0:00:08 – Barnabas

Hey, welcome to the Curious Curmudgeon podcast. I am Barnabas Piper, here with my co-curmudgeon, Adam Read. Welcome, and Adam, I hate to say it, I think this episode may be our biggest downer of the season. Hopefully, the way we handle it won’t be. 

 

You know what you mean, but the subject matter, it’s going to be heavier probably. So over the course of the season we’ve been talking about major life changes, significant life transitions and some work-related things, family-related things, church-related things, and today we’re going to talk about unwanted life changes, so unexpected ones. Usually they go hand in hand, yeah, those things you don’t plan for, yeah, and usually things that happen to us, things that we didn’t initiate, and that’s really different than a lot of the changes, because earlier we were kind of talking about decision making in these changes. 

 

So, ways to leave a church. Right reasons to leave a church. Friendship related. You know that’s a two-way street but there’s a lot of initiation involved Changes in jobs and where that takes you Like. 

 

0:01:08 – Adam

Those are all things that you have to decide on. 

 

0:01:11 – Barnabas

Parenting, you know, like we talked about, you’re definitely not in control, but you do have a lot of influence and you definitely have a lot of responsibility. But what we’re talking about today are those things where you get news or something happens and it completely alters your life, and how do we navigate those kinds of changes? Usually these are situations marked by pain and loss in some way, and I think the best way to jump into it is just for both of us to talk about any significant instance where we have experienced that, not because these are sort of like the paradigms of all of these things. As much as, a we’ve been through it or are going through it, we are navigating these things. And B there are principles that apply in one area of loss that hopefully will be a help to somebody in another area. So, even if I haven’t experienced the exact same loss you have, we can learn from one another in how the Lord has helped us, the wisdom we’ve gained, those kinds of things. 

 

0:02:07 – Adam

So Comfort one another with the comfort that we’ve been comforted with right? 

 

0:02:10 – Barnabas

Is that 2 Corinthians Sounds right I think that’s right and yeah, it’s an amazing verse, because the implication is that God’s hand is at work when you’re going through hard stuff, so that you can share comfort with someone else. So, Adam, why don’t you tell us just a little bit about any particular loss or major kind of change or transition that has happened in your life? That is this kind of thing where you’re like that was not expected, that wasn’t wanted, and now it’s very much changed the direction of life. 

 

0:02:34 – Adam

Yeah, a lot of things that are not accorded. I think we all have those. I’m very blessed in that my parents are still alive. I’ve not had to go through things like that type of a loss, which I’m sure will be life-changing in ways that I don’t yet understand For me and my end of things. You know, I grew up like I’m a fairly healthy kid, like no real issues growing up, and then you know, since then it’s been the kind of this nonstop and we’ll real, as we’ve learned through the medical system, like it’ll always be an issue for me with my health and the things that I have to go through. 

 

So, totally unexpected not anything that was brought on by anything that we did or decisions we made but when I was 20, my lung collapsed twice and I ended up having three lung surgeries. So once just a surgery where they go in through the ribs and they cut the rib and go in and try and reinflate the lung essentially and that’s fairly in-depth but its recovery is pretty good. And exactly a month to the day later, the same thing happened again. My lung spontaneously collapsed again and they did the same surgery that time a second time, but it didn’t work and things were not improving the way they should have been. So they ended up transferring me by ambulance down to a hospital in Green Bay and that was surgeons down there, and they determined that, you know, they had to go in and, just you know, be more aggressive and trying to fix this. 

 

And I was 20 at the time. I’m like in the middle of college, you know. Like just life was fine, everything was great, you know, dating the girl who became my wife at the time, so like it was pretty happy time of life, right, yeah, a pretty carefree. And then you’re hit with something that’s like, oh, I can’t breathe and that’s kind of important. So we went down there and ended up having a significant surgery. It was called a thoracotomy, with blood resection and talc porridge for all those technical people out there. 

 

0:04:28 – Barnabas

Sorry, could you say that in English now? 

 

0:04:30 – Adam

Thoracotomy. So they’re just cutting into your thoracic cavity. So they went through my back and they cut in through that area and they also went through my side in multiple places and they went into my lung cavity and they took the outside of the lung and basically tried to get that to stick to the chest wall by taking like a Brillo pad to the chest wall, which is a huge nerve system there, and just basically scraping up your entire chest wall and then putting talc in for the purpose of inflaming it. 

 

0:05:00 – Barnabas

So this hurts like a son of a gun when you are recovering it’s one of the worst things. 

 

0:05:04 – Adam

I’ve had over a dozen surgeries now and that is probably one of the worst ones I’ve ever been through. And so they go through this whole process. If you look at an X right now, it looks like I have staples all across my lungs because they put these staples there to seal off what they call blebs, kind of like blisters, and we kind of thought it was over right. It was significant in my life because my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, like, was with me through all of that and that was a really neat thing to see the way she handled it and still cared for me, not knowing what the future could hold Right and then coming down the road later, you know, heart problems, other problems coming in, problems with different organs and joint issues and all sorts of stuff. So it took us a long time to kind of try and figure things out and it was a long medical road for 15 years probably, before we actually got a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is a connective tissue disease. 

 

So my DNA is not made right and as such, the collagen, which is the glue that kind of holds everything together, isn’t made properly. So that allows things to be too flexible, basically become unglued when they should be held together. So, just as a result of that, it’s been tough at times, for sure, like lots of questions at times and a lot of questions revolving around like, okay, can I be okay with this, but I’m not really okay with my kids having to deal with this for me. Okay, can I be okay with this, but I’m not really okay with my kids having to deal with this for me? I’ve had two brain surgeries, I’ve had over a dozen surgeries. Now I have multiple implants, I’ve got bones that have been cut off and reattached and, yeah, it’s just kind of like this chaos of what’s your day-to-day experience. 

 

0:06:40 – Barnabas

Like I think you mentioned it was either in a conversation, it might’ve been on this podcast, I can’t remember just the ongoing pain. I think maybe it was over. I think it was a conversation over dinner. What’s your day-to-day like? So that’s a significant medical history, but you can speak very clinically about that. I have this condition. It means this, but like it’s Wednesday today, How’s Adam feel on Wednesday? 

 

0:07:03 – Adam

And I think it’s easy for me to relegate it to a clinical view, right? Because then it’s not as hard to process. Some of that Day-to-day is just constant pain. So it’s probably been, I would guess, at least 10 years, since I can remember not being in constant pain, so I don’t really remember what that’s like and, depending on what I do, the pain can certainly get worse. Some days are better than others, and that’s probably the most frustrating part of it is because I can’t always do the things I want to, especially with my kids or help my wife or my family with a project that needs to get done. 

 

0:07:37 – Barnabas

Just like the physical strain and the pain is inhibiting. 

