Rejoice in our suffering?

March 12th, 2016

Death. Loss. Depression. Uncertainty.

It weighs heavily, it crushes my emotional shoulders and causes my mental legs to weaken and waiver.  I'm on shaky ground.

I watch a family near us grieve the loss of their beautiful 1 yr old.  My heart aches and my eyes well with tears as I look at my own 1 yr old , my precious baby.  I am just barely able to brush against the fringes of the gravity and depth of that loss.  The fringe feels unbearable.  I can not fathom.  

A family friend loses their mother, no older than mine to a series of hospital and nursing home mistakes and misses.  It aches.  I've lost my mother in a dream and woke up unable to breath from the crushing feelings of despair and pain.  I can not fathom.

Abuse. Neglect. Crime.

My Facebook feed is filled with cases of foster children, abused children, sexually assaulted children, murdered children, forgotten children.  I tell myself that it just feels worse, feels like these things are happening all around me all the time because social media circulates them so much faster and farther, but then I find out that family members near me suffered similar abuse in the past...and I never knew.  My reality is shaken, my perceived safety net has giant gaping holes in it I never knew were there.  How could these things happen around me and I never know.  I fear for my own children.  I can not fathom.

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Divorce.  

The ones you thought "would never".  Families and hearts broken.  Reality shaken again.  

Photo by Mikhail Solovev/Hemera / Getty Images

Is there an age where death and loss and broken beliefs and shattered dreams become more a part of our living reality?  I guess I always knew that was probable...I just thought it'd be later...or I guess, really, I thought "not me".  Because, you know, my family has it together.  The world is falling apart, but, it won't touch us.  

It touches everyone.

A friend of mine and I were talking about trials recently.  We talked about the trials we are going through, and we talked about trials we've watched friends go through.  We discussed how it changed them.  Trials by fire.  They went into the fires and came out different.  Better sometimes, but you could see it, that it was by fire.  There's a difference in the eye, in the manner in which they speak that tells you: this person didn't simply "grow", they were burned alive and grew back differently.  The pain was palpable.  They are stronger now, better, but...

Innocence is lost. 

Dreams of happily ever after, of pure intentions, of trust, of total untarnished happiness...those are no more.  It's a death all in it's own; growing up.  Because our world is broken.  WE are broken.

I'm feeling the loss these last few weeks.  The loss of childish innocence.  I realize also, that I'm feeling the loss of something I never had, something none of us ever had; the world God intended for us.  I believe our hearts yearn for it, though we've never had it.  Children have a sense of it, of what the world was supposed to be, you see it in their innocent beliefs.  That innocence should be protected, it is so beautiful...and and is there for such a short time even so.

Matthew 18:3 "And he said: 'Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'"

I'm not sure how to navigate in my new reality, my new awareness of the broken and the awful, and sometimes I feel like I'm stumbling blindly in the dark, near tears, simultaneously trying to protect my children, give them the years of innocence and joy they should have, and working to instill in them skills they will need to deal with this broken world when they have to.  It's daunting really.  Never have I ever realized how much I absolutely and completely need to rely on God, because we humans...we do NOT have it together.  

Matthew 11:28-30  "Come unto me, all [ye] that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke [is] easy, and my burden is light."

Through it all though, I have been brought ever closer to the heart of my heavenly Father.  Never have I been so thankful that I do have an almighty God to lean on and to turn to with my fears, troubles, and pain.  This world is SO broken, so lost, but there is hope in our Savior.  We will see the world as God intended it one day.  Heaven awaits, but for now, I will seek after joy through pain and lean not on my own understanding, I will lean on God. 

Proverbs 3: 5-6  "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths."

Romans 5:3-5  "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."