Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 179:714 (Apr 2022)
Article: The Meaning-Making Model: Helping Others Find Their Way Through Suffering
Author: M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

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The Meaning-Making Model: Helping Others Find Their Way Through Suffering*

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall is Professor of Psychology at Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, La Mirada, California.

* This is the second article in the four-part series “Suffering and the Christian Life: The Hard Road to Glory,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2–5, 2021.

This publication was made possible through the support of grant #6147, Christian Meaning-Making, Suffering and the Flourishing Life, from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. I am indebted to my grant team members: Crystal Park, Jason McMartin, Kelly Kapic, Eric Silverman, Jamie Aten, and Laura Shannonhouse. I am also grateful for feedback on an earlier draft of the article from Kelly Kapic, Rick Langer, Jason McMartin, and Ken Berding.

On a lovely fall afternoon seven years ago, I received an email inviting me to be a plenary speaker at a conference, with a specific request to speak on the topic of suffering and growth. I had written an article on that topic several years before but had since then been concentrating on other topics, so I quickly sent back my regrets. A couple of hours later I received a call from the conference organizer, encouraging me to reconsider and providing some reasons that proved to be compelling. I agreed to speak at the conference, which was about a year and a half in the future, and also write a book chapter. Less than a month later, out of the blue, I was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. Although in my head I knew, based on the statistics, that I had a decent chance of surviving my cancer, my gut wasn’t as convinced. I was terrified that I was going to leave my teenage boys motherless and my husband wifeless. For the first time in my life, I had symptoms of both depression and anxiety. I spent the following year in treatment for

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cancer, wrestling with God and thinking about the topic of suffering and growth “from the inside,” and that chapter and conference presentation have led me into my current involvement in research on this week’s topic of finding meaning in suffering. God in his mercy did allow me to survive my cancer, and seven years later, I’m cancer-free, and the chances of a recurrence are fairly low. But in many ways my life has changed, for the better in some ways, and for the worse in others.

I share my story not because there is anything remarkable in it; my suffering is fairly minor ...