Happiness??

I remember being 17.

It was undoubtedly the worst year of my life. I struggled to deal with the many events of that year and the ones that would follow it. I remember sitting in the office of my then youth pastor at church with my mom and feeling completely fatigued and destroyed by my pain. I also felt the burden of my pain on those around me and I felt guilty for it as if it were something I could control. I remember crying and wailing to my youth pastor that everyday, EVERY day that I woke up all I saw around me was pain, in people's eyes, everywhere I went, everything I read, I was surrounded by it, consumed with it. I felt like a magnet for it. I was so deep within my pain and the thought that others like me that might be experiencing what I was that I honestly felt I couldn't bear it any longer. Instead of trusting God, turning to Him for strength and help, I was drowning in, and focused solely on, my own agony. I begged God, pleaded and cried every night that He would take me home. I remember feeling so hurt in the morning when I woke up that He would leave me here in this place and not take me to be with Him.

What I didn't understand then and still continue to learn now is that God is of love. What? Wait, didn't I just say that I was in so much pain that I couldn't function? So much hurt that I didn't want to live? Yes. But, still God is love.

Let me explain. I have learned since I was 17 that God is more concerned about my eternity, about all of our eternities, than of our worldly or immediate happiness on this planet. Of course He wants us to be free of pain, but if that pain or struggle we are facing is one that can ultimately work as part of His plan to free us to be with Him for eternity, if that agony or suffering is one that we must endure so that OTHERS can live for eternity, then this is His primary goal.

At first glance this may not seem fair. But it is beyond mercy, to a point that I cannot even fathom and am now, in hindsight thankful for. I'm continually learning to turn my eyes on Him, instead of focusing on my pain. Reaching to Him for strength, for wisdom. I am thankful He didn't take me in the night as I begged, because He had a bigger plan for me, one that included me to be a mom to children I would be responsible for training and guiding to know Him. My pain and struggles had prepared me for the battle that is sin, to be able to lead others, to be an example. To be a LIVING sacrifice.

When you think of it in that manner, it makes perfect sense. God sent His only son to endure all the pain and punishment and betrayal and mockery of sin that this world put upon Him to free us from our punishment in eternity. Is it really that much to ask that we be a living sacrifice to Him?

I am also reminded by what Jesus prayed to His father the night before he was to be crucified, (Luke 22:42): "Father, if you are willing, please take away this cup of horror from me. But I want YOUR WILL, NOT MINE." Jesus knew what was coming and knew what He was going to endure, and being born a human, asked God to take it from him. But the clincher is, He said, "YOUR WILL, NOT MINE." He knew that if it was of God to have him go through what he was about to go through for a higher purpose, to save man, then He would willingly do so and not stand in the way of it, fight it, or blame God for it.

In my bible study book for this week it says, "What would you say is harder to do - to die for someone, or to live for them?" We are to lay our lives down for each other, even through pain, even when we feel like it is impossible for us to hang on any longer, even when we feel like we can't get off the floor to stand. Just as Paul did in His imprisonment, as Job did when all He knew and loved was taken from Him, we are to turn toward God, not blame Him, THANK him for the opportunity to grow and to reach others THROUGH our common struggles, within our common circumstances.

I still struggle everyday with the memory of the pain I endured, and will probably do so for the rest of my life. But my family and I didn't come through it alone. I just didn't realize it then.

Verse to ponder: Psalm 46:1-3 (NLT) 1 God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. 2 So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. 3 Let the oceans roar and foam. Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge!