A Brother Born For Adversity

The day started before the day did.

I’d worked overnight for the daylight saving time change, which in my line of work means sitting up through an hour that happens twice, making sure the medication systems and timed doses don’t do anything unpredictable (or stupid) when the clocks roll back. I got very little sleep. And then the actual first workday of the week began, and somehow it got worse from there the next day.

It was one of those days that goes so badly it almost becomes theatrical. Everything that could go wrong did. People came at me demanding more than I could reasonably give, some of them self-centered, a couple of them borderline aggressive. A few took advantage of whatever goodwill I had left. Deadlines piled on top of each other. Responsibilities landed on me that were beyond what one person could carry on top of an already demanding load. I forgot to eat until the day was nearly gone. I didnt feel great. And somewhere in the middle of it all, I opened my banking app and remembered that an entire paycheck now goes straight to student loans and child support, which is to say, it was gone before it arrived.

I’ve been trying, lately, to let people into days like that instead of white-knuckling them alone. So I reached out.

A few people answered with offers to “be there.” What came back was a string of canned prayers. Praying for you! A heart emoji. A verse about strength. Another prayer about God’s provision. I know they meant it kindly. And a couple of others actually made time for me, which I appreciated, but once we were talking it became clear that their own lives were so full of stress there wasn’t any room in the conversation for mine. Within a few minutes we were talking about their days instead.

As I hung up the phone, I collapsed in my living room and felt more alone than I had in a long time.

And then I felt guilty for feeling it. God was with me. I believe that down to my bones. So why the loneliness? Was I expecting other people to carry something that wasn’t theirs to carry? And if not, what would it even look like for someone to stand with me in a day like that? What’s a reasonable thing to hope for from the people in my life?

Near the end of his last letter, writing from prison, Paul says something: “At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me” (2 Timothy 4:16-17).

There’s two things here: The people he’d hoped would come didn’t come. And the Lord stood by him. Paul doesn’t pretend the second cancels the first. He names the desertion, he extends grace to the deserters, and he testifies that God was there. The loneliness and the presence of God sat side by side in that Roman courtroom.

That helped me way more than I expected.

I think I’d absorbed a belief that if I really trusted God’s presence, I wouldn’t feel the absence of people. Paul trusted God’s presence about as fully as anyone ever has. He still noticed who wasn’t there.

“My brothers are treacherous as a torrent-bed, as torrential streams that pass away… In time of heat they disappear; when it is hot, they vanish from their place. The caravans turn aside from their course; they go up into the waste and perish… They are ashamed because they were confident; they come there and are disappointed” (Job 6:15-20).

He’s describing a wadi, a desert streambed that runs full in the rainy season and goes bone dry in summer. Travelers plan their routes around them. They walk for days counting on that water, and when they finally get there, parched, there’s nothing but cracked mud.

I’d been counting on the wadi. I’d done the hard work of reaching out, which doesn’t come naturally to me, and when I got there it was dry.

But heres the other thing about a wadi, too: It runs when it has water. It dries up when it doesn’t. The people who sent canned prayers may well have been in their own summer.

That doesn’t make the disappointment less, but it does make it less personal.

“Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda” (Proverbs 25:20).

I don’t think the people who sent me a verse and a neatly wrapped prayer were trying to sing at me. But I recognized the feeling. When you’re cold to the bone, someone handing you something cheerful can feel a lot like having your coat pulled off. It isn’t that the words are untrue. It’s that they’re the wrong thing for the moment, and they can leave you colder than before.

Job’s friends, for all their later failures, actually got the beginning right.

When they first came to him, “they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great” (Job 2:13). It was only when they opened their mouths that they became, in Job’s words, “miserable comforters” (16:2).

Sometimes the best thing a friend can offer isn’t a prayer or a verse. It’s a willingness to sit on the ground for a while.

What does a good friend actually do, then?

I’m going to be honest–I am trying to figure this out still. But the closest definition I know (so far) comes from a single verse about Jonathan. David was on the run from Saul, hiding in the wilderness of Ziph, and “Jonathan, Saul’s son, rose and went to David at Horesh, and strengthened his hand in God” (1 Samuel 23:16).

I love every part of that sentence. Jonathan rose and went. He took the initiative and came to David, in the middle of a manhunt led by his own father. And what he did when he got there wasn’t to fix David’s situation or carry it for him. He strengthened his hand in God. He tightened David’s grip on the One who could actually hold him.

Then the next verses tell us they made a covenant, “and David remained at Horesh, and Jonathan went home” (23:18). The visit ended. Jonathan didn’t move into the cave. He came, he strengthened, he left.

I think that’s closer to a healthy expectation than anything I’d been carrying in my head. Not someone who absorbs my whole day. Someone who comes, sits for a while, and leaves me holding on to God a little more firmly than before.

“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). And elsewhere, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (17:17).

Born for adversity.

Some relationships exist for good weather, and that’s fine. Not every friendship is built to bear weight. But some people, the Proverbs suggest, are made for exactly the kind of day I’d just had.

That said: I may have reached out to many companions instead of a few brothers.

When I finally decided to let people in, I cast a wide net, and a wide net mostly catches people who are fond of you rather than people who’ve been tested with you. That isn’t their fault.It may be mine, in where I’ve been investing.

Paul also shows what it looks like when it goes right.

He tells the Philippians, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” (Philippians 4:11). He’d learned to need nothing. And then, three verses later, he says: “Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble” (4:14).

The Greek word there is built on koinōnia, fellowship, partnership, holding something in common. They didn’t take his trouble away. They shared in it. And Paul, who could do all things through Christ, was grateful. His contentment in God and his gratitude for friends who came alongside weren’t in competition. One didn’t make the other unnecessary.

That’s what I’d been missing in my own guilt. Feeling lonely when friends don’t show up doesn’t mean I’ve failed to find my contentment in God. Paul had both.

So what’s fair to reasonably expect?

I think it’s fair to hope someone will come, the way Jonathan came. I think it’s fair to hope they’ll sit on the ground with me before they start talking. I think it’s fair to hope that, when they leave, I’ll be holding on to God a little tighter than when they arrived.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect any one person to carry the full weight of a day like that one. And I don’t think it’s fair to expect people who are in their own dry season to have water for me. Some of the people who answered me were doing the absolute best they had.

What I’m taking from that awful day isn’t a lesson about expecting less. It’s more like a lesson about where to dig. Fewer wells, maybe, and deeper. People I’ve walked with long enough that they know what my cold days look like. People I’d go to at Horesh if they were the ones in hiding.

And on the days when nobody comes at all, I’m learning to say what Paul said: If no one stood by me, may it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me.