Suffering and Joy

I don’t feel like I have the power to say what I would like, I don’t feel I have the knowledge to express it, and I am almost positive that what I say now will never be brought to attention in the future.

Words. They have power to destroy, and power to heal. As the Bible tells me in a passage I have forgotten the reference to. I do know that this is true. I’ve seen how words can mend a fight. I have seen how words have destroyed what “could have been”.

If I could ask for one thing right now, I think I would selfishly say I’d like to find my peace, despite many others that could have had peace by my request. I am driven by feeling and I am not sure how to counteract it.

Right now, life is my enemy. It is time alloted for suffering and endurance. I know the purposes are good because I know that God is good, but nonetheless it all seems evil to me. It is like chasing after wind. I am beginning to see why Ecclesiastes is full of wise sayings. Life is like chasing after the wind because we believe we are chasing after dreams, only to never achieve them or to achieve them and find we lose it eventually. If this isn’t evil, what is?

I want to harden my heart toward God, because I know He has called me to suffer for He is the maker, the creator, the allotter of our days; and I am not. I want to scream at Him and tell Him I can’t do it, I don’t want to do it: live. But what else is there on earth, but to live to please God and wait for the day of salvation?

I wanted to be a lady whom people saw and were filled with awe, passion, inspiration to follow God. I wanted to be someone who people saw that I gave everything to God. When it comes down to it becoming hard, I become a sissy and run away, I cry, I scream, I become emotional. Awe, the beauty of emotions. God created them and yet they seem to be the enemy when suffering comes.

I know one thing: I want to live.

I want to see the sun shine tomorrow. It is a reminder that God’s mercies are new every morning. Forever our souls can rest.

I want to see the world. I want to travel. I want to see culture, going to coffee shops. I want to be with someone who needs Christ’s love and to just be with them in a nice place, to give them compassion, joy, and love.

I want to see my friends and family just accept God, without the effort. Why couldn’t life be simpler?

I want to feel the warmth of summer.

I want to climb rocks with my best friends.

I want to laugh. make memories.

I don’t want to not live, but suffering stops the joy.

I don’t know how to live with joy when I am suffering, but I do know this:

John 16:21-22

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

I know He is good.

Psalm 119:50

My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life.