Chapter 2 - Reflections
Dr Parrott said that she was searching her life for meaning as she walked a place called Discovery Beach in Washington State. How do we remain mindful in a world of living? How do we retain our balance when life pulls us back and forth between home, career, family, church, and duties, etc.
Dr Parrott found, as she collected tiny bits of sea glass, her life’s meaning. The fragments of her life, like the tiny bits of sea glass, had been battered and pummeled by the daily grind of the sea of life, but put together they produce something beautiful. Without love, the pieces of our life are scattered to and fro but form a unique and personal treasure when brought together with love. What one could pass for a Myriad of distractions is instead actually the path of my life. All those different seemly unrelated spokes in the wheel of my life are where I make a difference and although individually they may seem insignificant and minor they are in fact my life and when placed together in the single jar of a human heart, they reveal themselves as a beautiful treasure. Then it is our jobs to place the person that we are in total up in the light so that we can reflect God’s light and love to others to see. If we hide away or do not acknowledge the treasure of our lives then others cannot see the beauty in the light of God’s love either.
Chapter 3 - Grinding
When great cataclysmic occurrences happen, we may go on with living out of necessity, but our minds and hearts are consumed with thoughts of the situation. Dr. P talks about how her father, a preacher, had an affair and divorced her mother and basically abandoned his first kids for his second marriage kids and how she was so angry and bitter towards those who had not suffered that devastation.
I know how devastating loss feels. To suffer the tragic loss of my father and my nephew so abruptly and violently and feel so lost and get so angry when people ask for prayer for their families for sickness or whatever. Why, I want to know should God give them anything that he didn’t give me. Why should they be spared this agony when I was not? I also have a tendency to want to tell people who want prayer for elderly people who are good Christians to get better from devastating illnesses. WHY??? They are Christians, they are very old, let them die for goodness sakes. I know this is wrong, but until now, I never felt the need to change it. I just prayed anyway, without feeling it, but because I was supposed to and begrudgingly.
The pain that a woman carries with her is the grinding stone. It will either make her bitter, or a better woman. So far in my life it has mostly made me bitter, perhaps now, it can start to make me better.
Dr. P talks about how going through her parent’s bitter divorce and what she learned makes her so much more effective in her work with married couples and in her compassion towards children of divorce.
I can see how growing up in the claws of bi-polar manic depression and feeling an outcast my whole life makes me have a much greater compassion for children who do not “march to the beat of the typical drum.” I was a special needs kid that the system failed and didn’t loose, only because God was greater, so I understand and have so much more compassion for those children who are trying so hard and just cannot “get it”.
Pain sharpens our ability to love. Pain is a gift no body wants, but it is the grinding of the sea against the stone to form the beautiful sea glass. It takes the sharp edges of our personalities and smoothes them over so that we can be more receptive and compassionate to those around us.
In my case, it was only when God allowed me to be completely shattered and broken emotionally and physically (He will never allow us to be broken Spiritually unless WE choose to break us), that I became willing to allow God to truly be God in my life. Until I was so battered and broken that I literally had no will nor real desire to live that I became open to the revelations of the Spirit happening now. Until I was crushed by the cornerstone, I could not be used in any efficient way.
Our pain is NEVER without purpose. In fact it may be the greatest motivator we ever have to embrace loving our fellow man.
4 comments:
The fact that God uses pain to shape and form us into who He created us to be doesn't thrill me at all, but I know it to be not just a fact, but TRUTH. A hard truth, but truth just the same.
We DO have a choice to make, whether to become bitter or better. Most of the time I've chosen to become better, but the roots of bitterness run deep. In the one case where I let bitterness take over, God had to do a deeeeeeeep work in me to change it. It wasn't a pleasant process and it didn't happen quickly. It was a detailed process for which I had to GIVE PERMISSION for God to do WHATEVER He wanted to do. He left the choice for each phase of the process up to me. Knowing that it was in MY hands to be made whole (or keep going the way I was) was a huge responsibility for which I would be held accountable before the One Who was giving me the opportunity for change.
Even now, I still need to allow Him to continue forming and shaping me into who He wants (and created me to be) so I can FINALLY fulfill my purpose on this side of eternity.
Thanks for sharing, Bec. :-)
YEah, the whole pain into compassion thing is not my favorite revelation either, but considering the "pain" I have been in most of my life, it sort of makes sense. The more pain you face the easier it is to be bitter instead of allowing God to use it to make you better. Like I said, I was so steeped in bitterness, bitterness that I could not even see it went so deep into who I am, that God had to allow my life to be completely shattered and truly abandoned by everyone around me for me to turn to Him alone and face a bruital truth.
Now that the truth has been faced though, like a cancer exposed, it can be removed and though the chemo may make me a little sick, :) I will recover and be even better than before with the knowledge of what I actually have to loose.
Thanks for the comments Wendy
I don't like pain. It hurts. But then so does a visit to the chiropractor.
pain definatly sucks
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