Pain in This World

Wow... I just read a most excellent post on the subject of pain in this world. So excellent, in fact, that I'm going to post Jamey's words in their entirety, because she's expressed so well the thoughts that swirl around in my own head, I don't think I could get them out any better.

I don't know where this is going. I'm just warning you in advance. Just in case you think I'm coming at this with an agenda or trying to make a point. I don't have one and I'm not. I don't even know what the next word is going to be as I type it. My life is like that a lot....

Being a grown-up was so much easier before I was one. I mean, did you ever look at your parents, even as a teenager, and think, "Wow, I bet they've got a lot of stuff on their mind." No. We all knew that parents had it easy. Work. Home. Clean. Pay bills. What's hard about that? Surely they didn't struggle, they didn't have friends having a hard time that they were trying to help, they didn't think about deep subjects, they weren't scared. They were just adults and what could possibly be hard about that?

It turns out...everything.

I mean, life is hard. What is going on with that? I keep reading these things (and I'm not actively seeking them out!) about husband's dying, children dying, awful things happening during wars, people have sick kids, wives have cancer, kids in Africa are starving. People are getting divorced, women and children are abused. Kids brought into loving homes have trauma issues and spreading their trauma into their new families. Moms are exhausted. Dads are stressed out. People don't have jobs, kids aren't getting good educations. People I love have cancer, are having heart attacks, are depressed.... Life is a daily struggle. Lives are going 180 degrees from the direction that seems right. Kids are hurt by adult decisions, adults are hurt by kids' behaviors, marriages are scraped over the rocks and both parties left hurt and bleeding. People are scared, alone, hurting.


I just don't understand. From the little pains to the enormous traumas, I don't get it. Where is the justice? How can this be okay? Where is God while the world breaks itself? Why does the suffering just go on and on.

(I'm just putting it out there, God, that I don't think this is a good plan.)


I grew up in church. I went to a Christian liberal arts college. I married a pastor's son and a Bible Theology major. I've read the books. I "know" the answers:


God is restraining himself. Grace and free will. Justice will be restored with the second coming. God weeps with us. And all of those other answers.


Theologically I can get it. Intellectually I can get it.


But my heart is not getting it.


The more I see of the world, the more I am given the privilege of seeing into other people's hearts and lives, the more I experience, the more I learn, the more I want to understand, the more I wish I knew how to respond, how to help, the more I want to help bring healing into others' homes, into my home, the more I seek, the more pain I find


the less I feel like I know God.


That's all.