 

0:07:40 – Adam

Yeah. So the physical strain, like I am pretty much like a go-getter, I want to get things done, but then not being able to do what you think you should be able to do, yeah, and then like if I do it and I’ve forced myself to do it if I can, you know, I met with very well, you know, like a week long, worse symptoms and stuff to try and deal with. So it’s one of those things that’s totally unexpected. I have another rare disease that’s come up since then that we didn’t know about and I get infusions for that every month and that’s about six hours and then puts me on my back for at least two to three days. So usually there’s one weekend a month that I’m just, I can’t do anything and my family has to take care of me. 

 

So those are the things that you’re like I, I didn’t plan for this and because of all this, like my career path has changed. I’ve had to make different decisions based upon, you know, my health, about what I can say yes to and what I can say no to. And then there’s always the fears that come in with like what does that mean for the future? Things are going to get progressively worse, barring a miracle. So trying to look at that and trust God with those things is really hard at times, especially trusting them with like okay, how will I be when it’s time for my daughter to get married? You know, walking her down the aisle, those sorts of things that are more of those highlights in life that you look forward to and you’re like afraid they’re going to be somehow taken away. Or diminished. 

 

0:09:03 – Barnabas

You didn’t picture it like this. Yeah, it’s striking to me, because we were talking about topics for this podcast and you brought up health issues. Two things stand out in my mind. One is I don’t know how to approach this because, for whatever reason, lord’s been kind and I haven’t experienced any major health issues, which just puts me in a position where, when you talk about what you’re describing like, I have to conscientiously try to imagine that experience, because you are experiencing an absence of something that most people take for granted, you know, an absence of just ease, physical ease. 

 

You know I’m 40, which means like I get to make some pains and like I wake up with my neck hurts or whatever, but like that stands out to me because it’s abnormal. Yeah, if you woke up, not in pain, you would wonder what was going on. Yeah, it’s completely backwards from my experience. That’s interesting, yeah. And then the other piece of it is understanding that the onset of a health crisis or major, significant health issue is a life change, not just an instant. It’s not sort of a snapshot in time and then this goes with you. It has been a pivot. It’s fundamentally changed your relationship with your wife and your kids and your future and your church and your work and everything else. Like it’s a shaping factor. 

 

0:10:19 – Adam

And that’s one of the hardest things, I think, is like everything has to be filtered through. 

 

What I’m able to do, yeah, and then, I want able to do, and then I want to do things, and so then I really shouldn’t, but I’m going to do it anyway, you know, and that you know, exacerbates things, and so every whether it’s going over to a friend’s house and you know, for dinner after work, or, you know, having people over and grilling out, like all of those things have to pass through this filter of okay, what part of the week is it? What’s gone on the day before, what’s gone on the night before? How much am I going to be able to handle? And I hate disappointing people. So that’s we were.

 

0:10:53 – Barnabas

We were talking also at one point about periods in our life when when we were young and broke and you know so like scraping together pennies to buy a pizza or buy ice cream or different things together pennies to buy a pizza or buy ice cream or different things and it sounds a little bit like you have to do the same sort of calculations with your wellness. Just, am I going to feel well enough, like can I cobble together enough, or is this going to put me in like a real bind? 

 

Yeah, and that’s, again that’s fair representation. 

 

Everybody has to do that at a mild level and at the extreme ends of energy. You know, like, ah, I should probably decline. That Life is full, yeah, but that’s a very different math than, like, I don’t know if we can do a cookout tonight with some friends because of this other piece of life that we lived. Right, yeah, that’s striking. So let’s share a little bit of my story and then we can get into sort of how we have navigated, our navigating and, you know, hopefully there’s some wisdom and encouragement in that. 

 

I got married in 2005, just out of college, and had our first daughter fairly shortly thereafter and kind of launched into life, young, you know, with marriage and kids, and a lot of that has come up on this podcast and I got divorced in 2016. And, as is always the case with a divorce, it wasn’t you know, there’s no such thing as sort of a quick and simple thing, you know. So it wasn’t a matter of like. Oh, we came to that decision on that day, as much as it was. There’s a whole lot of factors that went into it that led to a decline. But to make a long story short, I would say the first half of our marriage, my immaturity and arrogance caused most of the problems in marriage and then mid-marriage another thing that I’ve referenced a couple of times this sort of significant crisis of faith, losing a job all of this stuff was a catalyst that the Lord used through his people to really write my faith and we’ll talk a little bit more about that next episode just sort of the landing at a place of owning your faith. But that is a real turning point for me in terms of a genuine relationship with Christ that was vibrant, that was healthy, that was marked more by humility and need and learning how to be both fully honest about the state of my soul as well as then more gracious in responding to other people. So it was a real turning point for me as a husband. 

 

But it was also a real turning point for my ex-wife, because all of the hurt that the Lord used in my life one way she responded to with hardness and in one sense it was understandable, because she felt betrayed because I got fired from this job and she had thought I was sort of this paragon of virtue, found out that I had been dishonest in my work, and so there was a lot of trust issues that were created there that she then began to question aspects of faith, aspects of why do we abide by scripture, those kinds of things. So the first half of the marriage, my issues were our issues. The second half of our marriage, her issues were our issues. 

 

If I was going to sum it up, and at the end of 2016, and again it was a long, slow process Our marriage ended. She filed for divorce a few months earlier. It was finalized shortly before Christmas of 2016. At which point, we had two daughters who were elementary school aged yeah, probably fifth grade and second grade, something like that and the turning point aspect there is really obvious in the one sense, because it’s like well, this, this was a major life transition but a couple things that I’ve observed, and also in talking to other people who have been through unwanted divorce. 

 

There’s a couple of things that I would say to kind of give people a clue into what is this like? There’s all of the pain that you would expect of loss and betrayal and the anger that goes with it and those kinds of things. All those emotions, yeah, just the swirl of emotions. But what’s very hard to describe, even in the moment, is the blank slate future, and I don’t mean that in a positive way. Sometimes when you say blank slate, it’s like man, all the possibilities Right, yeah, but it’s more like blank slate, as in like I had a road, yeah, and now I don’t have a road. It is. 

 

0:15:07 – Adam

It’s like living in a dense fog of I don’t kind of night, every knowing which way is forward. 

 

0:15:09 – Barnabas

Yeah, well, everything you envision for the future is gone. You know you talked about, you wonder about your future in the walking of your daughter down the aisle and things like that. Like when I looked at the future I thought, well, high school graduation is going to look different. Well, now we’re approaching high school graduation. That felt like an eternity away and now it’s around the corner and walking. You know, kids’ weddings or grandkids or, or or or or. 

