Change My Name to Job

For Steph. Thanks for answering the phone. Again.

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place…they made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him (Job 2:11).

“Just change my name to Job in your contacts.”

My sister-in-law didn’t laugh at my nervous joke. I was calling her for the third time in a year with devastating news. The kind you think you might receive once in a lifetime but hope never to hear at all. Our life had become a series of traumatic events, and our friends and family were beginning to dread our phone calls.

I dreaded making them.

But one thing was clear to us: we needed people. We couldn’t do it alone. We still can’t. 

In the early days, we thought it was spiritual to bear up under trial privately. I still remember the searing envy that burned through me as a child when I listened to the praise given to those who never complain.

I wanted to be one of those people. The noble ones who go through so much but never let on. Beacons of humility, they suffer in silence, never burdening others with their problems.

But the type of problems we’d been having stripped away the privilege of privacy. When your house catches on fire, your child is trapped inside, and friends and neighbors come rushing to help, there’s nowhere to hide. When you are days away from taking up a position of leadership over an entire region of Africa and have a critical accident that causes a life-threatening traumatic brain injury, you can’t keep it quiet.

Suffering privately is a fallacy. Our suffering always impacts other people. 

My late uncle was a stoic, a bachelor his whole life, and lived alone. He rarely talked to anyone. Heartbreak in his early life rendered him a silent sufferer.

His suffering caused the rest of us to try harder to help. To worry more. To pray more. To grieve more when he died alone.

Suffering is not private.

So we pick up the phone and make the call. Again.

We thank God through our tears for the friends who surround us to comfort and show us sympathy.

Because I need you, and you need me. Your validation when I’m hurting helps me keep standing. My presence when you need help brings peace. Our hands in each other’s make us stronger.

Job’s friends get a bad rap. They were trying to interpret Job’s suffering, to find a reason for it. Doesn’t everyone? 

Consequently, they gave imperfect advice. But they were present. Job was not alone. 

In the end, God used Job’s #suffering not only to reveal Himself to Job but also to his friends. Job and his friends were #refined by Job’s pain and loss (see Job 42:7-10). Click To Tweet

Allowing others into our suffering is an invitation to know God better, together. 

Change my name to Job. The end of his story is restoration for him and his friends, and we are still talking about it today.

Lord, help me allow others into my suffering. Amen.

@audreycfrank