Are you going through a difficult season in your life, family, or business? Have you recently faced disappointment or rejection? Did an opportunity fall through?
If so, I’d like to share with you a mindset that has helped me build my capacity something that I’ve learned on my journey, even in difficult times. Even the toughest times can be a gift. Let me explain.
Gifts are often hidden behind the pain.
A mindset that has helped me build my capacity is to look for the hidden gifts, the hidden jewels that may be hiding behind the difficulty. The mindset of hunting for hidden jewels came from an allegory called Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. The main character, Much-Afraid, is a deer with disfigured feet. Her dream is to leap freely like a gazelle through the mountains and valleys. But to experience that healing, she needs to journey with her Great Shepherd toward understanding and experiencing true love. Her traveling companions are Sorrow and Suffering. Her road is full of curves and detours. It is so hard for her to trust. But after every segment of the journey, she learns to create an altar and lay down the pain of her heart. After the pain is burned on the altar, she receives a jewel. She puts that jewel—that lesson she learned—in her pocket, and it becomes part of her healing process.
When I read that book, I committed to look for the hidden jewel in every season of suffering.
Gifts are often hidden behind the giants.
In the Old Testament, we read about the people of Israel marching to conquer the Promised Land. But when they arrived and sent out spies to explore their new territory, they became afraid. The land was full of giants.
Ten of the spies came back and said, “We’ll never be able to beat those giants. The land is full of great provision—just look at these grapes! Look at the fruit of these lands! But nope, we’ll never succeed in conquering the land. We are worms.”
Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, came back and said, “Hey, we can beat these giants. This land is for us.”
The people listened to those ten spies and wandered the wilderness for 40 years. But Caleb and Joshua lived and were able to enter the land, full of food, assets, and business. In our lives, the assets available to us are often guarded by giants, just like they were in the Promised Land. When I thought about this story that I learned at a young age, I asked the Lord, “Please help me take on the giants. Help me to discover what the assets are behind the challenges.”
Gifts are often hidden behind the problems.
Years ago, I had the privilege of spending three days listening to Peter Daniels, a wealthy businessman from Australia. He grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. At age 26, he became a Christian. He realized that if God loved him and he was equal with all men in the sight of God, he needed to begin to act as such. So he took three dictionaries, taught himself how to read, and tried to start a business. The first one failed, and the second one failed. The third one also failed. But on the fourth attempt, from just one good idea, he basically became a multimillionaire overnight. The gift of failing the first three businesses was that he was able to learn and build the skill sets to build businesses. He gained the eye to see opportunity so that he would know what to do when an opportunity presented itself to him.
Peter Daniels shared a story about a gentleman whose company was at a crossroads. The man’s employees would come to him and say, “Give up. You have to quit. This is too hard. Why are you taking this on?” His response was, “You’re fired.”
The man would say in a low, eager voice, “I eat problems. Give me the problems and let me solve them!”
This guy became wealthy because he was a problem-eater. (And he got the right people around him 😊)
Peter Daniels also said, “Problems guard power.” Where there’s a problem, there’s power hiding behind it. I’ve adapted the saying a bit: I believe that problems guard gifts.
What are some of the gifts that problems can guard? Here are a few examples from my own life.
- The gift of conflict is creative problem-solving and deepening the relationship.
- The gift of pain is maturity.
- The gift of failing is learning to rebuild. In his book, Failing Forward, John Maxwell says that success usually follows failure by just two short steps. The gift of failure is what you can learn from it.
- The gift of crisis is that it often reveals ways we need to change and shift. Old seasons need to be stripped away to allow new seasons.
- The gift of striking out.Babe Ruth was a famous baseball player. He was the strikeout king as much as he was the home run king. He discovered that striking out is the way to learn the game and to ultimately win.
In my own life, I began looking for the gifts whenever I saw a problem. I found several hidden gifts:
The gift that came through my dad’s death. The first unconventional gift came from my dad’s death. When I was just fourteen years old, my dad died of a heart attack the day before Thanksgiving. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I said to myself, “Since I believe that God is good and I can trust him, then what are the gifts of my dad’s death? If God is for me and He is good, what can I learn? If I believe that God exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek him—that He’s got my back, is trustworthy and has my good in mind—then what is the gift in the painful experience of losing my dad at fourteen?” The hidden gift of my dad’s death was understanding the brevity of life: You can die with regrets. I committed in that season of grief to become an Olympic player in life. To have no regrets. To be intentional about stewarding my life and my dreams. Why live for a half-ass reason? All these gifts came through the pain of my dad’s death.
The gift that came through a dysfunctional childhood. Through my very traumatic childhood, I learned to live by faith in God’s boundaries rather than living by my experiences. I knew that God’s ways had to be better than the ways of my family, and I wanted to discover his ways. Because my childhood was so dysfunctional, I chose to lean in and trust God’s truth rather than follow my heart.
The gift of suffering young. All of us suffer; the question is when do we suffer? Lamentations 3 says, “It is better to bear the yoke when you are young.” To become fluent in the language of suffering, it’s better to start speaking it when you are young. I’ve seen so many people who haven’t been touched by suffering until they’re older, and in some ways, it can be more difficult to embrace the gift of suffering and trust this gift. I am grateful that at a young age, I was acquainted with sorrow and the gift of suffering.
In each of these experiences, I have seen that “God’s rejection is his protection.” When God allows me to face rejection, it means he is giving me feedback and guiding me in another direction. Rejection means he is helping me get clarity so I can hear his voice.
What are the gifts in the difficult experiences you are facing?
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