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Monday, July 19, 2010

Suffering

I hate suffering thru things, whether it's bad weather or feeling sad, I hate going thru things. I am one, by the way, to avoid those times of suffering to pass them right by and make sure I don't deal with them until I feel comfortable - which is usually months and months later (sometimes years). Ah the art of avoidance!!!! I figure suffering is one of those things that I really in truly don't need to press thru, I can do what ever I want until I am ready to suffer. Ok maybe thats not entirely true, I suffer - just inwardly not outwardly. I have an ability to carry what hurts me around inside until it eats away at my life and I have no choice but to deal with it. That's the art of avoidance!!! You never really in truly avoid it you just tuck away, carry it around, and hide the suffering until you can't hide it anymore.

This morning I woke up sore from a severe headache yesterday and most of last night. And after walking past Kaleb's door once more, I started crying - something that I do not do around the girls if I can avoid at all costs. It's Monday and like most Mondays a day that I have to wind all my emotions back up in order to go thru the work week. Only this morning, like the past few days, I have been pulled into realizing that my heartache and pain is not something that I can avoid especially when a good day preceeds a Monday. Because in doing something that I get enjoyment out of, peace out of, I find that I feel worse afterwards, as though I was not suffering during that time of peace and enjoyment. This morning, in an act of attempting to be diligent, read again in Streams in the Desert, and as I have found in the past - today is right on point. The scripture John 18:11 "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it" Means absolutely nothing to me...really nothing, in reading it alone, I can not determine where this sentence would fit into my day, week or life. But then I read what the author said about this passage.
"This was a greater thing to say and do than to calm the seas or raise the dead. Prophets and apostles could work wondrous miracles, but they could not always do and suffer the will of God. To do and suffer God's will is still the highest form of faith....To have the bright aspirations of a young life forever blasted; to bear a daily burden never congenial and to see no relief; to be pinched by poverty when you only desire competency for the good and comfort of loved ones; to be fettered by some incurable physical disability: to be stripped bare of loved ones until you stand alone to meet the shocks of life - to be able to say in such a school of discipline "The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?" - this is faith at its highest and spiritual success at the crowning point. Great faith is exhibited not so much in ability to do as to suffer."
In this small paragraph - John 18:11 took meaning for me, it meant that I was ok to suffer, that the feelings of suffering not quite enough are part of my life and part of me that, even though I did not foresee or expect this suffering, I am meant to go thru it. The suffering that I feel in place of the peace and enjoyment that I participated in, is the suffering that I am avoiding. This replacement of feelings is the thing that is pressing me thru this time of pain and heartache that I am trying to avoid.

I have no idea at what point suffering becomes a blessing to others, because that can be its only goal thru God to turn the suffering that I and a couple of good friends are persevering thru to be a word of encouragement for another. I can not begin to imagine why we have suffered the ending of our young sons' lives and now suffer the pain and heartache of those loses. And I do not know or speculate to know what suffering is being felt in your life but I hope and lien on the hope that there is, somewhere in the midst of this pain and suffering, a cup that is not so harshly filled, a cup that is not so full of suffering, and a day when all of His plan will make sense. I don't like the cup that we have been given, I don't like the fact that without choice, we had to drink from it and I am sure you do not like the cup you are drinking from, but somewhere in the midst of the avoiding of my cup, the suffering is still there- no matter how fast or far I run from it, the cup is still part of my life. What cup were you served that you are running from, avoiding and hiding from your life? Maybe the suffering is not meant to be avoided.

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