Suffering and Refuge

Alex has shared a lot about Apologetics here at Westminster. Spring classes start tomorrow, and I've been assigned to talk a little bit about how being here at seminary has changed me.  

I've benefited so much from just being here at Westminster for one semester. This fall, I took a counseling course called Dynamics of Biblical Change taught by David Powlison; it has been a blessing to me in so many ways, and the Holy Spirit has mercifully changed me in ways that I don't deserve.  This past two years or so God has been giving me an interest in counseling that I never thought I had, and never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be changed so much by it. But God gives gifts to His children that are so much better than anything we could ever ask for or imagine. Praise Him for that!

Since I'm not much of a writer, I thought I'd share some papers (essays, really) that I've written this semester in counseling class. The first one (this entry) is about Suffering and Refuge, and the second one (to come at a later time) will be about Sin and Grace.

 This is an excerpt from a project that I did about mid-October 2010. Our task was to examine a period of significant suffering in our lives and to seek God as our refuge in the midst of suffering. The trial that I examined was my sleeplessness due to Greek tests during the summer and fall semesters. 
 

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Summer Greek
This summer I began to have sleepless nights before each of our Summer Greek exams. If you know me, you'd know that I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. I had never had any issues with sleeping before, and it was a huge shock when I began staying awake for hours on end.  Each day before the test, I studied all day and felt fine about the test. However, when I went to bed, I laid in bed for hours and could not fall asleep.

At first, I told myself to calm down and that sleep would eventually come. Eventually the hours rolled by and I continued to stay awake. I told myself that this shouldn’t be happening to me. I repeated to myself that I needed to let it go, to surrender it to God, and that it wasn’t that big of a deal. Slowly as the hours passed one by one, I became increasingly frustrated. I tried a number of things to help me relax. Still no sleep. I wondered what was wrong with me that I couldn’t sleep as well, and thought perhaps that I had had too much caffeine. I also was jealous of Alex and Beni who were happily asleep and blissfully unaware of my angst.

The second time this happened, I tried my hardest to eliminate many of the contributors to insomnia that I thought I could control.  I had no caffeine that day, bought curtains to keep out the light and the noise, wore earplugs, and retired early, all to give myself the best chance of falling asleep. Still, the result was the same. I got under two hours of sleep that night. 

In desperation, I started thinking of how I could escape from the situation that was causing this suffering. I thought about dropping out of seminary so I wouldn’t have to take any more tests, and retiring to the “easy life” of starting a family. Anything, I thought, would be better than not getting sleep.

I NEED 8 Hours! 
In my mind, I feel that I absolutely need to get eight hours of sleep or I won’t be adequately prepared for the exam. I get debilitating migraine headaches from time to time, and I really fear getting those because I can't function at all for the whole day. In my mind, if something happens to my sleep, it will lead to me getting a migraine, not being able to take the test, having to withdraw the course, and dropping out of seminary, which would separate me from Alex, who would excel and continue to take classes while I could not. My mind turns one small thing into a great potential disaster looming around the corner, ready to strike. I think that the right circumstances have to be in place in order for me to be successful.

When I am doing something that I have previously been good at in another context, I expect a certain level of perfection when doing that same thing in another context. As a result I get nervous even though in the first context I was calm and confident. In this case, my dilemma is partially, “Can I be a good student again after all this time out of school?” and also partially, “Am I as good as these other students in my classes? Am I smart enough for seminary?”

As the semester progressed, I became fearful about sleep in general, that I wouldn’t be able to sleep the next night or during the following nights. Actually, I still dread going to sleep the day before an exam. Through this sleeplessness, God took away, for a time, one of the things that I’d always counted on as a guarantee. I could always trust in the fact that I could sleep, and suddenly I couldn’t do something I’d never had any trouble with my entire life. It was earth-shattering. I felt helpless and like my body didn’t work anymore. I had to spend much of the next day recovering and was not as productive as I would have liked to be.

