My friend Chris from The Mom Café reposted something on her blog that I want to share with you. As I read her post, I was reminded of the purpose of suffering.
Her post title is Your Pain is a Beautiful Reminder and you can click the link to read more. These are the words she began with: I was lying in bed the other night in pain. My ear was burning and twitching, my breasts burst with that familiar sharp surge and my joint in my foot was once again caught against the bone as I literally felt the fragments pierce my tendons. I felt the various pains rise and fall over and over again, while my mind followed them and tightly wound around each one. Here I was again… receiving the echoes of past surgeries that still linger and remember. Once again, sleep is pushed back against the shots of fire that rise throughout my body.
And this is the comment I wrote in response to her post: I just attended a class last night entitled The Purpose of Suffering. Your post reminds me of the things the speaker said. Without the pain and suffering my life would be totally different. In my mind I think things would be better, but in my innermost being, I know with a fierce knowledge that if not for the physical pain and the heart-wrenching suffering I wouldn’t be where I am today, with the blessings that surround me. Thanks for the reminder of a beautiful way to look at the not so beautiful circumstances that make up who we are.
There are so many truths in Chris’ words, the things the speaker said, and my comment. I admit, I don’t even begin to understand the ultimate reason for suffering and pain, and I have on numerous occasions asked the “Why” question, not just for the things that I have endured but on behalf of those I hear who are suffering greatly, whether people I know or not. I have yet to come up with an answer to the greatest question of all…why?
Perhaps the answer comes at the end of our lives as we reflect and look back with an unbiased view of the things that occurred. Or perhaps we just know as we take our last breath that the things that transpired did so in the exact time and the absolute way they were intended to play out, as painful and unpleasant as they were.
purposes that we will never see while we walk this earth?
I don’t know if these things I write are true or not, but I can tell you this; I know with every fiber of my being that the latest life-altering, devastating event that I am experiencing is being played out exactly the way it is supposed to and because of that knowledge I do not fight, nor flail at the circumstance that surround me and my family and threaten to eat us alive.
Don’t ask me how I know these things, but I do.
There is a purpose for suffering that we know not, but a purpose nonetheless.
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