There’s a story of a man who was given a choice of how to go through his last stretch of unbearable suffering – either to endure patiently for one more year, or to be in hell where he would complete the trial in three hours. Three hours of anything seemed like a piece of cake compared to a year, so he chose that, only to find that three hours in hell felt literally like ages. The time warp again.
The time warp has me dreading the day filled with so many hours of distress. One more, okay, if that’s the last one. But 14 ahead of me? Not to mention the long night following.
Distress skews time perception. The acute awareness of minutes passing is different from how time normally flows beneath awareness. Distress itself doesn’t take me “down into the pit,” but engaging with the thoughts that it generates, that’s despair.
Despair’s voice is firm: “I can’t do this.” Despair has no life and is only a dead end. Now this is the tip-off and signal to switch gears. But how is that possible when paralyzed by despair? The key is that the flow of healing grace that breaks the spell comes from God, not me. Prayer becomes the means to continually draw on that precious resource.
I practice first recognizing a thought that goes nowhere but down into the pit of despair (either coming from myself or the evil one).
Then to interrupt it with the Jesus prayer. This goes on all day. Aha! So this is how those hours and minutes can be repurposed, in a sense. Reach for the jar of honey – Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Stabbing pain – Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. The day is an endless prayer rope.
Now what follows is this: What if instead of that dreadful anticipation of so much time for distress, the “so much time” could be a gift to look forward to – time to praise God, time to transform my confused, distorted mindset, time to renew myself in the spirit of God – another opportunity for opening to the glory of God every hour of this day that otherwise would seem like a harrowing eternity?
The monks at the monastery deliberately sleep less so as to pray more. Well, I have my ascesis built in. The sufferings that in one way are a terrible liability in worldly life in another way become gifts of support for spiritual life. It’s unfathomable and just words until living it and discovering it within, each moment of opening the heart to God however it is given.
May it Be Blessed: An Orthodox journal 