What Do You Do: When You Feel Desperate: (Audio)
We’ve all been to the edge of this, and sometimes too often. Life or circumstances have thrown us a curveball and we were expecting just another day. Just another event. Just a regular everyday experience. Then the other shoe drops and we did not even know it could!
Adrenalin courses through our veins, fear, fight or flight… all those responses rise to the surface. If you do nothing, surely all is lost! If you do the wrong thing? Ditto.
How do you handle the crisis?
If you do nothing, surely all is lost! If you do the wrong thing? Ditto. Click To Tweet
I have seen desperate people react to their circumstances and go off the deep end, while at the same time others who go through similar events have developed a backbone to stand up to the situation and come out the winner!
There was a time when a man broke into our house just as my son was coming home from school. I’m stranded downtown, needing a ride. Fear overrides the situation. NO ONE REMEMBERS to simply call 911! Finally, all is safe. Then anger sets in. I’m willing to stand up and fight back!
We go out to scout for the perpetrator, and find him…in front of a convenience store, drinking a beer. I accosted him and took a gun (stolen, unloaded and no ammunition) from him. He flees and the sheriff soon catches him.
He had just gotten out of prison and robbed several homes around our house – even from his own mom…
“Kids, don’t do this at home!” Remember these kinds of warnings? Yet we sometimes react in a way we never thought possible when that adrenaline and the desire to protect your family rises up. Sometimes the victim mentality gets squashed into a corner and you come out ready to fight! You’re ready to take on the world. You are the David to the Goliath of all problems!
Maybe this is what we need to see a lit bit more of. Someone ready to stand up and fight! This is not about good and evil, rather, it’s about how to feel when it seems like the world is soon to overwhelm us! “I can’t take it anymore!”
Somewhere in my library is a book that I have enjoyed since my high school years. It has a title that is something like “The Desperate Hours” … From my research, yes, I find it was a book, play, and movie. The movie starred Humphrey Bogart and came out my birth year…
It is a story about escaped convicts on the run from the law. They are seeking a place to hide out until things cool down. They find a house and it looks to be just the right place. Although it’s occupied they believe they can control the situation until it’s safe to move on. They invade the house, take captives of everyone and try to lie low for a few days. Only, they don’t take account of the people in the house and how they will react to their captive situation. Eventually, the innocent create an environment of opportunity where they are able to create confusion among the lawbreakers and are eventually rescued from these “Desperate Hours…”
This is how life feels sometimes. Desperate. No hope and the deepest sense of failure and ruin. What to do? What to do? You feel like Chicken Little…all you see is the calamity. You’re at “wit’s” end, ropes end, and there’s nowhere to go. Sleep eludes you. Peace flees into the night. Nothing seems as it should be.
We’ve all been there. Maybe it was a major issue, or perhaps even as minor as choosing the least crowded line at the grocery store checkout. Or that moment when you feel like the kids are reliving their terrible two’s every moment!
How you handle yourself is the key to wading through the morass. How you respond is important to the solution you cannot see. Let me share four ways to think this through.
Step back from the moment. Distance is a buffer zone between you and the moment. It gives you time to think and analyze your options. Too often we hide our desperation from others, but that’s generally the best time to find someone to help you analyze your options. Choose wisely. Some personalities will not be able to help you at all! Not all “friends” are friends. It was Solomon who said that there is a “friend that sticketh closer than a brother”. (Proverbs 18:24) In fact, read the entire chapter and you find he’s discussing the pitfalls of isolation!
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing…that is a friend who cares.” ~Henri Nouwen
Do not over-react. Yes. If it’s a snake at your feet then you may have to act more quickly than you ever thought you could! But time and again we see the pitfall of reacting negatively when there was a better way of acting. If there is time to think it through, then take all the time allowed. I’ve learned that our pattern of reaction often comes from our heritage. We react to things by the way we are taught by our parents. You sometimes need to unlearn your heritage and cultural reaction!
There are always options. I believe this because I have not faced everything in life that others have faced. It is said that a pilot of an airplane that is distressed never stops thinking and working on a solution. Even till the moment of the crash. That’s the kind of pilot you need and the kind of person you want to be. As Churchill so famously stated:
“Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” ~
Sometimes the right decision is counter-intuitive. It may seem wrong to go left when the obvious and easier path is right. But making correct decisions sometimes require you to do what you never thought to do. Remember Jonah of Biblical fame? He was running from his responsibilities and the only solution to the storm was for the sailors to pitch him overboard… He told them that! (Jonah 1:12)
I’ve often wondered why he simply didn’t jump over himself?!
Desperate times require our best. Not our worst. Maybe you have learned some ways that help you respond to desperate hours. Would you care to share? I’d love to hear from you.