When Trouble Comes: Moving from Disturbed to Peace

 “My life has been spent wandering from place to place. It has been short and filled with trouble….” Gen 47:9

 Gloom, despair, and agony on me

Deep, dark depression, excessive misery

If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all

Gloom, despair, and agony on me   Roy Clark & Buck Owens

I don’t really want to talk about trouble. Who does—unless your one of the octogenarians at my local YMCA who delight in regaling the rest of us with all their ailments. Alas.

But because this has been a year of trouble for me, and for many close to me, the idea of trouble has been hovering over me and seems to demand that I wrestle with it. And so I will.

To start, let me tell you a story of a man thrust in a single moment into the lap of trouble.

He and his wife of close to fifty years had planned for almost a year a trip with a Church group to the Holy Land. The day had arrived, and they were waiting to board the plane to Israel, when he heard his name called to the gate counter. Two men in police uniform were there and asked him to come with them. He asked them “What is this all about?”, they said “You are under arrest-please come with us now.” The man had been in active recovery from alcoholism and sober for almost twenty-three years, but apparently there was a twenty-three-year-old outstanding DUI charge that he was unaware of.

He left his wife at the gate and would not see her again for two weeks. He encouraged his wife to go on with the trip—there was really nothing she could do. So she did.  One moment, he is waiting excitedly to board a plane with his wife and friends to the Holy Land. The next, he is in handcuffs being paraded through an international airport to jail. He was transported and booked into a para-military county jail that bragged about it’s tough treatment. There he remained for the next four days. In just three hours he was printed and given an orange jumpsuit and flip-flops which would be his uniform for the next four days while he waited to be bailed.

As he told it, for the first twelve hours from being arrested to sitting alone in his jail cell, all he could do was mutter over and over to himself “I cannot believe this is happening”. All he could think about was how scared and confused his wife must be, flying across the world without him while he sat in jail.

But very soon something happened to change all that as he conversed with several of the thirty inmates in his unit. He realized in his conversations with the inmates that most of them had nothing to look forward to—they were young, living a gang life, with no real hope for the future. He, however, had a wonderful wife, children, and grandchildren. He had a host of friends, and above all, after twenty-two years of recovery, had a level of trust and reliance upon God that even this situation did not shake- at least for very long. In fact, as he reports it, he became acutely aware while sitting alone in the sterile, cold, damp cell, that he was a most fortunate and graced man.

How does this happen? How does someone assaulted by misfortune turn and find a place of gratitude, of peace, even of renewed joy in the midst of it?

Reflecting on the role of trouble in my life, it is all too apparent that trouble comes to all of us. None of us will escape troubles—it is woven into the fabric of life, like sleeping and eating and breathing. If you live you will encounter trouble.

And trouble comes to me in many different forms. Like the man arrested just before embarking on a trip of a lifetime, some troubles pounce down upon us out of nowhere, leaving us rattled, confused, dumfounded and maybe shocked.

Just this past month, my wife invited her book club friends from the State of Washington to our home in Alabama. She was so excited to host her friends. All was going very well. They were having a blast.

I had decided to make myself “scarce” during their visit and was at my daughters helping her with a garage sale. Then, my daughter came up to me and said, “You need to call mom now”. Well, you probably know the feeling one gets on hearing a message like that. It turns out, our outdoor sewer line had backed up into every sink and drain in the house. I sped home and spent the next three hours cleaning and disinfecting the house while the plumbers came and fixed the problem temporarily. The ladies decided to get a hotel room that night but returned for the rest of their time. That next Monday the plumbers were digging up my yard and replacing the sewer line that had “dipped” toward the house.

Just like the man hauled to jail, I also thought as I was mopping up the sewage “ How could this happen—Why now? Why, Why, Why?”

There is a primordial cry that wells up out of me when I encounter trouble. And its always starts with “Why?”.  “Why” now, (with a house full of visitors) or “Why this” (Sewer back up? Really?) and most of all “Why” me!!

I have experienced troubles in three ways:

1. Sudden Calamity: The man above arrested, major car trouble away from home, death of a loved one, a miscarriage, Loss of a job, you fill in the blank.
2. A series of unfortunate events: Sometimes trouble seems to line up in front of us and take turns. The old superstition that “trouble comes in three’s” is not a superstition if it does!
3. The “Slow Drip”: Not enough money, Parents health care, troubled children, unfulfilling work, difficult relationships, all leading to loneliness, melancholy, sadness or depression, A hoped for outcome that doesn’t happen.

I know that in the past, when I have had to face sudden calamity, I could do it for the sake of those around me, but then weeks or even months later I would slip into the slow drip of melancholy sadness. Trouble not faced seems to come back for more, but with a different face.

