ARE YOU STRUGGLING?
This is a hard one to write dear friend.
Are you struggling? Are you thinking this is the end? Are you wondering how much more your soul can take and endure? Feeling utterly and completely alone and as if no one sees your hurt and need to know that your pain matters?
You are not alone. There are so many people genuinely hurting right now all across the globe. Whether it be in a dangerous relationship where you feel trapped and can’t get out, lost a spouse or child, have no money to pay the bills and getting evicted. There are countless types of pain and suffering, unfortunately.
The point is this….YOUR PAIN MATTERS.
Your pain…your story is not lost.
God refuses to let THAT be part of your story.
The pain is PART of your story. It is NOT LOST!
However, it does not define you my friend.
Here is the good news though beloved…it’s also NOT THE END!!
He promises us in His word (and He is incapable of lying) that this is not our forever. This is not the end. This is only the beginning. Hang on. Stand firm. So much more is coming than you could ever imagine and hope for. I Peter 5:10 affirms this for us “And after you have suffered A LITTLE WHILE, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
WHEN PAIN FEELS LIKE FOREVER
I definitely didn’t believe this during my Mom’s caregiving years. Each day felt more like a month and each week like a year. The minutes and hours dragged on like stinging needles into my spine and heart. Breaths felt like a workout and her care like hard labor some days. During much of that time, I fully believed that the Lord would come back and the world would end while Mom was paralyzed and I was her caregiver. Like, it literally seemed as if it would never end. I didn’t want her to die, obviously, but fully believed life would be like this for what the world knew as forever.
Sometimes that’s the hardest thing. Believing this isn’t ours forever DURING THE PAIN. The pain becomes the perspective lens we see everything through. It becomes our filter. We see time and everyday functionality through the pain. We see people and relationships and finances through the pain. Sometimes the pain is so deep and so tragic and so nonstop, it just all hurts and everywhere you look you just see it all through pain.
PAIN CAN BE THE PIVOT POINT.
This is where the fighting spirit has to come in!
You have to fight my friend, and a fight it is!
Fight against the perspective of pain to the heavenly perspective that THIS IS NOT YOUR FOREVER.
This is a temporary pitstop designed for your growth, maturity, sanctification, and to draw you closer to the Lord.
The pain can become the pivot that turns you to lean on Christ when He is the only thing that makes sense.
Your pain is so valid and He promises He catches all our tears and holds each one of them (Psalm 56:8). He is big enough to take your pain. He is the author of our emotions…He can definitely take it!
I had a dear friend comfort me with such great wisdom during one terrifying moment of many of my caregiving years to my Mom.
I was still getting used to all her care as we had only had her home maybe a month or so and it was all so completely overwhelming that in every task it felt as if I had just entered a room full of yellow jackets that were angry and there was no way out. Anyway, all that to say it was a touch and go life and death situation and it turned out to be a simple thing that I had overlooked because I was looking at all the major difficult things it could be. My dad came home at the last minute, I screamed for him to help, he ran over right away and within a second remedied the situation with the correct assessment of what was wrong. She survived and was fine and would survive us caring for her for another nearly 10 years. But, I didn’t know that then.
I was devastated that my Mom could have died right there on my watch due to my incompetence. I was absolutely terrified that I had made the wrong decision to become her full-time caregiver and knew that I was unable to fulfill this job.
I ran up to the top of the stair landing and fell to my knees in utter exhaustion just sobbing and wailing.
I began to talk to God. I questioned Him. I asked Him is this what we brought my mom home for…so she can die on my watch and the rest of my life I can live with that on my conscience. This is what it is all for God?” How could you? I want out. I didn’t sign up for this. I am not signing up to be an incompetent idiot that ends up being responsible for my mom’s death because I didn’t know any better. My Dad came to the top of the stairs and told me good solid truths. “She didn’t die though”, he said, “God did protect her.” Then he told me a truth I really wasn’t ready for as well. He said, “It may well be something like that the Lord uses to take Mom home and there is nothing you can do that can speed up or slow down Mom’s time to go home as God already has that planned out for Mom.”
