When your life gets “flipped turned upside down”
The Fresh Prince gave us false hopes.
From the streets of West Philadelphia to a mansion in Bel-Air. All it took was one little fight, and his mom got scared — so she sent him off to live with his aunt and uncle in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I grew up watching this show. I memorized the theme song, watched reruns, and felt all the emotions of the main characters. (Yes I cried a lot during the more sad episodes.)
When I fell in love with the show, I didn’t realize how unrealistic the whole situation was for normal people.
In fact, many of us have had our lives “flipped turned upside down,” but it was a disaster. In a moment, something happened, and our lives were never the same. We’ve all had this type of stuff — a family member passing away or receiving a terrible diagnosis, losing a job we thought we would have until we retired, or someone we trusted doing and saying things we thought were totally out of their character that end up hurting us and countless others.
Devastation shows its face, and we’re crushed. We know nothing will be the same.
I have a story too
I’m not going to go into great detail for the sake of time and respect for others, but I too have a story.
My story involves a friend that ended up being someone completely different than I thought they were — which culminated in a lot of hurtful words toward me and my wife.
It was painful and left my head spinning. What is true? What’s not true? How do I move forward? The words came from someone I trusted. Are they right? Are they wrong? Is there any truth to what they said?
I have vivid memories of the weeks following this unsettling conversation. One day I was doing the dishes and I remember thinking, “Everything is out of whack. I have no idea what to believe anymore.”
Maybe you’ve had a moment…
Maybe you’ve had a moment that was reality-shaking and earth-shattering as well. A moment that left you not knowing what was true or if God was good, not knowing which way was up or which way to move forward, and uncertain about how in the world you would pick up the pieces of your life.
Maybe you still don’t know what to do. If that’s you, I’m going to offer up a few practices that I think could help—because they helped me.
First, lament.
You need to mourn your life. When things in our life don’t go the way we expect them we need to lament.
We need to pour out our hearts to God and let Him in on our pain and sadness. We need to invite him into our brokenness, our tears, our anger. He knows it’s all there, we need to let Him sit with us in that brokenness.
I’ve done this so many times I can’t remember them all. I do, however, remember the first time I told God I was mad at Him. Aside from walking around nervously the next few days, thinking lightning was going to strike me down, the experience was healing. I was honest with God and I learned He could handle my honesty. Over time I learned to be more and more honest with Him — especially with my pain.
Second, remember what is true.
Where do you turn when you don’t know what’s true?
The Word of God.
The experience I referred to earlier left me questioning if I was a good husband, if I was actually following Christ, and if I was called to ministry at all. The accusations being presented to me were pretty weighty and I didn’t really know what was true at all. So I decided I wouldn’t trust my own thoughts.
I spent the next week or so reading through 1 Timothy. The Lord led me to write down every explicit and implicit command Paul gives to Timothy about walking with Jesus and leading in ministry. There were nearly 100.
I then allowed the Lord to examine my heart and mind. “God, am I a man of this character? Am I following You?” became a frequent prayer of mine. Even though not everything the person said to me was true, I wanted to do my due diligence to see if there was a nugget of truth in any of it.
Third, be humble.
Here’s the thing, when I stacked up my life to the Word of God, here’s what I found. There were nuggets of truth in what the person said to me. Not all of it was true, but there was enough truth that I knew some life change needed to happen.
By God’s grace life change has happened, but it wouldn’t have if I had simply thrown out everything that was said to me.
The major goal with approaching the Lord in humility during seasons of earth-shattering situations is simple: “God, what are you trying to teach me and change in me?”
God shines His face toward a humble heart.
Fourth, let God restore you.
Things will never be the same. And God never intended them to be the same. If there is something God has allowed in our lives it’s for the purpose of us living and being more like Christ in every area of our lives.
So what was He trying to teach you? What’s He trying to do in your life? I’m confident that His plan is to take you from a place of brokenness to a place of restoration.
Oftentimes we stop before we get restored. We tell God how sad we are, we may go to His Word for truth (sometimes though we get stuck here), we might ask Him what He’s trying to teach us, but then we move on just “assuming there’s a bigger purpose.”
But we never actually get to the bigger purpose.
It’s more important than ever, when your in this step, to press into the Lord and allow Him to restore you and to bring to fruition what He’s trying to do in you.
Lastly, walk confidently with God.
Let me restate this — things will never be the same. And in many cases, that’s a good thing. It’s certainly going to be a good thing once we allow Him to restore us.
If it’s a painful loss of a family member — we’ll soon be able to share a testimony of hope and restoration to others dealing with the same thing.
If it’s a painful job loss — we’ll soon be able to share a testimony of faith and restoration to others who have lost their job and need God to provide.
If it’s a painful friendship ending — we’ll soon be able to share a testimony of community and restoration to others who have lost friends but are now looking for new community.
God doesn’t waste a moment. My bet is He has brought you through a really painful experience to bring you to a place of spirit-empowered confidence. You don’t want to miss out on that.
Nothing I say here is meant to downplay the difficulty of a painful experience. I’ve had so many. Some of my experiences and your experiences are far more painful than what I even detail here. We often need Christian counseling/counselors to help us walk through our pain. Don’t be afraid to get help.
Everything I say here is to point us to this one reality: God is a God who restores us. He will take our pain and heal us. He will take our sadness and give us joy. He is faithful, so we can trust Him.
No matter where you’re at in the process of navigating a painful experience, God cares. He wants you to lean into Him, not walk away.
—Brandon
I too memorized that song and watched the show. One of my responsibilities now is to lead a ministry called Regeneration recovery at my church. Much of what you suggested is also suggested in that ministry program.
This is a very timely article. Thank you for your words of wisdom.