Dealing with Crushing Situations through Faith and Hope — Todd Stumbo

Todd Stumbo

Todd Stumbo is a Board-Certified Human Services Practitioner, a State Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor Level II, Relapse Prevention Specialist, Certified Anger Management Specialist and a Certified Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Instructor. Todd has over a 14 years of experience in the addiction industry and currently the Chief Executive Officer at Blue Ridge Mountain Recovery Center, a short-term intensive residential facility in Ball Ground, GA that targets males and females ages 18 and up. He specializes in employee training and growth as well as program development and expansion. He is skilled in individual and group therapy focusing on education of the disease of addiction, the recovery process and relapse prevention. Todd is also versed at anger management counseling and public speaking. He has managed teams as small as 3 employees and as large as 80 employees/72 clients. He leads them in developing and adhering to day to day activities/schedules, clinical modalities, operational demands, addiction and recovery education and requirements by multiple regulatory agencies.

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Notes

Real faith produces genuine patience that can allow us to maintain good works (doing the next right thing), which promotes peace and serenity, develops a sense of hope and helps us learn to live patiently in the anticipation that things will happen exactly as they should.

Looking for Direction

1. You should look inward. Ask yourself what your beliefs are about the situation and how they may be a benefit or detriment to finding peace and resolution to the situation.

2. You should look upward. Turn to God or a Higher Power for direction. Begin to have faith.

3. You should look backward. Ask yourself what you have done in the past during times like this and the turn out of it. Was it good, bad….should you do something different this time.

4. You should look forward. Determine the consequences of the different actions you can take and develop a choice that gives you hope for the future. Finding hope may mean doing the most difficult thing.

Four “Don’ts” as we deal with what to “Be” during difficult times

1. Don’t focus on the situation or you will be filled with anger and/or anxiety. This will ultimately destroy your faith and hope for the future.

2. Don’t focus on yourself or you will be filled with self-pity. This will create feelings of inadequacy, low self-worth and low self-esteem.

3. Don’t focus on blaming or you will begin to complain. This will create feelings of resentment and entitlement.

4. Don’t dwell on the past or future or you will miss the point of what God or your Higher Power is wishing to achieve or teach you in your life.

If you can’t let go of your past you can never accept the present, if you can’t accept the present you will struggle to have a future.

“BE’S”

1. Be Patient

Patient- the word stresses non-retaliation. It means to hold one’s spirit in check. It implies the ability to keep calm and cool for a long time without exhibiting frustration with difficult circumstances. It means to be long-tempered and longsuffering.

Patience promotes faith and hope in God or your Higher Power. It can help develop self-esteem, self-worth and courage.

Proverbs 25:28 “Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls.”

Being patient in difficult circumstances means we deliberately allow God or our Higher Power to handle the situation in His/Their own way and on His/Their own time. This helps us develop healthy anticipation for our future. It can begin to reduce anxiety and the feeling of the need to try to control.

If we have faith and hope that God or our Higher Power will help us work through our issues it can be the path that makes the present bearable.

With a lack of faith and hope we live in fear of the past and the anxiety of the future. Our serenity and peace are compromised, and we begin to repeat behaviors that have gotten us to where we were most lost and misdirected.

When we as parents and loved ones, feel lost and misdirected, we seek relief. That relief often comes from denial, rationalization and or control. That relief, long term, creates more feelings of misdirection and emptiness which is the opposite of faith and hope. We need to learn to be patient in these times and turn our focus to God or our Higher Power and seek spiritual growth and relief instead of falling victim to physical destruction, emotional turmoil and spiritual depression due to our need for our loved one to be ok.

Being patient may not produce any visible evidence of growing or relief immediately but internally and spiritually much work is being done (Farmer and crops example). Waiting periods are never without trials and testing.

2. Be Firm

When we are in a waiting period it is easy to become irritated and frustrated. Some of us turn to holding grudges, murmuring and grumbling. There is also potential within us to become very bitter and resentful towards others.

“Establish your hearts”- your self-talk can reveal different parts of your heart. It can prompt you to behave in ways that can become conflicting which lowers your self-esteem. You need to focus on aligning your actions with what you know to be right. It will strengthen your being. It will create an inner sense of stability and will help you establish decisive actions. It is your personal duty to develop an attitude of courage and firmness in facing your circumstances.

Establish principles.

3. Be Clean

Do not grumble against one another. The word grumble means to sigh with an inner unexpressed feeling. When the pressures of life mount there is a temptation to divide. When we are going through difficult times in life we tend to look at people around us and become resentful and judgmental. I encourage you to start to look inside and be clean.

4. Be Aware

Be aware and prepare for troubling times and suffering. Having struggles in life is a natural process that is meant to promote growth if one has learned to be patient, be firm and be clean. If they have not it can cause self-destruction.

Suffering can be unexplainable at times and most of us naturally want to grumble about it. We must learn to have the right actions during the difficult times. Unfortunately, people suffer a lot of times not because they were doing anything wrong but because they chose to do what was right. This is called character.

Kent Hughes wrote, “Our moral development, our character, is largely dependent upon the experience of suffering. Without trials we would be morally dwarfed. The study of the lives of great people reveals there is a consistent link between the crucible and true greatness.”

Basically, most great achievers experience great suffering.

Malcom Muggeridge wrote, “Suppose you eliminated suffering, what a dreadful place the world would be. I would almost rather eliminate happiness. The world would be the ghastliest place because everything that corrects the tendency of this unspeakable little creature, man, to feel over-important and over-pleased with himself would disappear. He’s bad enough now, but he would be absolutely intolerable if he never suffered.”

Having hope for your future will create faith in yourself and your Higher Power. Having this faith toughens your ability to endure suffering and troubling times which will cause you to be more compassionate to others who struggle. This compassion is seen by others around you and it is contagious. Three of the most influential things in life are having hope, having faith and showing love.

In Closing:

We must realize that having patience, firmness in what we stand for, a clean side of the street and awareness of struggles can always help us maintain out integrity. If we can maintain our integrity, we will be able to accomplish doing right action during the trials and tribulations we face in our lives. If we maintain the right actions our recovery is much safer, and we slowly begin to build our character and our character promotes our self-esteem to be more positive.