How Do You Respond to Tragedy?

We all face it eventually. The moment when life doesn't go as planned and circumstances blindside us, when we're forced to confront something we never saw coming. It might be a job loss, a death, a diagnosis, or any number of things that shake the foundation we thought was solid.

When tragedy hits, we have a choice in how we respond to it. And that choice, even more than the tragedy itself, is what defines who we become.

When tragedy strikes, we typically respond in one of two ways. The first is what I call the path of resistance—the natural, human response. It looks like anger and regret. It brings hurt, doubt, and those questions that plague us: Why me? Why did this happen? What did I do to deserve this? This path leads us to sadness, apathy, and envy. It can become the foundation of fear and stress.

Then there's a second path—one that requires something most of us have to deliberately choose. When we're God-focused, we can respond to tragedy with peace, relief, gratefulness, confidence, and the sense that we are cared for. This path brings strength for perseverance. It makes us patient. It develops appreciation for life and its blessings.

And here's what might seem impossible: we can even experience happiness and joy in spite of the tragedy. Not because the tragedy is good, but because we're not allowing it to define everything about us.

I learned this the hard way when I was fired from my job. In that moment, I had a choice. I could spiral into shame, regret, and the story that I was a failure. Or I could look for what God was doing beneath the surface. When I chose the second path, when I was willing to be God-focused rather than pain-focused, I found my WHY. That tragedy ended up strengthening my faith in ways I never could have anticipated.

This isn't just an idea for me, it's tangible. I volunteer with the PARC, an organization that serves people experiencing homelessness here in Amarillo. These are people who live in tragedy every single day. They're vulnerable to the elements. They're vulnerable to predators—people who would use and abuse them. Everything about their environment is unforgiving. Many of them struggle with mental illness and resort to self-medication just to survive. They exist in a constant state of crisis that most of us can barely imagine.

What I've learned from them is that the difference between the two responses to tragedy is stark. When people who are homeless get to see both paths clearly, when they can observe the difference and speak into it, when they can see it from both perspectives, something changes in their understanding.

It helps them look at their own lives and see how a single different choice, one turn in a different direction, might have meant they avoided the catastrophic events that others are suffering through. They begin to understand that their current suffering isn't necessarily the end of their story.

One young man I met this week stands out in my mind. He showed up cleaned up, wearing shoes when he typically doesn't. I'd seen him over three years, watching him make slow progress, baby steps toward healing. Two steps forward, one step back. The kind of struggle you can see on someone's face and in their body.

He's the most highly intelligent person I've ever come across in my life. Quiet. Hard to hear. But there's an intensity and a quickness to how he speaks when he does, and then he reflects inward, thinking deeply about what he's saying.

We were discussing the book of Job, how Job was considered righteous not because he avoided complaint, but because he complained only to God, never to others. God called him faithful even in tragedy. This young man quoted a chapter of Job verbatim and understood the context. Not from any formal education, but from his own search for meaning.

Then he talked about how much he loathes himself. How far from God he realized he'd become. Having that realization put him right at the precipice where he could finally see that God is everything he needs. A tragedy (his mother's death) had held him in this place of profound brokenness for so long. I don't know the whole story, but it's a wound that goes deep. What I do know is that he's fighting toward healing.

At the PARC, there's a constant spirit of welcoming. You get to witness transformation. People moving from a place of complete shame and rejection to a place of acceptance. You also witness a lot of people who don't improve and who stay stuck. The difference isn't always circumstance, it's often their response to it.

When tragedy comes to you—and it will—you'll have that moment. That split second where you choose your path. You can choose the natural response of anger and regret and spiraling fear. Or you can choose to look for what God is doing beneath the surface. You can choose to see that He cares for you, that He's building something in you through this, that your job isn't to avoid the pain but to find purpose in it.

The people living on the streets of Amarillo have taught me this more clearly than anyone else could have. They've shown me that tragedy isn't destiny. It's a teacher, if we're willing to learn. And the response we choose to that tragedy becomes our foundation for everything that comes next.