The Common Wound
Touched but not held by adversity.
Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash
"All of us have been wounded in some way, whether by violence, disease, or other personal tragedy…But though we can never pretend we have not been touched by adversity, we can refuse to be held by it."
Lauren Manning, 9/11 Survivor, in her book Unmeasured Strength
I was going through a particularly rough stretch of my life.
The expression…if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all…felt like an appropriate descriptor.
In the middle of this difficult time, a friend reached out and invited me to lunch.
“You’re going through a rough stretch. Here’s something that helped me during a similar time. Maybe it will help you,” he said, sliding a slip of paper across the table.
Many people tried to encourage me. One friend gave me the ultimate positive thinking guide, a copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s, ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ hoping to help me out of my funk.
None of those hopeful or positive thinking messages had done anything to change my situation or improve my attitude.
Now, this friend gives me a handwritten note.
“Read it tonight when you have some quiet time.”
I shrugged and tucked it into my pocket, and enjoyed lunch.
That evening I pulled the note out and read it. It wasn’t a pie in the sky saying like your attitude determines your altitude.
The note shared thoughts from St. Paul…
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
“Yes! That’s exactly how I feel,” I shouted out loud.
Hard-pressed on every side…perplexed by circumstances…persecuted…struck down.
Then reading it again, the other parts spoke to me.
Not crushed…not in despair…not abandoned…not destroyed.
Most of what friends shared, especially scripture, was positive.
This admitted that life happened, and sometimes it sucked. Something about that made me feel better.
For much of my life up to that point, I thought everyone’s life was largely problem free.
Mine was a disaster, and there was a certain amount of self-judgment that went with feeling this way.
Why me?
WE are hard-pressed, the note said. Maybe it wasn’t just me. If everybody has issues, maybe there isn’t anything wrong with me after all. Maybe that’s how life is sometimes.
Even with all the bad things going on, I wasn’t crushed nor abandoned, and I certainly wasn’t destroyed.
Realizing this represented a turning point in my young life.