Surviving A Crisis
I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
Philippians 3:8
Job suffered the loss of everything except his life. He was in the pit of depression and wished he had never been born. He did not accept his present condition; instead, he resigned and gave up on life (see Job 3). We all experience losses in our lives. We need to learn how to accept what we cannot change and grow through the crisis. How well we handle a loss is determined by how we process three mental constructs.
The first mental construct is permanence. The speed of our recovery is greatly affected by whether we think the consequences of the crisis will have a short-term or long-term negative effect on us. The loss is permanent, but it doesn’t have to affect us permanently. There is the potential to grow through every crisis.
Suppose your new employer is irritable. If you think it is just a passing mood, it is a short-term problem and will have little impact on you. However, if you think your boss is always irritable, it is a long-term problem. You can respond to this crisis in several ways. You can decide to ignore him, which is denial. You can decide to be irritable back, which is responding in anger. You can try to appease him, which is bargaining. You can decide you are stuck with this irritable person whom you cannot change, which is depressing. You decide to quit, which is resignation. Or, you can decide to love him and learn to live with him, which is acceptance.
The second mental construct is pervasiveness. You will recover slowly if you think your whole life has been ruined as a result of the crisis. If you experience one loss, you are not a loser. If you fail to accomplish one goal, you are not a failure. If you get laid off at work, you are not unemployable. It is natural to grieve for what you have lost, and grieving is an important part of the recovery process. However, a prolonged depression due to losses signifies an undue and unhealthy attachment to people, places and things that you have no right or ability to control.
The third mental construct is personalization. Blaming yourself for every loss will keep you in rut. If you experience loss in one area, don’t generalize it and create a total crisis. Keep your loss specific. If you experience a crisis today, don’t allow it to affect you tomorrow. Keep short accounts. If the world is disintegrating around you, don’t accept the blame when it’s not appropriate. If you are suffering the consequences of a bad decision, then change what you can, minimize your losses and move on.
Traumatic losses often cause us to reevaluate who we are, especially if our identity has been tied up with what we have lost—such as when we lose a job or a spouse. A crisis can deepen our walk with God and solidify our identity in Christ. Losses also precipitate the need for new relationships and a change of scenery. These changes are probably necessary for our growth in Christ, but we may not make them unless we are forced to do so.
questions to consider:
Read Job 1:13-19. Using Job as an example or a significant loss, how can you reprocess your loss by rethinking those three mental constructs starting with permanence?
How can you reprocess your loss by rethinking through pervasiveness?
How can you reprocess your loss by rethinking through personalization? (Note that Job’s three friends tried to convince him that his suffering and depression was due to his sin!)
As a believer, what can you never lose? How can that truth help you recover from any temporal loss?
Loses will have an impact on believers just like unbelievers. So how can you prepare yourself for future losses so the impact is not so devastating?
Neil T. Anderson is the founder of Freedom in Christ Ministries. He began the ministry in 1989 and continues to spread the message of freedom to this day.