Discovering our Common Struggles

Get to know someone really well, and almost without fail, you will discover a person who routinely struggles to get out of bed in the morning. And not just because they’re tired. They can’t get out of bed because once they step foot on the floor, they will be launched into a day that is uncertain and lifeless and in some ways impossible. 

Here are some things you will see if you get to know people: you’ll discover someone who suffers panic attacks every time there’s another mass shooting, someone who cannot stop obsessing over how they may have failed as a parent, someone who cannot eat or who cannot stop eating because of the guilt they feel from being sexually assaulted, someone with a nearly debilitating mental disorder that only manifested after they were married and had kids and now their spouse seriously considers divorce on an almost monthly basis, or someone who is stuck in the habit of living even though they feel terribly alone and bored. None of these scenarios are unusual.

Think about someone you know who is living the good life: someone well dressed, confident, smiling, high achieving, maybe even attractive and intelligent and funny. Nine times out of ten, they are carrying around something unspeakably painful. And often, when you learn what that pain is, it’ll be something completely unexpected. You weren’t even aware that people could suffer like that. Maybe you didn’t know how helpless it can feel to have an adult sibling addicted to meth. Or to carry the guilt of learning that your child was abused at a sleepover. 

There are diseases and disorders and burdens you have never imagined, carried like boulders on the backs of the same people who smile and tell you that they are doing “good.” Every time you ask them, “How’s it going?” they’ll say, “Good! I’m doing good. How about you?” Maybe they don’t trust you, or they are terrified to vocalize their suffering. But maybe they just don’t know how to say how bad they feel. 

So why should they even try? Most of these people will show no obvious signs of the despair that follows them around, or at least those signs will be subtle and veiled. They might surface in a prayer request (“Can I just ask you guys to pray for a stressful situation at work?”), sudden moodiness, or distracting addictions like social media or porn or work. But mostly these people are high-functioning adults.