to endure with God, with ourselves, with others

Depression is a more frequent occurrence than I realize. Last week I was informed that one in four women are depressed at some point in their life. One in ten men, likewise, face depression at some point in life.

Over the past few months, I’ve wrestled with some significant questions about the nature of pain and suffering: about how to confront it in my own life, as well as how to walk alongside others as they deal with it. I am the type of personality – I think many of us are – that just aches to fix things for people, to make everything better. I think quoting Scripture or relaying all the encouraging thoughts I tell myself in an effort to make me feel better will help others in their pain. The problem is, oftentimes the Christian already knows the Scripture, but is not feeling the truth of it. Christian or not, hearing of God’s goodness in great suffering is just blatantly incongruent with their situation. Perhaps God is teaching the person in pain about his goodness. Perhaps, if we just listen and endure alongside this person, He will teach us to more deeply trust in his goodness. Perhaps, God’s goodness is an underlying, overlying, pervading fact that need not be mentioned, but will be experienced. I feel like people in pain need a hand to hold, and an ear to hear, rather than an informative lecture on overcoming. We all know the tension of these situations: someone opens up; we give advice. Suddenly it’s a bit quiet, and uncomfortable. You might attribute the silence and the discomfort to the proclamation of and confrontation of truth. However, I would put forth that this is a personal justification for the tension caused by the giver, rather than the receiver of advice.

The nature of pain is that it is often an emotion caused by deeply rooted issues with family or past experiences; in this instance, it cannot be easily corrected. Perhaps it's chemical imbalances; in this case, a medical doctor is needed. When people in our lives face hard or terrible circumstances, this too demands endurance on our part. Pain is part of the healing process. Most people in pain, most people that are depressed can remember what they formerly took joy and happiness in, whether that be sunsets and sunrises, or reading the Bible and worshiping God. However, those actions don’t stir up those emotions any longer. Their pain is an emotional state that, yes, can be aided by right thinking, but, in my recent experience, is most often occurring hand in hand with the constant repetition of truth, and (in the life of a Christian) constant prayer for peace and direction. Of course, there are situations when advice is absolutely necessary. But I think that the privilege of directing and giving advice can only come after a great amount of time is spent listening, asking questions, and really understanding the difficulty that the person finds him or herself in. When we’re quick to give advice, we sometimes belittle and ostracize the person we aim to aid. We're telling him or her that their deep suffering is in vain – that they just need to do A, B, and C and everything will be better. We're basically using a euphemism for, "Get over it." In additon, in our quickness to speak, we fail to find out what lessons they’ve already learnt. As a result of our efforts to satisfy a personal need to relate and help, we can unfortunately miss an opportunity to learn from someone with a unique experience with pain and suffering.

I would surmise that the most prevalent motive for giving advice is private emotional satisfaction. I say this because I have realized how true it is in my own experience. We take issue with sitting in the suffering of others because we take issue with sitting in our own. Thus, when someone begins to tell us of their present pain, we fail to find the strength to sit and carefully listen to them, to completely understand them as a unique human being. We jump to understanding them as someone sharing in the same old plight of humanity as a whole. Certain words in their personal narrative will trigger the remembrance of our own experiences, which in turn trigger the memory of the lessons learned, and it is here where we quit listening; it is here where we are ready to interrupt with our advice, our effort to make everything better – partly because we. of course, care, but partly because, if we are honest with ourselves, we are uncomfortable with their unhappiness. We are just, bottom line, uncomfortable with pain.

Lately I’ve been praying for patience – patience for me in my own pain, and patience for others as they work through their very unique pain as unique people in unique situations. I want to display self-control that manifests in imparting advice at appropriate moments, moments when it is asked for – whether it is overtly asked for, or it is an implied request via body language, tone of voice, or some other relational indicator.

On a broader scale, I have been praying for a deeper understanding of what it means that Christ has not yet come back – that Satan is still ruling, still deceiving, still wrecking havoc on God’s good creation. I’m realizing I need to be truly active if I want to be in touch with the world and its pain. Oftentimes when I am doing well, I think my job is to make sure everyone else is doing well – that that is what it means, as a Christian, to pour out my life for the sake of others. However, the past few months have opened my eyes to the truth that pouring out my life mostly means allowing the peace of my situation (if I am experiencing peace in my situation) to be a support, rather than an answer to the pain of others. I want to sit with someone who is confronting a confusing, messy situation and simply share the presence of peace that God has given me by his amazing grace, as opposed to trying, as if I myself am God, and have that amazing power, to heal another’s hurt, to pacify their pain.

Note to G. Stump: 100%