A Good Cry

Compassion, Healing, Letting Go, Trials 0

Having a good cry can help us to heal.  We can feel sad about what is happening or has happened and then move back into the present moment.  Breaking down in tears over a seriously painful event is perfectly natural and healthy.  Think of your tears as a sign of your compassion and love.  Allow yourself to be fully present to the pain.  Feel your emotions.  Observe your thoughts.  Your tears will help to heal your broken heart.  Let your vulnerability be your strength.  Tears of sorrow cleanse your soul.  Crying is a sign of acceptance.  You face the pain, you feel it in your body, you observe it in your mind and emotions.  Crying doesn’t last long.  You catch yourself, realizing it is now time to let go and move on.

— Alexandra Stoddard, Choosing Happiness, p. 83

Overwhelmed

God, Trials, Trust 0

First Corinthians 10:13 is certainly a promise — but it isn’t talking about trials.  It’s talking about temptation.  The promise is that God will always, always give you the power to say no to sin.  But when it comes to heartaches, physical problems, and disappointments — things out of your control, difficult circumstances suddenly thrust upon you — you may very well be overwhelmed beyond what you can bear.  There is a kind of suffering that rips your world apart and leaves you bewildered and wounded.  There are trials that overwhelm.

I drew a deep breath, showing my friend the context of the promise — and her brow furrowed.  “But take heart,” I told her.  “It’s when we are at the end of our strength . . . that’s when we fall helplessly into the everlasting arms of God.  That’s when God floods our hearts with sustaining grace.”

— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, January 31 entry

Grieving

Compassion, Healing, Life, Trials 0

It seems to me that I and most of the people I know have forgotten how to grieve like this — not only for others but for ourselves.  We have forgotten how to grieve at all.  It no longer comes naturally to us.  We have to learn it from self-help books and therapists.  Or we have to do without.

All I have to offer you is a list of don’ts.  Don’t forbid painful topics.  Don’t judge.  Don’t preach.  When people tell you of their pain, don’t say anything at all.  Don’t think, if you can help it, at least at first.  Just hear it and, if you can, cry.  Cry for them and for yourself, because you, too, have suffered such things, or will.  Cry that there is evil in this world, that we are all of us sometimes the victims and often the perpetrators of it.  Cry that people, however messed up, and even if they themselves caused the misery in which they find themselves, have to suffer at all….  Remind yourself of these truths about the pain of our world and the sins that occasion it.  Others’ sins.  Our own sins.  Because it is only this grieving, this taking of a knee, that truly comforts us, that connects us to one another and to God.

— Patty Kirk, Confessions of an Amateur Believer, p. 96

Wisdom of Women

Relationships, Trials 0

Women have a remarkable way of helping other women.  The wisdom of women can be a life raft when you are in the midst of a transition.  When you get together with them, they always tell you how fabulous you are even when you don’t feel fabulous!

— This Is Not the Life I Ordered, by Deborah Collins Stephens, Jackie Speier, Michealene Cristini Risley, and Jan Yanehiro, p. 205

Working Together for Good

Forgiveness, God, Healing, Life, Trials 0

If you’re a child of God, the ordeal you’re undergoing, however wrong or unfair or heartless it may be or may have been, in His providence and skillful hands will be used to take you somewhere good — deeper into His heart, to a place of greater dependence and trust, more perfectly refined into the likeness of Christ.

— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 107

Literature and Life

Life, Trials 0

There is no story without conflict, I tell would-be story writers.  Universal truth is ratified, in literature as in life, not through a character’s mere mindless affirmations of it but through the lifelong study that comes from doubting and challenging and searching and returning to the problem again and again.

— Patty Kirk, Confessions of an Amateur Believer, p. 73

He is Present

God, Trials 0

And yet, paradoxically, during those years of struggle, not believing in him, not seeing him, having no faith at all, I nevertheless felt him there.  He was present in my anger.  Present in my loneliness.  Present in my world’s refusal to be what I wanted it to be, and present in his own denial of anything I wanted to make him into.  Present.  With me.  Patiently waiting for me to turn and see him.  And still I struggled.

— Patty Kirk, Confessions of an Amateur Believer, p. 67

Perspective

Forgiveness, Guidance, Healing, Trials 0

Remember to ask Jesus to stand between you and your spouse, and to say only things you would say to Jesus and to listen to everything through the heart of Jesus.  When I have felt discouraged, thinking all this was unfair, I often hear Jesus from the cross saying, “And me, what have I done to deserve this?”  Bear your cross with humility, patience, and confidence in the Lord.

— testimonial in Your Father Knows Best, compiled by Bob and Charlyne Steinkamp, p. 71