It’s likely the last six months of my life have been harder
than anything I’ve encountered in the last 18 years. I wasn’t sure I would
emotionally survive to ever make sense of it. And only now am I beginning to
see the beauty in suffering.
A lost job
A life-threatening illness
A wayward child
A broken heart
What is it for you?
I boast of being able to juggle many tasks and roles at
once. I generally have a clear plan for achieving my goals and I am rarely
caught off guard. That prideful little
resume is a recipe for emotional destruction when a series of arduous events is
hurled at you. I had become very comfortable with the routine of my life, and
quite idolatrous of the absence of heartache. I had forgotten John 16:33 and
its reminder that in this life we will
have trouble.
When things began to unravel, I felt myself taking a step
into hopelessness and despair. I cried. I whined. I reflected. And then I cried
more. Father, what are you doing in our
family? Why is all this happening? Why
does it have to be this hard? There
was no answer I could hold on to, just the deafening silence of my perforating
soul, drowning in a sea of senselessness.
I read God’s Word. I prayed. I did all the right things. And yet I felt God was overlooking me. Have you ever
felt like this?
One morning in my quiet time before the Lord, during my
daily petition for Him to please show
up on my calendar and put things back together, my spiritual ears heard His
message. What if there is no other way?
(Picture me with a tiny pinky finger squeaking out whatever
had seemingly muffled my hearing.) What
if there is no other way? What are you trying to say, Lord? And then I
understood.
It had been a long time since I felt this desperate for a
work of God. For days and nights, I
cried out to the Lord to radically move in the lives of the people I love most,
begging Him to do a work so intense in my own heart that I would not, could not, be the same. I had abandoned
all the worldly wisdom and just hurled myself at His feet. Desperate.
Suffering has purpose. Desperation has its mission. The hard
things are producing a dependency on Him I may not experience in the
happy-happy-life-is-easy moments; so suffering somehow becomes worth the tears. Perhaps there is no other way for the Lord to
accomplish His purpose in my life – to bring me to Himself, and reveal the depths
of His love and faithfulness to me. Maybe there is no other way I would’ve
released my grip on the familiar to chase the unexplainable. And if there is no
other way, then Lord Jesus, let it be.
You may find yourself in the same place, looking around and
waiting for life to make sense. Friend, as followers of Christ, let us be
willing to release our grip on things we cannot control, and open our hand to receive - fully and completely - whatever He is doing in us, despite the circumstances. His desire for our good
is the only certainty. The chaos around
us may not immediately subside, but we can endure hardships with the
perspective there may be no other way for Jesus to make us more like Him.