Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Something
has struck me as I’ve studied those who’ve grieved; a commonality that all seem
to share. I know it personally, and it is indelibly real.
Those who
are challenged at the depths in some ways master those depths. And, as a friend
has only recently added, those who have been to such depths ‘discover that they
can (now) minister to those depths in others.’[1]
Those who
are challenged are changed and, of a sense, a lost part of who they are is
completed; they ‘graduate’ from that person and walk on in a newness of person.
To embrace it is healing.
What challenges us, changes and
completes us.
Those who
are challenged are changed because a completeness comes into their existential
realm; they carry about themselves the losses they cannot quite let go of. This
can seem rather like a weight, a burden, but really it’s better thought of as a
testament of what was endured. It will never be forgotten. It does not need to
continue to be painful, yet at times such pain is in itself an important
requiem of a former part of our lives, and such pain ought to be honoured if
that’s possible.
The secret way of suffering is
success in the succession stakes.
success in the succession stakes.
Suffering marks the end of something
and the beginning of something else.
and the beginning of something else.
Suffering is a portent that somehow
enriches our experience of time,
which is often experienced as pain.
enriches our experience of time,
which is often experienced as pain.
Suffering
takes us beyond where we are. It forces us to create a new normal. It commands
the attention, and though we may resent it or be depressed or develop an
anxiety disorder, it creates sufficient crisis that we cannot stay as we were.
This in
itself can be seem to be such a massive loss; having to let go of an identity
we were perfectly content with. But it isn’t always and doesn’t have to be.
It’s a
blessing to have been challenged so much that we’ve been changed to completion.
We don’t always see this early on though. It can take the passage of years
before we more fully embrace the suffering that caused us to grow. And still
there’s the remnant of regret, which is a depth we’ve learned to live with, but
that goes on with us; a dear and unfortunate spiritual possession we carry for
the remainder of our lives.
The normality of life never shifts
us.
It’s only
pain and pressure and challenge that changes us. God must get our attention
somehow. Then we realise, once we’re over the resentment of hating what’s been
done, that God is ever fashioning the good out of evil.
Something must die in us before new
life can rise.
And new life only rises once death
gives way to the possibility of hope.
gives way to the possibility of hope.
[1]
Attribution to Pastor Peter Randell, senior pastor at Waratah Christian Community
Church in Western Australia.
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