When Survival Stops Feeling Like Enough
Survival is holy work. But eventually, something inside us begins to ask whether we're allowed to live again.
I couldn’t tell you the exact moment it started. My best guess is somewhere in my early teens, after my parents’ divorce turned my life inside out. Whenever it took root, I came away with a quiet belief that nothing good could arrive in my life without something painful trailing behind it. The bad news didn’t always appear right away, but I was certain it would. Before long, I was watching for it.
It’s not lost on me how much of a “negative Nancy” that makes me sound. At the time, though, I never said any of it out loud. I kept those thoughts to myself and let them do their damage in private. By my twenties and into my early thirties, they had grown into anxiety and mild depression.
It took many decades, a wise friend with a strong faith, and time with a licensed therapist, before I understood what I was actually doing: arming myself against harm I was sure was coming. The habit started with the first trauma I can remember, when I was around eight years old.
A pattern formed after that, and some part of me noticed. Not on purpose, and not in any manner I could have explained back then. It took years — and a fully developed brain — before I could name what I was doing.
The pattern looked something like this:
Traumatic event takes place
“Fight or flight” response occurs; survival mechanisms engaged
Peace settles in; guard goes up
Traumatic event takes place
“Fight or flight” response occurs; survival mechanisms engaged
Peace settles in; guard goes up
You get the idea. Round and round, with no natural stopping point. Not until I decided to stop it.
It was a choice, friends. Not an easy one, and not a one-time one either. I still catch myself sliding back into that old groove. When it happens, I ask the Holy Spirit to meet me there. For me, it amounts to a full surrender to the faith I claim and the scriptures I already know as truth.
I often remind myself of the words a man spoke thousands of years ago. His name was Job (pronounced jōb, like “robe”), the central figure of the Old Testament book that bears his name. By every measure, he was a devout and righteous man. Even so, God allowed a series of tragedies into his life that pushed him into a “woe is me” season and led him to question his Creator directly.
The early chapters let us hear his torment in his own words:
“Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?” ~Job 3:11
“What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.” ~Job 3:25-26
That kind of talk continues through most of the book, interrupted by “advice” from his friends, until God Himself finally answers.
Could Job have kept up that self-destructive conversation with himself? Of course. Plenty of readers would say he had every reason to. Others admit they’d grown tired of the complaining long before God ever spoke a word. But once God answered, in the form of a loving rebuke for questioning His wisdom and justice, Job chose something different.
“I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.” ~Job 40:4
“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” ~Job 42:5-6
In the end, God defended Job’s faith. And by the close of the story, Job had decided that he wasn’t only permitted to live again — he wanted to. Surviving had stopped being enough for him. He wanted to thrive. The text tells us God blessed the second half of Job’s life more richly than the first.
There’s more here than I can get to today. A real spiritual warfare component exists in the way we speak to ourselves. But here’s the point I want to leave with you today: surviving your tragedy was never meant to be the end of the story. It may be all you have at first, and that’s no small thing. Still, a day will come, if you leave your mind receptive to it, when you’ll sense that it’s time to set down the sackcloth and ashes and turn toward living.
The shift will feel awkward at first. As I’ve mentioned before, you only need to take the next step, the one small move in that direction. Look much past that, and you risk getting overwhelmed enough to quit altogether. We’ll get into practical steps in a future essay. For now, let your mind wander toward the things that could pull you into a life of purpose, friendship, joy, hope, and creativity — a future you’d actually want to see. It’s possible. It starts with a choice. And I’ve come to believe it happens in the mind long before it shows up anywhere else.