Overwhelmed and Frustrated? How to Find Resilience

Overwhelmed and frustrated.  There are times in life when we each feel overcome by many things pushing in on us. What do we do? What does it take to restore our balance, to be resilient in tough times, and to move forward with hope? Today I want to share an important story that helped me to understand how to take better care of myself when I’m feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

The following is a text version of this blog posting.

There are times when nothing seems to be going the way it should.  We’ve all been there.  Try as we might, it seems that we encounter one roadblock after another and find ourselves overwhelmed with frustration.  What do we do?

One of the things I find important about sacred texts is that they often capture wisdom from past generations for living well.  I think people make the mistake of using sacred texts as sources of historical facts or as proof of some unchanging law of life.  Instead, I think that sacred texts are inspiring because of the wisdom they share.  That’s particularly true with the writing from the Hebrew scripture we know today as the Book of Exodus.

The story of Exodus is the story of a group of ancient Semitic clans from the area of Mesopotamia who came to share an identity as the Hebrew people. The story of Exodus is a story of how that identity was formed. In that process, they had a leader:  Moses.  There’s no evidence outside of the Bible that any of the stories contained in the book of Exodus ever occurred.  But in the collection of stories that make up this saga, there’s one in particular that resonates with me. I find it to be profound and convey important wisdom about living.  This story is found in chapter 33 of the Book of Exodus.

It’s important to understand the context.  Moses led the people out of Egypt, from some form of captivity, to go and find a new home, a promised land.  The journey took forty years of wandering in the desert before entering the promised land.  There were times along the way when the people were fed up with wandering in circles, not sure of which way to go.  They questioned Moses’s leadership.  They complained about everything:  the constant traveling, the living conditions, the food, the leadership.  Remember that this journey is taking forty years.  They wondered:  were we just led out here to die? 

Moses got fed up.  He was doing a job he didn’t want to do.  He could have had a pretty good life in Egypt, but here he was trying to lead a group of complaining, belligerent people to something that would be far better for them.  In his frustration, he decides to get away from it all, take a break, climb and mountain and have a word or two with God.  He’s angry with God for inspiring him to take on this leadership role.  Moses yells at God.  He asks God, “Have you noticed that all these chosen people of yours do is complain?  Day and night.  After everything that’s happened, they want to go back to Egypt. I’ve had it.  Get someone else for this job!”  The response of God is compassionate and understanding, conveying that he’s well aware of what’s going on.  Moses pushed further.  He says to God, “You tell me that I’m your friend.  If you’re really my friend, then let me see you.  Stop with this mystery stuff and let me see you.”  Moses is looking for comfort, for assurance, for affirmation.  God tells Moses:  you can’t see me.  It would be too much for you.  It would kill you.  But here’s what we’ll do.  Go into that cleft in the rock and be very still.  Don’t look out and you’ll understand more of who I am.  Moses goes into the cleft in the rock.  The story beautifully describes that the hand of God shields and protects Moses.  God’s presence comes from behind Moses and Moses hears all the wonders of God, all the amazing aspects of the Divine.  Then as God passes the place where Moses is standing, the Divine is removed so that Moses can see the back of God moving forward.

I don’t think this story is literally true.  But I think it contains an important lesson for us.  In those times when we find ourselves overwhelmed with life when it seems as though everything is going wrong no matter how hard we try, the best thing we can do is step back.  In the face of life’s difficulties, taking time for silence and solitude is where we find our grounding.  In that time of solitude, when we allow ourselves to be quiet within ourselves, we then can remember the wonders we’ve experienced in life: the times we’ve known love, support, friendship, and care.  When we’ve allowed ourselves to be in that quiet solitude and recall those times of wholeness and affirmation that we have experienced, it’s then that we can look out and look forward with strength and courage to take the next step, whatever it might be.  It’s in this way that faith becomes critical.  It’s the faith that just as we have experienced goodness in life in the past that we’ll experience goodness in life again despite whatever hardships we face.  That’s something important that I’ve learned from this very ancient story of Moses.