Resilient Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent
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Resilient
© 2022 by John Eldredge
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ISBN 978-1-4002-0864-7 (HC)
ISBN 978-1-4002-0868-5 (eBook)
ISBN 978-1-4002-3782-1 (ITPE)
Epub Edition March 2022 9781400208685
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022932089
Printed in the United States of America
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To Sam and Susie, Blaine and Em, Luke and Liv:
Time with you makes me a more resilient man!
He has made his people strong.
PSALM 148:14 NLT
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction: No Ordinary Moment
Chapter 1: I Just Want Life to Be Good Again
Chapter 2: Where Are We? What’s Happening?
Chapter 3: The Strength That Prevails
Chapter 4: Eden Glory, Not Desolation
Chapter 5: The Assurance of Abundance
Chapter 6: Unconverted Places
Chapter 7: The Kingdom Without the King
Chapter 8: The Deep Well Inside Us
Chapter 9: Your Prescription
Chapter 10: Hold On!
Appendix: Prayers
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
Introduction
No Ordinary Moment
Camels have an Achilles’ heel; this is where we will begin.
But their vulnerability is hidden by their legendary resilience: these
famous “ships of the desert” have been crossing dune seas since before the
time of Abraham.
The stamina and strength of camels is truly impressive—they can carry
heavy loads across leagues of burning desert sand, going without water for
weeks while their human companions die of thirst. But the treacherous
thing about camels is that they will walk a thousand miles with seemingly
endless endurance, giving you little indication they are about to collapse.
Then it just happens. As the Alchemist said to Santiago,
Camels are traitorous: they walk thousands of paces and never seem to tire. Then suddenly,
they kneel and die. But horses tire bit by bit. You always know how much you can ask of
them, and when it is that they are about to die.1
Human souls hide an Achilles’ heel too.
We have an astonishing capacity to rally in the face of calamity and
duress. We rally and rally, and then one day we discover there’s nothing
left. Our soul simply says, I’m done; I don’t want to do this anymore, as we
collapse into discouragement, depression, or just blankness of soul.
You don’t want to push your soul to that point.
But everything about the hour we are living in is pushing our souls to
that very point. Some folks are nearly there.
We entered the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 worn out by the madness
of modern life. Now, this isn’t a book about the pandemic, though when
history tells our story COVID-19 will be our generation’s World War II—
the global catastrophe we lived through. What began in 2020 was a shared
experience of global trauma, and trauma takes a toll—the long experience
of losses great and small, all the high-volume tension around masks,
quarantines, vaccines, school closures, and on and on the list goes.
Journalist Ed Yong won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting
for his coverage of the pandemic. Here’s what he found:
Millions have endured a year of grief, anxiety, isolation, and rolling trauma. Some will
recover uneventfully, but for others, the quiet moments after adrenaline fades and normalcy
resumes may be unexpectedly punishing. When they finally get a chance to exhale, their
breaths may emerge as sighs. “People put their heads down and do what they have to do, but
suddenly, when there’s an opening, all these feelings come up,” Laura van Dernoot Lipsky,
the founder and director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute, told me. . . . “As hard as the
initial trauma is,” she said, “it’s the aftermath that destroys people.”2
Right now we’re in a sort of global denial about the actual cost of these
hard years (which are not over). We just want to get past it all, so we’re
currently trying to comfort ourselves with some sense of recovery and
relief. But folks, we haven’t yet paid the psychological bill for all we’ve
been through. We would never tell a survivor of abuse that the trauma must
be over now that the abuse has stopped. And yet that mentality is at play in
our collective denial of the trauma we’ve been through.
We need to be kinder to our souls than that. Denial heals nothing, which
is why I’m more concerned about what’s coming than what lies behind. In
our compromised condition we’re now facing some of the trials Jesus
warned us about as we approach what the Scriptures refer to as “the end of
the age” (Matthew 24:3).
Extraordinary times can be thrilling, but they also tend to be very
demanding. Our hearts will need guidance and preparation. It would be a
good idea to take the strength of your soul seriously at this time.
In case you’ve already forgotten what the pandemic was like, allow me
to refresh your memory. Fear of death suddenly swept the world, death
unseen and unpredictable, death by plague. In a matter of weeks, we found
ourselves in various forms of quarantine and lockdown—schools, churches,
and businesses all closed their doors. The economy reeled. Everything that
makes for a joyful, normal life was taken from us in a moment and withheld
for many, many months.
Follow me closely now. To be suddenly stripped of your normal life; to
live under the fear of suffering and death; to be bombarded with negative
news, kept in a state of constant uncertainty about the future, with no clear
view of the finish line; and to lose every human countenance behind a mask
—may I point out that this is exactly the torment that terrorist regimes use
to break down prisoners psychologically and physically?
Folks, this had a traumatic effect, and we’ve got to plan for our recovery
and find new resilience.
“At least we can get back to our normal lives,” one friend said. But
that’s not true either. I know you want it to be true, but events are
converging that prevent normal life from happening. Our enemy, the prince
of darkness, has engineered this situation to do serious harm to the human
heart. I believe we are set up for a sweeping loss of faith.
There is hope, great hope. Jesus Christ knew that humanity would face
hard times, especially as history accelerates toward the end of the age. He
gave us counsel on how to live through such trials, and now would be a
good time to pay attention to what he said. The Creator and Redeemer of
our humanity has given us a path toward recovery and resilience. We would
be fools to ignore it or push it off to “some other time.” Whatever you
believe about the coming years, I think we can all agree that greater
resilience of heart and soul would be a very good thing to take hold of.
In this hour we don’t need inspiration and cute stories. We need a
survival guide—which is exactly what this book is. Each chapter opens
with a true story of human resilience against the bleakest odds. You’ll also
encounter “Skills” callouts to draw your attention to practical tools for
strengthening heart and soul. And every chapter will pull your attention to
Jesus himself, for we need the supernatural resilience provided in Christ. It
is always available—we simply have to take hold of it.
LIVING WATER
In 1946 Wilfred Thesiger made an impossible trek across the desolate Empty Quarter of Arabia with
four Bedouins, journeying in winter on camelback. They reached a desperate point in their odyssey
when the odds looked grim—they were nearly out of water, the next well was beyond an impassable
mountain range of dunes, and their camels were showing signs of collapsing.
All the skins were sweating and we were worried about our water. There had been a regular
and ominous drip from them throughout the day, a drop falling to the sand as we rode along,
like blood dripping from a wound that could not be staunched. . . .
I suppose I was weak from hunger, for the food which we ate was a starvation ration, even
by Bedouin standards. But my thirst troubled me most. . . . I was always conscious of it. Even
when I was asleep I dreamt of racing streams of ice-cold water, but it was difficult to get to
sleep. . . .
I worried about the water which I had watched dripping away on to the sand, and about
the state of our camels.1
The survivor’s first need is water. You can live forty days without food, but only three without
water. Water is life; finding water is one of your first objectives.
