Life's Harsh Reality

“A hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
-Proverbs 13:12

In total desperation, our only refuge is hope. As the refuge of hope gives us shelter, we become more desperate to retain it. Hope is like a warm blanket that we can wrap around ourselves in the midst of a cruel, bitter-cold world. Things are broken because they break easily. No one has ever observed an unbreakable heart or an unbreakable spirit because none of us is invincible, no matter how much we try to be. And it’s the hardest thing in the world to repair our own brokenness. The hurt is suppressive. The pain is oppressive. It’s too much for us to handle, so we become desperate. In our desperation, we sometimes turn to abusing drugs or sex, for example. Or sometimes we turn to violence or self-mutilation or eating disorders. Unfortunately, we still may turn to suicide in an unsuccessful attempt to subdue our pain and brokenness.

The pinnacle of our hope in this life is “to be happy.” Everyone wants it. Deep down inside, in the depths of our beings, we’re all hedonists. We all want to avoid pain and sorrow so that we may gain happiness and pleasure, and we’ll go to great lengths to get it. In some cultures, this might be defined as nirvana, or intellectual clarity and enlightenment. In postmodern Western culture, we typically turn to material wealth and possessions or appearances or social status or intellectual superiority or self-help manuals to try to make ourselves happy. All in all, we find ourselves lacking and our hope of happiness keeps getting deferred to a later hopeful point in life, as we naïvely say to ourselves, “Maybe I’ll get there someday.” But when that someday comes and we still find ourselves unfulfilled, our hope turns into despair as we become desperate all over again. In that sort of desperation, often people turn to last resort measures, some more severe than others. It could look like a change in career or an impulsive purchase of a Porsche 911 during a mid-life crisis. Or it could look like suicide and/or mass murders. Any perceived happiness for these people is simply the exact opposite, a counterfeit, misery in disguise. Or it could mean an entire surrender to another person because we’ve found that we are totally incapable of attaining happiness at all, no matter what day of the week it is. We may turn to a friend or a spouse or a family member or a public figure. But the rightful place to turn is to the only One who can give us true, lasting happiness: our Creator.

I’ve had many people close to me that have found themselves in positions of desperation, myself included. Life is not easy – that’s a lesson most of us learn a little later in life. There are real responsibilities, real conflicts, real broken relationships, and real battles. In the midst of this war that rages in our lives, and there is a war, pacifists will be slaughtered. There’s no draft dodging. There’s no M.I.A. or A.W.O.L., for no one can escape hand-to-hand combat with the brutality of life. Those who try to escape it can’t; they’re only living in a fantasy world. We must fight.I think the lyrics from Ben Harper’s song, “Fight Outta You,” describe a desperate reality that some of us face day in and day out:

there's always someone younger,
someone with more hunger…don’t let them take the fight outta you.
they'll say you're one and only,
then straight up leave you lonely…don’t let them take the fight outta you.
like a transplant patient,
waiting for a donor…don’t let them take the fight outta you.
like a half empty balloon,
after a party in the corner…don’t let them take the fight outta you.

This is not something that someone teaches us – we learn it as we live. It can make us resilient or it can wear us down. Regardless, we must still cling to hope, for it may be all that’s left for us to hold on to.

For one reason or another, I’ve had a few people in my life confide in me with the strains of their souls. And I know of other situations of the sobering reality of life.

Once, a teenage girl told me that she had severe difficulties with having a positive self-esteem and self-image leading to depression, an eating disorder, and thoughts of suicide. Her life became a haze of despair.

I know a woman who has lovingly poured out her entire life for the sake of other people. Despite being in excellent health for her age, she was recently diagnosed with cancer. She couldn’t believe that something so destructive could be inside of her when she felt so good. Her life became an unusual, dismal excuse for a reward.

A young man once told me that he felt very lost in his life, running away from his past. He had grown up in the Midwest, gotten into some trouble with the law, and took off with the carnival down south in order to escape the warrant that was issued on his life. As a traveling vagabond, he began to develop his drug addiction. His life became a house of shambles.

Back in college, a friend of mine struggled intensely with homosexual tendencies that tormented him to the point of depression and hopelessness. He refused to give in to the temptation to submit to these tendencies because he knew deep within himself that it was wrong. His life became a living nightmare.

A wonderful man I know fell in love with “the only one for me in this world.” As the wedding approached, she started having doubts and it puzzled him. She said it had nothing to do with him, but he still didn’t know what had changed in her. His life became a wave of uncertainty.

One of the most loving women I know encountered severe health problems and had to drop everything in her life to deal with her depleted health. Faced with double kidney failure, she had to endure dialysis on a daily basis. Her name was put on the organ recipient list. Her life became a slave to the fleeting sands of time.

In all of these stories, people became desperate because their lives became broken, in one degree or another. Their hope for happiness was deferred to a time when the brokenness would be repaired. Immediately, their hearts became sick while sadness crept in. But in all of these particular situations that have already been resolved, a common response developed in their hearts and compelled them: their desperation led to a hope in the One who could help them, namely, God Himself. They came to the realization that it was impossible for them, in and of themselves, to attain happiness and wholeness for themselves, but Jesus could because He lived here on this earth and experienced all of the pain, sorrow, and difficulty that life has dumped on us – and he overcame it all. Since He overcame it, they knew that through Him they could also overcome the despair, in hope, to someday attain true happiness. Their lives may not be fully healed or fully repaired or fully whole (yet), but hope has been their refuge and that refuge has provided a place to seek more hope, that their desire for happiness might be truly fulfilled someday.

On that day, in that place, they will find a tree of life.

In desperation, there are two paths to take. One leads to a true hope that fulfills a desire and ends at the towering tree of life, while the other leads to a false hope that makes the heart sick and ends at the wilted tree of death. Psalm 16:11 is a description of God’s intervening work in the lives of those who seek Him, that “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” At that tree of life, Jesus awaits us to fulfill our desires and make our hearts glad.