended my son’s last regular season football game. It was his senior year, and during the second game of the season, he broke his fibula, resulting in seven long weeks of recovery. We were all excited for his return. 

But during his third possession of the first quarter, he slipped on wet grass and reinjured his leg. His return for the playoffs became cautiously optimistic and I watched as he wept in his dad’s embrace after the game as the reality of his injury set in.

These personal sufferings are set in the present broader context of mass shootings, continued displacement and wreckage from a horrific hurricane season, and of course, the usual “us-against-them” rhetoric and behavior in U.S. politics. And, every day, as a psychotherapist, I have the honor of climbing into the world of my clients whose trauma, hardships, and perseverance teach and challenge me to the depth of my being. Needless to say, I have been wrestling spiritually.

So how is it possible to access and allow joy to fill a soul amid micro-and macro-experiences of suffering and evil? I'd like to share two reflections I have gleaned from the wrestlings of my soul.

HOW DO WE FIND JOY AND HOPE IN THE MIDST OF SUFFERING? 

FIRST:  Joy requires us to release our expectation of what is an acceptable outcome.  

These three passages of Scripture have rocked my “outcome-based” spiritual world:

Daniel 3:16-18:  “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your  hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up’.”

Hebrews 11:39-40:  “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” 

Matthew 26:39:  “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”

All held loosely to the outcome because it didn’t define the One they worshipped, trusted, and loved. It did not threaten their experience of being beloved of the Lord. Letting go of an acceptable outcome is the birthplace of joy. I want to be this kind of worshipper even if I struggle with letting go.

SECOND:  Joy requires that we feel sadness, anguish, grief, and bewilderment. 

Brene Brown wisely said in her TED Talk: “we cannot numb pain without numbing joy.” We are told in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” We are also reminded in Psalm 30:5 “...weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”

Here is the reality: we cannot know joy if we do not embrace pain. Until recently, I did not realize how intimately these are connected. 

This reality is laced throughout the entire narrative of the Scriptures. Research to date on psychological resilience affirms it as well. We are designed to feel pain and struggle through it. But when we resist it, there’s a tremendous cost to the joy we experience in our lives.