The Psalms: A Roadmap to Resilienceনমুনা

Resilience Requires Vulnerability

We’ve been following David through the Psalms and discovering that resilience is built on the character of God. It comes from digging into the truth that He sees us, loves us, chose us to be His partners, and can be trusted to use His power for good, deep into our hearts.

When it comes to digging things deep into our hearts, exposing those depths requires vulnerability. And if we see anything about David, it’s that he was brutally honest with God.

O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Psalm 13:1-2 NLT

Those questions are raw, full of emotion, and brutally honest.

They are a peek into the depths of David’s soul. He’s feeling forgotten at best, blatantly ignored at worst. He’s experiencing daily anguish and sorrow. Relatable?

Interestingly, no matter how relatable those questions and feelings are to us, very few can relate to the experience of voicing those kinds of questions to God.

Maybe we don’t because we’re afraid of the consequences of actually giving voice to those things. Maybe we don’t because we don’t know how. Maybe last time you were vulnerable with someone, you ended up hurt. Whatever the case, we hold back when it comes to saying what’s really going on under the surface.

However, what the psalmist so beautifully models for us is that we can’t defeat what we don’t define. Not that our emotions are an enemy to be defeated, but the storms and situations that evoke those strong emotions can end up taking over our lives and rendering us ineffective if left unaddressed. And this is why resilience requires vulnerability. If we want to weather storms well and be able to bounce back from setbacks, we’ve got to learn how to get brutally honest about what’s really going on and how it actually feels.

This is one of the counterintuitive things about true grit and resilience. It’s tempting to think that it’s about keeping your walls up and armor on so that nothing can affect you deeply. But that way of showing up in the world requires little to no resilience at all.

The mark of a resilient person is how they respond to the things in life that are real, hard, and painful. It’s how they quickly and with an appropriate urgency find their way back to center when they notice they’re off.

Think about trying to give someone directions to your house. You’re on the phone with them, ready to assist. But, there’s one problem … they have no idea where they actually are. They keep asking you to get them from where they are to where they want to be, but they’re giving you and themselves nothing to work with. In that situation, you probably both end up feeling frustrated, lost, and stuck.

But, imagine if they start describing all the landmarks around them. There’s this shopping center and it looks like this. There’s a walking trail that goes into the woods over there but it’s overgrown and kinda creepy. If you’re familiar with the area, you can help them figure out where they are and where they need to go.

This is a little bit of what it’s like to open up to God. When we do the work of describing some of the “landmarks” in our hearts, or even just admitting we don't recognize anything around us, God, who is intimately acquainted with the landscape of the human heart (and even more specifically, with your heart), rushes in to meet us right where we are with unfailing love and guide us where we need to go.

This was David’s experience time and time again. And this psalm, that starts with raw emotions and big questions, ends with this confident declaration:

But I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me. I will sing to the Lord because he is good to me. Psalm 13:5 NLT

If resilience is about finding center again, then do the hard work of describing the landmarks of your heart to God. He’ll meet you right where you are with unfailing love and graciously guide you somewhere better.