Tribulations
Ten anchors from scripture — read in the context of real suffering
1. James 1:2-4
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Insight: The instruction is not to feel joy about pain. It is to recognize that something is being produced inside the pain — perseverance, which is the muscle of the soul. It does not form without resistance.
Application: When the withdrawals were at their worst, when the 48mg of Suboxone still was not enough to stop the shaking, the question was not “why is this happening” but “what is being built here that could not be built any other way.”
2. Romans 5:3-5
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
Insight: This is a chain reaction. Suffering to perseverance to character to hope. You cannot skip steps. The sequence is the point.
Application: The years of pharmaceutical dependency were not wasted years. They were the formation of perseverance that no comfortable life could have produced.
3. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in others with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
Insight: Comfort received becomes comfort transmitted. Your suffering becomes qualification. This is the economy of grace — nothing is wasted.
Application: This memoir exists because someone else may be in the place where you were. The suffering that felt meaningless becomes the credential that makes you credible to someone drowning in the same water.
4. Psalm 34:18
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
Insight: Proximity to God is not correlated with spiritual performance. It is correlated with brokenness. The lowest points are not points of divine abandonment — they are points of divine nearness.
Application: The 5150 holds were not evidence of being forsaken. They were, in retrospect, exactly where the verse says he would be found.
5. Isaiah 43:2
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”
Insight: The promise is not that you will not pass through the fire. The promise is that you will not be consumed by it. The fire is part of the path.
Application: Every hospitalization, every detox, every psychiatric hold — passage through, not destruction in.
6. Jeremiah 29:11
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Insight: This verse was spoken to people in captivity — in the middle of exile, not after it. The promise of future and hope does not require the present circumstances to have resolved.
Application: Plans existed while the addiction was active. Plans existed during the psychotic break. The existence of the plan does not depend on the subject’s awareness of it.
7. 1 Peter 5:10
“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”
Insight: Restoration is active, not passive. God himself restores. And restoration produces three qualities: strength, firmness, steadfastness — none of which form without the crucible of the suffering that precedes them.
Application: The suffering was not the end of the story. It was the process by which the restoration would have the structural integrity to last.
8. John 16:33
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Insight: “You will have trouble” is not a warning — it is a statement of fact delivered without apology. The peace promised is not the absence of trouble. It is a peace that coexists with trouble because the outcome has already been determined.
Application: The 6 spinal surgeries, the Bipolar 1, the addiction — trouble, all of it. The instruction is not to avoid or deny it. It is to take heart anyway.
9. Romans 8:28
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
Insight: “All things” does not have an asterisk. It does not exclude the things that should not have happened, the choices that were catastrophic, the years that were lost. All things.
Application: The fentanyl years are being worked for good. The psychiatric holds are being worked for good. This memoir is part of the working.
10. Revelation 21:4
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Insight: The ultimate resolution of all tribulation is not therapeutic — it is eschatological. The current order, with its pain and death and mourning, is temporary. The permanence is on the other side.
Application: Every tribulation documented in this memoir is a temporary condition in a temporary order. The tears, the surgeries, the withdrawals, the breaks — all of them are filed under “old order.” The new order does not contain them.