Whenever I think about the richest of life, I am always taken back to my darkest times, which informed me of the depths that this life has to offer.
Oftentimes we don’t know what we don’t know, and much of life is like this.
As we look back, we come to face this glorious truth, etched with gratitude:
We don’t know until we have suffered,
having buckled under that suffering,
having surrendered to the sadness of it,
having been defeated by it,
somehow as we got through,
we learned the deeper, richer,
sustaining hope that prevails
over all destinies of despair.
Endurance pays in the tangible gratitude of peace, a hard-won wisdom.
How is it that we can sit with those who are in their darkest lament if we have not been there ourselves if our empathy hasn’t been piqued by sufferings too harrowing to imagine?
It’s only afterward that we recognize that such disciplines are for our good and not for our harm, and they offer us a future beyond what we could of ourselves procure.
Isn’t it a stunning reality, then, when we are struck with gratitude for the things we have endured?
We never forget that when we were stuck in our miry clay, we had but one option, but to trudge through it, one arduously labored step at a time.
Is it not afterward that we recognize that, for us, ‘but for the grace of God go I’?
We are all encumbered by that which should crush us. It’s our humble tenacity to keep plodding
onward that gets us to where we’re destined.
We only see this through the wisdom of hindsight. It’s faith that we apply that gets us to this
cherished goal. With a courage of sustained endurance. Our turn to step only the steps we can take—ours to take, not another’s.
This is something we can only experience firsthand through an empathy that grows from within ourselves first, and then for others as we are cast forth into a ministry of giving back what we have first received.
It is a great and very gorgeous thing to suffer enduring every bitterness and complaint—but we only see this looking behind us.
It is only possible to do such suffering if we go to sadness first and resist all temptation to enter into non-productive anger, though anger is definitely the human part of it!
Our sadness, our tears, our lamenting surrender will heal us—and it has!
It is nearly maddening to imagine that the things that I speak of are truth. They are hard to hear and even harder to read, but it is the truth, however difficult it is to reconcile.
It is a good thing for others to see a person suffer and to do it without revenge rising up, without bitterness and resentment taking over. Such a vision captivates us as inspiring; it draws us close to the one who has no answer.
Their strength speaks volumes in their weakness.
Many of us want to live inspirational lives, but no such life comes without costs we’re all so unwilling to bear. But bear these we must if we are to rise above the deathly stench of a reality too brutal to contemplate.
Rise we must, but too often we rise without giving thanks for the provision that we have been given—the grace that went with us. It is a gift, most especially of God, when we rise, as one enduring, humble, grateful, one found faithful.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Tribework
Featured Image by Phil Riley from Pixabay
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