Lion Counseling Podcast

🎙️ Episode 48 – Finding Meaning in Suffering: A Legacy Highlight with Jonathan Pageau

What if suffering wasn’t just something to escape—but an invitation to transform?
In this short but profound highlight from our full-length interview, symbolic thinker and artist Jonathan Pageau reflects on how symbolic stories, biblical patterns, and personal failures reveal deeper meaning—even in the darkest seasons.
We discuss:
  • How symbolic thinking helps us cope with trauma
  • Why every loss contains the seed of new creation
  • The difference between humility and wallowing in shame
  • How suffering can become a spiritual opportunity
  • The power of attentiveness during breakdown and chaos
🔥 Whether you’re in a season of success or suffering, this is a powerful reminder that your story is not over—and that meaning is always possible.

👇 COMMENT BELOW:
Have you ever looked back at a painful season and realized God was at work?

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🦁 About the Lion Counseling Podcast
We help high-achieving Christian men overcome trauma, anxiety, and burnout through faith-integrated therapy and coaching. New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe and join the movement.

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Creators and Guests

Host
Mark Odland
Founder of Lion Counseling, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified EMDR Therapist

What is Lion Counseling Podcast?

The Lion Counseling Podcast helps men escape the cages that hold them back and become the Lions they were created to be. It exists to help men obtain success, purpose, happiness, and peace in their career and personal lives. The podcast is hosted by the founder of Lion Counseling, Mark Odland (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified EMDR Therapist), and Zack Carter (Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling). In their podcasts, they address a variety of topics relevant to men, including: mental health, relationships, masculinity, faith, success, business, and self-improvement.

Mark Odland:

Very cool. Yeah. That's that's awesome. So the yeah. There's so much power so much power in the stories and the symbols.

Mark Odland:

And, it makes me wonder too, Jonathan, like, thinking about your own your own journey is you almost feel like things seeing things symbolically is almost like, at this point, an operating system that's just part of who you are, or do you feel like you have to be intentional to apply it? So, like, for example, there's a lot of suffering in this life. Right? And when you think about going through something difficult in life or something challenging, is it something where that just kind of flows out of you as you cope with it, as as you work through it, as you try to overcome difficult things? Or or is it something where you have to say, I I need to apply this in some way?

Jonathan Pageau:

Yeah. Well, yeah, I hope so. I mean, I think that, for example, one of the insights that you get from understanding symbolic stories, know, even if it's you consider something as simple as the hero's journey, you know, this kind of basic story structure that Joseph Campbell tried to describe, one of the things you realize is that obstacles and difficulties and suffering is always also an opportunity. Because as the world that you re part of is kind of falling apart or is breaking down in different ways, it's not to belittle that, right? It's not to say, Well, it's not a big deal.

Jonathan Pageau:

Like, know, it's just an opportunity. No, it is suffering, and it is painful. And there is room for weeping and gnashing of teeth. All that stuff is part of life. But then realizing that all suffering is an opportunity for change.

Jonathan Pageau:

Even your own sins, like even when you sin. Like when you sin, there's no celebrating sin, but every time you sin and you face the consequences of your sin, that is actually an opportunity to transform. And so, I think that that's one thing that I try to always keep is that when I go through obstacles or through difficult things, always try to be as much in the position where instead of simply suffering, although it's normal to suffer, I also have my eyes open for the changes that are possible in that transformation. You know, like when you realize, like, let's say, a friendship ends or you lose your job or whatever, all of these are tragic things. But all of a sudden, the world becomes possibility again.

Jonathan Pageau:

So, it also can be an opportunity to to kind of find that treasure in the dark place.

Mark Odland:

You know? Yeah. Definitely. I mean, in some Christian circles, it almost might feel cliche when people say, well, it's only in hindsight that you look back and see how God was at work. But I wonder if that still holds true in your experience.

Mark Odland:

Is that limited in how people frame that? Or is that do you feel like an accurate

Jonathan Pageau:

No. I think that that I think that that's definitely true, you know. But I think that you can also, in those moments, can find the best internal stance possible. Like, you know, the one that is the least destructive and in some ways to kind of one of the things you can also do when things are breaking down and when difficult things are happening is to kind of stop. To stop acting, you know, because sometimes we start flailing and then we start hitting in every direction and we panic.

Jonathan Pageau:

Mean, that happens to me still, obviously.

Mark Odland:

But

Jonathan Pageau:

usually the best stance is in some ways to kind of be attentive, to just stop and be attentive because in that kind of chaos, glimmers are always there. And it's easier, like, it's funny because it's easier to see it in other people. Obviously, it's harder to see it in yourself. But like, if you when you're with people that are often going through difficulties, you know, sometimes you're like, you can kinda see, you know, what brought them there, but you can also kinda see, you know, what it is or the best stance they could have in that position in order to find the best opportunity to move out of it. It's hard because when you tell people, obviously, you can't you just tell they're like, it's annoying when someone says that.

Jonathan Pageau:

But what what I'm saying is when you notice it in others, you know, maybe the best thing to do is to realize that that's also true for you. You just have to now, when it happens to you, try to pay attention in the same way you were able to pay attention to watching your friend kind of go through his divorce and think like, okay, you know, whatever, you know, but maybe now it's too late. It's all happened now, like it's all broken. So now let's see how we can put it back, put things back together in the best way possible because there's no going back, you know. I mean, that's an example, but like Oh,

Mark Odland:

that's powerful because that's not an easy thing to do. I mean, in my line of work as therapist, I see so often people have kind of a unhelpful way that they go to this place of extreme shame. It's not like a God given guilt that's corrective. And you can be like, okay, this has got my attention. Now it can point me in in a proper direction.

Mark Odland:

And instead it's almost like this place of wallowing of turning inward. And it just becomes so destructive because they aren't in a space to receive any kind of criticism because that wound and wound is so deep. Mean of course I'm conceptualizing it through that kind of therapy lens. But to be able to that paradox, right? That we're Yeah.

Mark Odland:

We're sinners and we're fallen and and we are kind of in an active state of rebellion most of the time towards our creator. And yet, we're also created in his image, and and we're so valuable. He went to the cross for us.

Jonathan Pageau:

And Yeah. Well, one of the things one of the things, Mark, is to understand that wallowing is pride. That's what wallowing is. Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Pageau:

It's like when you wallow when you self deprecate and you wallow and you just kind of you just kind of feel that that, like, paralyzing shame. It's because you think you're more than you really are. It's because you think you should be more than what you are, you know? And so true the true shame, like, or the true humility is to think that, no. You don't.

Jonathan Pageau:

It's not true. It's like, oh, I should have been better than that. Like, I'm better than that. Like, no. You're not better than that.