Isn’t it interesting how perspective works? The way you perceive something can so drastically change the way it affects your life. You’ve all heard the glass half full/empty analogy. It is so easy, living with a chronic condition, to end up on “team half-empty”. When you live with pain most of your life, that pain flows over into relationships, to your work, your spiritual walk, into every aspect of your life. It can consume you, if you allow it. Well, it will consume you, physically, and there is little you can do about that, but you do have control over how you allow it to affect the other aspects of your life. I know there are some of you who have suffered great pain, and you’re thinking, “This girl doesn’t have pain like I have pain,” and maybe I don’t. Or maybe I have been given a gift, a perspective change.
Why? We have all asked the question, either rhetorically, or genuinely. Why do I have to suffer this pain? Why is this happening to me? I believe it’s a fair question, but my guess is that none of us have gotten an answer. I know that when I was diagnosed with mastitis when my youngest child was six-years-old, I asked why. That was a genuine why – because mastitis most often affects lactating mothers (and I was NOT breastfeeding my six year old). Now, over two years later, my genuine why has become rhetorical. Why won’t this go away? Asking why often leads to self-pity, which is another easy place to end up when you suffer from chronic disease. Self-pity can lead to depression, isolation, and even bitterness. I know because I have started down all of those roads.
I am learning to say yes to myself more, even if that means saying no to others, and even when those others are people who are really important to me. Saying yes to myself last weekend meant attending a ladies’ conference at a church about an hour south of my home. During the Saturday morning session, I began to get an answer to all of the why’s I have asked over the past two and a half years.
And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.
Romans 5:3-4
The speaker defined patience for us as the ability to tolerate delay or suffering without getting upset or angry. Strong’s Concordance defines patience as cheerful or hopeful endurance. That seems a bit like an oxymoron to me – if suffering is to experience something unpleasant, how do you do that cheerfully? The passage in Romans provides the answer – because your tribulation (suffering) is going to produce something in you that nothing else could produce. If I suffer for a while, I will come out better on the other side. If I can endure this pain, this disease, this affliction upon my physical body, my inner being will be transformed. Experience in the passage above can be translated as character, and hope is the expectation of something good. So I could rewrite the passage above to say that my suffering is producing within me the ability to endure pain, and tolerate the delay in the healing that the Bible says is available to me; and when patience has been established, my character will be proven, and I will be able to confidently expect good things. Read it again – that’s a lot to take in.
I heard it put another way, from another preacher, just two days later – yeah, God knows I need to hear things twice sometimes! He said that problems (suffering) come to open doors for us. Essentially, the tribulation that comes our way it is an opportunity for us to prove ourselves. When God sees that we can endure the suffering, without complaint, we will be promoted. Wait…without complaint? You mean that if I am in pain, I cannot express to others that I am in pain? I have spent the past two years learning to ask for help, to allow others to share my burden. What does that mean, without complaint? I went over to Dictionary.com and found out that a complaint is a statement that a situation is unsatisfactory or unacceptable. It’s not, then, that I should suffer in silence, but that I should be careful with my words. The preacher reminded me that God does not punish his children, and that mighty men of God came out of the wilderness, out of great tribulation.
God wants good things for me. The Bible tells me that, but I am also a parent, and I want good things for my children. Does that mean I never want them to struggle? Of course not, because I know from experience that it is in the struggle that we learn. Have you ever taught a child to tie their shoes? Usually this happens because the child gets to a stage where they want to be independent, they are tired of having someone else tie their shoes. So they try, and fail, repeatedly. Then you show them – over and over – and they try, and fail. It was hard for me to watch my toddlers struggle, laces wrapped around their tiny fingers. The joy on their faces, however, when they made that final tug on the loops and everything came together was incredible to witness, and worth watching them struggle. The struggle produced in them an ability that could not come any other way. I could have told them a hundred times how to tie their shoes, but until they put the laces in their hands and struggled, over and over, enduring the frustration, they could never learn to tie their shoes.
Psalm 118:6 tells me that the Lord is on my side, and Romans 8:28 tells me that all things will work together for my good. If I believe that the Bible is true, then I have to believe that this suffering is working for my good. If I allow the word of God to change my perspective, it makes the suffering easier to endure. It doesn’t ease the pain, but understanding that the pain has a purpose changes the way that I perceive it.
But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.
1 Peter 5:10
Generally, when you take a test and fail you have to go back, review your errors, and try again. I am going to take an inventory, review my response to this suffering. When I see an error, I am going to study (the Word) and find out what the proper response should be. I am thankful tonight for a new perspective.
When you cannot change your circumstances, change your perspective, and your circumstances will change.
Uncommonlycommonmom
Uncommonly Common Mom 