Suffering and Difficulty

Suffering and difficulty. This subject has been on my mind alot lately. I struggle with it. Since my stroke, I’ve had to face the truth about myself. I’m a wimp. And that I’m not nearly as “spiritual” as it might seem.

In my more self-righteous days, I’da sucked it up and “endured” for the Lord’s sake and thought myself “spiritual” and pleasing to Him for doing it. But ramp up the suffering and difficulty a bit, mess with my sleep, make it long and tiresome and constant and tedious. And LONG. (Did I say long?) And it becomes all-encompassing and all-consuming. “I just want OUT! I don’t want to do this anymore!” Even going so far as accusing God and being angry at God when He could change things, but He won’t. Fighting the situation. Fighting Him and His will.

Fighting my own ugliness. Feeling that condemnation for my failures in these things.

I know, right? Scary stuff.

Don’t misread me, I’m not looking for a pity party here, or a pep talk. I’m just trying to be real, and what I’m sayin’ is that in the right difficult conditions, under the right difficult circumstances.. you just don’t know how you’d react. Not one of us, no matter how mature we may seem to be, is as “spiritual” as we want to be or as others imagine us to be.

God has no need for imagination. He knows. He knows me entirely. He’s totally familiar with my humanity. He knew exactly what this trial was going to bring out in me. There’s nothing about my flesh that surprises Him.

Nope, He’s not okay with my flesh. But His intent isn’t to bog me down in myself and how earthly, and ugly, and horrible I am. In fact, the condemnation I feel doesn’t come from Him, most of it comes when I stay looking in that ugly ‘me’ place.

God didn’t make me to look at me. I wasn’t created to showcase my inner ugliness. He made me to gaze at His Son and find beauty there beyond and in spite of the nasty ol’ me.

Life’s not about me. It’s about Him. It’s okay for me to look away from me and be secure in that. In Him.

No, again, these yuk things aren’t okay with Him. His desire and His working with me, in Christ, is to be more than ‘I’ am. But He knows my heart truly wants Him, and He’s not stomping on me as we’re going thru this process.

His goal is to expose the ugliness-to show me all that I’m (spiritually) not….. NOT so that I can dwell there and be depressed about it, but so that I can be humbled, be honest, and by doing so, need Him all the more. And prove HIM to be more than me…. and MORE than enough in my suffering and difficulties and failures of the moment.

“How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”
‭‭Psalm‬ ‭36

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