When was the last time you saw someone upset? Maybe you were the one upset? Maybe it was a friend or a parent. Or perhaps a complete stranger.
No I’m not talking about having a bad day. I’m not talking about failing a test, or stubbing a toe. I’m talking about real raw unexpected blindsiding sadness. The kind you cant prepare for. The kind of hit you never see coming. Do you know what I mean? The writer Mary Schmich in her famous poem “Sunscreen” put its this way.
‘The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.’
That’s so true isn’t is? If you really think about it I think you’ll agree that the most pain provoking tragedies in life are the ones that hit us out of nowhere. The sucker punches, if you will. The ones we don’t even have time to worry about. I’m sure you can think of one of these moments in your life, maybe more than one. If you can’t your lucky.
Anyways think of that person. That upset maybe hysterical person I asked you to picture in the beginning. How did you react? Did it make you sad? Maybe you didn’t know the person. Maybe you just wanted to know what was wrong? If it was you who was upset how did you feel? Even if it wasn’t how did you feel seeing that person?
I work as a nurse. This gives me the blessing of seeing people at some of the worse stages in their lives, at their weakest moments, and seeing them overcome. Seeing them get better. I’ve seen answered prayer. I’ve seen rejoicing. I even saw an older man who suffered multiple strokes and a heart attack at the local gym a few days after I saw him leave the hospital. But I’ve seen the opposite as well. I can think of one instance in particular….
I was in my first semester in nursing school. Only a few weeks into class I was doing my clinical rotations at a local city hospital in downtown Pittsburgh. One morning I walked into the hospital and went up to my floor to meet the rest of my classmates and our instructor in our normal morning meeting place. I learned to keep my head down and walk fast when heading into the hospital because if you walk down the halls of a hospital unit wearing scrubs and with a stethoscope around you neck you are qualified to answer any questions anyone may have. Patients and families don’t care if you are just starting or finishing your 12 hour shift. They don’t care if you are a 30 year veteran of nursing or 30 minutes into your first clinical rotation you become an expert and its very easy to get trapped in tough situation leaving you tongue tied as if your vocabulary was literally reduced to the phrases “uhhhh” “ummmm” and if your lucky “I’m gonna go grab my instructor”.
On this morning though I could not keep my head down. I heard crying. Not an ordinary cry like you may hear when someones life hits a rough spot. I’m talking about my life just hit a road barrier at 100 mph and I wasn’t wearing a seat belt type of cry. As I looked up I saw a girl maybe in her late twenties crying harder than I had ever seen anyone in my life cry. I didn’t know it yet but this woman had just lost her mother to an unexpected heart attack.
I sat in a chair in the lounge area with my class and our instructor began to hand us our assignments for the day. We were carrying on as if there wasn’t a woman a few feet away from us whose world was crashing down around her. My teacher started giving us brief histories on our patients, I’d be lying if I said I paid the slightest bit of attention. My eyes were focused on the nurse sitting in the hallway floor with this poor woman. All I could think is wow that may have to be me someday. As I listened to their conversation I realized that most of it was no more than silence. What could be said right now anyways? I’m sorry for your loss? Yea maybe that appropriate but what good is that going to do now? But then I heard the nurse break the silence with a phrase that because of the situation still makes me cringe to this day when I hear it….
“Gods not giving you anything more than what you can handle”
The crying stopped. The tension in the room more evident now then ever. My teacher even stopped talking. The young woman had a look on her face that is hard for me to even begin to explain a very “je ne sais quoi” expression if you will. Regardless though she was not happy and the nurse knew that what she meant for good, generated nothing of the sort.
Sometimes God does give you more than you can handle.
There will be times in your life where your world is falling down around you and you cannot see and end. There will be times when the pressures and anxiety of your circumstances are weighing so tightly down your chest that every breath you take is a struggle and you cant find anywhere to turn. Sometimes life crushes us into unrecognizable shells of what we once used to be and leaves us in a hole we are unable to overcome. It leaves us with a burden that we can not handle… by ourselves anyways.
Where did we get this idea from anyways? To answer that question we need to go back some 2,000 some odd years to a little church in the city of Corinth.
1 Corinthians 10:13 reads, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
With regard to temptation and sin, Paul says that we will always have a choice… To engage in sin or run from it. The promise in this verse is that God will always provide a way for us to run from it.
To be clear, Paul was talking about temptation, not suffering.
In the garden the night before he was crucified Jesus was praying to God and this is what he said
“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” -Matthew 26:38
Jesus was saying this is too much for me to handle!
So what is all this mean?
It means its okay to feel the way your feeling. Its okay to feel broken the way you may be feeling right now. Its okay to feel overwhelmed and its okay if this is too much for you to handle. In fact, there’s beauty in that!
There’s beauty in the reality that there is God who meets us in our suffering. There’s beauty in the fact that we have a God who took on the flesh of a human came down to earth, lived with us, suffered like we suffer, cried like we cried and experienced pain like we experience pain. There’s hope in the fact that when we are in agony we can call out to God and say “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” and he by the person of Jesus has suffered with us. And take hope in the truth that because he did that, there will be a time when all hurt all pain all suffering all injustice ceases to exist. A time where that same God who suffered with us, suffered for us on the cross will come down from heaven again to take us up with him. To be with him, in a place where sadness and the troubles of this life are no more.
There’s a promise in all of this. A promise that can only be found once your come to grips with the reality that life will constantly give us more than we can handle. That promise is this: that Jesus came down to earth, suffered, cried, and experienced pain like we do ever day. He was crucified and defeated death and rose again. And because of that He walks with us. In all of our suffering and pain. Towards a future of eternal happiness with Him because he Loves us.
with love,
Steve
