SUFFERING

I was thinking today about suffering. 

Many people have said to me, "Wasn't it great to know God was with you and feel his presence when things were so hard."

Actually, no, no it wasn't great. It was the opposite. 

It was confusing. 

How could we, my family and I, suffering so profoundly and something as simple as a healing could change everything- and yet God never did it. 

How could my family just about be torn apart, but God's close and watching and ... doing nothing - was supposed to make me feel good? Thanks for... watching us be in pain? 

I don't know much about life. Not like I used to. 

But I think suffering has to do with beliefs. 

If I believe my life is supposed to be easy, suffering will be shocking, devastating, and I won't be prepared for it. 

If I believe hard times happen FOR me and I can USE them as a school for change, then I can endure suffering and let that sucker work transformation in me. It will be painful, but not devastating. 

If I believe God is supposed to be there to rescue me from my pain, then when I have to endure something from start to finish . . . it's confusing. I will start to believe he has failed me, or he is powerless, or he just doesn't care about me. 

It's weird. We get to choose what we believe - and most times we base our beliefs on our experiences. 

Many of us lose faith when we go through hard times and God does nothing. People DO die. People DO have autism. People DO get sick. People DO hurt people. 

I look back and I wonder what could have helped. 

I think I wanted to face life as an all-star. Like a super hero who saved the day and came through unscathed. I believed that was Christianity. I believed that was what God called me to do. Overcome the world. Be more than my circumstances. 

But NOW I think what hurt me was my own ideas. Ideals. I had opinions about how things should go and it didn't go that way. I think watching ME fail my own beliefs destroyed me. 

I'm not totally sure now, exactly how things are supposed to go. I see people suffer and I wonder what I should do. I feel my own circumstances and I wonder what to do. What to feel. What to think, what to believe. Years of praying to be rescued just created resentment and frustration and disappointment. 

Lately I've been open to the idea that there are always gifts are buried in the crap. If I'm not so shocked and offended by hardship, maybe I can stop trying to keep all my crap together, lean in and... learn... and ... 

... well . . . who knows. But it doesn't need to lead to devastation and destruction. I think the point is to come through in tact on the inside, not just on the outside.

Something to think about. Decide on. Be open to. Because what I HAVE believed in the past, didn't bring life to me.