Who is God in all of this? 
 God promises He is in control. He has ordained every sleepless night for a reason. He is the creator of all things, including my body, Greek participles, and sleep. He promises to work everything to the good of those who love Him, even something that takes away the ability for me to function and think properly. He promises to be there when I walk through the long corridor of sleeplessness, and to lead my steps. 

He gives me strength, not necessarily to happily pretend that nothing is wrong, but to persevere and trust Him through these trials. He both hears my cry and gives me strength to have peace during a troubling night of sleeplessness, and to persevere in my studies and be faithful to the task that he has called me to. He is worthy of praise because His character doesn’t change dependent on my circumstance. He is infinite, outside of time, and knows every single second of my life. He is infinite; the situation is not. He is all powerful; the situation is not. 

More Greek Lessons  
Through all trials, God is shaping us and showing us things in our lives that we need to change. First of all, the Lord has been challenging me to not run away from suffering. This sleepless has continued into the Fall semester. During the weeks leading up to the first test this semester, I thought a lot about the concept of sleep. I was challenged by the article we read on Psalm 119 where Dr. Powlison shared about his struggles with insomnia and how he learned to look forward to that time as a time to meet with and be in the presence of God. It really challenged me to think about my beliefs about who God was in the midst of suffering. 

I slowly began to realize that God is with me when I cannot sleep. He is unchanging, so that means that He is still sovereign and still good even when I can’t sleep. God is by my side in my suffering. He is present, sustaining me, giving me strength to carry on when all human reason screamed to give up and go home. Most of all, He is my help, my refuge in times of need. I can cry out to Him, tell Him how I’m feeling, and He hears and gives me strength to persevere. Even if I don’t get to fall asleep, His hand is still completely sovereign over my entire life. I can trust in Him to have some purpose to my suffering, and to be the one who gives and takes it away. 

The words of Psalm 62 have really become the cries of my heart during those moments of sleeplessness:

 ¹For God alone my soul waits in silence;
   from him comes my salvation.
² He only is my rock and my salvation,
   my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.

In those nights, God is the one who my soul waits for. He has saved me from my sins, and He will save me from this sleeplessness when it is time. He ONLY, not my grades or knowledge, is my rock and salvation, and I can cry out to Him and He will keep me from being greatly shaken. I may be slightly shaken from the insomnia, but my world is not the disaster that it once was in response to this suffering.

Secondly, I’m beginning to see that the issue I’m facing is more than wanting to get a good night’s sleep. Rather, it is an issue of surrender. Before seminary I had successfully completed a college degree, and was competent to handle engineering classes.  I started class with unconscious pressures to achieve at a certain level. 

I’m learning that I trust in my own performance. If I don’t do well, I believe that I have failed. I put my identity in my achievements. I’m not really taking the test for God, but to prove my own goodness and ability.  

Slowly, I’ve begun to learn to say to myself, “This is the amount of time that you have been given to study, and this is the grade that God has given you. These are blessings from God, and not works of your own hands.” My focus in seminary is beginning to shift from having to prove myself to realizing this time is a gift and a blessing to study and to know God better.

Finally, sleep? 
During the night before this past Greek test (about two weeks ago), I once again could not sleep. However, my reaction to the time dramatically changed. Instead of feeling utter despair, I was able to genuinely cry out to God and surrender my circumstances to Him. I found that the times that I was on my knees asking Him desperately to help me trust in Him were the times that I had the most joy that night, because it was in those times where I didn’t have to be in control. I didn’t have to will myself to relax. I admitted my inability to do anything on my own to God, and cried out to God as my protector and refuge. I knew my God was right alongside me, and that I wasn’t alone. I was able to ask Him for help in addressing these performance issues, and for asking Him to take my life and transform it for His glory. I asked Him to use these results not for my praise but for His.

Although I didn’t sleep normally that night, I did end up falling asleep for five hours, which was a huge difference from sleeping only 1-2 hours the nights before our previous two tests. I praise God that He has changed my heart about anticipating these times of insomnia as a time to cry out and surrender to God, to thank Him for loving me and for taking care of me, and for understanding and meeting with me during my time of suffering.