If a child has the fortune to be born into a stable family, they will grow into a young adult largely insulated from the chaos of life. Part of adulthood is coming into unchaperoned life.
Adults do not have walls to protect them from the occasional but often intense exposures to what this world is capable of doing. When a person is hit with the first main crisis of their lives, they undergo a descent into degrees of sorrow of which they were perhaps not previously aware. Some never come out of it, and others escape it through the same seemingly random events that got them there. Some few actually gain an awareness of what they previously lacked, obtaining the tools required to overcome the thing that initially overcame them. These people end the experience having ascended to greater joy than they had prior to the decent into greater sorrow.
Descent can consist of many different things. Typically, it includes the revelation of a greater degree of reality beyond your previous awareness.
If you want something better than what you have, the only way to get it is for the Lord to show you that what you have isn’t as good as you thought—either by exposing you to something better or by showing you something worse about what you thought was good.
You are free to embrace what you have been shown and actively seek to incorporate what you have learned into your life, or you can attempt to flee from it.
Fleeing from increased awareness may free you from thinking about reality, but it will also free you from any chance you have of improving your outcome. Also, turning from increased understanding won’t free you from the consequences of your understanding. Falling doesn’t hurt less if you don’t realize you are falling, but realizing you are falling may give you an opportunity to stop before you hit the ground.
To maximize the amount of joy you obtain in this life, it is necessary not only to recognize the pattern of descent and ascent, but to realize that it is a cycle, and you can make as many rounds upward as you choose to.
The Lord taught that while some descent arcs come whether we seek them or not (see Matthew 5:45), we can opt to participate in more by choosing to be teachable: “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 14:11) Teachability is a factor of how honest we are about life, others, and ourselves, as well as a realistic view of how little we know.
Did Jesus experience descent? Of course he did. He had to live through the successive revelation of the impermanence and limitations of everything he valued in life, until all that was left was the goodness of the Father. Meanwhile, what he understood of the goodness of the Father increased line upon line.
Descent cycles help us improve. Pause for a moment and consider the last time you were in a great deal of pain. The pain need not be physical— emotional pain is at least as effective. How close were you to God before the onset of that pain? And during? How willing were you to find something better before? During?
While we are in a descent arc, it is much easier to seek and apply what is needed to improve. We are more willing to ask: What am I lacking that this shows me? What am I going to do about it? What is the principle that conquers this, either in removing the effect of some previously unseen cause, or in providing me understanding to allow me to experience joy in spite of this pain, or in helping me appreciate what I previously took for granted?
It is possible to be just as pliable in an ascent arc. There are those who can cry out to God with just as much earnestness outside of suffering as in it, but for most of us, this is beyond our current capability.
Suffering shows you the limit of your trust in God. Even Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered: “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;” (Hebrews 5:8)
Suffering provides you the opportunity to acquire the next level of trust in God.