Pain

“Struggling to put things into the hands of God is often revealing of my arrogance: I am fighting to control something He is obviously sovereign over, and I am prideful enough to think it isn't already in His hands.”

            I find myself in a place of pain.  I find myself questioning, a lot.  The words of my closest friends fall upon ears that are deafened by self centeredness.  The often heard phrases right now are “God has the best in store,” or even “Trust Jesus.”  Well to be blunt, I don’t care about what the best is when I only long for relief, and I have a deep loathing for anyone who gives me doctrine in moments of emotional distress.  I know such people mean only the best for me and long to try to comfort me, but honestly I know what the answers are most of the time; I just don’t know how to make the pain stop. 

            My life recently took an interesting turn that I was completely blindsided by, and I have not handled it well.  The first day I was looking for anything to make me feel numb and I found just that in a bottle of Canadian LTD. Amidst this poor behavior I had friends try to comfort me, but I wanted to be alone and begged them to leave.  Inside that moment I hated the world, and hated myself, and questioned the past year of my life in its entirety.  I questioned why God would bring to such a seemingly joyous place only to strip all the joy from me in an instant.  I questioned if the entire previous 10 months had been a mistake.  I questioned if I had any right to be sure of what I felt was so certain.  I woke up the next morning not feeling well, for multiple reasons, and soon the pain caught up with me.   I faced the rest of that day with tears welled up in my eyes ready to overflow at a moment’s notice.  I was looking for a place and moment to just fall apart and get the tears to exit their familiar location.   That night I cried until I exhausted myself to the point that my body had to give way to sleep.  

            The third day was a day of performance.  I tried to convince myself that everything would be fine and went about the day acting as if my heart was not shattered.  I tried to distract myself with the mundane tasks I perform at my occupation.  I remember leaving work and when in the parking lot knowing that if a car sped by and hit me, I still could not feel any lower than I did.  I came home and found comfort in a friend and was finally free to convey the message that I had so severely guarded: I am not ok.  I am not having good thoughts, I don’t understand why God is doing this, and I have no assurance that anything will be ok anytime soon.  I was finally able to admit my struggle, and say that I was lost.  I was not trusting God, I was not with perspective, I was not joyful, and I was not able to change any of it. 

            I recalled all of the right answers to this situation, that God is in control, He is sovereign, His plan is better than I can imagine, and that if the seemingly worst happened it would be for the best.  I knew them in my head, but nothing mended the tear in my heart.  Nothing, no matter how biblical, seemed to offer comfort, or seemed to ensure me that relief could soon be mine.  I tried to imagine how this could be good in the end, how it could bring glory to God, how I could one day have my joy restored and know that my satisfaction has been found in Christ and by nothing else.  But all attempts were without avail and I continually found myself shouting amidst tears, “Jesus, I don’t know how to trust you with this right now!” 

            And there it was, the root of my anguish, the beginnings of my affliction; that I just was without a picture of what it meant to find satisfaction in Christ amidst pain.  I knew the now infamous John Piper Quote “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him,” but how do I be satisfied in Christ when all I long for is my selfish desires to be fulfilled?  How do I shift my longing for only one outcome to the longing to be fulfilled in Christ regardless of the turns of the journey God puts before me?  I don’t know how to do anything except ask for what I want out of the situation, and because of it I almost missed the point of the entire situation.  Psalm 73:25-26

Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides you I desire nothing on earth.  My flesh and my heart [and my girlfriend] may fail but You are the strength of my heart and my potion forever.

This makes God look glorious, as God not as giver of gifts, or girlfriends, or comfort.  This makes God show as He is, my strength, my portion, and my hope.  I find hope in things that are designed to fail, and when they do I don’t know how to trust the one thing that never stops satisfying.  I long for the temporal and question why it hurts when it falls apart. 

            I am far from knowing how this struggle will continue, and I cannot even bear the emotional strain of hypothesizing the end.  Amidst the uncertainty, amidst the tears, and amidst the waiting, I know that my only satisfaction comes from the supreme Christ who demonstrates grace and mercy that is new every morning.  I see now that for so long I found too much satisfaction in the gifts God granted me, and when they were seemingly taken from me I lacked the ability to declare Christ as my most treasured possession.  Tomorrow is another chance to demonstrate the worth of Christ to me.  Tomorrow I can do what I have not been doing, trust Jesus with my inadequacy.  Tomorrow I  will still long for relief, I will still long for the outcome I have been craving. Tomorrow will have tears, and joy.  Tomorrow life will go on and I will see Christ as my treasure, my joy, my strength.  Tomorrow I live out Psalm 73.