When You Can’t Seem to Get a Break

Over the past 25 months, I’ve experienced the following setbacks:

I ruptured my right Achilles tendon, putting me on the couch for a couple of months.

Covid shut-downs reduced our gross income by 75% overnight.

We had to cancel an epic, much-anticipated, family trip to Europe that would have created some incredible memories that would have lasted a lifetime.

I experienced the arduous process of clawing back and rebuilding my business post-Covid, including multiple re-staffing and subsequent trainings, etc.

My oldest son had an emergency appendectomy

We had car trouble multiple times, including a major break-down 45 minutes in to an interstate road trip

My middle son had a concussion from playing soccer that set him back

We had a fire at the roastery that destroyed our ductwork and our roaster, requiring us to pivot and drive down to San Diego, renting time at a roasting facility for six weeks just to keep the business alive.

Just after getting our new roaster installed, we had an attempted break-in where someone rammed a truck into our bay door, causing $10k worth of damage to the building.

My family all got Covid, with my wife getting hit the hardest, including late-night visit to the Emergency Room for breathing treatments

I could talk about more of the fun as well: relational stressors with friends and family, the inevitable ups and downs of parenting, and the general toll that living during these times can take on us.

My point in this list is not to invoke a pity party, but rather to simply share the reality that my life has been really hard these past two years.

If I were a betting man, I would imagine you could create a similar list of things where you have experienced setbacks, loss, disappointment – things where, at the end of the day, you probably find yourself just simply wishing for a break. Something - anything that could replace the short-end of the stick with a happy emotion, unexpected good fortune, or something worthy of celebrating.

I imagine there are probably a few of those sprinkled in your list, as there are in mine, but I think the main point is this:

In my younger years, when setbacks would happen, I would find myself mad at God, asking a lot of “why?” questions. Why did this happen to me? Why did he have to die? Why couldn’t this have been easier? Why didn’t you provide in this way? Etc.

You ever been there?

But as I’ve experienced more and more setbacks, I’ve noticed a shift. I no longer ask “why?” I’ve started to arrive at the conclusion that the why questions rarely get answered. And if they do, I’m usually not completely satisfied with the answers, and in fact find myself asking even more why questions in the end.

So my shift has been a bit more foundational, and actually was instigated by the first thing on my list – the ruptured Achilles.

A good friend posed the simple question of: “What is God’s invitation to you during this experience?”

He didn’t encourage me to press in to the why, but rather encouraged me to simply accept the situation I was in, seeking to find God in that situation, rather than seeking to find God’s solution to that situation.

This shift was monumental. 

No longer frustrated by an apparent lack of a solution that fit my protocol, instead the focus was simply on sitting with God amid the pain, the discomfort, the questions, the disappointments.

The result?

I noticed I stopped asking Why.

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I noticed a father holding his infant son yesterday. The kid was so dang cute, looking around at everyone, nestled in his father’s arms and feeling safe and secure because of it.

In fact, the little boy eventually fell asleep, resting his little head on his father’s large shoulder.

I think this is more what God has in mind when we experience difficulties. I think he enjoys being our source of comfort, our source of security; the One we run to when things are tough.

And when we do, I think we can find that peace and that comfort simply in his presence.

This, I believe, is the grand invitation: 

Not that we expect God to be our genie, fixing all of our problems, but rather, that he would be the one we seek, simply to sit in his presence, to be held in his arms, when we feel sorrow, when we hit setbacks, when we experience disappointment.

Because like that infant son, we all can find blessing in being held, by resting in the presence of One who has seen it all, been through it all, and isn’t surprised by any of it. And in that presence is peace. And from that peace, we can find hope.  

And I think the beauty of that hope is that it is independent of our circumstances; rather, the hope is in the fact that we are loved, that God is with us, and that with those two firmly established, we can find peace in the presence of the father.