 

As you look at these milestones down the road and you think it’s all kind of in a framework of life with a person. All that’s gone, and so with that comes a whole set of questions about sort of who am I then? Because in a marriage context, if you are dedicated to that, every decision you make is in light of your marriage. That doesn’t mean you run everything through the filter of your spouse in terms of like, permission and things like that would be profoundly unhealthy. But it does mean that you never make a decision without taking into account how is this going to affect her or us? 

 

You know, friendship things, money things, time things, career things, all those things Like there’s no space, there’s no place for a, an isolated decision that has no effect on that person. And when you start making decisions that way, that’s often what goes wrong in marriage. And so all of a sudden I don’t even have that calculus anymore. It’s like, okay, how do I make a decision about money? On the one hand, I can do whatever I want, but, like, what should I do? I had a compass that applied to what was good for the family, and now I don’t anymore. 

 

So those kinds of things were all at play Spiritually. There’s whole layers of questions there wrestling with God about. You know. There are things that I know to be true about you know. Marriage is a representation of the gospel, or it’s designed to be. I know that God loves marriage. I know that God loves his people All of those things are true, and yet my marriage fell apart. 

 

So how do you reconcile those things? That’s not something I’ve actually come to a tidy answer for, other than the realization that there are a lot of things that live in God’s mind that we don’t get to understand. That doesn’t mean that he’s withholding goodness from us. It does mean we don’t have the capacity. And then another piece is just there’s a calculation for sin that must be taken into account where God does love and value many things that humans also have the capacity to screw up. God loves his church. We screw that up all the time. We talked at length about that on the couple of church episodes you know, and so forth. God loves his children and parents. Screw that up, we screw that up. 

 

So all of that to say that there was just a kind of a profound amount of, I’d say, confusion and pain more than anything, and then also urgency. You know I still my ex and I have joint custody, so the kids were still with me half the time. So there’s an establishment of a new life to give them some solidity and a home, a second home and all of that, and so, yeah, I think parallels to what you described, very different circumstances, totally different kind of this is not how I intended my life to go, but also a very real like a calculus looking at the future and looking at the present and going how do we navigate this? So let me throw a question your way in light of your story, and this is a very open-ended question. But what are some of the most kind of substantial things that you have learned that stand out in your mind thinking about? 

 

You said this started when you were 20. So we’re talking half a lifetime ago. The most substantial things you have learned through this that could be practical things. Value this, don’t value that. Put your money here, get this kind of life insurance, whatever it is, or it could be like deeply spiritual things. 

 

0:18:50 – Adam

That is a large question, for sure, because we could talk about that all day and the things that God has taught me and things I’ve learned as a result of it and I’m still learning, for sure, and failing at understanding things sometimes that I should have already grasped. 

 

I feel like One of those things would be like I don’t want to call it the death of a dream Like in my life. I thought I knew where things were going, I thought I had a plan laid out. Yeah, I mean, I went to school for certain things, thought I would be in that area my whole life and focused on ministry, but there came a time when I was working full time for the church and then working outside the church to try and make ends meet and just physically could not keep up, and so I had to come to the realization that, hey, you know what like as hard as this is with a body like mine, if I continue this rate, it’s going to be a difficulty for my family in more ways than it is now, and God had to help me realize that. It was a long process, I think, but over time, just grasping and accepting his sovereignty over my life in those things that I can’t control. 

 

0:19:57 – Barnabas

Yes. 

 

0:19:58 – Adam

And just growing a really hopefully, what is a really deep view of his sovereignty and allowing that to bring me comfort. Otherwise I’d be running around like crazy. So, like Psalm 138, eight, uh, is a verse that we’ve clung to my wife and I. It’s got it on a little plaque in our house, you know, but it just says the simple explanation is the Lord will accomplish his purpose for me, yeah, yeah. And like that was super helpful for me. 

 

I came across it, like in a Lifeway store on a thing one time and I was like hey, you know what that is very meaningful to me. And then it was like, oh, it’s on clearance too. This is like a double, a double win here, you know, and it was cheap and all that. But that was not the purpose. The point was like God used that verse in my life at that moment to touch me and has since reinforced it in different ways that I never would have imagined. And nothing is going to happen to me physically, nothing’s going to happen in my life in any way. That is going to make it so that God does not accomplish the purpose he set forth for my life, and I think that was a big one for me, because a lot of people those of us who are chronically ill feel like we lose a lot of purpose because we can’t do all the things you lose capacity. 

 

Right. You lose capacity to do things. I have a rib out of place and I have other words that slip out of place, and I’ve been that way for years. Like every breath hurts. And so you look at life and you’re like I want to go play this or I want to go throw a Frisbee or whatever, and all those things interact with your decision to how am I going to proceed. And yet, even if I can’t go throw the football with my son that day, God’s purpose in his life for me being there is not ruined. Like he still has a plan for my son and he still has a plan for my daughters and my wife and he’s still going to work that out. Like nothing is completely blown up and impossible circumstances that are going to be like my life is going to be wasted. 

 

0:22:00 – Barnabas

Yeah. 

 

0:22:00 – Adam

And that’s not because of me. That’s because God’s going to accomplish that. He’s going to use the things that he puts in my life as tools to do those things, even though they’re things I don’t like. 

 

0:22:12 – Barnabas

and that’s been a couple hard things, yeah, to grasp with and one thing that stands out just sort of over the for everything you just said is um, I know the temptation to dismiss statements of god is at work in the midst of hardship, because it sounds pie in the sky, kind of nonsensical. But you can’t look a man in the face who is living in chronic pain and say false, unless you’re willing to look that man in the face and say your life is diminished and it is pointless Because you just made some profound statements about the purpose of God in your life. That’s a reason to live Right. It’s a reason to take joy. It’s a reason to roll out of bed every painful morning and give your best to your wife and your kids and your work and your church that you have. And it’s not like a ginned up figment of your imagination. That’s real and so it’s just for a listener. 

 

I hope that you hear that because I know the gut level like kind of eye roll that can happen, especially for those of us who have grown up in the church and heard, you know, Jeremiah 29, 11, slapped on everything, and we’ll talk more about that in a little bit later on. But these sort of uh like we’re just going to put a positive spin on this and what I don’t hear you doing it. There’s no positive spin because you’re speaking very frankly about the ongoing loss, difficulty, frustration, pain and the ongoing. The Lord is at work in this and he’s sustaining me and it’s a twofold reality, not a denial of reality. That’s really significant. 

 

0:23:49 – Adam

And God does use those things in ways that, like I don’t understand, I don’t think I will understand yet, I may never fully understand. But then you look on the other side and you’re like God’s given me a wife who is like I don’t know what I would do without the care she gives me and she has a lot on her, you know, just as a normal mom with normal family situations, but then to also be taking care of me and the things that I can’t do, that she has to try and, you know, pick up the extra slack on, and I know she’d probably deny that, but it’s true, you know, like I just I look at looking back and you’re like, well, god really had his hand in this and it doesn’t make it easier, right, but it helps you to understand it a little more and to trust a little more. 

