Lessons in Pain

What if all your circumstances-good, bar, or ugly- can be a source of strength to you? What if God is using a bad situation to strengthen your belief? Maybe he wants to teach you a bit of patience and perseverance? Just stay close to him and don’t panic.

Graham Cooke

Part of growing up is pain. Physical, mental, emotional these are all places that people feel pain. In my somewhat short life I have definitely dealt with physical, and some mental and emotional pain. But my emotional pain has always been about me. Not to go too much into detail, but I didn't have the best time growing up. That was just my life. I didn’t even know that I was depressed until I went to college and became happy. I wish someone had pointed out how depressed I was when I was younger. In our society so much rides on your academic achievements. I have some learning disabilities that are just severe enough to make school suck, but not so severe that I was put in the special needs class room and labeled as different. Those kids that went for “resource room” as we called it in elementary school, were weird. Kids are so mean at that age. They don’t know what makes a person stand out or can understand what separates some kids from others, but they pick up on those things. I definitely picked up on those cues, and wanted nothing to do with the resource room. I don’t know if in the long run being in the resource room would have made my life any easier, but it would have at least given me more of a sense of something being different about me, and there fore I might have accepted my differences a lot sooner.

Also in my life I have had a bit of a battle with anxiety, which really sucks, and is something that I think you just have to work out with your God. In my situation it was all about control. I would get into situation where I felt unsafe, and didn’t have a comfort place to go, and I would become so scared and anxious. The first time I came to Kenya, I was having anxiety attacks everyday. A system, which at first glance, seems like utter chaos, can be pretty shocking to a person coming from a neat orderly society. I tried a number of things, counseling, pills, but in the end I came to the realization that God is in control and he is the only one that can do anything about it. This has brought me a lot of peace, I still have trouble with anxiety from time to time, but I just go to God and tell me that he is the only one in control, which really just reminds me of this fact, because God is God and already knows this about himself.

But to get back to the point, after much too much information about myself, I think that pain, and what you chose to do with that pain, evolves as you get older. Something that I have come to understand is that God is not in our lives to make things better or easier. I don’t know why I didn’t realize this a long time ago; he never took away my dyslexia, back pain, or anxiety. But now that I am a bit more grown up and dealing with things outside of myself, I am beginning to realize that life is hard, and God doesn’t just take these things away. It is us who are supposed to lean on God and learn from what we are going through. Which I have to admit, sucks. Before it has always been about myself, and me trying to find an escape for what I am going through, but I am beginning to understand that sometimes people must go through the rough times in order to become what God wants us to be. 


Like James says in chapter 1:2-4 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you maybe mature and complete, not lacking anything." I think that this is one of those verses that you can only understand and appreciate in hindsight. What? who wants to be told to think of hard times as pure joy? that sounds like a horrible idea. But once you have been through the kind of tough times that do bring you closer to God, you can understand what James is trying to tell us here. Only when you face hard times do you feel like drawing closer to God and asking for his help. Who looks to a higher power when you have everything you need? Which i think is exactly why Christianity is so much stronger in developing countries then any where in the west. but that is another story for another time. 


Hope everyone is well, and love to you all!
suz