My Experience of Why

I guess I will share my current understanding of why for my pain. We had a discussion group this Sabbath on the Dali Lama but it ended in a discussion of pain. It was odd one of the guy's asked the same questions I asked in my last blog. It was almost verbatim. Weird.

Charles and I talked about it on the way home. And after two years of mulling it over I have come to one reason why I need No in my life. But first I will share what other people said yesterday in our discussion group.

Just so you understand this discussion group is made up of people who go to our church but there is a good mix of SDA and non-SDA people there. Many of the non-SDA used to be SDA and have a lot of pain in their history; abuse from a "holier than thou" congregation that destroyed itself from the inside out. We meet in a friend's coffee shop.

One fellow suggested that the older he has gotten the more he has realized that he doesn't have to know all the reasons why. He doesn't have to have all answers like he used to. Another broke it with...the fact that he believes God is not only omnipotent, omnipresent etc etc but all wise and so he isn't always going to understand.

A girl on the couch popped in with the reason she finds for her own pain is that she doesn't seem to grow without it. God can't have us as little babies spoonfeeding us for the rest of our lives. Pain matures us and pushes us to get rid of tradition, to solidify our beliefs and to get to know God.

These answers are all a part of the why of pain but the maturing ability of pain/No's is what resonated more with me at this time of my life. I ask God to help me to get closer to Him and trust Him more. And the only way my heart seems to learn to trust Him more is to be put in situations where I cannot fix it and I must trust Him as a Friend to carry me through emotionally.

I am an independent sort of person and I have an obstinate "can-do" personality that often will motor on through tough times, using my brain to figure out a way to get through, to meet the goal. Not that this is a sin always...unless it gets in the way of my relationship to my Friend. And it does at times. When something like what happened this week happens to me my first thought is all the alternatives and I rush around trying to fix it. The whole time filled with frustration, angst and frayed nerves. It is only when He has pulled that very last rug (idea) out from underneath me do I give up.

Thankfully, it is coming quicker since I first started to learn to rest on His wisdom. When I have given up on hope from myself I often find my brain is clearer and ideas I hadn't consider pop in but sometimes I just have to wait and turn to Him each time that frustration shows back up.

So why pain and No's in my life. Currently I feel it is because I don't seem to learn to trust Him any other way. And I am finding that God seems to have an agenda. That agenda is to become a trusted best Friend of mine and my agenda is to be happy and unruffled. They collide! But I see that His agenda is for my better good; I have submitted my agenda to Him by asking Him to help me grow.

I am slowly coming to understand that He is there crying with me, willing to give me the strength to get through my disappointments and comfort me. But He doesn't rescue me because it is not for my best good. I find Him like Kim's description Like a Father Blog He is tangibly right there comforting me never leaving me alone. He may not say YES and but like my dear friend C said, "He will never leave me in a ditch alone."