 

0:24:35 – Barnabas

When, if she also believes that the Lord is fulfilling his purposes, then what she’s doing doesn’t feel like picking up the extra slack to her. It feels like the Lord has given me the capacity to be a wife in this way to fulfill these needs. And I mean that’s how marriage ought to work. It ought to be a thing where the two are filling up one another’s weaknesses and picking one another up where there’s a shortcoming, and so a truly sort of complimentary building one another up. And so I highly doubt she feels like. I mean, maybe on her worst days she feels like she’s picking up the slack, but I bet on most days she feels like marriage God gave me, and not like begrudging that, but just like and he’s given me the capacity to love well in this context, and that’s really significant. 

 

0:25:16 – Adam

Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing to see that in so richly blessed in that way. I think one of the things that maybe is a good thing that we can both talk about in relation to these unexpected things that happen in life is how they affect our kids. Unexpected things that happen in life is how they affect our kids. I struggled a lot with like okay, my kids are going to have to deal with this, you know, and how they care for me, and sometimes you know they have to do things that normal kids the dad would just get up and do, right. But I struggle with that and it’s times I still do. 

 

But God helped me to understand better at one point and I think maybe it’s the same in your situation where you know your kids are now in a divorced home not what you first saw for the situation, but certainly where you’re at and wanting to please the Lord and wanting to glorify him. 

 

You know like my heart goes out to my kids, like in either of those situations, right, because the kids are the ones that are going to have to, you know, grow up under those different circumstances and their life is changed. Because my life’s changed and one of the things that I just had to wrestle with a lot, and I really did struggle with this one a lot, and still do at times is like I firmly believe that God’s given and will give me the grace, day by day, to handle whatever he’s given me. Right, like that’s a pretty fundamental, basic belief in our Savior that we should have. And I think it’s the same in your situation like and in mine with the kids is like God knew this was going to happen. Yeah, this is not a thwarting of God’s ultimate plan, but God’s going to give your kids and he’s going to give my kids the grace to deal with the situation and to be able to live it in a way that honors him, just like he would give that grace to me. 

 

0:27:01 – Barnabas

Yeah, and I think there’s an advantage that you have in your situation in that you feel an amoral pain. So you’re not in pain because of sin you didn’t sin to bring this about. No, you’re in pain because of sinfulness. We’ll go way back. 

 

0:27:23 – Adam

It’ll be the fall. 

 

0:27:23 – Barnabas

But I mean, this isn’t a judgment on you or your family for anything, and so when I say it’s an advantage, it means that you can approach this alongside your children, looking at it and addressing fallenness in the world and trust in the Lord and all of these the things that you just spoke so clearly and eloquently about, and that doesn’t make it easier. But there is maybe one slight complication that’s not there. It raises another complication, which is well. If no one’s at fault for this, then why are we experiencing this Like sort? 

 

0:27:54 – Adam

of the Job question. 

 

0:27:56 – Barnabas

And I would say one of the challenges in navigating these things with my kids is how to address appropriately sins that were committed by my ex and by me. You know, in terms of you know, where does fault lie? And then, in an ongoing way, more importantly, how do we avoid further sin? Like I don’t get to, nor do I have any desire to dishonor their mom. Like they spend half their time with their mom. I think it’s of utmost importance that I do everything I can to foster their relationship with their mom. She is not my enemy. I don’t want her to be their enemy. I don’t want them to get to a certain point in life and turn on her. And so there’s a lot of moral past failings, current complications that lend itself to okay, what does that look like? But the foundation is still the same in terms of honoring the Lord in the midst of so what does it look like? And trusting that the Lord will bring about his purposes. So if I refrain from speaking ill of their mom, they don’t know what I’m not saying. 

 

Nobody knows what you don’t say unless you have a very pronounced facial expression. 

 

0:29:02 – Adam

I might know a few people like that. 

 

0:29:04 – Barnabas

Right, I mean, I don’t always have a poker face, but someday maybe they will have a sense of the importance of honor and the importance of dignity and respect and speaking well of and you know, not talking behind somebody’s back. Because of how the Lord has helped me navigate this and, honestly, I think their mom does more or less the same for me. I don’t think she’s talking trash behind my back either. Just thinking back, though, I pose this sort of open-ended things that stand out to you as you’ve navigated this On my side, going through some of those things. One of the things that stands out to me and this is another one of those things that will sound cheap or trite to somebody who either doesn’t believe it or hasn’t gone through something really difficult and that is there’s a closeness to Jesus that you can experience at the times of worst pain and low, yeah, lowness that you cannot experience in other ways, yeah, and at other times and that’s a weird backwards thing that we have to be at our worst to get the most of. 

 

Jesus Right, not because he keeps himself from us, but mostly because, when we’re at our best, we don’t think we need Jesus as much we’re more relying on him in those other times. 

 

Yeah, when Jesus is all you have, you notice him a lot more. Yeah, and I think back to I mean, I just have sort of particular instances of, you know moments sitting at my little desk in the apartment that I was living in and over my Bible and the ministry of Christ to my soul through some of those times and how much that stands out. And the fruit of that is still being borne out now because it kept me from a lot of sin, it kept me from a lot of depression, it kept me on a course toward faithfully walking with the Lord. And so, you know, I wouldn’t be where I am right now had Christ not been ministering to me in that way. And the second thing that stands out is and it kind of follows in line with that is just the you know I mentioned earlier the sort of aimless, confused fog. I mentioned earlier the sort of aimless, confused fog. One of the things that the Lord helped me see in the midst of that was I don’t need to know my 10-year plan or my five-year plan. 

 

But I want to Honestly that sounds very stressful to me. I don’t want to. I’ve never been that guy, but I’ve always been somebody who likes to glance into the future and imagine. I like to imagine, if not plan, and I couldn’t even do that. 

 

But what the Lord did show me was take the next right step. That’s faith in a nutshell. What’s the next right step in walking with the Lord? Well, that’s obedience in a nutshell. And so there was a sense of walking things out faithfully on my end and not worrying so much about outcome as just obedience, just faithfulness. What does today look like? What does resisting temptation today look like? What does loving my kids? Well, today look like, and over time that expands Like. The fact is that the Lord does kind of lift the eyes to the future and go okay, so obedience can actually take you here and you can dream about this and you can pursue this and you can have, you know, you can try this new challenge or, you know, kind of expand your horizons a little bit. 

 

But the other piece of that that was so significant was for somebody who has been through a divorce or a bad breakup you know those are different circumstances, obviously but and is trying to figure out. What might it look like to get into a significant relationship again and is trying to figure out what might it look like to get into a significant relationship again. A lot of us just drag baggage with us, and I certainly did that in my first dating relationship. I went into it too soon and I was not prepared and it didn’t end well, not because there was anything wrong with the lady I was dating, but because I wasn’t remotely ready and I didn’t know what going in, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know, and so the fallout was, you know, very painful to her. Didn’t even know what I didn’t know, and so the fallout was, you know, very painful to her. 

 

And so there’s a certain amount of just faithful walking out obedience that helps you get to the place of clearer wisdom, clearer decision-making, recognition of where your soul is and is not ready to engage deeply with somebody else. 

 

You kind of undo some habits of marriage that ought to just remain in marriage so that when you enter a relationship you can enter it, you know, at a starting point, instead of sort of too far down the road, either sexually or relationally and so forth, and so there’s just a real wisdom that I stumbled and fell in, and then the Lord grew me in of just faithfully walking these things out to work on who does God intend me to be. So this isn’t the sort of therapeutic like love yourself before you can love somebody else as much as it is. Gain a keen understanding of the kind of person, the kind of man that God wanted me to be before I engage deeply in, you know, giving myself to someone else. And a lot of that had to do with friendship and community as well, because I cannot be done in isolation. I benefited profoundly from being in a church context where I was getting deeper into community and having friends speaking into my life so that I can see myself through their eyes and gain correction and gain encouragement and so forth. 

 

0:34:13 – Adam

Yeah, that’s really. I really that’s some deep stuff, certainly very helpful. I love the phrase who does God intend me to be, and I think there’s a couple parts to that. Like one God’s plan for you is still going to happen. You know, whether it’s something that in my case, like it just happened to me, like you know, outside causes, or it’s something that we look as more of a result of a decision or situations that happen, or series of decisions, like God is a redeeming God right, he’s going to take because of his sacrifice and his power, he can take the bad things in life and he can say, hey, I’m not done with you. This, ultimately, is part of my plan to make you who I want to be, and that’s a beautiful thing. 

 

0:34:57 – Barnabas

Let me rephrase that real quick, because I can imagine a listener feeling a burden that we don’t want them to feel. 

 

Okay yeah, the question, who does God want me to be? Might accidentally be heard, as there’s a bullseye I need to hit. Oh yeah, and I don’t mean that, right, I know you don’t. I think, rephrasing that as what kind of person does God want me to be? Yeah, so we’re talking like character, faith, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control that these are marks of the Lord’s work in your life. So, like that’s what I hear you saying, I just know somebody else, especially somebody who’s been in a context where somebody has talked about finding the will of God and this and that. 

 

And it sounds like. It sounds like you know, kind of we need to use like a Ouija board and a full moon and dice and uh, you know, and a calculator to puzzle this thing out. And that’s not it at all. Right, I had zero idea what God wanted to do with my life, right, but I had a really clear understanding of what kind of person the Lord intended me to develop into. And here’s the thing If you grow into the kind of person God intends to grow you into, you will go where God intends you to go. 

 

0:36:13 – Adam

Yeah. And you don’t need to know where that is. You don’t have to worry about those other questions that are out there. Yeah, and I think that’s. When I say that I mean more of like being the right type of image bearer, right being someone who’s being made into God’s image in ways that are hard to happen apart from trials, because, like you said, those things force us to rely on God. 

 

0:36:36 – Barnabas

Yeah. 

 

0:36:37 – Adam

And I’m sure there’s people that just rely on God without those trials, and I’m not one of them. I’m very self-sufficient, so I’m like I can just do this. And it’s forced me to change the way I think and as I look back across it, I don’t know if I’d ever say like, yes, I want that to be part of my life. I want all the sickness and I want all the infusions and the pain to be part of my life. I don’t know, if I was 19 and asked that question, if I’d say, yeah, that’s what I want to do. But looking back now at 43 and having dealt with this for 23 approximately years, I can see in my life, in my wife’s life, in my family’s life, how God has used this to mature and change them, and it’s like I don’t know that I’d ever asked for it to be taken away either. 

 

0:37:28 – Barnabas

Man, it’s so amazing that you just said that because, like I literally was jotting down while you were talking earlier, the exact same premise of what you just said and you used the term redemption earlier God is a redeeming God. Now, that’s a wonderfully Christian word that we often don’t put flesh on Like what does? 

 

that mean and what you just described is sort of the lived out reality of redemption, in that I think a way to kind of picture redemption in our lives is to say we look back at portions of our lives and say I wish that had never happened and we simultaneously say, and I wouldn’t change anything about it because of what God has done. So God uses the thing that we can definitively say it shouldn’t have happened. It’s not good For you to be perpetually in pain and dealing with ongoing illness is not good. It’s not sin, but it’s not the way things are supposed to be. For me to have experienced divorce is not good. There was sin involved. The fallout was profoundly painful. 

 

It is not God’s intended design, but also what God has done through these things is something that we go. 

 

Well, you start to pull on the threads of that sweater and say, well, I’m going to unravel this or that, and you actually unravel God’s goodness and his good work. 

 

And you started with the verse you know, comfort others with the comfort you have received, which I hope we’re doing in this podcast, but we wouldn’t have received comfort to then build others up, encourage others, pour into others, see them through, walk alongside them, bear their burdens, all of those things, had not God done this. So there is an element of you talk about this to a point and you just end up with open hands going, yeah, absolutely, god is God and he’s at work, and I am profoundly thankful for so many things and I still live in pain about so many things, and you live in pain, quite literally, due to so many things, and it doesn’t change God’s goodness and it doesn’t change his work, and in a lot of ways, it is the palette that he’s working on and I like the illustration, like the unraveling, if you start pulling on it because you know like are the age of our kids. 

 

0:39:38 – Adam

I mean, our kids are different and there’s been hard things your kids, my kids, like because of the situation that they’ve had in life. They’re different people but they’re also mature in ways and able to listen to others in ways and become alongside others that people that haven’t been through similar things just don’t know how to do. And so, because of the trials that are there, our families are different people and then God’s going to use those life situations that they’ve been through to then allow them to reach other people that they wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise. And it’s just the beauty of the grandeur of the scale of how our God works, because it’s easy to look at the crisis situation and be like, well, that shouldn’t have happened and kind of think that things would have been better for my family had things gone different. And in the perfect sense of that word, yeah, I guess things could have been easier for them, but they wouldn’t be the same people today. 

 

0:40:37 – Barnabas

Nobody is a more fully formed person or Christian because everything has been easy I mean literally nothing in life. We don’t grow at anything in life through ease. Right, you know it is always challenges challenges. 

 

0:40:50 – Adam

I mean, you think, about physical strength. 

 

0:40:52 – Barnabas

It requires the breaking down of muscles to build them up stronger. Yeah, you know, if you think about endurance, you have to push yourself to the point of pain for your body to be built up stronger, and so forth. So, yeah, this is I’m. I’m going to get nerdy here for a second, so hang with me. 

 

I was reading recently in a book for a seminary class and it was talking about how all knowledge of God that we have is analogous. It’s an analogy and the some of the examples are you look at the world and it is an analogy for things that are true about God, so representative of, but not the full picture, and so like we can understand these beautiful, profound truths about God’s goodness through things like physical endurance and physical building up and scars and these things that you’re like. These are an analogy of how God builds us up and how he works. Even family is an analogy of God. You know, when we hear God as father, he’s not a father like we are a father. He’s the perfect father. We are kind of a dim image, right, and so you know there’s so much to be learned there that helps us kind of just pause and go. 

 

Oh man, the reality is a lot greater than the description. Yeah, and that’s really encouraging to me because I feel like the descriptions often leave me quite satisfied, but the reality is utterly satisfying. I just have. I have one more encouragement. I don’t know how well it applies to your situation, but this is for listeners who have experienced a profound loss. You know I’m not living in chronic pain, but that’s a different scenario because it’s ongoing. So you’re approaching healing very differently than somebody who had a one-time profound loss. I’m thinking of somebody who has lost a loved one or gone through divorce. 

 

That’s very different situations and you know so different kinds of pain, the lord. The lord is equally and similarly as kind and gracious through it, but very different. And one thing I would say to people who have had that one time profound loss be it a death, be it a divorce, whatever that may be it feels at times as if hope and happiness and joy will not return again. And you approach things like wedding anniversaries or birthdays or any significant holiday, or even geographic places that were significant, and all you can anticipate is pain as you get near those things, the reminder of what might have been what used to be what has since been a profound cause of pain. And the encouragement is simply this If you cling to the Lord, he absolutely heals over time. 

 

Time doesn’t heal all wounds. If that was true, we wouldn’t need doctors. But we have the great physician who does use time. Yes, and one of the ways he uses it and this is just a very simple like you can mark this on a calendar is cyclically. So the first time you experience those pronounced moments of pain birthdays, holidays, et cetera it is just awful. Then there’s all the other times and you kind of get ambushed by pain unexpectedly. The second time you experience them. You have had a year to form some new memories, to get a little bit of distance, not distance that makes you forget, but distance that then you get to add the good to the pain. So time spent with other loved ones, new people entering your life, healing that the Lord has brought about. 

 

And so every cycle, you are adding good to your life. The Lord is adding good to your life. So this isn’t just a psychology kind of thing, although psychology is a science created by God too. But be patient. You want to know when you’re going to feel better. The answer is not yet, but little by little, next Christmas is going to be better than last Christmas, that kind of thing, especially if you are intentionally investing. In what kind of person does God want me to be? With friendship, with community, with closeness to the Lord, because he’s going to be stacking good in your life that will never replace what you lost and it’s not intended to but it will help redeem the loss. 

 

So I just wanted to put that in people’s ears because I imagine there’s somebody who’s in that very raw place of pain. It just feels like that all sounds great for you people. When do I get to feel better? 

 

0:45:05 – Adam

And the answer is not yet, but later little by little, yeah, and I think we have high expectations of people oftentimes who experience loss as believers, like we just expect people to well, god’s good, you just got to trust him, you know, and. And we kind of say these things and it’s not that God’s not good, and it’s not that we shouldn’t trust him. But that does not make the moment easy, like those things can still be true and you can still carry the pain of whatever you’re going through. And I think we have to give people lots of grace in that, because it’s easy to look at someone and be like well, they should have recovered from that by now. 

 

0:45:44 – Barnabas

Yeah. 

 

0:45:44 – Adam

You know, because, one, maybe we haven’t been there, or two, we don’t understand the depth of their relationship, or they are just emotionally different than us, and those things are all valid, yeah, and I think we have to be really careful that we allow people time to work through the trials that they’re facing, instead of just saying, hey, you’re a believer, life’s good, you know, pick it up, go on. 

 

0:46:05 – Barnabas

There are extremes at both ends. There is what you just described, which is sort of the like rushing recovery, which, in any you know any medical professional will tell you that rushing recovery on anything is bad. I mean, we were just talking earlier about a lady who you work with who’s recovering from surgery and it’s going to take some months before she’s physically recovered enough to kind of have full physical motion and lift. Things like rushing recovery is only going to make things worse, so we don’t want to do that. However, if somebody is languishing in a sort of morose pain years later, like without much sign of progress, that’s also a sign that something’s not healthy. I mean, pain tells us something and it might not tell us that the we might know what the wound is and the question is like are you following the treatment instructions? You know, if you have an open wound of something, are you following the treatment instructions? Healing does take time. We are called to trust in the Lord be close to his people drink deeply of his word, cause that’s the medicine yeah 

 

and, you know, wrap ourselves in his promises like there’s the bandages. These things are things that we must do and if we are continuing to languish, that might indicate that our hearts are clinging to something that’s not Christ instead of to Christ. Yeah, I’m not trying to burden anybody’s conscience with that, but that’s more for if we’re walking alongside somebody and it’s been two years of languishing, no progress, grief after two years is entirely normal. Grief after 10 years is entirely normal. But languishing is not that sort of morose, like wallowing that get up, dust yourself off, like there’s an element of element of like. Okay, you’re not being the kind of person god wants you to be. If you’re languishing, right, you are. 

 

0:47:50 – Adam

If you’re grieving, right, and I think that’s you know. Like the psalmist says, I lift my eyes to the hills. From whence comes my help? Right? My help comes from the lord, the maker of heaven and earth, and if it’s a situation where there’s this major loss, there’s this huge amount of, but there is a refusal to lift up our eyes to God and ask for his help and hope in this situation, then I think we’re called, as believers, to come alongside and try and encourage those people out of love for them. And that could be a tough thing, for sure, and, yeah, sometimes it’s very hard to know how to help. 

 

0:48:23 – Barnabas

Sometimes, it’s For sure. And, yeah, sometimes it’s very hard to know how to help. Sometimes, it’s, you know, help is rejected. There’s, I know, a guy who went through a significant loss, you know, led to loss of marriage, loss of home, and he basically just held the line that the Lord was offering no comfort. Meanwhile, half a dozen people would rotate through his home to offer help and to sit with him and to talk with him for hours on end and I was just like this is the Lord offering you comfort? You’re just not listening. 

 

0:48:54 – Adam

And I’m not saying that every word that came out of everybody’s mouth was perfect, you know but nor were we Job’s friends, being like you did this to yourself kind of thing, and it’s not theological platitudes of like well, it sounds good. 

 

0:49:10 – Barnabas

And it was actually on the ground, boots on the ground, trying to help and encourage. I had a realization the other day and this is speculation from scripture so I want to be careful with it but I was talking with one of the other elders at our church about Job book of Job. 

