Resilience: Enduring Together

After months of the pandemic, economic crash, and struggle for justice, we still face a long period of challenge. We need resilience! Larry explores a second factor to build this crucial skill in the episode, “Resilience: Enduring Together.” Spiritual and psychological wisdom can guide us in our journey through this arduous time. Enjoy a listen today!

Newsletter subscription

Transcript

I recently spent a few nights away from home. My borrowed pillow and I didn’t get along very well. Just about the time I got it bent to the exact shape for my comfort, the foam would bounce back to its original shape! My head felt like it was bouncing all night on this foam pillow. That’s the basic character of foam: it returns to the original shape, even though it didn’t help my sleep!

In 2020, the COVID pandemic has stuck many people around our country and the world in one literal place, enduring isolation, uncertainty and sadness. The question is raised, no matter where we are: “How can I make it through these hard times?” 

The answer given by clergy and counselors is the same. We must gain resiliency. I offered some insights in a first episode which explored the connection of resiliency and our goals. Let’s go further in understanding the ways science and faith enhance resilience and our greater well-being. 

What is the idea of Resilience in connection with our emotional health? The term describes our capacity to adjust to the changing situations of life. A resilient person can gather inner resources to meet the challenges. Counselors and therapists today believe this quality is essential for emotional health in our complex and dynamic world. The greatest value of resiliency is found when we are in stressful, difficult or threatening episodes. With resilience, we are like foam rubber, able to bounce back to our original shape.

An inspirational teaching about resiliency is found in the Book of Hebrews. This writing is a bit of a mystery in the Bible. If you’re not a regular Bible reader, you may miss it tucked in the back of the New Testament. However, it really is a gem. Scholars say it presents the highest level of Greek writing in the Bible, being lyrically beautiful to read, elegant, rhetorical, and filled with alliteration, word play and balance. We don’t know who wrote this beautiful work, but we do know the situation the first audience was experiencing: these believers faced difficult times. The Roman world had periodic persecutions of Jews and Christians. Many Christians were driven out of Rome in 46 A.D. In 70 A.D., Jerusalem and the Temple used by Jews for hundreds of years were destroyed in the Jewish War. The years that followed brought times of economic pressure, family rejection, demands of submission to the Roman religious systems, and expulsion from the synagogues.

The writer had the clear purpose of exhorting faltering Christians to grasp the power of God with restored hope and courage. In today’s words, the author wrote to build resilience among these followers. In Chapter 12 we read, 

“And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” (NIV)

Jesus is our example and companion with the skill of resiliency. He succeeded totally in the race of faith due to his endurance. We might call Jesus, “The Enduring One, or ‘The Endurer.’ This passage describes the obstacles he overcame to achieve our redemption. 

As the Endurer, Jesus faced “opposition from sinners.”  We know that during his ministry he faced Jewish leaders, Roman rulers, demonic powers, stumbling disciples, skeptical townspeople—every turn brought headwinds. More than once Jesus had to leave where he was teaching because he was in imminent danger. His arrest was engineered by religious opponents who felt threatened by his attacks on the corruption of the faith. 

This may sound like our walk through life sometimes. We will face people who discourage, disparage, derail, distract, or deny our path of worth. Perhaps these are subtle affronts. Maybe the words of a relative cut deeply. Or the opposition may come from within our own minds as the pride of our own life hardens against what we know is right. We can also face opposition from the circumstances that bring hardships. The pandemic has blown away the security of many with health and work. The world economies are facing the greatest crisis in decades. The issues of racial inequality and social justice for every American have surged to the front. All these are real and monumental barriers to our well-being. Our resilience to live by faith, or to live with authenticity, will be challenged by pressures of the world around us.

My father-in-law was sued by his Union when he worked through an illegal strike that took place many years ago. The case ultimately came before the Missouri Supreme Court, which decided in his favor. He weathered the storm by leaning on words from a Hebrew prophet who faced many enemies and said, “Don’t be afraid…Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” (2 Kings 6:16).

The verses in Hebrews also say that Jesus struggled with his own fears in “scorning its shame” of the Cross (v. 2). Shame is the feeling of being unworthy, a hopeless failure, inadequate to offer something to the world. We should pause and hear this: Jesus had to face the temptation of shame. He had to deal with their opinion and ask, “Am I worthless?” He faced this when his family didn’t understand him. He may have wondered when his cousin was brutally murdered by a ruler. Even one of his disciples rejected and betrayed him. The ultimate shame was his execution on the cross, which stood as a criminal’s punishment and the clear sign of abandonment by God. The crowds considered his life worthless and wasted. Jesus faced the shame that others heaped on him.

