Surviving Our Troubles, Part 1

Surviving Our Troubles: “Solution Talk”

One day when Jesus was in Jerusalem for one of the Jewish feasts, he took a side trip to the pool of Bethesda -- a pool that purportedly had healing powers. (Tradition said that on occasion an angel would stir the waters and the first one in the water after that stirring would be healed.) As a result of the pool’s reputation and its covered colonnades, it became a gathering place for a “great number of disabled people -- the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.”

One of the pool’s patrons was a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Standing over the cripple, Jesus asked him: “Do you want to get well?” Jesus’ question -- which deserved a hearty: “Of course!” -- was answered with a weak complaint: “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” This man, who was broken in body and in soul, kept returning to the pool out of habit, not out of hope.

Why did Jesus ask such an obvious question? Because not everyone wants to get well. As I was recently waiting in a doctor’s office, I overheard two women try to top each other’s stories from their medical history -- “Well, I had surgery one time and had to stay in the hospital for 3 months!” I could tell that they both relished telling their painful stories. But were they interested in getting well? I’m not sure.
Why don’t sick people want to get well? Because solving problems is hard work. It is easier to whimper over your friend’s rejection than to forgive her and seek reconciliation. It is easier to moan about your fatigue than to develop an exercise program that will restore your energy. It is easier to commiserate with the complainers than to enlist with the committed. It is easier to discard a dying marriage than to learn how to love again. It is easier to stay depressed than to change the thought patterns that feed your sadness. It is easier to criticize the ministries of your church than to join one of those ministries and try to make a difference.

Psychologist and author Mary Pypher’s counseling philosophy is based on “solution talk” rather than “problem talk.” The person who wants to get well is the person who fixes his eyes on solutions: “Lord how should I view this situation differently? What actions can I take to begin solving this problem? Don't let me merely fuss or fret. Show me how to survive this ordeal.”