Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times

by John Eldredge

The first stage of the coming storm is this: we’ve all run off to find life and joy following years of stress, trauma, and deprivation. But it isn’t working; it won’t ever work. We return to our normal Monday through Friday disappointed, and disappointment will become disillusionment. And disillusionment makes us extremely vulnerable to our enemy. We must lovingly shepherd our famished thirst back to the source of life.

Jesus, I come back to you now in my longing for life to be good again. I love you here, Lord, in my soul’s longings, desires, and heartaches. I consecrate to you my Primal Drive for Life. I surrender to you my ability to aspire for good things, plan for them, take hold of them, enjoy them, and keep on aspiring. I consecrate all living in me to you, Lord Jesus; I give you my famished craving for life to be good again. I love you here. I love you right here.

The constant barrage of injustice and outrage overwhelms the soul. It clouds our perspective on what the story is right now.

Story is the way we orient ourselves in the world. Story is how we figure things out, bring order and meaning to the events around us. The story we hold to at any given time shapes our perceptions, hopes, and expectations; it gives us a place to stand. In this mad hour on the earth, what story are you telling yourself—or letting others tell you?

We are living in a story, friends. A story written and being unfolded by the hand of God. Despite what the world is shouting at you, the story of God is still the story of the world. This is the hardest thing to hang on to, and the most important thing to hang on to: the story of God is still the story of the world.

The world is a dangerous place. This startling fact sharpened the humility and wits of every generation prior to ours. But we live in the gourmet latte generation. The instant-information, overnight-delivery generation. When you return to reality by simply stepping one mile into nature, you are taken back into a world designed to make you a smart, resilient human being.

The assurance of abundance is something we learn from our mothers—although saying that we learn it sounds way too cerebral, like learning to read. The assurance of abundance—or not—is imprinted in our souls and becomes a core conviction.

Resilience is bestowed upon us by being adored and by experiencing our deep hunger satisfied with overwhelming abundance.

was watching this mother sheep with her lamb; they had been bedded down for a rest when the mother sheep stood up, decided that she’s going to cross the meadow and go somewhere else to graze. Her little lamb stood up right with her and, as she took off, he stayed right on her flank. They were practically one. I’m watching this, and I’m watching my soul watching this, and I realized, I have absolutely no category for that. I look in that folder and there’s nothing there.

The redemption of Dallas’s story is so beautiful. The little boy who lost his mother before the age of three, the man who went on to become one of the most brilliant voices for Christianity in the twentieth century, discovered at the end of his life his most important lesson—salvation is a new attachment, the soul’s loving bond to our loving God. We’ve all heard a good bit about our heavenly Father, but in human development mother comes before father, and a new world of love opens to us when we discover that God offers to mother us too—to come and heal our souls here, in this essential place.

the promise of the Christian faith is that God will reproduce Jesus’ goodness in you:

Nineteenth-century Scottish author and minister George MacDonald wrote, The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the consequences of our sins, is a false, mean, low notion. The salvation of Christ is salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It is a deliverance into the pure air of God’s ways of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure, with the will and choice of the heart to be pure.

I’m using historical examples because at this point they have few defenders, although only a few years ago these movements were the darling of the intellectual elite. If I use contemporary examples I’m going to start a fistfight because folks do not like it when you question their Eden agendas.

Tired souls are willing to go along with just about anything, so long as we are promised we can have our own little happiness back.

You can’t heal trauma without grieving it. This is why the mad rush to grab some joy and the global denial insisting that “things are getting back to normal” are cruel to the soul. It’s a shared attempt to sweep it all under the rug, but the problem is a good part of your soul goes right along with it. Under the rug.

We honor our emotions by acknowledging them. We bridle our emotions by keeping them subject to truth. Let me remind you here of the importance of our attachment to God. Emotional fortitude is not based in severity but in security.

all change initially feels like loss. When you leave one life to pursue another—a career change, a shot at grad school, even something as hope-filled as a new marriage—all you know is the life you are leaving behind. The adventure ahead is still strange and unknown, and thus you are more aware of what’s behind than what’s ahead. So it initially feels like loss.

the longing for life to be good again is not subsiding; it is growing stronger in every human heart.