Rev. Cara Scriven, Lead Pastor
This week we mark the one-year anniversary since we have closed our in-person worship and our church building. It has been a hard year that has been filled with missed celebrations and opportunities, grief, loss, fear, and anxiety. While this is the first pandemic in the western world in many decades, it is not the first time in our lives that we have experienced adversity.
In fact, we all experience hardships some time in our lives. We may experience it when someone you love dies, your heart is broken, your marriage dissolves, you live through a natural disaster, you’ve been bullied, you lost a child due to miscarriage or an abortion, grappled with infertility, you or someone you love has mental health difficulties, dementia, or struggled with suicide. There are very few people in the world (if any) who have not been touch in some way by adversity.
When we are faced with life’s difficulties, we can feel overwhelmed by our grief and pain. The science of resilience teaches us that we can recover from these moments in our lives. Brené Brown, as I mentioned in my sermon this week, suggests that being good problem solvers, asking for help, believing we can cope with how we are feeling, having a social support network and connecting with other people all help us deal with the adversity we experience. Lucy Hone, another resilience researcher, also suggest that resilient people have the following in common:
1) They get that suffering is a part of every person’s life.
2) They focus their attention on the good without ignoring the negative.
3) They ask the question “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?”
You can watch Hone’s Ted Talk on thee topic in the video to the right.
People who overcome adversity inspire us as they show us how resilient the human race can be. However, instead of thinking of these individuals are anomalies, perhaps, we should understand their stories to be examples of how resilient we all can be. I encourage you to watch a few of the inspiring stories below and ask yourself “Where have I experienced the same kind of resiliency?” May you be blessed and inspired by how others have approached hardships in their lives.