The Problem of Pain-When It’s Mine (or Yours)
I arrived home exhausted today. Like I’d run a marathon or climbed Everest, both things I’d never even attempt because that’s not really my design.
But what I did today is normally in my wheelhouse. I worshipped with people I care about. I attended a long lunch with a subset of those same people. All wonderful—kind, godly, caring individuals prone to saying the right thing. They did nothing wrong.
It’s my life that has changed.
Have you ever experienced such a string of losses and life alterations that you survive, only to realize maybe you haven’t as well as you initially believed?
Until suddenly it exhausts you to answer the question, “how are you?” or to respond to the invitation to “catch me up on your life.”
Have you ever felt a desperate longing to be “fine?”
I used to despise the word fine. It’s non-descript, commonplace, a cliché. I’m a writer after all and we eschew cliches’ but today, I would have given my left foot to be fine.
Instead, the losses, changes, transitions—good, bad, expected, traumatic, chosen, unwanted all caught up with me and every conversation snowballed into the next like a cartoon avalanche, an unfunny cartoon or one that’s only funny if you’re not the one in the path of the careening snowball.
Authentic. It’s always been important to me to be authentic and vulnerable. To refuse to protect myself and let God be my protector.
Today, that just seemed like a crazy idealistic notion best left to fictional characters. Who needs authentic when it seems more like drama? Like stuff no one wants to hear? Or makes you sound like maybe you don’t trust God to work all things together for good.
I do. After over sixty years of following Him, I do. But, there are paths I’d have preferred not to be walking and choices I wish other people had rejected and incidents it would have made my life easier if they hadn’t occurred, but here we are.
And Jesus is definitely with me, but I would rather be lying down in green pastures.
Ever hear yourself answering questions about what you’re doing and suddenly not recognize your life? That was me today.
And maybe this is too real to share—it probably is—and maybe it makes you uncomfortable to read—it probably does, but as it turns out, one thing that hasn’t changed is my commitment to authenticity, to God in real time, to standing in truth—
Even if that means I’m up to the top of my waders in personal pain.
And even though I trust that God is my shepherd and that He works all things together for good and that He is always with me, even though I believe all that to my core,
I wish that some things that were lost were not, and I wish some things that have changed didn’t and I wish when people ask how I am, I could just say that I’m fine.
Still, even though I can’t say that I’m fine, here’s what I can say: God is with me, and I am with Him. That hasn’t changed.
Worshiping Him today was bliss. Talking about things that matter to Him was unbridled joy. Sharing a prayer and a meal with others who know and love Him was heaven this side of glory.
And that will tide me over through the exhaustion and the pain.
And there will be a mountaintop on the other side of this valley, but somehow, I felt like it was important for someone to hear what it’s like during the climb, because much of life is the climb.
Much of life is lugging the pack where the air is too thin and heels blister and it’s hard to breath and you wonder why you even began this trek in the first place
So, be sure that your climbing companion is Jesus
That will make all the difference.
I suspect some of you wish you could say you are fine. And you are, because you know Jesus is with you, but you’re walking a stretch of road you wish hadn’t come up. I hear you. Please know, you’re not alone.
I guess that’s all I wanted to say, really. So, I’ll close with words from two writers who saw some dark stretches of road and understood about life when fine had gone missing in the fog:
“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”–J.R.R.Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.” C.S.Lewis, The Problem of Pain
The Problem of Pain – When It's Mind (or Yours) https://t.co/sBuzKcJapu (When you're not fine). #Jesus #amwriting
— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) July 16, 2022
