Guest Author - Diana Pederson

H. Norman Wright. Will My Life Ever Be the Same?. Harvest House Publishers. 2002.

Young Christians often think they will be immune to the difficulties of life. Unfortunately, as long as we remain on earth, no one totally escapes events such as death of loved ones, illness, abuse, difficult children, loss of a job, or even a terrorist attack. The difference between a Christian and others lies in the way we cope with such difficulties.

Will My Life Ever Be the Same?discusses how we learn to cope. Wright talks about the stages of dealing with a crisis and presents some principles on learning to cope. I found chapter 3, “Am I Normal” valuable because it discusses two types of wounds we experience when in crisis: those we inflict on ourselves and those others inflict on us. The stages of a crisis include: impact, a new meaning, surviving the initial impact, the withdrawal-confusion stage, secondary wounding, adjustment, and reconstruction-reconciliation. We go through these stages regardless of the initial situation.

Wright gives advice on the type of people to avoid and those to associate with during all stages of the crisis. He strongly suggests we avoid those “super spiritual” people who think Christians recover faster. He does suggests we seek people that don’t shock easily, aren’t embarrassed when we cry, aren’t compulsive in giving unwanted or undesired advice, show human warmth towards us, trusts us to survive the difficulty, treats us like adults, and that don’t spiritualize everything among other characteristics.

This chapter really made me think about what I say to someone in the midst of a crisis. It helped me remember that just listening is sometimes the best way to help a friend. I never want to fall into the category of person who just says “I told you so” or “Get on with living.” We need to realize that everyone, including Christians, go through the very real human reactions to these tragic events.

Recommendation

Everyone should read this book. However, I strongly feel that pastors and Christian counselors particularly should pay attention to the ideas presented in this book. All too often, they are the very ones that spiritualize a human tragedy and make people feel even worse because their faith wasn’t strong enough to get over things as quickly as another Christian thinks they should. Too often we hurt when we should be encouraging to someone going through a crisis.