Depression

On January 15th, 2009, US Airways flight #1549 departed New York City’s LaGuardia’s Airport. Within a few minutes, the plane collided with a flock of geese, taking out both engines. Captain Sully Sullenberg made an emergency landing in the chilly waters of the Hudson River. Before he left the plane and got to safety, he walked the plane twice to make sure no one was onboard. As the captain, he knew that he must be the last person on the plane. “Sully” became a national hero.

Three years later—almost to the date—on January 13th, 2012, a massive Italian cruise ship called the Costa Concordia crashed into the rocks and started to sink. An investigation would determine the cause of the crash: the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, was trying to impress a younger female dancer on board when he veered too close to danger. The ship started sinking with its 4,000-plus passengers on board.

In the confusion and chaos, Schettino escaped on to a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off the ship. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, d--- it.” Schettino later claimed that he fell into a lifeboat because the ship was listing to one side. But the court didn’t believe that story. Instead, he was found guilty of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning the ship with passengers on board. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.

In an on-line article for Leadership journal, John Ortberg discusses how adverse situations are necessary for our spiritual growth. He writes:

Psychologist Jonathon Haidt had a hypothetical exercise: Imagine that you have a child, and for five minutes you're given a script of what will be that child's life. You get an eraser. You can edit it. You can take out whatever you want.

You read that your child will have a learning disability in grade school. Reading, which comes easily for some kids, will be laborious for yours.

In high school, your kid will make a great circle of friends; then one of them will die of cancer.

After high school this child will actually get into the college they wanted to attend. While there, there will be a car crash, and your child will lose a leg and go through a difficult depression.

A few years later, your child will get a great job—then lose that job in an economic downturn.

Your child will get married, but then go through the grief of separation.

You get this script for your child's life and have five minutes to edit it.

What would you erase?

Wouldn't you want to take out all the stuff that would cause them pain?

I am part of a generation of adults called "helicopter parents," because we're constantly trying to swoop into our kid's educational life, relational life, sports life, etc., to make sure no one is mistreating them, no one is disappointing them. We want them to experience one unobstructed success after another.

One Halloween a mom came to our door to trick or treat. Why didn't she send in her kid? Well, the weather's a little bad, she said; she was driving so he didn't have to walk in the mist.

But why not send him to the door? He had fallen asleep in the car, she said, so she didn't want him to have to wake up.

I felt like saying, "Why don't you eat all his candy and get his stomach ache for him, too—then he can be completely protected!"

If you could wave a wand, if you could erase every failure, setback, suffering, and pain—are you sure it would be a good idea? Would it cause your child to grow up to be a better, stronger, more generous person? Is it possible that in some way people actually need adversity, setbacks, maybe even something like trauma to reach the fullest level of development and growth?

Ian Leitch writes in Life Before Death! A Restored, Regenerated, and Renewed Life:

A businessman asked me if I would speak to his staff, and I readily accepted. One of his staff asked me if we could talk privately. She said, "Ian, when I was 22, I was in a serious car accident, and my boyfriend was killed. I have gone through a lot of surgery and am now doing well. When that happened, I lost my faith."

What do you say to someone like that? Well, I prayed and I said, as kindly as I could, "You know, when they built the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, and the QE2, they did not test them in dry dock. They didn't leave them in dry dock and get big hoses on them to see if they would leak. They got those ships out into the open ocean to put them through sea trials. These trials were not intended to sink the ship. These trials were to prove that the ship was seaworthy. The only way you can know whether your faith is real or not is when the pressures of life come, when you go through trials. Then you know if you are seaworthy or not. Can I ask you honestly, did you lose your faith or did you find you had none?"

She said, "Ian, I guess you are right, I had none."