Keion Henderson - The Smell of Struggle

I want to talk about this subject, and I know it won’t make sense until I’m done, but let’s discuss the smell of struggle. A study was done not too long ago on the survival rates of people who encountered cardiac arrest. Now, I’m no doctor, but let me say from the outset that there is a significant difference between cardiac arrest and a heart attack. A heart attack occurs when blood flow to the heart is blocked, which is starkly different from cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest simply happens when, unexpectedly, the heart stops beating. That’s why, when you see someone experiencing a cardiac arrest, they pull out something called a defibrillator. Why do they do that? Because a heart attack is about flow, while a cardiac arrest situation is about electricity.

In all of our bodies, there are electrical currents, which is why, when a person’s heart has experienced a cardiac arrest or some sort of attack, they can implant a pacemaker inside, and the heart can still beat. The pacemaker is an electronic device sending the necessary electricity to ensure that the heart remains sustainable. Thus, there’s a difference between a heart attack, which involves flow, and cardiac arrest, which involves electricity; one is circulation and the other is electricity.

They conducted a fascinating study with 114 people who experienced a cardiac arrest episode, and here are the findings. Remember these findings: regardless of health, regardless of age, regardless of gender—none of those factors mattered. It didn’t matter if it was a man or a woman, young or old, rich or poor, black or white. They studied those 114 people, and here’s what they discovered: nobody survived when the response time was longer than six minutes.

So, not the severity of the heart episode, not the gender of the person, not the eating habits, nor the health—none of those were the deciding factors in whether a person survived; it was based solely on the response time. Every person who lived received help, on average, in less than two minutes. Therefore, when we look at it, we understand that surviving a cardiac episode, although health is important for maintaining a healthy heart, hinges mainly on response time.

Today, I want to talk to you about why it is possible that you’re not surviving what you’re going through, and it may be in your mind because of all the trauma you’ve endured in your life. This trauma needs to be acknowledged, and perhaps it is because you don’t have the money you think you need, or maybe you lack the connections you believe are essential, or perhaps you don’t have the friendships you feel you require.

When you observe how others have responded and consider what they had to respond with, and then you calibrate your life by measuring what you have, you may realize you’re missing everything that is present in their lives. You might think that your circumstances result from not having what they have or not coming from where they came from. But let me tell you the difference between those who survived and those who didn’t is not what they have, it’s not who they are, but how they respond.

Today, I want to discuss your response time—how quickly you react to what is happening to you. I’ve learned that it is more about our response. Here’s what C.S. Lewis said: the greatest thing we can do is to stop defining the unpleasant things in our lives as interruptions. He stated that what we call an interruption is what God calls real life.

Now, I’m going to take my time on this one. He said that the biggest issue you and I face is that we keep viewing our episodes as interruptions. We see losing a job as an interruption; being rushed to the hospital feels like an interruption; needing to get our children extra help and tutoring seems like an interruption. We perceive arguments with our spouses as interruptions to happiness. We become upset with life, with people, and with God because these situations dared to interrupt our flow. But God says what you have called an interruption, I call real life. I call it real life; I call it real life.

There is nothing you are going through that is extraordinary; I call it real life. Being sick sometimes is a part of real life. Breaking up may be hard to do, but it is a part of real life. Having children you don’t understand is a part of real life. Losing a job is a part of real life. Stop viewing it as an interruption and start regarding it as direction because everything you lose points to that which God wants you to gain.