Believing in People: Endure
The second "E" in Believe stands for Endure. That's a word that comes in really handy for being a believer in people.
I think the old saying, “Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them,” hits the nail on the head.
We'd like to be at our best all the time, but sometimes life is just hard.
While we may learn, grow, and end up better people at the end of some of life's challenging times, the truth is that we are not usually at our best during them....especially when those times are prolonged.
During periods of extended stress, sometimes it's all we can do to keep getting out of bed and putting one foot in front of the other all day long; shutting down the emotions may be the only way we can see to even keep going through the motions at all.
And sometimes.... the only emotion we can feel after a while is anger. That, too, is part of the grieving process but it certainly doesn't bring out the best in us.
Whether emotionless and unresponsive, silently resentful or loudly bitter, hurting people are not always the easiest to be with. In essence, they run the risk of becoming unlovable at a time when they need love most of all.
Believing in people means seeing and loving people the way that Jesus did... not because they are lovable but in spite of the fact that they (at the moment, anyway) are not.
We all need those faithful and durable friends who are there through good times and bad and will not run from us when we are not fun.
Job's three friends have received a lot of criticism through the years, but there's something about these "miserable comforters" which often gets left out of the story:
SEVEN DAYS AND SEVEN NIGHTS...
I don't know about everyone else but I can tell you this is a lot more endurance than I have ever had with anyone!
Seven days of silence with Job, and when he finally speaks, does he say "Look guys, I'm never going to get over my grief, but your being here means a lot"?
If he did, it isn't recorded because the next time we hear anybody speaking it is Job cursing the day of his birth. It sounds really selfish, but if I'm being honest, I'm afraid that after sitting there silent and mourning for seven days, I might have felt a little put off by that.
Isn't that, however, the frustration we experience as our inability to comfort the "un-comfortable" leaves us somehow feeling that we have failed our mission?
Not only do hurting people have a habit of not "cheering up"- even when we've done all we know to do to comfort them, people in crisis don't always seem to make the most logical decisions and often appear to miss what seems obvious to those who are observers rather than actual participants in the fray.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a counselor and thought I had really good advice to give people. Imagine how discouraging it was to realize that, even though I could provide a clear list of what they should do to straighten out their problems, people didn't go do it.
Could the poem be right that, when people are hurting, it isn't so much our assistance they need as much as it is...
I've never been very good at "padding barefoot" but I have a feeling that counseling career would have gone a lot better if I had been.
The "mission" of enduring can't be about repairing what is broken, righting what is wrong or removing the emotional pain of others but rather loving them through all of that.
The hardest thing about being with a hurting person (for me at least) is not knowing what to say. I always feel so inept as I struggle to find the right words.
Maybe that's because, when it comes right down to it, there really aren't any right words.
There are, however, an abundance of wrong ones!
The "platitudes" people use in those awkward moments may make the person who says them feel better, but, as it was with Job, they leave the hurting person feeling alone in a grief that either others don't understand, or worse, can't bear to look at.
It's much better to sit and hold a hand even if there are no words than to pretend everything is okay. It's even better if we can offer one of the best things any hurting person can receive, the gift of authenticity... being honest with others and allowing them to be honest with us.
We may be hesitant to share our "ugly emotions" for fear of offending others, or even God. Unfortunately, ignoring or denying them doesn't help. What does help is expressing them to someone who can remind us that God is bigger than our emotions, that feelings aren't actions...not "right" or "wrong," and that there is no "normal" when it comes to how people process their pain.
Eugene Kennedy, in his book, The Joy of Being Human, says it so well:
Emotional healing being not so much a point as process, enduring with people takes a lot of patience, but people are worth it.
In closing, I can't imagine putting it better than my friend, Su.
To believing in and enduring with others and to all those who cushion our own adventures....
Until next time!