How To Have Faith When You’re Going Through Hell

Photo by Chris Buckwald on Unsplash

There is a saying that if you are going through Hell, keep going. This is a very practical solution for getting through tough times. If you keep putting one foot in front of the other you will eventually get to the other side of your difficulties. But how else can we deal with the pain of living with misfortune? How do we know for sure things will get better?

The first and most important realization you must make is that there is a spiritual lesson in EVERYTHING that happens in life. Once we take our eyes off of all the terrible details, we open our minds to see the possible gift and learn something we would otherwise never be able to learn. Some teachings can only be gotten through pain. Elizabeth Viorst wrote a book called “Necessary Losses”. In her book, Elizabeth talks about how we gain maturity and wisdom through our pain and losses. Expecting life to always be easy and to never suffer a loss is unrealistic and childish. Once we accept that we will experience loss and pain, these things become easier to handle. We cannot grow and learn without hardship. Eventually, you can become so skilled at seeing the lesson in the disturbance it becomes akin to catching a fastball. It will sting your hand a bit when it hits your glove, but you caught it. Developing this level of emotional skill is maturity. Receiving the lessons will add to your sense of purpose in life.

Having a sense of purpose is the next thing you will need to hold fast to get through hard times. A strong sense of purpose will turn difficulty into part of the journey. Instead of an obstacle, you begin to see these events as a time to pause or reroute and you will often find your purpose within them. When your GPS has your travel mapped out and an accident occurs somewhere ahead on your route, it will seek an alternative road to travel. You may see a great restaurant on the new route and stop for lunch. It can be that simple. OR, while having your lunch, someone at the next table might start choking and you are the one to act quickly with the Heimlich and save them. While having to take a longer route may have been annoying to you at first, you now feel so gratified by the events that transpired, and the choking diner is eternally grateful! Most of the time we are not even aware of the effect we have on the people around us every day. Yet we each fulfill…