"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Does it? Or does it grit on you you until you're too tired to fight it? You can only stretch any object so far before it breaks. And here I sit, in the same spot I've been so many times. I'm human, and imperfect. I've been beating my head against this brick wall for what feels like forever. I stand up, and I sit down. I break, then put the pieces together, then break.
Today... I'm angry. I'm angry at all the hurt, depths of despair, pits of darkness, and water too deep to tread. I'm angry that it covers the earth. I'm angry at what I can't control. I'm angry at my heavy body that won't move, and the tears that won't come. I'm angry that I can't even figure out why I want to cry! I'm angry at "it" for taking so much life out of millions of really good people. "You're not alone.", "I've been there.", "So many others suffer like you." Ok, maybe I'm alone here, but does hearing that make anyone feel better?? Why do I want anyone to feel this way?!? I don't want know others suffer. I want to know there's still happiness out there. That He is letting people feel the joy He's promised. Ok, I get it, I should be comforted by others knowing where I'm at and "getting it." Truth is, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Knowing it's sucking the life out of others makes me wonder more where He is. Sometimes it seems there's so much more sadness in the world than happiness. People are stressed, don't have enough time for half of what they need to do for others let alone anything for themselves, treading water that they're slowing sinking into, life is crushing them. We go to church and follow commandments because that gives us hope that we'll get to a place someday that all these things that are making us sink will be gone.
Maybe He let's us sink so we fall into Him. He's the water? The muck that makes the pit? That wall? So He can surround us when no one else will or can? Maybe. When I think of it that way, the anger dissipates a bit. He's everything, the edge of the cliff that we're holding onto with the tip of a pinky, so He can look in our eyes as we try not to fall. We may be about to let go, and think He's nowhere, but really it's Him that we're holding onto and we don't even know it. Maybe?
While I don't have all the answers, I do have one - we are here to become like Him. Why some have to have this "darkness"in order to accomplish that goal and others do not, I don't know. But somehow remembering that key piece of information helps me when I have to go through stuff that I don't want to.
ReplyDeleteI also want to mention why I go to church. When I was younger, I went because I thought it was necessary to get back to Him, more like a requirement that I had to do in order to be let back in. Now I realize it is a requirement, but for a different reason. It's not a check box "I-did-it-so-I-earned-it". I go to church because I want to become like Him. Not only do I need to go so I can have my sins washed away again through the ordinance of the sacrament and by the power of the Atonement, but I go because it is a critical way (nay, might I say "essential") for me to learn to become more like Him. That's why I go to church. Many might argue they can do this on their own at home. I have come to learn going to church is a necessity.
In a way it's like school. When I wanted to be an engineer, I needed to learn math. So I went to school, over and over and over. And sometime in high school I was saying, "Why do I need to learn this again? I'll never use it." Or even better, "I've already been taught this. Why are we doing it again?" And then one day I found myself in a graduate-level math class on Laplace transforms or differential equations and it all clicked. I could finally see why I had to learn what I was being taught, and I realized though it seemed like I was learning the same thing over and over, I was actually progressing in my knowledge little by little. Only in the life case, the "knowledge" is really "real-life-experience-wisdom-and-growth-knowledge". I'm sure at some point in our eternal future we will look back and say, "Now I know why I had to learn that."