Looking for Purpose in the Pain

I have been feeling numb. I haven't really even been crying very much lately.

I just feel...cold...sad....and angry.

I haven't been able to read very much yet I find myself praying more.

I should read, but I just don't want to put forth the effort, especially when I feel so worn down by the mere thought of the holidays.

I am sleeping more, at least when my son allows it, but I feel more tired than I have in a long time. I want nothing more than to just go back to bed, even if I only got up an hour ago. How blissful it would be to just sleep life away. Well, until the nightmares come anyway.

Winter is getting to me. I can feel the weight of the clouds pressing down on me in the bleak grayness of Ohio winters.

I just want to get away.

When I finally tore myself away from Lilly's lifeless body I told my mother I wanted nothing more than to crawl under a rock somewhere and die. Sometimes I still feel that way, though I would never leave my precious boy.

She just said "I know". The same I would say now if a grieving mother said that to me. My mom buried two sons. I'm so sorry mom, I didn't know this was how it felt.

I am so empty. I feel as if I am waiting for something....

What now Lord? Where do we go from here? What do you want us to do? Surely there is some purpose in the pain!? Lord give me purpose.

---

It's been weeks since I wrote this, but I remember opening my current Nancy Guthrie book that same night, Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow, and reading "I Have a Purpose in your Pain" as the next chapter title. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or throw the thing in the garbage.

I've been so focused on just getting through every day, I didn't get through it till recently.

I have tried to explain what this passage says countless times but never could get it quite right.

      To experience and exude peace when life is crashing down around you, to have the lightness of joy when the weight of sorrow is heavy, to be grateful for what God had given you when you've lost what is most precious to you—that is God at work on the interior of your life, on display in your life. It is the light of God piercing the darkness of this world. Certainly all this is part of God's purpose for the suffering and sorrow in your life. 

     Sometimes God, in his goodness, draws back the curtain and shows us; we can see how he is using our loss in our lives or in the lives of those around us. And other times we have to wait. Certainly we can never expect to see the complete purposes of God in this life. That is where faith is required....

A friend at church recently approached Casey and I and, after having prayed for us, said he felt as if we were going through a desert but soon God's plans would bloom in our life, like the blossoming of a calla lily. He knew nothing of the wasteland my soul had been wondering and, not knowing us all that well, did not even know Lilly's name, only that we had lost a child earlier this year.

Every time I start to question, God shows up in unexplained and unexpected ways.

Life has been crushingly heavy. Living has been a struggle. Pain is everywhere. I asked Casey just yesterday, "So do you think we just never paid attention to all this suffering before or has this been an unusually tragic year?".

On top of the many funerals we have attended and uncounted couples we have met that lost children in 2012, I know five people with cancer, two of which are children (ages 2 and 12).

Then of course there was the shooting in Connecticut. The pain and screams that rolled through me would paralyze the weak hearted.

Babies being murdered!! My God why?? When will you come Lord?? 

I do not know God's purposes. I do not understand how the all-powerful can allow such cruel injustice, but He has showed Himself to me too many times to give up on Hope.

I would gladly trade peace and grace for the life of my Lillian girl, but what choice do I have? I will find comfort in knowing that she is with the One who defines Love and look for the beauty in the pain.

We often feel like shattered dust and fragments, but He reveals to me how He can turn the pieces of life into a beautiful mosaic masterpiece.

If I will let Him.

So, I continue to look and listen and pray and read; even when it is hard, even when I don't want to and even when I don't see the point. 

⁸ We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.  

¹⁶ Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸ So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:8-9, 16-18)