I have learned a lot through painful circumstances. It felt discouraging and hopeless at times, but ultimately pain has told me things that kindness was just too nice to let me know.
I love the truth. I think the Bible is true when it says that the truth will set you free. But sometimes the truth is painful to seemingly no end, especially when it is delivered in a hurtful way. While a few comments stayed on my heart and were difficult to process, eventually they did indeed set me free and help me find new ways to overcome parts of myself where I had been my own worst enemy. What was meant to make me feel small eventually empowered me to never be that small on the inside again. I needed to make improvements and wanting to resolve the pain of that criticism was what I needed to finally devote the resources necessary to overcome the fears I had grown comfortable with.
I would have preferred to learn those truths without such an intensity of pain, but it is how it is and I would not trade certain things I have been through at the loss of learning what I did. That one last ridicule or final unexpected sad was just what it took to break something inside of me where I was holding myself back.
Most importantly, I learned that I really need to let God speak for Himself. I see that I have projected my own perceptions onto God. Even though I thought I was putting God first in a number of situations, I had a lot to learn about really growing in my faith, making it my own, having a true living union with it throughout my being, and outgrowing childish notions that were helpful as a kid but needed to mature over time.
There are times when faith is a community effort and you need to connect with others and value the wisdom they share with you, but there are also seasons where you need to trust God and follow Him to places where the journey is meant for just the two of you. Other people’s kindnesses will still affect you and will be season-alteringly encouraging, but you will learn to place your dependence solely on God. There is a fine line between enjoying the experience of God’s love through the blessings of relationships and being able to keep yourself from expecting that to be how you primarily relate to God. Sometimes God may allow you to lose closeness in a number of relationships in your life so that you will rediscover your relationship with the love of God that makes all other relationships worth having. Without God, people are highly likely to disappoint you and break your heart at some point. But with God, you have a center to your existence that defines your life by a love that is greater than your circumstances and that helps to diminish the heartache that is inherent to connecting with others in an authentic way.
Seraph: “Did You Always Know?”
Oracle: “Oh, No. No, I Didn’t… But I Believed. I Believed!”
-The Matrix Revolutions
A relationship with God is not always an emotional comfort. Sometimes your emotions are not at their best so you go through the motions until those actions ignite with meaning again. You believe your way through it. I don’t always feel like going to Mass, but that is often where a Bible verse or a homily is shared that makes a connection within me to a truth I need in order to move forward in my faith. Maybe I wasn’t emotionally enthusiastic when I arrived at church that morning, but I made a choice to attend a service where my faith could be in an environment that was likely to be encouraging and that often brings about life in me.
Sometimes it takes a lot of work to wage a war within yourself to not give up, but there can come a point when love triumphs over the pain. It may take an act of God, but God is Love and He supports love’s agenda – on a broad scale throughout civilization and creation and also on a personal scale within you. You’ve got this!
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