How do we find joy and hope in the midst of suffering?
Two days ago, I was deeply contemplating how we access both joy and hope during deep suffering. This question had been percolating in my soul, and recent personal and global events have heightened the need to gain wisdom on this subject.
My 22-year-old daughter had just attended a funeral of a high school classmate who overdosed on drugs. This is 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.
That evening, 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. Everyone was excited for his return.
During his third possession of the first quarter, he slipped on wet grass as he attempted to score. He reinjured the leg, and return for playoffs are cautiously optimistic. He wept on the bench 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 the worst mass shooting our country has experienced in Las Vegas, continued displacement and wreckage from a horrific hurricane season, and of course, the usual “us-against-them” rhetoric and behavior in U.S. politics. Every day, as a psychotherapist, I also 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. How is it possible to access and allow joy to fill a soul amid micro-and macro-experiences of suffering and evil? Below are some reflections from my wrestling soul.
1. Joy requires us to release our expectation of what is an acceptable outcome.
Three passages of Scripture have rocked my “outcome-based” spiritual world lately:
“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’” (Dan. 3:16-18).
“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” (Heb. 11:39-40).
“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’” (Matt. 26:39).
All held loosely to the outcome because it didn’t define the One they worshipped, trusted, and loved. Letting go of acceptable outcome is the birthplace of joy. It did not threaten their experience of being the Beloved of the Lover. I want to be this kind of worshipper, but I have a hard time letting go.
2. Joy requires that we feel sadness, anguish, grief, and bewilderment.
Brene Brown wisely said in her 2010 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 not only throughout the entire narrative of the Scriptures, but research to date on psychological resilience affirms it too. We are designed to feel pain and struggle through it. And when we resist it, there’s a tremendous cost to the joy we experience in our lives.
