My Hardships Don't Give Me Strength. Here's Why.

I found out I had an ear and sinus infection this past week. I remember sitting down in a chair at the pharmacy, waiting to get my antibiotic medication, tears rolling down my face. Pharmacists had rattled something off about not having the right dosage prescribed by my doctor, and mentioned the word "delay." My ear felt terrible, and the fatigue had set in. Everyone was staring at me because I had held up the line while the pharmacists mumbled. Little did I know, I was also hours away from my period. The sounds in the room began to blur together, and my body got hot. I was angry. I was in pain. And I was having a meltdown.

I realized it early, and as the hot tears started forming on my eyelashes, and the steam rose from under my medical mask, I crept toward a chair in the waiting area and sat down. I felt helpless and scared. I'd already been dealing with intrusive thoughts about my dying from a reaction to the medication or the ear infection spreading to my brain for most of the day, and I was exhausted. The thing I hoped would be simple, easy, and straightforward turned out to be just another hump in my day.

My mom was there with me, thankfully. After a bit of snarky remarks about crying in public and me trying to laugh, she gently grabbed my hand and said, "It's okay, just breathe." Eventually, I calmed down, called an urgent care doctor, and had them represcribe the medication in the proper dosage. I walked away with my antibiotics an hour later. And I didn't die from taking it.

Round 1, complete. But life found it amusing and continued to throw more curveballs.

This week, on Monday, I awoke to the sound of rushing water at 4:50 am. Upon jumping up from bed and running toward the sound (not the smartest idea with dysautonomia), I found part of my bathroom ceiling had burst from a flood in a neighbor's apartment. It was surreal to see my ceiling pouring water like a waterfall. By the time the leaks stopped, it had gotten into the lights, walls, ceiling, and floor in multiple rooms. The hallway was all but totally flooded. My brother and I spent the next few hours moving furniture, calling emergency services at the apartment, changing out buckets of stinky water, and mopping. I've been sleeping on the couch in the one part of the house that has minimal damage for days.

Round 2, complete. But then, life decided to throw one more thing my way.

Yesterday, I got into a challenging scuffle with a fellow advocate that included online bullying, a direct violation of personal boundaries, and a total disregard for mutual respect, and I had to make the difficult decision of going no-contact with them and removing them from some of my projects they were involved in. I sensed that it would not go over easily. And I was right. I was cursed out via text, met with vitriol (including a slur), and internet and internal community backlash ensued against me.

I am fighting the feeling that I could have prevented it by predicting it, being better about communication and boundary setting with them, or simply never interacting with this person in the first place (everyone says I'm too nice), but I never expected, nor deserved, the end result. Still, I have to remain zen. I didn't even look at what they posted about me.

Round 3, complete. And life finally took a minor breather. For now.

From all these stories, most people would extract, "See, no matter what, God takes care of you. These situations make you stronger. They build character." But I disagree. These situations were exhausting, terrifying, and cruel, and they stressed me out way more than they encouraged me. I felt stretched thin and scared, and trusting Hashem didn't mean I wasn't afraid of the aftermath.

As a society, we have this assumption that hardship makes people stronger, and that those who bend under pressure are "weak" or "unstable." In many religious settings, there's a mental image reinforced of God sitting up in space somewhere on a throne, watching me live a challenging life and go through pain, all whilst snacking on popcorn and soda, waiting for the right time to swoop in and let good things happen on cue. I mean, isn't that what happened with all of my biblical forefathers and foremothers?

I used to embrace that mental picture heavily, accepting hardship and pain as gifts from God to become stronger and give Him glory. In my pain, someone else can be inspired, and I'll come out of this with new wisdom, a new outlook on life, and stronger. Yet, every time I'd go through things, I'd push to seem like it didn't bother me, even when it did, to make it look like I was enjoying it for God and getting stronger. All that I ended up with was stress, burnout, and chronic illness being overlooked. And feeling like a cruddy person for it all.

Many people have questioned God and His existence under this notion. "How could a loving God allow xyz..." is a common question. In deconstructing God and His character, I started to unpack this mental image and the assumption that strength had to be the only result from supposedly God-ordained hardship. I concluded that I don't get stronger from hardship. Instead, I like to summize that hardships bring out the strength already within us. Moreover, hardship is a part of life, and whether God is involved in it or not is not my concern nor a basis for my theology.

Through hardship, I can learn how to harness my strength, better manage my emotions, and become more in tune with my limitations. Hardships harness internal resilience and encourage growth, but they are not the sole way to grow. Sometimes, I may bend, break, or lose my cool during challenging moments, and that doesn't make me any less resilient or strong because it comes from within.

When I was having a meltdown in Walgreens, I wasn't any less strong because of it. I learned how to identify the feeling and recognize that it was coming, so I could get somewhere safe and calm down. I had to feel the feelings before I could address them, unlike what I used to do, which was to shut down the feeling before I identified it and call it strength, which was backwards and only led to shutting up emotions I never learned how to express. To undo generations of pent-up aggression, trauma, and religious abuse, it's vital to me to reconcile the fact that God doesn't encourage righteous suffering or harm for His own gratification. Life may throw curveballs, and God helps me through them, but I don't need to suffer for God to see I'm holy.

Experiences like the events of these past seven days have shown me that I am extremely resilient, and God didn't hold back when He created me. I may be curled up in bed right now, hoping for better days next week, holding back fear and tears, but I'm here and I'm growing. In this new adventure beyond trauma and religious control, everything is unknown and scary. But God is quite familiar, and I'm learning to love Him in an entirely new way. That's what strength is all about.