The Wall

One of the many hard things about living in the Covid-19 crisis is that no one knows how long it will last. It’s challenging to endure pain and stress when the endpoint is not clearly in sight. Most of us can empathize with the recurring refrain in the Psalms “How long will this last?” (Ps. 6:3 CEB; and 13:1; 35:17; 62:3; 74:9; 80:4; 82:2; 89:46; 94:3; 101:2). 

I certainly can’t answer that question. But I can offer some perspective. One of the most helpful summaries of the journey of the Christian life is found in a book by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich called The Critical Journey. They find that many of us go through six “stages” in our Christian lives. We may not visit every stage. Our journey through them may not be linear. But many of us spend time in many of these stages.

One thing almost all of us experience is what they simply call “the wall.” It is exactly what it sounds like. It’s that experience when we feel like we “hit a wall.” It’s a place of pain, uncertainty, anxiety, doubts and despair. 

There are several helpful truths about this wall:

1 – The wall is part of your journey, but it is not the entirety of your journey. Right now, weeks and months into quarantine, it can feel like this is your life. But the truth is walls are not permanent. At the time we face them they feel eternal. But they are not. It can be helpful to get this 30,000 foot look at your life and remember that there’s a lot more to your whole life than the challenge of this present season.

2 – There is more than one wall. The diagram shows only one wall, but the truth is there are many walls. This pandemic is not the first wall most of you have hit. And it won’t be the last. That’s not being fatalistic. It’s being realistic. It’s important to learn how to face hardship, to learn how to deal with despair–because it’s a skill we need for many seasons in our lives. One thing you can do in this Covid-19 time is invest as much as you can into learning self-care and spiritual rhythms and mental health practices for the hard times–because you’ll need them again later in life. You’ll find some simple spiritual practices here in some videos I’ve been creating: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsmzM5SHFVdSxbg_B2-vWiFfkLtoYs-g5

3 – The wall can lead to growth. This is not to glorify suffering. Suffering hurts. Period. And … it can lead to growth. In this diagram, the wall becomes a gateway to the latter and most fulfilling and productive stages in life. There’s no way to reach those latter stages without going through the wall. There are so many things happening right now during Covid-19 that are grievous and trauma-inducing. It’s important to give yourself space to mourn and to lament. It’s important to mourn and lament for others as well. And … it’s helpful to know that God has such surprising and unimaginable ways with you that he can redeem these experiences and lead you to even greater maturity and fulfillment through these things. I’m struck by a line in a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer regarding his visits to churches in America: “Bonhoeffer’s experiences with African American community underscored an idea that was developing in his mind: the only real piety and power that he had seen in the American church seemed to be in the churches where there were a present reality and a past history of suffering.” We must mourn the present reality and past history of suffering which Bonhoeffer witnessed in those African American churches. And … we must acknowledge how the all-loving and all-mighty Father did not allow that suffering to overcome them but instead used the fire for transformation. Power and piety emerged from that pain. The same is still true today.

4 – Walls are normal. Pandemics certainly are not normal. But pain and suffering are. Sadly, most of our churches treat pain and suffering as abnormal. A friend recently said to me “Churches want scars but not wounds.” What he meant is that churches are willing to celebrate those who have been at the wall and have moved on. Churches love the testimonies of those who have suffered and nowlive happily ever after. What we don’t tolerate, much less embrace, are those currently at the wall. Those with open wounds. Those barely making it through the day. We treat their trauma as abnormal and shameful. But walls are normal. Every day, someone in your sphere is at a wall. Our churches must become places that embrace those at the wall not simply those who’ve passed the wall. If there’s one thing that could come from Covid-19, it’s a greater compassion for and desire to be with people who are suffering in the present, not just with people who suffered in the past.