Then another friend came up and told me, “It’s OK you are angry at God Susan because guess what? He knows your heart…He knows your anger and is the author of all of your emotions and He is definitely big enough to take it.” “Think big enough of Him to give it all to HIM.”
That bit of wisdom profoundly impacted me. Do I think of God as big enough to take my serious anger, my utter contempt and disgust and my raging bitterness or hatred at certain things? Well, if not, I have the wrong idea of who He is. He is big enough to take it and do INCREDIBLE things you wouldn’t even begin to imagine with it. Don’t lie and hold it in because He knows about it anyway.
THE GIFT OF PAIN STRIPPING IT ALL AWAY.
Give Him your pain, stand back, and watch what amazing things He can do with your great trust and immense pain.
If I had known then that the pain was a gift to help me see the beauty in the every day by stripping it down to its bare bones of breathing and life.
Sometimes, it has to all be stripped away from us in order for us to fully grasp the magnitude of the beauty that is right before us every day.
Strip all the hoopla away for a minute. Forget the money. Forget the houses. Who cares about the cars and vacations unless you are BREATHING. It’s crazy really how much we take for granted.
Pain can sometimes reverse that and give us that heavenly perspective to appreciate the basic, yet wonderous miraculous moments right in front of us, even in the pain.
Pain sometimes magnifies the beauty because it feels unreachable and simultaneously as if you are smack in the middle of the eye of the beauty. It’s like somehow being in the midst of the storm you are able to clearly see just how beautiful the reality of L I F E truly is. Pain can give us the motivation to push through. The pain can make it all worth it to reach what God has in store for us.
The pain is NOT the end my friend. The pain is a lesson. The pain is a gift. The pain is the very thing we run from, and yet the thing that can teach us the most.
Remember, it is designed to mold and shape you, not melt and break you and is truly only temporary, even though it doesn’t feel like it when you are in the throws of it.
Grab ahold of that lifeline that is Jesus, my friend. He will go before you in the storm. He will guide you through the pain. He IS RIGHT THERE with you in it! You don’t have to get through the pain to reach Him.
He is there and was there all along. Jesus loves you and is The One carrying you through this. He never left you nor does He know how to do that.
When I have been at my most lonesome in this world is sometimes somehow when I have experienced the most intimate closeness with My Savior. It can take the world ’s pain to draw us to God’s beauty.
The pain is part of the beauty God is molding in us to make us an even more beautiful human and representation of Him and point to His ultimate suffering.
Don’t listen to the “Christians” who say, “well if you only prayed harder or trusted more or believed and named and claimed it this wouldn’t have happened.”
That is such a dangerous, false, and damaging philosophy. God doesn’t work like that, my friend. If you want proof, look at His absolutely perfect Son that had never done anything wrong and He went to the cross anyway. He believed enough and trusted enough and prayed enough, but knew the pain was a necessary part of His walk towards the sacrifice He was willing to pay to save you and me.
The pain has to happen so that we are bonded to Christ. I Peter 4:12-13 reminds us of that, “ Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”
The pain helps us to realize what a contrasting beauty it is with heaven and we end up longing for heaven the way our bodies long for water…the way our hearts long for love…the way our minds long for rest. Contrast is the beauty of the bible after all. Without pain, life would be all good all the time and that would mean there is nothing more to hope for because we would already be in heaven.
The pain is a reminder that God has so much more in store for you than this life could ever offer. He isn’t the author of the pain as that belongs to someone we won’t give lip service to here.
He is the author of the healing and the answer to your pain though. He will comfort you and be your place of refuge in the sorrow. He will secure you in a way that doesn’t make sense in this world. He will embolden you for the fight that is temporary during this painful trial. Psalm 147:3 reminds us, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
He is there with you. He never left you. He sees you. When you can’t see where He is leading you, trust that He knows the way. When you can’t see the end in sight, trust that He is the light and will lead the way.
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