(In full rawness and all the run on sentences....good glory..the run on sentences! HA! But I shall not edit! HA! :) Also I am NOT comparing pain we go through being anywhere near the pain of the crucifixion of Jesus---just that in this moment I experienced a compassionate Father letting me know He grieves the pain His children endure and He does understand.)
Life is hard. And God is good.
Not BUT God is good.
The BUT somehow tries to convey that life isn’t that hard because of God’s goodness.
I mean your going through abandonment, betrayal, cancer, loosing a child to x, y, z, and at the end you stand and say BUT GOD IS GOOD! As if it this statement alone is so powerful that it takes away, negates the pain, the gut-wrenching sorrow.
There is pain that is slowly taking your breath one blow at a time sometimes over and over and over again….at moments you are allowed to come up for air…sometimes regroup long enough to revel in His goodness and you are in awe at His sustaining ability to keep you alive bc you were pretty certain that the end was near-ish.
How much more can this world take?
How much longer can we wait…in the now and the not yet?
Surely He has to come soon bc the pain and the suffering and the pits and despair, the disease, the disorders, the infections, the selfishness, the greed, the lust, the marriages that are crashing into the abys, the abandonment of people, the orphans left to die, the life of children being snuffed out in the womb not dubbed valuable enough to be granted access to oxygen!
And on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Surely this has to end. Soon.
Is there beauty from ashes? yes
Is He working all things out for good? yes
Are there moments that catch me, and calm me, and deliver and unnatural inhale and exhale it’s going to be ok? Yes
Are those moments beautiful? A resounding YES!
Do I drink those moments in, lap it up, to fast at times bc my soul, my core feels so desperate, so parched, and I just need a drop, a moment of reprieve so when it comes there is no time to enjoy it-I destroy it.
I drink it in and plead “BE STILL MY SOUL and know that HE is God.”
How can I be still? I got a drop of H2O on my tongue and I need gallons… to be released…..yesterday!
God I got a taste. Taste and know that He is good. I tasted…I know! Please make the pain go away!
Life is hard AND He is good.
NOT
Life is hard BUT He is good.
Seemingly we want the BUT to take away the hard. We let it roll off our lips as if we are going to convince ourselves and all those around us that this hard is not that hard. And we grasp for a perspective…..is life really hard? Are these not all first world problems?
And we know that we know that we know that somewhere in the world someone is experiencing, walking through, carrying things that are harder than we even have words to describe the pain!
We know this!
God is good but pain is not nullified.
Life is hard AND God is good!!!!
Your pain, my pain, his pain, her pain, one person’s pain is not less painful bc somewhere someone is going through something that we would put on a sliding scale as more painful.
If you loose a leg at the same time that I hit my knee and gash it open…OUCH!
No one looks at the person with the gnarly, gashed blood gushing knee and says “well at least you didn’t loose your leg!?”
And yes this is physical pain…but oh so often do we do this with emotional/mental pain.
Whether we are desperately trying to encourage others or desperately trying to convince ourselves ….It’s not that bad bc people are dealing with worse.
Life is hard BUT God is good.
It’s not that bad bc I haven’t been asked to walk that road over there!
Life is hard BUT God is good.
It’s not that bad bc look at all the things I get to enjoy in the midst.
Life is hard BUT God is good.
Every fiber in my being lately has been screaming Life is hard AND God is good. Period.
We cannot add the BUT God is good as if the pain is not real.
We cannot add the BUT God is good as if we do not feel what we feel.
We cannot add the BUT God is good as if this world was not and is not shattered and scattered!
Yes He is good! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes a thousand times YES …HE…IS…..GOOD!
And life is hard.
We were banished from the garden. Perfect communion was obliterated! There was a desertion. Man sat with His God in perfect harmony, perfect peace, perfect relationship and reveled in His creator.
Until..he didn’t.
It was so so so good…until it wasn’t.
And now we live in that place of Life is Hard. Period.
And we rest in that place of God is good. There is no but.
Make it end.
Make it stop.
My heart aches navigating my own pain, sitting with people, aching with people and disastrous situation after situation-some that they have created themselves-some that they have been forced into-thrown into by others.
And its hard!!!
There is physically/emotionally/ and mental exhaustion on all fronts.
Make it stop I beg you.
This has to stop.
The abuse, the searching for answers and no one is seemingly coming to the rescue or just offering aid/relief, the physical decaying of these damaged bodies seen in diseases, disorders, cancers, immune dysfunction, the mental sicknesses that is consuming and devouring so many.
Make it stop.
The marriages abandoned, the families incinerated, the longing, the suffering, the agony, the afflictions, the discomfort, the sadness, the heartache, the stab, the labor, the strain, the striving.
Make it stop!
So much pain.
He grabs me by my shoulders-pretty firm but not angry-not even frustrated-stands me up slowly as I was on the ground pleading and He turns me around…and before me…Jesus.
Life is hard AND God is good.
Jesus before me on the cross.
The physically painful, mentally excruciating, humiliating, death on the cross.
God holds my shoulders tight but doesn’t say anything and I immediately feel like I’m just a "whiner."
Look at that. Look at that pain. And here…here I am laying all these things before the Lord and calling this pain and this pain and this pain….here I am.
I immediately start to retract all that my heart had felt and all that my soul had bore raw and bear before Him and surely all that I have just mistaken for pain isn’t really all that hard.
All that I think is pain I describe as pain bc my mind is so small…life is hard but God is good..surely that is the order that is supposed to be in.
Look at what He did.
His goodness does negate that life is hard.
His goodness does take it away.
His goodness does make this not as painful as it feels in the fiber of my being.
And when I finally grow quiet and stop confessing and repenting from calling these obviously trivial things painful….”I’m so sorry for calling this pain. I’m so sorry for calling life hard. It’s not that bad. You are good.” The grip grows firmer on my shoulders as if I am missing something……
I look at the cross and Jesus bleeding, abandoned, a soul that was crying out hours before to His Father to not walk this road.
“Please make it stop…make another way. There is going to be so much pain and I’m asking for you to take this. Remove this. Find another way.”
And yet there He is. Excruciating pain. Vanquished. Abandoned.
I see this, realize this, I am convicted about this and start to confess my wrong view again and my sorrow bc THAT IS PAIN and THAT IS HARD!…..
”God I am so sorry…Life is hard....BUT”……and as I am just about to let BUT YOUR GOOD trickle off my lips again….the firm grip gets even a little more tight.....I am silenced.
His response ……there was no angry correction, no frustration with my small mind, no flaming accusations....a compassionate....heartaching....quiet.....
I know.