I see now that trouble can be a great power for both evil and good. Which it becomes for us becomes a matter of perspective—of how we see trouble.

Trouble not faced, trouble denied, trouble not embraced, will get me stuck in the muck of melancholy, cynicism, or anger, resulting in a loss of joy and gratitude—the two characteristics that make life beautiful no matter what is going on around me. Trouble expands as I lose a reasonable perspective. Or, when I lose my consciousness of the overriding and abiding presence of God in all things, even trouble.

In contrast, when I allow trouble to refocus my soul on what is really important and lasting, then trouble has served me well.

There once was a poor Chinese farmer who  lost a horse, and all the neighbors came around and said, “well that’s too bad.” The farmer said, “maybe yes, maybe no-God knows.” Shortly after, the horse returned bringing another horse with him, and all the neighbors came around and said, “well that’s good fortune,” to which the farmer replied, “maybe yes, maybe no-God Knows..” The next day, the farmer’s son was trying to tame the new horse and fell, breaking his leg, and all the neighbors came around and said, “well that’s too bad,” and the farmer replied, “maybe yes, maybe no-God knows.” Shortly after, the emperor declared war on a neighboring nation and ordered all able-bodied men to come fight—many died or were badly maimed, but the farmer’s son was unable to fight and spared due to his injury. And all the neighbors came around and said, “well that’s good fortune,” to which the farmer replied, “maybe yes, nmaybe no-God knows.” And so the story goes.

I do not know how to judge trouble-or how it will be in the end. To take trouble with equinimity requires my trust is in God and not in my circumstances.

Alcoholics know about trouble—much of it self-imposed, but then as they recover, they discover they are faced with the same living troubles as everyone else, but they can no longer medicate away their inner discomfort. From The book “Alcoholics Anonymous” comes wisdom on facing trouble we can all use:

• Time after time, this apparent calamity has been a boon to us, for it opened up a path which led to the discovery of God.
• if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence.
• Just to the extent that we do as we think He would have us, and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to match calamity with serenity.
• If at these points our emotional disturbance happens to be great, we will more surely keep our balance, provided we remember, and repeat to ourselves, a particular prayer or phrase that has appealed to us in our reading or meditation. Just saying it over and over will often enable us to clear a channel choked up with anger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding, and permit us to return to the surest help of all — our search for God’s will, not our own, in the moment of stress.

And from the Ancient Greek Playwright Aeschylus,

“In our sleep, pain which we cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”    

When I become conscious to the truth that this present trouble has a part in the curriculum of life -teaching me that I am not alone, not meant to be alone, and that I need help from others, and most importantly from a loving God-It is as if the emotional power has been taken away, leaving only the concrete specifics of the trouble. And after all, it is my thought-driven emotions that I attach to this present trouble that disturbs me—not the trouble itself.

To be free of the disturbance within me when faced with troubles, whatever form they come in, I need only remember that I am not alone. I am in God’s hands, and He has given me friends and family to lean into for encouragement and strength and renewed perspective.

Sometimes I respond to trouble with anger. I am angry because I demanded and felt a right to have a reasonable answer to the absurdity of troubles and loss. I expected to know “WHY”. Much smarter men and woman have wrestled with the issues trouble in life, as if it was a problem to solve—to no avail. This question of “WHY” can lead only to despair and futility.  Only when I stopped asking why, and rather asked another question –“WHO?”, have I been able to accept that life in general, and suffering and loss in particular, are mysteries to be lived through by faith, and not problems to be solved.

The question I really have, and the only one that can be answered, is to whom will I turn to in this time of suffering for help and comfort? I lean into loss as it comes my way by leaning into my family, my friends, and my God. I bear up against these unanswerable questions by staying connected to those who have gone before and have survived profound loss, who have been changed from the inside out—wiser and full of compassion and generosity for those who will come behind carrying that same load.

So what do I do when trouble comes? I take the initial punch—it’s only natural. But then,  I let that punch focus me on the one who has me, and the one’s He has given me.

I will finish my thoughts with a beloved old country song by AP Carter of the Carter Family:

Keep on the Sunny Side of Life

There’s a dark and a troubled side of life
There’s a bright and a sunny side too
Tho’ we meet with the darkness and strife
The sunny side we also may view

The storm and it’s fury broke today
Crushing hopes that we cherish so dear
The clouds and storms will, in time, pass away
The sun again will shine bright and clear.

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us ev’ry day, it will brighten all the way
If we’ll keep on the sunny side of life

Let us greet with the song of hope each day
Tho’ the moment be cloudy or fair
And let us trust in our Saviour away
Who keepeth everyone in His care

Kind Regards,

Bob