 

And you know Job, if you’re familiar with it. It ends with so Job loses everything because the Lord allows Satan to take it all from him. Then it’s basically a whole exploration of why and his languishing and wondering about the justice of God, and then it ends with God declaring his sovereignty and wisdom over all things. There’s not a reason given. I did this because X? Well, there is an explanation given of who I am and why you can trust me. And then the last chapter is a very brief. Basically, job was restored multiple times, so his flocks were rebuilt, he had more children, et cetera. Yeah, what dawned on me was like that happens in about six verses in the book. 

 

0:50:00 – Adam

Right at the end. 

 

0:50:01 – Barnabas

Scientifically that had to take years. Right, particularly the children part. Like, let’s say, he had a whole series of Irish twins and he had 10 kids. Like you’re talking 90 months, like that’s, yeah, that’s a long time. So yeah, you know, like there’s. 

 

My point is. My point is the lord’s restoration does not happen all at once. And the other thing is that it took re-engagement by Job. He reinvested in his relationship with his wife. That’s where the children came from. For those of you who don’t know where babies come from, ask your mommies and daddies. 

 

His flocks being rebuilt probably wasn’t just a check that he stroked for a one-time purchase, but a rebuilding through cultivation. His house had to be rebuilt. That takes craftsmanship and time and investment. So that picture of the final results of Job skips over the process of recovering. To that Now I’d say it’s speculation, because there’s a possibility that the Lord snapped his fingers and restored all that to Job, but there’s no indication that happened, and usually the Bible is pretty clear when there’s a miraculous pop, and so that should be comforting to us. If we have lost everything, what feels like everything, we should not expect instantaneous recovery. What we need to do is do what Job did, which is at some point kind of cover our mouths and say you know, I’m going to cover my mouth because you are God and I am not. We put ourself in the Lord’s hands and we take the steps of obedience that lead toward whatever version of recovery God intends to give us. Yeah, that’s great, excellent, all right. 

 

0:51:37 – Adam

So we’d come to that part in the podcast which is Did we make it through the serious part? We did. 

 

0:51:42 – Barnabas

But also so I intentionally tried to pose a question, this time for our curious question of the week, this question that just allows our imaginations to run and have a little fun. That is not silly, but is hopefully, then, an actual further encouragement to listeners on the heels of a serious conversation. And the question is this what is a book that you have read that has encouraged you in a difficult time? 

 

0:52:04 – Adam

So not like Dr Seuss’s sleep book. I mean, I don’t know, did that? 

 

0:52:07 – Barnabas

encourage you in a serious time. I not like Dr Seuss’s sleep book. I mean, I don’t know. Did that encourage you in a serious time? I don’t know that one. 

 

0:52:11 – Adam

Love me some Dr Seuss, but yeah, that’s a different topic. Oh, the places you’ll go, right, if I was to pick. I mean, I’ve read several books, you know, some on lament and some on, you know, trying to find encouragement and hope, and I think of all the books that have been revolutionary is probably not the right word, but had a huge influence on my view of the trials in life. Paul David Tripp’s book Forever is fantastic. Yeah, Tripp is wonderful. He’s my favorite author in general and I just his practicality and application is so useful. Yeah, and such a magnificent view of the grace of God too. He, just his practicality and application is so useful, yeah, and it’s such a magnificent view of the grace of God too. 

 

0:52:50 – Barnabas

He just he writes it so invitingly. 

 

0:52:53 – Adam

Yeah, like you’re just kind of drawn into it and it’s just a warm, like embrace as you read it. It’s just so very comforting. And the premise of the book is like we expect to get from this world what we’re currently living, what is only available to us in the forever of eternity and perfection. Like we expect to get from this world what we’re currently living, what is only available to us in the forever of eternity and perfection. Like we expect to go through the drive-through line and be treated with courtesy. We expect to go onto an airplane and not be totally stressed out by the people around us, or we expect people to not drive slow in the fast lane. All the things we’re curmudgeonly about right, but like we have to understand that we live in a broken place. 

 

0:53:31 – Barnabas

I expect my phone not to listen to me and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to in eternity. 

 

0:53:35 – Adam

Well, if it brings you up a Paul David Tripp book, we’ll have to find out what goes on here. 

 

0:53:39 – Barnabas

Okay, that just means the Lord can even redeem AI. That’s true. That’s true. 

 

0:53:47 – Adam

But yeah, it is just a fantastic read on perspective. Like my perspective should be that I should expect things in this world to be broken, like that’s where it should be. Now there are those things that you talked about that are these beautiful shimmers and facets of God’s glory and goodness, that when we see that, we say there’s something beautiful about that. Yeah, and it’s beautiful ultimately because it’s a reflection of God’s beauty and it’s just a little tiny glimpse of that and we see those things in life around us. Those things should invite us to see a higher view of what heaven’s like, of what God’s like to be in his presence. It helps you reframe expectations to be like okay, like if I expect to live in a fallen world, like anything good that happens to me is simply God’s grace. 

 

Yeah Right, any of these good things that I can breathe after my situations and health is God’s grace. Like I remember not being able to sing and finally being able to sing with a group of people again and I was like this is amazing. Like being able to praise God together is incredible. But I would have never known the beauty of that had, you know, god not allowed me to be healed in that circumstance and that’s still his grace working through the doctor. So just a different perspective of how to live day to day and I’ve gone through it more than once, like it’s just a super helpful book. About to go through it again with a small group from people from our church and I just find it super helpful every time. For my soul that’s wonderful. 

 

0:55:14 – Barnabas

Yeah, that’s where I’d go. Yeah, I mean, and and Tripp is one of those authors where listeners, if you get that book and it’s meaningful and significant to you, like you really go any direction with his stuff, like it’s all really wonderful and good. You know, there are some authors who kind of write one great book and then others are like, oh, maybe skip that one. Yeah, not so with him. Yeah. 

 

Every book read, anything read anything you get your hands on by Paul Tripp, it’s. It’s really encouraging. So my answer to this question a book that I’ve read that has encouraged me in difficult times. It’s hard not to give a list, because I’m a book person. I read them, I occasionally write them, I love them. Books are just, I don’t know. I think heaven’s going to be a library. 

 

The one that comes to mind off the top of my head, specifically given the topic of conversation in this episode, is A Grief Observed by CS Lewis. It stands alone among CS Lewis’s books in terms of style as well as brevity. You know, Lewis most famously wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, wrote the Space Trilogy, but he wasn’t really a novelist, he was much more like apologist, deep Christian thinker, kind of pseudo-theologian. But A Grief Observed it’s basically his journals from having lost his wife to cancer, and honest, heart-wrenching reflections before the Lord that they’re not comforting because he solves your problems. They’re comforting because he’s mourning with those who mourn, yeah, and he is beautifully articulating things that often our grieving souls just sort of grown at, and so it was very healing and it is very clinging to God, but not clinging like big bear hug, more like white knuckle fingertips Like this is the only hope I’ve got, but I don’t know how much hope I’ve got kind of thing, and that’s comforting to somebody in the midst of profound loss, because often it’s very off putting to be around somebody with profound peaceful faith when you feel like you’re falling apart, but to be around somebody who’s like I understand I also have barely held on. Okay, we understand one another. So that’s one book that I would definitely recommend. 