Shame is real in the lives of so many today. The traumas of childhood have wounded millions of Americans. We can become embedded with fear that we are unworthy, unlovable, and broken. The result as we try to cope might be a turn toward perfectionism, addiction, conflicts with others, and other behaviors as the shame blocks healthy connections. But we can refuse the shame, as Jesus did. He knew his status with the Father, loved and connected. In the same ways, Shame will have no foothold in our minds when we accept the grace, love, and presence of God. This freedom of acceptance for who we are, with no condemnation, with humility, and with kindness, lays a foundation for resilience. With this inward understanding, we can push back against the outward pressures that want to crush us. Unashamed, we are like foam rubber to bounce back to our original shape.

We finally see that Jesus endured the suffering by “endur[ing] the cross” (v. 2) He accepted its excruciating pain, embracing the discipline of soul when every physical fiber screamed to escape. “Why have you abandoned me” he said, reciting Psalm 22, and probably continuing to vs 22-24, which says, “I will declare your name before the people… God has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one… but has listened to his cry for help!”  On that cross, Jesus endured and brought forward the courage that completed the journey of redemption. 

The example of Jesus inspires us. Modern research in psychology has given new depth to our understanding of resilience. 

Dr Sydney Ey, Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University, offers 5 skills that increase our resiliency. She teaches that we should: 

1. Identify and Use Your Strengths.
2. Increase Positive Emotions on a Daily Basis.
3. Engage in Meaningful Activities.
4. Counter Unhelpful Thinking.
5. Create a Caring Community.

I think it is important to focus on the last item, a caring community. The reality is that Americans have become less connected and more isolated over the past decades. Last year over 60% of US residents reported feeling lonely. With the pandemic and isolation, that number has increased. Jamie Ducharme authored a story in a recent issue of TIME entitled, “A Plague of Loneliness.” She documented that most of us are out-of-touch with neighbors, inactive in social organizations, pulled away from contact with co-workers, and lacking the supportive interactions that provide strength when we feel weak. In fact, loneliness is as detrimental to our physical health as smoking.

What about you? Is your support network weaker now? Who can you turn to for real caring support? In my counseling practice, I check on this factor regularly. It is startling how many of my clients have no one they could turn to for a supportive, caring, and honest conversation. They are alone in facing their issues. 

To increase your resiliency, it is vital to build a network of support and friendship. We are wired to be social creatures. Our brains respond to the signals we receive from others instantly. Being in contact with folks you know and trust will increase your well-being on a daily basis. It’s not hard to do, either. We can make the choice to attend a church, join a ceramic group, invite a neighbor to chat at the community room of the apartment, or make a phone call. We might have to work at it. Some people we reach out to just won’t click with us. But the benefits far outweigh the effort! 

Many find strength in the spiritual connection with this Christ who endured the darkest hours of death. The Christian message is that God is with us on our journey. We can find emotional strength by meditation and prayer that receives the real presence of the Spirit in our struggles. We should remember that there is more than simply an example in Jesus. He is the Universal Christ, in the terms of Fr. Richard Rohr, who writes, “The core message of the incarnation of God in Jesus is that the Divine Presence is here, in us and in all of creation (29)… we are all In Christ… a cosmic identity that is driving and guiding us forward.” (UC 43)

We can overcome great adversity when we learn the skill of resilience. Like a foam pillow, we can spring back to our original shape after the pressure has ended.

The great leader of the United Kingdom during WW 2, Winston Churchill, brought this message when he spoke to his alma mater in October 1941, with the Battle of Britain just one year in the past. Britain had been bombed for months by Nazi planes, with thousands killed. The war was raging in Europe and the Middle East. The United States had not joined the war. No one knew how this great conflict would end. He said in his dramatic speech, 

“Surely from this period of ten months, this is the lesson:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. 

But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.

Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.”

We must bring discipline and grit to our journey. for there will be hard times. You’ve already had them, and there are certainly more ahead for each of us. Resilience grows when we must reach out to link our lives with others. It becomes a skill in our lives when we receive the grace of God to follow the example of Jesus, and, in Churchill’s word, “never, never, never give in.”