Tag Archive for: suffering

Even if.

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I’ve always known I had a choice. I can live in constant fear of the worst happening, or surrender to the fact that I have no control.

This is the lesson that I have been learning my whole life in various ways, but parenthood has really slapped the icing on the cake. Because now there’s this teeny tiny person who relies on me for everything and yet I ultimately have very little control over her life. Yes I make choices that affect her on the day to day, but in the grand scheme of things, her life is out of my hands.

It happened on day one. I had already been wrestling with how my relationship with God might navigate parenthood. Pregnancy had brought with it more anxieties then I had expected. But when Lilah was born she was taken to the NICU. This was it, the moment of deciding what kind of parent I was going to be. Eric and just looked at each other and I said, “I guess this is parenting. We don’t have control of this.” And we didn’t. She only spent five hours in the NICU and ended up being okay, but at the time, we had no idea what was happening. I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew that if I was going to survive the rest of my life without fully breaking down mentally, then I was going to have to learn to take things as they come.

That’s always been quite hard for me. I come from a long line of senseless worriers and so I come about it honestly, and have lived most of my life walking in the ever pacing footsteps of my anxious relatives. But I’ve always wanted it to be different. Deep down I know that the only way to live a life free of deep worry is to open my hands and say “God, even if, you are with me”. Ugh but that is hard. Because how can God really be with us if the worst is happening all around us. If God is good, and just, and loving, then why is there so much pain and suffering? Well I don’t claim to be the theologian in the family but I can tell you that on my best days I believe God is all those things despite the horrors that may unfold around us. I believe that there is more to the story than we will understand. I believe that God mourns with us. But on my darker days, I can’t imagine how any of that make sense. And that’s okay too. Wrestling with these things is crucial, I believe.

But this is what I know without a shadow of a doubt. That even if, for reasons we may never understand, God does not heal your loved one, or prevent that hurricane, or stop that shooting, he is there in it all. When we hear stories of joy and goodness coming out of pain, that is Jesus. That friend who lost a loved one, but feels a strange sense of peace, that is Jesus. It may not always make sense, but we see it, right? We can feel it.

While the questions still remain, I can offer this: Even if, God sees you and is holding you and loves. If you don’t believe it that’s okay, I don’t always believe it either. But I do cling to it, because I’ve experienced it and seen it and choose to believe that it is true.

The Place That Brought Me Back To Life.

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I look at this picture, stare straight into the eyes of this woman, and I catch my breath. There was a time I hated the eyes that stared back at me, banged my head against the mirror in agony, shuddered at the thought of my future. My life is not perfect, but there is a strength and a hope that was never there before. I am thankful for my journey. So thankful.

Spring triggers the memory for me. The smell of new rain on the earth, bonfires, the feel of warm sun on my face. The most unlikely of places brought me back to life 12 years ago.

We weren’t really a camping family. Sure, I ran around barefoot all summer and climbed trees like a monkey, but nothing that quite prepared me for this.

I arrived terrified beyond anything I’ve ever felt. The truck bumped along the gravel driveway for over a mile before grinding to a hault next to a brown ranch building. I went in the front door with only the clothes on my back, and came out ready for the next two months of my life. My hiking boots pinched my feet, and the cargo shorts they’d given me clashed terribly with my new yellow t-shirt. I climbed back into the truck, refusing what they called “the last supper”, a Big Mac and fries, before making our way slowly up the mountain to the drop off point.

We stopped at the edge of a thick forest, and the door opened beside me. My driver helped me out of the truck and clipped my pack to my back. Another man was waiting for me by the woods, ready to take me to what was next. I wanted to scream and cling to the bearded man who’d brought me here. I’d only known him for a few hours, but the sound of his truck driving away felt like deep abandonment.

The new man hiked in front of me as I stumbled along behind. My pack was too heavy for my small frame even though it had barely anything inside. By the time we arrived at the campsite, my hips had been rubbed raw.

Little did I know the hardships I’d experience over the next two months; the agony of missing family events, of finding out I would not be going home again, the physical pain I would overcome as I hiked through the Blue Ridge mountains. But deep suffering does something to us doesn’t it? When we are stripped of everything we find something underneath it all. We find grit we didn’t know was there. We find those many wonderful things God gave us as babes that we forgot were even there.

