“On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden & Gift of Living”
by Alan Noble
Wow. This was a favorite read of mine this year. I just finished it for the second time. Isn’t it a beautiful cover?! Don’t let the brevity of the book (104 pages) fool you – this book is full of life-changing, inspiring and motivating insight. It’s like a warm hug that doesn’t let go, and a gentle but firm push to keep going when you think you can’t go any further.
This book addresses suffering, whether it’s related to a mental illness, tragedy, or simply the mundanity of life that feels meaningless. Alan Noble writes that we all experience some form of suffering at some point in our lives and that we must be able to answer the question: why should I get out of bed?
One thing I really liked about this book is that Noble actually gives us the answer as to why we should get out of bed! I won’t spoil it by sharing it here – you should go read the book –but I feel like so often authors use flowery language to get you to think about and figure out the answer for yourself. Noble actually gives us the answer in multiple places in the book and we have to decide if his answer is our answer.
In Christian circles, I feel like we often gloss over suffering, try to wrap it up and put a pretty bow on top. We see it as God-ordained, that good will come of it and we need to just put up and shut up, if you will, and wait for the “good” part, the life lesson, the closer relationship to Jesus that will come from it. On the other hand, we can fall into pits of despair, only seeing our suffering and not the beauty and goodness we bring to the world. This book gently, but firmly pushes back against the falling into the pit of despair. But the warm hug that doesn’t let go comes in by normalizing the experience of suffering to every human being, acknowledging that suffering is hard, and is not something to be simply glossed over with spiritual language.
I’m often telling my clients that our experience of our emotions are real, but that doesn’t mean they’re representative of truth. Noble agrees, and encourages us not to “feel right but to act right.” Even when we don’t feel gratitude or that our lives are purposeful or gifts, we can still choose to act on the truth that they are gifts. In this way, in being faithful by “doing the next right thing,” by getting out of bed, we live out our purpose and testify that life is worth living despite suffering. By doing this, “we honor God and His creation, we testify to His goodness and this is worship.”
I really appreciated Noble’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, what is often known as the “love” chapter, and how it relates to loving ourselves, something I had never considered before. I also appreciated his remarks on 1 Peter 5:6-9, and his explanation as to what it really means to “cast all your anxieties on Him,” rather than shaming us out of feeling anxious, as it can so often be used in Christian circles.
He also emphasizes the crucial role of community, and the importance of helping others, but also letting them help us when we truly need it. When I think of the strongest people I know, they are people who have experienced great suffering and usually with little or no resolution to the situation that brought the suffering. And yet they continue to get out of bed each morning. Is that not the very definition of emotional strength? These people are testament to me, of the goodness and worthwhile-ness of life, even when it does not feel the least bit good or worthwhile. In the final chapter, Noble writes: “The task before us is to hold each other up, to remind one another of the truth that is truer than our deepest misery, to attend to the gift God has given us, and to accept that our lives are good even when we do not feel that goodness at all.”
