where Billy and Ruth will eventually be buried. Billy has said that
sometimes the mental, physical, and spiritual pressures on him
have been so great that “I felt like going to the Cove and lying
down in the cemetery to see how I fit.”
Yet after that wry comment, Billy added, “God has called me
to my responsibilities, and I must be faithful.” This is no easy men-
tal turnaround, for being faithful has its requirements. Billy also
speaks about his being “constantly concerned about being quoted
in the press and perhaps saying the wrong thing.”
The cost of leadership accentuates sufferings and anxieties,
and shallow prescriptions only disappoint. This Billy knows
only too well. “I must admit I feel very inadequate at times
when talking about God’s discipline through pain,” he says.
“I’ve been close to those who have lost their children in acci-
dents or lingering illnesses.... I have been with leaders whose
careers were ruined by their own bad choices. I have been in
areas devastated by earthquakes, fires, and bombs. When those
I love have suffered, I have wished I could take their pain as
my own.”
He does not want to be presumptuous when speaking of suf-
fering when he contrasts his with the depths of others’ travail.
But he does offer hope and turns for personal inspiration to the
Bible and examples of believers, without which, he “would be as
inadequate to write about suffering as a child would be to explain
nuclear physics.”
A model for him is the early church’s most dynamic and effec-
tive leader, the apostle Paul. Billy says that “when it comes to all
sorts of suffering, Paul was in the major leagues.”
Indeed, he was. Billy quotes Paul’s own description of being
dishonored, hungry, thirsty, in rags, brutally treated, homeless,
cursed, slandered—and considered the scum of the earth. Yet for
all Paul’s “devastating physical sufferings,” it’s significant that Billy
points out Paul felt even greater pressure as he thought of his
responsibilities as a leader.
“If any of you are leaders,” Billy wrote, “you know the kind
of pressure Paul was describing. Humanly speaking, it can lead to
Experiencing Trauma and Betrayal