It's time to develop a redemptive perspective

A while back, I worked through a programme designed by one of my favourite authors/thinkers, Donald Miller. In one of the modules, I was reminded of something another of my favourite authors/thinkers, Viktor Frankl, said: when we find a redemptive perspective on our suffering, it ceases to be suffering.

Now that's a tough ask: to be able to face your suffering and find a redemptive perspective. But, as tough as it is, if you want to live the life you were made for (and, like you, I do) you must find that perspective, or that suffering you face will keep you forever trapped in a prison of existence. Too often, though, rather than search out that redemptive perspective, and with it your freedom, you find yourself going to great lengths to avoid a process that will allow you, and empower you, to redefine and, crucially, re-frame the suffering you face, no matter how seemingly incidental or severe it may be. Or maybe you don’t do that, but I know that I do.

But why is that? Why do I (and most likely you) do that, when, deep down, we both know that avoidance - effectively running and hiding - only leads to even more suffering? Maybe it's because the word 'suffering' is so evocative and conjures images of extremes - famine, war, or disaster, whether it be personal, corporate or on a national scale - rather than a picture of everyday humdrum events like the ones we face? After all, against images of despicable and unspeakable horror, how can what you and I face be suffering, right?

But, here’s the thing: there is no benchmark for suffering. Suffering is personal. If you are caught in situations that cause you pain - mental, emotional, spiritual or physical - you have suffering in your life. And, where you have suffering in your life, you have a gaoler who longs to keep you imprisoned in existence. But you weren't made for existence. So, forget comparing your suffering to the suffering of others; or trying to dilute your pain, so that it feels 'less bad'. Things will only change when you face the reality of your situation, and deal with it head on: when you redeem it.

You see, when you redeem your situation, you give it a new meaning - you frame it in a new story, and you become free to live the life you were made for - a life where the real you emerges and your best self can step forward. And no, redeeming past suffering does not diminish its reality, or its severity. It does not take a bad event and make it good. It cannot do that - nothing can. But, what it does do is wrest control from the tormentors that lie within that suffering and place it in your hands. What once held you captive no longer has power and influence over you. What was bad remains bad, but that ‘badness’ no longer has authority to rule you. Finally, with a redemptive perspective formed, you have authority; you have control.

Never more is that principle evident than in what Frankl describes in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. Frankl taught men and women trapped in the midst of the holocaust not to look upon their plight as something from which to escape through suicide; but, rather, to die only at the hands of the Nazis, and thus expose the full horror and inhumanity of what was taking place. In teaching them not to seek release by taking their own lives, Frankl showed those men and women how they could redeem their suffering and liberate themselves into a new reality. A reality where, in spite of the horror surrounding them, they were not victims, but heroes.

And in his programme, Donald Miller speaks of the deep impact and suffering he felt when, as just a young boy, he experienced the pain of his father leaving him. But, with the help of others, he faced that pain and redeemed his suffering to create a new story - a story where he became a leading light across America, and beyond, in mentorship programmes for children being raised without a father, and stood as an advisor to former President Obama's 'Taskforce on Fatherhood'.

But it's not just celebrated authors and thinkers, or people facing extreme horrors, who have stories of being set free by finding a redemptive perspective on their suffering. We all have stories of suffering, of one sort or another in our lives (even if we struggle to acknowledge it as such); and, where there is suffering, there is always the opportunity to find a redemptive perspective and create a new story.

I have stories of suffering in my life. Stories of a breakdown that left me humiliated by my own frailty, and with my career in tatters. Stories of being brutally forced out of my job while I watched my Dad fade away before my eyes as he rapidly succumbed to cancer. And many more besides.  Sure, those are not stories that might make headlines, or cause others to recoil in horror or disbelief had they been witness to them unfolding; but stories, nonetheless, that were real to me. Very real. Stories that embodied suffering for me, right there, right then, in those moments. Stories that could have become my gaoler, imprisoning me in existence, had I not found, sometimes without realising, a redemptive perspective that reshaped those situations, and set me free to walk a new path.

And I am no different from you. You have stories of tragedy and suffering in your life - dark and hard-to-bear stories that will keep you imprisoned in existence, if you let them. So, don't let them. Just as those young men and women in the concentration camps chose to redeem their suffering - a suffering that, in its horror and brutality, embodied the absolute extreme of what the human mind can bear to comprehend - so you, too, can choose to redeem your dark, hard-to-bear stories, and allow them to take on a new meaning - a meaning that will set you free to walk into the life you were made to live. 

Sometimes that redemptive process requires therapeutic intervention, sometimes it involves no intervention at all. And, sometimes, some simple coaching is all that’s needed to take a new position on what took place, and take hold of it as a springboard for your future. It may take many months, even years to fully form, and it may bring with it pain you would rather avoid. But, whatever it takes, no matter how hard it may be to follow-through on - facing, and embracing, that process is the only way you will ever set yourself free from your past.