This piece is from the Young Writer’s Cohort. They were asked to write about a season of suffering or a really difficult trial and share what they learned through it.
While taking lab classes in college, I would often perform a procedure called ‘centrifugation’ where a liquid is placed in a tube that is spun at high speeds. My life has often felt like that tube, especially when facing rejections that closed the doors on my dreams.
For the longest time, I have dreamt of one future and one future only. It has been a dream that forced its way into my heart as a young child who read a book about a missionary involved in medical missions. Her story inspired me to dream of being a physician one day. That childhood dream felt so simple as a six-year-old, and yet growing older has shown me both how much I truly love medicine and how difficult it is to pursue that dream. In high school and college, I was forced to reconsider this dream as I was met with rejection. Doors that needed to be open for me to become a physician remained shut. And yet, after each closed door, this dream has always stayed in my heart.
After graduating college and navigating multiple hurdles, I applied for medical school. My dream finally felt tangible and exciting. That is, until a few months later. I received letters that closed the door on this path once again. Letters of rejection that made me run to God and reflect on the rejections that I have faced.
Rejection has always made me wonder who I am. Although I know success should not define me, rejection makes me feel inadequate and is a source of fear. This fear worsens exponentially as I wonder what others will think of me when they find out that I have been rejected yet again. The doubts, unmet desires, and constant changes that come with rejection have made it a time of suffering for me and a reflection of the spinning of centrifugation.
However, I have to admit that centrifugation is about more than just the spinning. The interesting part of centrifugation is watching the procedure itself which is actually quite satisfying. Centrifugation is used to separate different components of a liquid, such as DNA, from the other parts we don’t need. Especially when different colors appear in the liquid, a beautiful layering comes out of this process.
In the end, there is clarity and organization. I have seen this process of centrifugation reflected in my experiences of rejection and suffering through Christ. Just as Jesus faced suffering on the cross by being rejected for our sake, His work in my life has abounded during seasons of rejection. After the spinning seasons of life, I’ve found the remains of my centrifugation to be His virtues. Hardship ultimately produced renewed faith but also hope and love by grace alone.
So, through the closed doors that I have faced, God has grown in me the three virtues that are said to remain in 1 Corinthians 13:13 [NIV], “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
1. Faith: the Questioning
I used to believe that forcing faith was the only way to respond to suffering. My prayers would be filled with fake phrases of “but only if it is according to your will” when I hoped the difficulty would end. Those prayers would come from my head but wouldn’t quite reach my heart. This became more and more challenging as I realized that I was building up bitterness by repressing my frustrations.
I slowly found that the more I knew God, the more I wanted to go to Him while facing difficulties. I no longer wanted to go before Him with empty words of fake faith, but with honest words. However, I didn’t know how to go before God honestly without the fear of Him rebuking my lack of faith.
This was my struggle while facing medical school rejection letters. I struggled especially because I knew that God was good and that He cared for me while I also knew that my dreams were for good things. I wondered why my good God would say ‘no’ (even if it was “no for now”) to my good dreams. During that time, my church began a Bible reading challenge and I read Habakkuk for the first time. I was shocked that the passages I was reading were in the Bible.
The most surprising part to me was that God never rebuked Habakkuk for asking Him questions that felt so impertinent. While encouraging Habakkuk’s questioning, God also cultivated faith in Habakkuk that went against his outlook of despondence by revealing God’s character of greatness.
Habakkuk ends the book not with the fake faith I started with but with true faith in God. Habakkuk wrestles with God honestly and ends with a heart of faith that is clearly given to him by God. He says that even while facing the coming challenges, “yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” – Habakkuk 3:18 [ESV]
I realized that I needed to let go of my fake faith and acknowledge the brokenness of my feelings too. Instead of wishing away the fear and anxiety in my heart, I needed to wrestle with God as Habakkuk did for faith and peace in His plans and timing.
2. Hope: the Wishing
One of the biggest ways that God’s gift of faith has manifested itself in my life is through hope. Hardship is infinitely harder with a root of false hope. I began to question whether or not my hope was false while reading through the book of Job. As Job focuses on themes of grief and lament, I was surprised to find that Job’s friends would often share hopeful but incorrect ideas. False hope was clearly not the solution for lament.
In college, I held onto false hope all too often. This hope felt right to me (and was an easy coping mechanism for discouragement) because I knew that God would ultimately redeem all situations. I believed that the hope of the Sunday school story of Job, was that Job had all of his losses returned to him with bonuses too. This belief came crashing down when I faced failure in college and my false hope didn’t come to fruition. I didn’t know what God’s answer of “no” meant for my hope.
Recently, while thinking through failure and rejection again, I finally found true encouragement in Job’s story. I realized that God’s gift to Job was not found in the last chapter, as his losses are restored, but rather throughout the book. The hope of the book of Job is found in the fact that not only can I speak to God while facing difficulties, but He Himself speaks to me too.
So, I don’t have to merely hold on to hope that my circumstances will change but that my God Himself is with me as I feel the pain and the hurt. God is the only truly faithful listener as He hears my cries while He proves that He is in control of all things. Job’s story and God’s response pointed me toward Christ on the cross suffering on earth, as God being with us. By reducing my hope to only the changing of my present circumstances, I was losing sight of my ultimate hope in Heaven of God’s eternal presence. Realizing this refocused what truly matters for me. This has been immensely comforting to me while processing the redirection of my path to medicine.
3. Love: the Abiding
Romans 5:5 says, “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” [ESV]
Experiencing God’s deep love has ultimately allowed me to grow my faith, hope, and love in the midst of trials. Suffering has revealed God’s love to me in a way nothing else has. God’s love feels almost “normal” when life is going well and I am not struggling. However, when God is with me in suffering, his love challenges so much of what I believe love is.
God’s love is not a band-aid fix to my heart issues. God’s love is not a snap of His fingers to make my bad circumstances disappear. His love is His presence as He provides me with the faith and hope I need to continue. God’s love is powerful enough for our broken world. He allows me to face the effects of sin while never leaving me alone to face them. As I’ve experienced more of God’s love carrying me through hardship, my love has grown too.
My love has especially grown in church. In the book of Philippians, Paul calls the church his “joy” as he writes that they chose to “share his troubles” by partnering with him in his ministry. This really connected with me as the entire book of Philippians is focused on the theme of joy in suffering. However, Paul says that one of the most important reasons to rejoice is because of the love of the body of Christ. It’s so beautiful to think that God gives us the church also for our joy in love.
I have experienced this love uniquely during challenging times. My church family remembering the food I love or important dates in my life means so much during difficult seasons. Suffering has really shown me the beauty of the church in a new way. Others pouring into me when I need comfort the most has allowed me to also grow in love. Understanding what failure feels like and what grief feels like, I have grown in understanding what love feels like and that has made me a more loving member of my church.
1 Corinthians 13 says that love is the greatest virtue because it lasts forever. It doesn’t end in Heaven but rather continues. So, the virtues that God has shaped in my heart through trials are ones that have weight beyond my short time on earth. Love abiding in my heart because of suffering is the ultimate gift.
At the end of the day, the spinning of life is difficult. Closed doors are not what I would have chosen as they took me through the high-speed disorientation of centrifugation on my journey toward my dream of medicine. However, the centrifugation does do its job. So, when you face the next rejection in life, would you join me in pursuing these virtues through it all? I am sure the remains of our hardship will be the abiding virtues of God of faith, hope, and love through His sanctifying work in our hearts.
Photo Credit: Thor Alvis