Maggie O’Farrell is the author of I Am, I Am, I Am. In the book, she recounts seventeen brushes with death. They include the following:
- She had a machete pressed to her throat during a robbery.
- She contracted amoebic dysentery while traveling.
- She nearly bled out giving birth to her first child.
- A plane she was in plummeted to the ground.
- She nearly drowned after jumping off a wall into the sea.
- She barely managed to talk her way out of an encounter with a murderer.
- She was relegated to death by doctors due to encephalitis at age eight.
As she reflects on all of this, she makes this conclusion (55):
“The things in life which don’t go to plan are usually more important, more formative, in the long run, than the things that do.”
Writing from a purely secular perspective, O’Farrell finds that these trials have had a profound impact on her, and that they’ve shaped her into a better person.
We see the same in the life of Jesus:
Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. (Heb. 5:8 ESV)
Suffering can injure us.
But it can also instruct us.
Loss can ruin us.
But it can also ripen us.
Jesus found a way to steward pain so that it was developmental in its impact rather than merely destructive.
How did he do this?
What did he do?
And, how might we follow his example so that the crisis we’re now facing around the world doesn’t do us in but rather grows us up?
Jesus’ final statements from his cross provide a paradigm for facing hurt and grief. In Jesus’ last words we find Jesus doing three things we can do so that we don’t flounder in despair but actually flourish in it.
First, Jesus practiced Self-Care.
As we’ll see in much more detail in later posts, Jesus’ words, “I thirst” (Jn. 19:28) were, among other things, a form of self-care. He was acknowledging his experience in suffering, giving voice to his needs/ desires and to his own hurt. Lysa Terkeurst writes this ( It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered):
“Feeling the pain is the first step toward healing the pain. The longer we avoid the feeling, the more we delay our healing. We can numb it, ignore it, or pretend it doesn’t exist, but all those options lead to an eventual breakdown, not a breakthrough.”
Jesus felt his pain and voiced it. This is a critical part of self-care. We’ll explore this deeply in future posts.
Jesus’ cry, “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30) is also a move toward self-care. Here, Jesus acknowledges at least two things. First, he clarifies that this trial is transient. It will not last forever. It has a time limit. Second, he reveals that this pain has produced something. The agony has accomplished something. These, too, are important steps of self-care that we’ll explore in later posts.
Second, Jesus practiced Soul-Care.
This is intimately connected to self-care, a form of self care. I list it separately though because self-care can be seen as us attending to our relationship with ourselves in the midst of misery, while soul-care can be thought of as us attending to our relationship with our God in the midst of mercy. Listen to these words from the cross:
- “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46)
- “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Lk. 23:46)
Here Jesus models healthy and authentic spirituality in the midst of misery. Jesus engages in soul-care at two extremes on a continuum. On the one hand, he authentically laments to God. Lamenting is vital in times of loss. On the other hand, Jesus genuinely entrusts himself to a God whom he ultimately finds to be a safe place in the trial. In later posts we’ll explore steps we can take toward soul-care.
Finally, Jesus practiced Social-Care.
The school of suffering taught Jesus not only to look inward to his relationship with himself, upward to his relationship with God, but also outward to his relationship with others. Notice these lines:
- “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Lk. 23:34)
- When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” (Jn. 19:26-27)
- “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Jn. 23:43)
Jesus finds a way to serve in the midst of suffering, to minister in the midst of misery. We’ll look in more detail at just how Jesus looked outward to others in this painful time and how doing the same today can be an important step in our own capacity for enduring suffering.
T. D. Jakes writes this in his book Crushing (44):
“It would seem to us that our growth would begin in places of comfort, but that’s counterproductive and backward to a Master who has died and given rise to a harvest the likes and size of which the world has never seen.To him, our comfort is the prison that produces more cycles of stagnancy.”
In comfort we are almost dormant. In crisis we begin to develop. And Jesus models three important ways that this happens: Self-care. Soul-care. And Social-care. Keep reading in future days for more on each of these.
