Dealing With Elephants

Written by Lynda Wasser

Metaphors abound to describe life’s inconveniences and heavy challenges. We all need inspiration and perhaps a different perspective to lift the weight.

It has been suggested that if you tie a baby elephant to a stake with a rope, you can restrain it the same way when it is an adult. The elephant can be programmed from an early age to believe that resistance is futile, even though it could easily break free with its adult strength.

While this might not be actually true for elephants, it can certainly be true for people! Our upbringing and circumstances can make us feel hopeless and helpless to break free of negative or harmful situations.

Like the elephant in the proverb, if only we knew our true strength and what we could do! If only we had a different perspective and could see our possibilities, it would make an impressive difference.

Is that an elephant?

It’s said that if blind men were asked to describe an elephant, their answers would vary depending on where each of them was standing. The man next to the trunk might think it was a snake, and the man next to a leg might compare it to a tree. The man next to the body might describe it as a wall, and the man next to the tail could say it’s like a rope.

And they all could be correct in their description, since they perceive it from their own perspective. But if they could step back and see the whole picture, they would quickly know, “This is an elephant!”

Experience affects perspectives

A common idiom is used when people try to tiptoe around something evident to everyone but which no one wants to talk about or acknowledge. This unpleasant or difficult topic is often called “the elephant in the room.”

Often, these problematic topics are ignored because they are sensitive subjects. After all, who wants to be the one who hurts a friend or family member? So the elephant in the room often stays, misunderstandings ensue and the whole situation becomes a weighty burden for all involved.

But like the adult elephants who are restrained by a rope and do not know they are capable of breaking free, or like the blind men who have the wrong perception based on the limited facts they know, we can easily make assumptions in our own lives. We don’t always see the obvious!

Of course, there are many reasons why we don’t see the obvious. It might be trauma from generational abuse, combat experience or something else. Yet often our “elephants” are weights that can be set aside, if we are willing.

What to do when elephants show up

In Philippians 4:6, Paul instructs us to pray and not be anxious. We can ask God to help us know how to handle another person’s seemingly unmovable weight or a problem that feels too big for us to deal with.

Often, these seemingly unmovable weights have been in families over generations, and they rear their ugly heads just when we think we’re finally ready to leave them behind.

Be encouraged because you can ask God for His tender mercy both for yourself and for your loved ones. Be specific in your prayers. Ask Him for the peace that “surpasses all understanding” (verse 7). Christ said that with faith we can move mountains (Matthew 17:20), another metaphor for dealing with life’s problems.

We can go to God and ask Him for His perspective. God uses our trials to teach us how to overcome so that we can someday help in leading a broken humanity back to the way of life God intended from the beginning. We have trials now in order to learn and grow. God promises that if we love Him, which means keeping His commandments, He will work out our problems for the best (John 14:15; Romans 8:28).

Please don’t allow yourself to get overwhelmed by the weight! While God does allow us to suffer with trials, He doesn’t want us to be overcome by them. Find comfort in the promise that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Christ was perfected by the things He suffered, and personal experience gives us a much deeper level of understanding.

Let God comfort you so you can comfort others. God comforts us so that we can comfort others in trials just like ours, restoring hope, guiding them through the way that works, so that they don’t give up either (2 Corinthians 1:4).

Elephants can be handled

You’re the only one who can control your elephant in the room, so grab the rope, climb into the saddle, charge ahead and grow from it. Let your elephant carry you forward instead of holding you back.

To learn more about growth through suffering, check out the following articles:

Photo credit: iStock.com/vicnt