Abigail was testing my patience. I knew where she was coming from and understood what she was saying, at the same time I wanted to scream “Life is precious, don’t stop living!”
My sentiments were based on the fact I knew someone stuck in a world of regret unable to see the blessings in front of them. They’re alive but not living, the real-life equivalent of a zombie. I was concerned Abigail was heading in that direction. I didn’t want to ignore or diminish her pain, at the same time her hiatus from living was beginning to look more and more permanent. She simply wasn’t interested in making progress.
Thankfully, she had a good support system. Nevertheless, I was worried and frustrated, convinced she wasn’t valuing the preciousness of life. This was my diagnosis of her situation. If I could coin a term, I was ‘pulling an Eliphaz.’
Eliphaz who?
Eliphaz lived centuries ago, I don’t know much about him except that he was Job’s friend. He shows up in chapter two of the Book of Job along with two of his companions, they make up the group of three who visited Job when they heard he had fallen on hard times.
He is the first to respond to Job and is probably the oldest of the three. He’s already formulated an opinion about Job’s situation and openly shares it. Job 4:4-5 is a sampling of what he told Job: “Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees. But when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you.”
Not all help is helpful
There are some people you can count on when life gets hard. They will drop everything and help you, no matter the day or hour. They are selfless, unjudgemental people who don’t mind getting dirty.
Then there’s another group of people who think they’re helping but they’re really not. I’m not sure what their motives are but they will share a plethora of ‘wisdom’ from their vast knowledge of life and how it works. They’re gifted in pointing out flaws and casting blame. Experts not only in the diagnosis and treatment of problems but in the dispensing of advice as well. They are also notorious for looking only from their perspective and never anyone else’s.
Eliphaz is of the latter group. From his vantage point, Job’s misfortunes were justified: Job sinned. And no one could convince him of anything else. He was so wrapped up in his theory that he never bothered to listen to Job.
Job’s reality
He failed to see Job’s reality. Job not only lost everything but he wasn’t well physically either. He was covered in boils that he had to scrape with a piece of broken pottery. Job’s miserable. And there was no escape from his reality, not even temporarily.
He can’t sleep his problems away because the boils prevent him from being comfortable. He can’t even take comfort in food – which makes me wonder if the illness also affected the inside of his body just as much as the outside. In any case, there’s no getting away from his mental and physical pain. He ‘has no peace, no quietness and no rest (Job 3:26).’ Only trouble.
Job is grieving. He’s grieving the loss of his livelihood, staff, kids and now his health. He’s grieving the loss of what his life used to look like and coming to terms with what it has become. While at the same time, trying to figure out why it happened.
Job needed empathy but Eliphaz slaps him in the face and tells him to stop whining. It was easy for Eliphaz to give such advice because he wasn’t the one suffering. He was so hung up on solving Job’s problem that he totally failed to see Job’s need. Or maybe he was uncomfortable with Job’s suffering and didn’t want to see it prolonged.
When Eliphaz first saw Job, he hardly recognized him. The shock was so great, that he was speechless. He and his companions sat with Job in complete silence for seven days (Job 2:13). Yet when Job begins to talk about his suffering, Eliphaz condemns him. If Eliphaz had taken a moment and put himself in Job’s shoes, he could’ve been a great support instead of adding more to Job’s suffering. But it’s hard to sit with someone in their mess for a long time. It’s uncomfortable and you run out of things to say pretty quickly.
Eliphaz’s story in many ways reminds me of my frustration with Abigail. I wanted to tell her to pull herself together. She was alive, there was still air in her lungs and she needed to live. I didn’t understand her holdup…until I lost my father. Then I understood the heartache and pain of unexpectedly losing someone you love and hold dearly. I felt firsthand how hard it was getting back to the world of the living when death colored everything in shades of murky gray. It was then that I glimpsed a small portion of Abigail’s pain. She had lost her husband, her partner and confidant. Her world and identity had radically changed and I had failed to see that because I was so concerned she was going to be zombie. I failed to see the kind of trouble she was really in.
Two kinds of trouble
Some troubles visit for a bit and leave. We grow stronger from their visit and there’s not a lot of mess to clean up. Others are permanent residents in the spare bedroom and we have no idea when they’ll go.
Abigail’s troubles moved in with a suitcase and furniture of their own. This was not the kind of trouble that was going to go away anytime soon. My fears for her may have been from concern but it wasn’t about me. It was about her. I needed to meet her where she was. Why was I trying to make her run when she hadn’t even learned to crawl yet?
What I’m learning
Don’t pull an Eliphaz when friends are going through troubles, nobody needs that. Instead, be willing to sit in the mess until they figure out how to clean it up.
Abigail has started taking baby steps. Her sorrow and grief will always be there but she’s no longer living between two worlds, no longer alive but not living. I’m learning to sit and listen as she relearns how to live.