When You Feel Helpless
There is nothing quite like feeling helpless. It is a particular kind of pain and weight that settles onto the soul like a weight.
I remember when I became acutely aware that I hated feeling helpless. Hate is too soft of a word, but I shouldn’t use colorful French words. It was late one evening, my night shift in the hospital as a chaplain was reaching hour 12 of 24. I had just completed my nightly routine of getting a bacon ranch toasted sub at Subway in our hospital’s cafeteria. I was walking it back to my office when my pager beeped. I was being called to our TICU - trauma intensive care unit. A patient was dying and the staff thought my presence could be helpful.
This is not all that uncommon, after all, my job was to work in these types of environments. Places where sorrow runs deep and grief fills the room. I had learned to swim in that water and help others do the same. But this call was different, as I was about to find out. Due to privacy laws, I won’t go into too much detail. When I arrived at the unit a nurse told me that a tragic accident had happened and a family member was dying because of the accidental mistake of someone else in the family. Someone made an honest mistake, with no ill-intent, and now their family member was dying. They were all in the room together. The wails, screams, sobs. Sounds and sights that stay with you forever. The guilt was palpable. “It was an accident…I didn’t mean to… I don’t even know what happened…” they kept repeating.
.
.
.
I could feel it in my chest the moment I walked into the room. That old familiar feeling. I’ve felt it as a kid struggling to fit in. I’ve felt it in school when I wasn’t as good at sports as I wanted to be. I’ve felt it when I want to try to control God but can’t. It comes up at different points in my life, this feeling. In some ways it is familiar. Kind of like a scar on your arm or an old pain in your knee. You’ve learned to live with it. I hate the feeling, and yet, there is a type of familiarity with it.
What was the feeling? Helplessness. I can do nothing to fix any of this.
That day in the hospital, it clicked for me. I was embarking on a journey to come to terms with a reality that I love to deny. I am often helpless. I began trying to understand my relationship with this feeling, with this reality. I am still on that journey. Though I’ve traveled a portion of the road, I still have a lot to go. My hunch is that it is a road that takes a lifetime to complete. Maybe you are on your journey with the feeling of helplessness. Trying to understand what to do with it. How to “fix” it. How to handle it. How God relates to you within it. How you are supposed to respond to it.
Helplessness is a bit like quick sand. The more you fight against it, the deeper you sink into it. Helplessness is also like baptism. You’ve got to surrender to it to come out the other side. You’ve got to allow yourself to drown and to be brought back up out of the water by the hands of God. It is a process that hurts like hell.
Anatomy of the feeling
Why is the feeling of helplessness so difficult for us to cope with? Because we come face to face in those moments with how little control we actually have over anything in our lives. And that is a very scary reality for those of us who find comfort in our own ability to manage things. It crumbles our foundations of stability, of course we feel shaken when the feeling creeps in.
God knows
As I was reflecting and praying, my mind went to God the Father watching His son be killed on earth. Murdered. By the people he sent him to save. Imagine the heart of the Father as his only beloved son was dragged through the streets. Hung on a cross. Spit on, ridiculed, and shamed.
Was God helpless? No. He could have stopped it. Jesus said in John 10:18 - “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”The Father and the Son were not helpless. But because God the Father knew this was the plan, he did not intervene. He watched darkness overcome the light. In this we see two lessons:
1- God can understand our feelings of helplessness
He absorbed the pain of seeing His son die, choosing to not allow it to compel him to step in and stop this difficult sight. He sat in the tension of watching one you love be overcome by darkness. Although He is not helpless, He can understand our feelings of helplessness.
He is a sherpa, a traveler of the mountains of helplessness who has gone further on that road than any of us know. He can show us the way. I warn you though, it is a painful road. To confront the realities that you may have built your life on is scary business. You cannot dismantle a foundation without damage. You also cannot rebuild without deconstruction. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’ reflection on grief. After losing his wife to cancer, he wrote in A Grief Observed:
“God has not been trying an experiment [by seeming far and leading me into suffering] on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”
God has his ways of knocking at our foundations, the things we cling to so closely for comfort and peace and stability. Why must God pry our hands off of the beloved feeling of control through the feelings of helplessness? Because the truth is we are helpless, and the most comforting thing is to surrender to it and hold onto God himself. That is what the invitation to surrender to helplessness is. An invitation to change what you cling to. Or rather, an invitation to realize your hold of God is not what comforts you, but His hold of you.
2- Jesus dying on that cross was not the end of the story
God raised Jesus from the dead three days later. Darkness does not get the last word. Though we feel helpless in this world, God would encourage us. Be helpless, not hopeless.
We ultimately can surrender to the feelings of helplessness when we trust in the loving hands of a Father who is in control of all things. It takes a lifetime to learn. I have a lot more I’d like to write about this, but I’m not sure today is the day for it. I hope this brief reflection is helpful. Write below your experience and thoughts with helplessness. Someone may need your story.
Navigating helplessness,
Josh.