The Unlikely Gift of Crisis: Finding the 'Must-Be-Addressed' in the Unforeseen

Life has a way of throwing curveballs—sometimes they’re just unexpected, and sometimes, they feel like catastrophic meteor strikes. These are the moments that stop us in our tracks: the sudden job loss, the shocking diagnosis, the natural disaster. They are moments of trauma, of deep disruption where we have no control over the event itself.

It’s human nature to look back at these awful events and try to find a silver lining. But what if the "silver lining" isn't some grand cosmic lesson, but rather the stark, undeniable visibility of something that has always been there, just hidden from view? What if the crisis wasn't the bad thing, but the loud, insistent alarm bell for an even worse thing that needed to be addressed immediately?

This is a concept my family knows intimately.

The Flood, The Back Pain, and The “Christmas Tree”

In October 2018, my world shifted on its axis, but the event that kicked it all off was entirely different. Our house flooded. It was a massive, exhausting ordeal of cleanup and repair. After days of heavy lifting and moving, my husband, Rhett, began complaining of persistent, dull back pain that simply would not go away. Finally, after my encouragement, he went to the doctor to get it checked out. The doctor ordered an X-ray, and when the results came back, the physician described it in an unforgettable way: The X-ray of your spine, he said, "lit up like a Christmas tree." The unexpected discovery? Multiple Myeloma, a form of blood cancer that affects the bone marrow, the spongy tissue inside bones where blood cells are produced. It is a diagnosis that is frightening, incurable, but, crucially, treatable long-term if caught early enough.

The back pain Rhett experienced from the physical labor of cleaning up the flood wasn't an injury; it was the signal—the alarm—that something far more serious was quietly and dangerously progressing inside him. If not for the flood, the back pain would never have been aggravated enough, soon enough, to prompt that fateful doctor’s visit. We would have simply gone on with our lives, blissfully unaware, until the cancer was far more advanced.

The awful event—the flood—forced an urgent and life-saving discovery. It led us to an important thing that needed to be addressed that we wouldn't have known about otherwise.

The One Thing We Control: Our Narrative

When something terrible happens, it’s not the trauma itself that determines our future, it’s the story we tell ourselves about the trauma. This is where we seize back control.

We could have gone down a dark path:

• We could have told ourselves, "This is because of the flood. We should have never bought this house." (Blame)

• We could have told Rhett, "This is your fault for working too hard before and after the flood." (Guilt)

• We could have collectively decided, "We are victims. The universe is against us." (Victimhood)

Any one of those stories would have poisoned our spirits, divided our focus, and made the difficult, multi-year treatment process infinitely harder.

Instead, we chose a different narrative: Terrible things happen to good people, and it’s not that we did anything wrong.

Our simple truth became: A devastating cancer was found only because a manageable home flood brought an insidious symptom to the surface. We didn't dwell on the injustice; we focused on the opportunity to fight. We poured our energy not into blame, but into treatment and hope.

We understood that we had zero control over the cancer appearing, and zero control over the flood happening. But we had absolute control over the inner dialogue that would determine our attitude, resilience, and quality of life going forward.

Reclaiming the Unexpected

Your crisis, whatever it is, may not save a life, but it can absolutely transform one.

Look past the surface disaster—the unexpected failure, the sudden loss, the traumatic injury—and ask yourself: "What important truth is this catastrophe forcing me to see?"

• Did the sudden job loss highlight that you’ve been deeply unhappy in your career for years and need a real change?

• Did a health scare reveal how deeply stressed you were, forcing you to prioritize boundaries and rest?

• Did a friend’s betrayal show you that your people-pleasing tendencies are leaving you vulnerable to toxic relationships?

The unexpected things in life are often not just setbacks; they are the shocks that dislodge hidden problems. They rip the veil away from the things that truly need to be addressed in our lives, from our physical health to our core relationships and deeply held beliefs.

You cannot control the awful thing that happens to you, but you can always, always control the powerful, life-affirming story you tell yourself afterward. That story is the key to turning trauma into a path forward.

©Lisa King, MS, LPC, NCC