Are we listening and helping to spread the word of God? Pain and suffering offer us opportunities. It's paradoxical, but when we suffer we are especially invited to turn our pain into love. Suffering often softens hearts. It can help us to grow in compassion for others who suffer.
I never had a real appreciation for the pain of death until my dad died when I was 38. Before that, death had not touched me so personally. We moved around so much when I was a child that I never saw the cycle of life. I only saw three or four years in the lives of those around me. It was only when I put down roots after marriage that I started to see families growing up, people growing old...dying.
I had attended funerals, but they were often people I didn't know well or with whom I had little relationship. I didn't know my grandparents very well. When they died they were elderly and it seemed to me to be in the natural order of things. You expect your grandparents and parents to go before you. Only three times before my dad's death did I attend funerals where the sense of loss was crushing, all three involving the death of a baby. One was the death of my little brother just days before birth. I was too young to fully understand. The other two were my little nephew, my brother's son, and the son of a dear friend from SIDS. I remember being in the grocery store the day I learned about my friend's tragedy and seeing people going about their business as though nothing earth shattering had happened. "Don't you understand?" I wanted to shout.
Suffering can turn us angry and bitter. That happens when we turn against God and blame Him. But if we let suffering act on our hearts and we unite it to the suffering of Christ it becomes a waterfall of grace pouring over us, changing us, softening our rough edges. I pray not to miss the opportunity that these challenging times offer us to grow closer to Christ. "By His stripes we are healed." And by our own as well.
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