Name the Pain.

Growth, Healing, Trials 0

Weighed against “real” suffering, like systemic racism, or abuse, or war, our everyday losses might seem too silly to mention or even feel. Our minds know suffering is not a contest, but our actions prove otherwise. So we hobble around, trying to ignore the swelling – the soft anguish of growing children who need us less, old regrets that cannot be undone, the ache of fading friendships, the too-quiet nest, the faltering faith, the strain of aging, the looming sense that our society is catastrophically unwell.

Grief is grief. Its intensity and duration might differ, but the DNA is the same. We can’t counterweight what we avoid or minimize. Our only way through is to feel its full weight without judgment. Naming the pain is our prescription for healing. Embodying it is even better.

— Shannan Martin, Counterweights, p. 33

Lament as a Path to Praise

Peace, Prayer, Trials 0

You might think lament is the opposite of praise. It isn’t. Instead, lament is a path to praise as we are led through our brokenness and disappointment. The space between brokenness and God’s mercy is where this song is sung. Think of lament as the transition between pain and promise.

It is the path from heartbreak to hope.

— Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, p. 28

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, August 9, 2025

Love Is Stronger.

Compassion, God, Love, Trials 0

[A prayer for when “the pain is too much”]

I am busy telling you
I will never survive this
and you tell me the truth.
You never poison me with the lie that
“God gives you what you can handle.”
You say, instead,
that you promise,
you swear,
an oath made in your blood,
that this suffering will never outlast
this love.

Tell me again, God,
about how love goes on forever.

No, truly, tell me again
about love stronger than even this.

— Kate Bowler, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, p. 67

Photo: Snow on branches, South Riding, Virginia, February 12, 2025

People of Hope

Hope, Trials 0

I don’t believe our suffering is a premeditated test that forces us to find meaning, but I believe that pain is a present opportunity to choose: a sacred space where we get to decide who we will be and what we will believe and how we will respond. As people of faith, we get up when we fall because we are a people of hope, we accept the descent as an invitation to rise again. The spiritual journey — like the human experience — is not a level, linear path where pitfalls are uniform and where growth is predictable and progress comfortable. It is a messy, meandering, awkward path of stops and starts. It is made of both the falling and the getting back up — and the former is often far easier than the latter.

— John Pavlovitz, Rise: An Authentic Lenten Devotional, p. 1-2

Photo: Sunrise, South Riding, Virginia, March 23, 2022

Love and Suffering

God, Life, Love, Trials 0

In the practical order of life, if we have never loved deeply or suffered deeply, we are unable to understand spiritual things at any depth. Any healthy and “true” religion is teaching you how to deal with suffering and how to deal with love. And if you allow this process with sincerity, you will soon recognize that it is actually love and suffering that are dealing with you. Like nothing else can! Even God has to use love and suffering to teach you all the lessons that really matter. They are his primary tools for human transformation.

— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 207

Photo: Dunluce Castle, Ireland, July 2001

Rejection Is Protection

Faith, God, Letting Go, Prayer, Trials, Trust 0

I saw such sorrow on a friend’s face today, Lord. Something did not work out the way she had hoped. There was once a time when I would have prayed for her to get the position she was aiming for. When I think of that now, how I used to pray, I wince in my soul. It took me years — and maybe lifetimes — to understand my folly. Thinking that I know what is best for someone, and that You require my guidance — my intervention — to direct another person’s life! I often replay the dream I had years ago, at the time I felt the doors had suddenly closed on the career I had chosen. I had been lamenting not getting my way. I was feeling sorry for myself, rejected by something I wanted, and abandoned by heaven, so to speak. I was not in good shape. But in a dream visitation I was informed that “earthly rejection is holy protection.” I woke up calm. Tranquil, as if I had slept under a blanket of grace. I have never doubted again — not once. When I released my unmet expectations to You, You led me down a path I did not see coming. One I could not have imagined because I never knew it existed.

— Caroline Myss, Intimate Conversations with the Divine, p. 118

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, February 27, 2021

A Priceless Experience

Growth, Trials 0

It seems we acquire the most strength and wisdom
at those points in our lives that are the most difficult.
Later on, we think back on those difficult times,
on what we learned from them
and how we came through them.
Then we realize that they have been
a priceless experience for us.

— Haemin Sunim, Love for Imperfect Things, p. 161

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, August 7, 2020

Transformation Through Suffering

God, Growth, Life, Trials 0

The supreme irony of life is that this voice of Christ works through — and alongside of — what always seems like unwholeness and untruth! God insists on incorporating the seeming negative. There is no doubt that God allows suffering. In fact, God seems to send us on the path toward our own wholeness not by eliminating the obstacles, but by making use of them. Most of the novels, operas, and poems ever written seem to have this same message in one way or another, yet it still comes as a shock and a disappointment when we experience it in our own little lives. But apart from love and suffering, both of which are always underserved, I see no other way that humans would recalibrate, reset, or change course. Why would we?

— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 83-84

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, July 10, 2020