“Feeling awful means you’re healing.” His words flashed on to the screen and my curser blinked as a metronome pacing my thoughts. I hated what I was doing in every way, and I so badly wanted to do the right thing. The reality of my next choices weighed so heavily on my heart, and I tapped my pen on the desk.
For some reason that pen needed to be there. Yes, I type, but it seems the writer in me is still unwilling to abandon the tool of the trade. It helps me think. That day wasn’t unusual.
I wonder if God ever feels heartbroken over the temporary pain He allows us to experience. While He knows that that suffering will bring us closer and will build us stronger, I can’t help but see a father who agonizes over how it has to happen. If I could help someone grow through luxury, I would! Instead, it seems that the only way to see character shaped and built is to lead someone through the harder roads. It’s not pretty, but it’s something that has to be done for those you care the most deeply for. It’s in those moments that you can be bitter and wish to spite them or you can be over protective and wish to shield them. Each of those comes from a place of brokenness. Instead, there is evidence of healing when you can lead someone into heartache, knowing it is for their best, all the while feeling the pain of the trial you are allowing to take place.
Father, you know we are broken. We were never meant to live in a sinful world. You don’t wish to see us suffer, yet that is the cost of sin. You carry out your plan, not with spite, but with intimate care and gentle love so that, though we walk through the dark places, we can know that you are near and that you weep with us over the fallenness of sin. You are driven by the goal of seeing us made whole. Your heart yearns for the healing to be complete so that we need not suffer any longer. For at that time, we shall be without sin and see You are you are!
Today though, I am not yet whole, therefore you allow me to struggle so that, through each trial, I will become a little more complete in you.