 

And then Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning is another one. Manning has a fascinating story. You should read his biography or autobiography as well. But it’s one of the books that it pushes the limits of God’s grace in his sort of beautiful poetic descriptions, beyond comfort levels for your average conservative American Christian. But also I think he’s right Just sort of the lavishness of God’s grace for people who are in a disastrous place. And so that might be. You have sinned and blown it, that might be. Life has just come apart at the seams. So both of those A Grief Observed by CS Lewis or Ragamuffin Gospel by Brendan Manning are ones that I couldn’t recommend highly enough for people, and they are both gentle reads, like you don’t have to sort of put on your thinking cap and buckle down with a pencil in hand, you can just sort of let them wash over you, which is nice? 

 

0:58:12 – Adam

Yeah, absolutely. And CS Lewis also wrote Problem of Pain. 

 

0:58:14 – Barnabas

Yeah, and just how you process that I would say, problem of Pain is one you want to read when you’re at a little more stable spot because it’s a thinking book, yeah, and it’s wonderful, but it’s comforting at an intellectual level, kind of building a framework of how to understand this. A grief observed is more like the. You know, romans eight talks about how the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. This feels like the words that accompany the groanings that type of thing. 

 

0:58:41 – Adam

I read problems for pain. It was a hard read in some ways. Yeah yeah. 

 

0:58:46 – Barnabas

All right, this might feel like a little bit of a twist in this episode, but again, I tried thematically to tie it all together here, and so we have come to our curmudgeon moment, which is where we take great delight in being grumpy about something, and what we are going to be grumpy about is something that has come up a bit in this podcast, because it’s something that neither of us find remotely helpful when somebody is in pain, and what we are going to be curmudgeonly about is platitudes. 

 

Oh boy, so platitudes, for example, are somebody’s life is falling apart and somebody quotes Romans 8, 28 at them, just flippantly off the top of their head, and says you know, god works all things together for good, which is profoundly true, absolutely and profoundly unhelpful in that moment when what is needed is probably an I’m so sorry. Can I sit with you? Do you need a hug? Can I get you a drink? Like whatever the situation calls for. Platitudes are not falsehoods, although they can be as much as they are, kind of a cheap, tawdry attempt at comfort in the face of something that needs thoughtfulness. 

 

0:59:57 – Adam

Yeah, and I think some people just don’t know what to say. Yeah, I mean, I’ve kind of come to that realization, like it is hard to know what to say to someone who’s hurting, but just to say things like, well, you just got to trust God, you know. Trust God. Well, yes, absolutely. Like I should trust God and that’s a hundred percent true, like there’s absolutely nothing incorrect about that. But I need you to come sit with me and help me trust God, because that’s a different level. 

 

1:00:24 – Barnabas

Yeah, yeah. What a platitude fails to do is do is understand the difficulty of a situation. So, for example, man, just let go and let God. If somebody’s anxious, you’re like, look, if I could do that, I would do that. Okay, the problem is not that I don’t know this. 

 

1:00:39 – Adam

Yeah. 

 

1:00:40 – Barnabas

Is that I don’t know how to do this right now. I know that God works all things together for good, but guess what it now? I know that God works all things together for good, but guess what it hurts right now. So maybe shut up. 

 

So the idea of this is not to say do not offer comfort Absolutely, but offer comfort appropriate to where the situation is at. First of all, never tell anybody to let go and let God, because that’s a stupid phrase. But verses like Romans 8, 28, or Jeremiah 29, 11, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future, those are there’s. I don’t know if there’s two better promises in scripture other than I will never leave you or forsake you. But there’s also a proverb that talks about joyful songs early in the morning, and you know so. There’s like there is a time and a place where gladness and kind of happy thought is actually depressing, and so to enter into somebody else’s situation of pain and offer comfort is more about. I will see you through this. 

 

I will stand by your side, I will be present or I’ll give you the space that you need, and it’s about understanding more as opposed to the platitudes. So you’re right, and you’re very understanding, to say sometimes people just don’t know what to say. But if you don’t know what to say, a really good starting place is I’m so sorry. You know anything I can do for you. I’m here if you need me. I’m praying for you. Maybe pray for them right then and just, and the nice thing about a prayer is you can actually take those promises and turn them into a request, which is actually more the yearning of the heart, I think. So, lord, would you help so-and-so who is hurting to be able to really cling to this truth that you will work this for their good, even if we can’t see how right now. Okay, that doesn’t hurt my feelings, but if you throw it at me, just believe this, you’ve actually set a bar that I can’t reach. 

 

1:02:25 – Adam

Yeah, and I think, like when you quoted Jeremiah there, I know the plans I have for you. The follow-up to that was believe in me, trust in me, for I am your God. Right, like that’s a process, that’s not like a. 

 

1:02:36 – Barnabas

Oh, I can just pick up myself by my bootstraps and believe and trust in you. Also, god was talking to people in exile, and so the whole context there was hopelessness. And so God saying that wasn’t like that’s not a precious memories figurine holding a little plaque up on our wall. It’s the almighty God looking at people who are hopeless and wondering if they will ever be set free and saying I know the plans I have for you. Yeah, so put some confidence in me. Yes, don’t give up. Yeah, keep trying, keep believing, keep trusting. Again, don’t give up. Yeah. 

 

1:03:06 – Adam

Keep trying, keep believing, keep trusting. 

 

1:03:07 – Barnabas

Again, the truth of that is unassailable. The appropriateness of the use of that given context is what we’re talking about. Yep, absolutely All right. Well, thank you, Adam. 

 

I’ve been encouraged by this, just hearing your honesty and your wrestling with difficult things and clinging to the Lord and the way your family has been carried by the Lord through it. So thank you for sharing all that and the wisdom that the Lord has given you in it is striking as well. And, listeners, this has been the seventh episode of the first season of the Curious Curmudgeon podcast. We hope especially that this episode has been encouraging and thought-provoking, especially if you were in the midst of something difficult or walking with somebody who’s in the midst of a difficult situation, and I don’t know that this one’s been at all entertaining. 

 

1:03:49 – Adam

but that wasn’t at all our aim. 

 

1:03:52 – Barnabas

Not in this episode, so if you’ve enjoyed it, good, but we were really just shooting for upbuilding with this one. We hope we landed that. Thank you so much for listening and tune in next week. Thank you.