Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” This quote has been attributed to the Dalai Lama, Haruki Murakami, and M. Kathleen Casey. I was exposed to it initially in coaching school and embraced it based on how my instructors couched it. In other words, no one this side of the dirt escapes pain-it happens to all of us, but we can exacerbate that pain by choosing to suffer by what we tell ourselves.
However, biblically, we are told we are going to suffer. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation, (trouble), but take heart, I have overcome this world.” John 16:33. So I cracked open my Strong’s Concordance-a sizable book to dive deeper into the Word and extrapolate what exactly He meant when He was saying, ‘you will have tribulation’. The Greek word for tribulation in this passage is ‘thlipsis’ meaning afflicted, anguish, burdened, persecution, tribulation or trouble. He was speaking to His disciples. As followers of Jesus, we will suffer persecution. When you look up ‘suffer’ in Strongs, there are many references as such. So, in a way, suffering in that case is optional. We know that when we choose to follow Jesus, we will suffer-for a servant is not better than his Master, and our Master suffered greatly on that cross.
All that said, this wasn’t where I initially was going with the thought thread that suffering is optional. So, always wanting to communicate accurately and clearly, I would tweak that initial quote I was taught to reflect the accuracy of the bible and context of what I think was meant by that initial quote. We all will suffer pain, trials, anguish, burdens and afflictions and trouble in this life. Jesus also in John 16:33 also encourages us to ‘take heart’. In other words, don’t get pulled into the depths of despair when you suffer trials, loss, pain-instead, focus on the fact that this life isn’t the end of the story for believers. This is a blip on the timeline radar-He has overcome this fallen, messed up world! We can choose what we focus on and tell ourselves. Emotions we feel are secondary to what we are choosing to focus on and tell ourselves. We can make our suffering worse by focusing on our loss, by focusing on how hard it is, by telling ourselves a ‘crappy story’ about our circumstances or future and exacerbate our suffering.
Sometimes we have automatic negative thoughts, or ANTS as Dr. Amen calls them. And there are many different species of ANTS. Sometimes we have ‘fortune telling’ ANTS, wherein we tell ourselves in our heads (oftentimes at a subconscious level) or audibly speak it out to others a very negative story about our future. ‘This will never work.’ ‘This will always happen.’ ‘He will never pay attention to me.’ Etc, etc. Do you see where I am going? How do you feel when we tell ourselves thoughts like that? It certainly does nothing to help us maintain a good mood, or optimism. At the same time, it’s not even true. None of us knows the future. None of us is promised the next breath, so when we predict a negative outcome we are speaking death over the future. It’s a recipe for increasing our suffering.
‘So Christine, what you are saying is that we need to just think positively? That seems to rainbows, unicorns and Pollyanna. You mean you want me to just stick my head in the sand and not deal with the reality that there will be hardship?’ No-I don’t want you to be Pollyanna, stick your head in the sand and not deal with reality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The goal however, is accurate thinking. What is the whole truth? Perhaps you have Mind Reading ANTs, thinking you can know what another person is thinking. Maybe that look of dissatisfaction the other person has on their face means nothing more than they have a build up of gas in their belly or they swallowed a bug. Ask yourself if you can prove that negative thought in a court of law-usually you can’t-or the thought at a minimum needs tweaking to get you into the whole truth-and you will feel a whole lot better as you shift out of negativity into accuracy by expanding the story. ‘I feel hopeless because this circumstance looks so bleak, but the truth is, I don’t know what the future holds and things could turn around-I simply don’t know the future.’
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Click here to check out my Christian Marriage Troubleshooting 6 Week Course for all kinds of tools to think differently and navigate the relationship challenges that come with marriage: Christian Marriage Trouble-Shooting 6 Week Course | Mustard Seed (teachable.com)