Gifts

I started getting calls – concerned calls – about my mom a few years ago.

“Uh, Jess,” the voice of my precious pastor said, “something is not right here.”

“Is this Jessica?” Another call came, someone I did not know. “Hey – my name is Brian. I need to talk to you.”

And so my personal nightmare began. My mother’s breakdown lasted several long months during which I felt like everything I knew was turned upside down.

I lay on the bed at night, trying to talk to Hugh, feeling as if he were a million miles away. No one could possibly understand the pain I was in, not even my husband. When my depression started, I was relieved because it meant I didn’t have to fight anymore.

My mother’s severe breakdown remains that single most difficult experience of my life. It was the darkest, most painful thing I have ever experienced.

A few days ago, my friends and I talked about Philippians 1. Paul talks a lot about joy – but he talks a lot about suffering as well.

Slowly, cautiously, we shared stories of our own suffering.

All their stories make me cry as I remember. Loss, disappointment, and grief – the common thread of all our experiences.

How can we find Christ in the middle of the pain? Where is He when life doesn’t make sense anymore?

One of my friends spoke up. “When I think back over my life so far – when I think about it like a timeline – I can see that the times I have grown spiritually – really grown the most – are when I have been suffering.”

We all thought for a minute. My head started to nod. I remembered my mother’s breakdown, I remembered wanting to die, I remembered the total hopelessness.

Then I remembered starting to trust God in the middle of the pain. I slowly started to trust Him even though I did not have the answers. I began to seek Him with a passion and a hunger that I had never known before.

I never needed Him that much until I had nothing left to give. No more energy to face my situation, no more ideas on how to solve it. I was completely broken – my suffering was total.

When I had nothing left, He came in. Step by step, Jesus began to fill me up. I started to trust Him. I became dependent on Him.

Paul says that “there’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting” (Phil. 1:29, The Message).

The suffering is a gift.

“You know,” another woman said, recounting her own story, “it has been worth it. Really. The pain of what I went through – now that I know Him more, it was worth the hurt.”

She echoes what Paul knew, what kept him full of joy during his own suffering. Knowing Christ is worth everything – the things He speaks to us in the dark places are precious words that we wouldn’t hear in the light of day. He can become our everything in the middle of the pain – and we can understand truly that “to live is Christ, to die is gain.”

He comforts the brokenhearted.
He gives beauty for ashes.
He changes mourning into dancing.
He takes us from darkness to light.
He speaks life to things that have died.
(Isaiah 61:1-3, Psalm 30:11, 1 Peter 2:9, Ezekiel 37)

And, now trusting and loving Him more – we begin to live again.