Question: No One Will Put Up With My Struggle

Anonymous asked:

I’ve read your previous posts about dealing with depression, in which you’ve mentioned that a healthy support network is key to learning how to cope with these struggles. But what if your struggles are pushing your friends away, and if they’ve explicitly told you’re too much to handle? No one wants to be be around such constant negativity, or put up with hours of rants, problems and despair. I’ve stopped answering calls from other people because I don’t want to lose anyone else or be a burden.

 

Dear friend,

Please know that the grace of God is limitless, Jesus welcomes our craziness, and your church is there to serve you and to fight this fight together. 

You should never ever have to feel like you’re weighing down someone else, because that’s one of the devil’s tricks in keeping you isolated from others when there are eager people who want to struggle with you.  It’s the Christian’s privilege to hear you rant, whine, complain, and be real.  If someone has told you that you’re “too much,” that says more about them than you. 

But please also know: Your struggle is not the only thing that defines you and you are more than what you’re going through.

 

I don’t say that as an inspirational cliche as if it makes your problems disappear.  But just think: If all your conflict actually disappeared this very second, what would you do then?  What would be your next step?  What does life look like beyond the struggle?

If you are merely seeking to be tolerable around your friends, this won’t work. But if you are seeking Christ in your hurt to heal you — you won’t worry about being intolerable, which automatically makes you more tolerable.

There’s definitely a time and place for you to rant and rave, but there’s also a time when you can put that on the shelf for a little while and consider how God has handcrafted your life for His purpose.  You don’t need to rush that process either, but that’s the productive conversation which by default will give your struggle a direction and an end goal.

Many of us put such a microscope on our particular sin-inclination that we morbidly revel in all the fine inner-workings of temptation and failure. And it’s not that our struggle will cease one day: but after a while, we want to focus not just on what we’re running from, but who we are running towards.

Spiritual introspection can run the danger of identifying with your scars of the past instead of who you are in Christ.  In fact, pursuing after Jesus is the only thing that will overcome the scars themselves.

 

I recently heard of a youth group that meets weekly and they totally pride themselves in being honest with each other, and God bless them, that is awesome.  But the honesty is about the same thing every week: “I broke up with him again, I got drunk again, I cut again, I binged again.”

Please hear me: I am NOT diminishing the weight of these issues.  But a mature leader eventually needs to step forward and not only disentangle these things, but also seek a way forward to a new life.  If we keep hitting a brick wall, it’s good to be honest about how much it hurts, but we also want to find a way to navigate around it.

God will always offer grace and forgiveness for our every misstep: but He also wants us to experience the fully forgiven life that is joyful freedom in Him.

Often the Christian life can look like we are always moving from negative to neutral, as if we’re constantly crawling up to the mouth of the pit and falling back in.  It looks like this:

Negative One ==> Zero ==> Negative One

But the Christian could look more like this:

Negative One ==> Zero ==> Positive One ==> Zero ==> Positive One

 

The major breakthrough for Christians is when they suddenly see not only what they’re saved from, which is already a big deal, but what they’re saved to, which is a mega-deal.  If this sounds too easy: the truth is, it’s actually that easy. 

None of this sin-focus is really your fault. The modern church has assumed that the more guilty you feel in church, the better you’ll become.  There’s also the presumption that if you learn more information, get more doctrine, and join some program, that you’re a successful believer.  While those things aren’t wrong in themselves, they can force a culture of desperate maintenance that burdens you when it’s the church’s job to set you free.

So please be the Christian who is actually willing to move forward. 

Consider that your community and school and workplace and church is ready for your specific God-given gifts to be unleashed. 

Consider the one or two people who need your wisdom in battling depression and are willing to be discipled about Jesus as best you know how.

Consider a church where people are sincere about their struggles and even more sincere about stepping out in compassion, justice, and mercy for the least of these: to serve other people like you and me.

Again, this doesn’t mean you’ll do this perfectly nor will the struggle just stop overnight.  But getting onto your God-designed mission has a way of reducing temptation in your life and turning down the volume of pride and despair and everything in between.  Since we all must struggle, do so with a Christ-centered goal in mind.

— J.S.