I struggle with suffering. I want it to go away. In fact, I spend much of my life subconsciously trying to avoid it. But when I stop and really consider, suffering is what grounds us. It grounds us to God, ourselves, each other, our humanity. Over the years has come this understanding that for us to fully live as we’ve been created to live, we must experience suffering. Our choice is how we to choose to navigate through the hard.

Trust me.

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I’ve been wrestling with anxiety over something I can’t control.

There’s really no statement that better describes my life struggles. It always comes back to this need for the illusion of control, to know the outcome before it happens, to be prepared for every uncomfortable thing.

Anybody else? I hear a chorus of “Amen!” Out there. Because life is a series of events that we don’t see coming and cannot often prepare for. Some of those experiences are breathtakingly beautiful and others are much more difficult, steal our breath away, leave us feeling like the shell of who we thought we were. And while we can often find pieces of beauty in life’s difficulties, it doesn’t always make it that much easier. Maybe for a moment. Maybe we feel a deep peace in the midst of the darkness, but the pain still comes in waves.

So it makes sense that life feels scary at times. I sometimes feel so attacked by the “what-ifs” that I actually freeze for a few moments of time, unable to function for fear of all that could occur.

But recently a still strong voice has followed my anxious thoughts. “Trust me”, it says. I know it to be God’s voice, the certainty is not my own. For no matter how much I stir up on my quest for Jesus. No matter how frustrated I may become with the old traditions and ways of thinking. I believe in a good good God. One who walks with us through this journey of life. I don’t believe he saves us from pain, I think He respects us more than to shield us from heartache. And while it often feels confusing and scary to me to serve a God who allows (as I see it in my limited understanding) the pain of this world; Something deep within in me just knows it all makes sense somehow. “Trust me”, He says. “For the love, just cling to me as the world falls apart all around you, as it all seems so scary and daunting. Feel your feelings, feel your doubts, but somewhere deep inside that wrestling heart of yours, “just trust me”.”

Why We Do Hard Things.

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I’ve wondered for as long as I can remember: Why do we have to endure hard things? Why can’t life be just a little bit fluffier, easier? Is it really necessary to suffer? I don’t presume to have all the answers, but through the years I have realized one thing: hard things are so necessary.

Yesterday Eric, Lilah, and I flew to Florida. No big deal right?

WRONG!

I hate to fly. I hate everything about it: the teetering above the clouds in a metal contraption, being stuck next to strangers in a small space, not being able to move around with ease, tiny cramped bathrooms. I’m a claustrophobic control freak. You do the math. Flying is not for me. And in case you don’t really believe it’s all that bad, I once got out of my seat during take off and demanded that the stewardess land the plane immediately (and no that wasn’t yesterday, I was 16 at the time).

This wasn’t necessarily a trip that I HAD to go on. It was a three day work trip for Eric, so it might seem a little odd that I would want to take my neurotic self and teething 16 month old to tag along. But something inside me knew I had to do it.

I knew it would be really really hard. I knew that I might have a million panic attacks, and maybe barely get through it. I knew it might be miserable. And deep down inside I just wasn’t so sure I could handle it. Especially with a baby. And I’ve been challenging myself to push back against those lies that I won’t make it through hard things. So here we are, in Florida. Yesterday felt like a nightmare, but we did it. We boarded that bare bones, possibly made of tin foil, aviation contraption, and we lived to tell the tale (I’m nothing if not dramatic FYI).

But why the hard stuff, right? Why the pain, the suffering, the adversity? If God was really good, wouldn’t He/She lighten things up a bit? There can’t really be a point to all this madness. Listen, I’m not going to get into the black hole question that is “why is there suffering”. But I think it’s important to note that without suffering we would be empty shells. The hard things are what teach us who we are, and who God is.

Anyone who really knows me knows that I believe in a complete correlation between knowing and loving ourselves, and knowing and loving our God. They work in tandem. And how do we really learn about ourselves and our God? By journeying through life’s ups and downs and realizing that we will make it, that God is with us.

Please hear me, I am not suggesting that this is in anyway easy. As someone who struggles with anxiety, depression, and has been an empath my entire life, I pray daily for “easy”. I still don’t want the hard. But when I take a deep breath and dig down deep, I know that it is the key to so much of what I am searching for in my restless soul.

