Those who have suffered from some form of affliction know how lonely their struggle can be.
“There is a lonesomeness to affliction. You get to a place where people can come so far and no further. They can’t enter in in the way you’re experiencing it.”
In his book , Russ Ramsey compares the lonesomeness of affliction to talking to someone over a fence.
“Inside the fence is the afflicted person and on the other side of the fence are the people that care for them. The people who care for me couldn’t come inside the fence, deep into the heart of the affliction, but they could go to the fence, and I could come to the fence, and we could talk over the fence.”
Russ says it’s important for the afflicted to not expect others to completely understand what they’re going through.
“We the afflicted can alienate ourselves from those who are well by saying, they don’t know what I’m going through, well of course they don’t, they’re not going through what you’re going through. But they can love you through it.”
Part of the work that the afflicted person needs to be willing to do is go to the fence to talk. Another thing that can make affliction even more lonesome is falling into self-pity.
“Self-pity says, nothing bad should happen to me. Nothing hard should happen to me and if it does it’s because the God I thought I knew has betrayed me.”
Russ says there is nothing in the Bible that suggests life is going to work that way.
“In fact, Jesus tells us in this world you will have trouble. You look at any of the major characters in Scripture and there is pain in their lives.”
While self-pity should be avoided, that doesn’t mean we can’t feel grief. In fact, it’s healthy to grieve.
“We’re given passages like Psalms that are Psalms of lament, of crying out and asking the Lord to attend to us. Those things are allowed to be said because we live in a broken world. It’s when we start to feel exceptional and we think, I should not be affected by the brokenness of the world in the way that ther people are that we can move into self-pity and have expectations of God that He never promised in the first place.”
Russ Ramsey and his wife and four children make their home in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of Behold the Lamb of God and was awarded the 2016 Christian Book Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association for his book Behold the King of Glory.
Key Scripture: Hebrews 10:31
Featured Songs: Unfinished – Mandisa; Bulletproof – Citizen Way; The Cure – Unspoken
The loneliness of affliction