What can you do today to embrace the hard? Can you let yourself feel sad, heartbroken, disappointed, angry, and still leave your hands open to what it is teaching? Can you take a deep breath and lean in, knowing that it might be the hardest thing, but you can do it. We will be more empathetic, more whole, more in tune with ourselves, more in tune with God and the world around us, because we have chosen to press into the hard.

Much love you on this journey my friends.

Even if.

/in , ,

I’ve always known I had a choice. I can live in constant fear of the worst happening, or surrender to the fact that I have no control.

This is the lesson that I have been learning my whole life in various ways, but parenthood has really slapped the icing on the cake. Because now there’s this teeny tiny person who relies on me for everything and yet I ultimately have very little control over her life. Yes I make choices that affect her on the day to day, but in the grand scheme of things, her life is out of my hands.

It happened on day one. I had already been wrestling with how my relationship with God might navigate parenthood. Pregnancy had brought with it more anxieties then I had expected. But when Lilah was born she was taken to the NICU. This was it, the moment of deciding what kind of parent I was going to be. Eric and just looked at each other and I said, “I guess this is parenting. We don’t have control of this.” And we didn’t. She only spent five hours in the NICU and ended up being okay, but at the time, we had no idea what was happening. I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew that if I was going to survive the rest of my life without fully breaking down mentally, then I was going to have to learn to take things as they come.

That’s always been quite hard for me. I come from a long line of senseless worriers and so I come about it honestly, and have lived most of my life walking in the ever pacing footsteps of my anxious relatives. But I’ve always wanted it to be different. Deep down I know that the only way to live a life free of deep worry is to open my hands and say “God, even if, you are with me”. Ugh but that is hard. Because how can God really be with us if the worst is happening all around us. If God is good, and just, and loving, then why is there so much pain and suffering? Well I don’t claim to be the theologian in the family but I can tell you that on my best days I believe God is all those things despite the horrors that may unfold around us. I believe that there is more to the story than we will understand. I believe that God mourns with us. But on my darker days, I can’t imagine how any of that make sense. And that’s okay too. Wrestling with these things is crucial, I believe.

But this is what I know without a shadow of a doubt. That even if, for reasons we may never understand, God does not heal your loved one, or prevent that hurricane, or stop that shooting, he is there in it all. When we hear stories of joy and goodness coming out of pain, that is Jesus. That friend who lost a loved one, but feels a strange sense of peace, that is Jesus. It may not always make sense, but we see it, right? We can feel it.

While the questions still remain, I can offer this: Even if, God sees you and is holding you and loves. If you don’t believe it that’s okay, I don’t always believe it either. But I do cling to it, because I’ve experienced it and seen it and choose to believe that it is true.

Why Me

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Today as I was nursing Lilah before her nap, I felt an overwhelming sense of thankfulness at the little person wrapping her little arm around my waist. But that feeling of thankfulness was followed by another familiar question: why me?

I’ve wondered this at so many times throughout my life, both the good and the bad. But now as a mother I wonder: Why have I been given a child when others struggle to have one? Why am I able to nurse my little girl in peace while other babies are ripped from their mothers arms at the border? Why do I sit here a beautiful beach house while others sit amidst the dirt and grime of poverty, begging for food to feed their babies.

Why me?

I’ve been asking questions as early as I can remember. I’ve always been obsessed with fairness, justice. I don’t understand why some of us suffer more than others. Why some of us claw our way through life while others float by.

So many times I just stand there, look up, and ask “what the hell are you doing?”

Sometimes It’s in the midst of my own suffering; the deepness of my own thoughts has caused me much pain. But the older I’ve become, the more I’ve come to recognize my own privilege. The more my heart breaks for those who were given something different, a life I could never even imagine.

And while I believe that there is purpose in it all, that all things work together for good (Romans 8:28), I am still saddened, outraged, shocked over the things I see going on all around me. More often than not I cannot grasp that any of it is good.

I find myself praying that I will see things clearly. That my heart would break for those things in this world that really matter. That God would lead me into dark places without fear, that he would use my privilege to love others. If not that, what have I been given all of this for?

I wrestle with wanting to stay in my bubble. Wanting to avoid fear and pain, failure. But that bubble is also a prison that will rob me of true life.

Why me? I have no clue. But I will not waste it.