Togethering through it.

I’ve been thinking lately about suffering… No, not trying to suffer.  I mean, why it happens so much…

Now, it may just be because of my Philosophy of religion course this semester, (We’re talking about the problem of evil and suffering this week) but I have a feeling there’s a little something more to it.

I’ve been more emotional lately, which is quite unusual for the last year or so… Things just get me easier.  Little things mostly.  Like why the HELL do I keep snagging my pants on the door frame!!??

“It shouldn’t be so hard.”

Or sometimes it’s bigger, like when a man on the bus has an old seeing-eye dog sitting next to him, who seems to be developing cataracts…

or when I think of the many loved ones I know who seem to be fighting a losing war against addiction, or some other neurosis.

I find myself gripping anger.  Why is there so much suffering?! How do some alcoholics find freedom, sometimes suddenly, and yet others continue on?  Why do so many of my friends have to trudge through chronic depression?

“It shouldn’t be so hard.”

I think it would be easier for me to accept if I hadn’t experienced miraculous healing myself.  Or if my mom’s husband hadn’t been suddenly freed from alcoholism.  He’s just not interested anymore… I know there is help… and yet so many can’t seem to find it.

“It shouldn’t be so hard.”

I find no easy answers, no logic.  And worst of all, no formulas.

Then I remember that people are beautiful, that life is worth it.  That addicts don’t have to get their lives together to be valuable.  That Jesus walks right alongside those who struggle with mental and physical illnesses.  That I’m okay the way I am, tonight…

I remember how much I love my loved ones.  That it has nothing to do with who I WANT them to be… (Any time I think that way it’s just my own neurosis.)  I remember how thankful I am when someone, old friend or stranger on the street, loves me.

I’ve been asking myself lately whether suffering has a purpose.

Well, it simply must, because it couldn’t exist otherwise.

…right?…

I’m one of those people who tends to believe that everything has a purpose.  I think there were times in my life that I would have lost hope, otherwise.  It has served as a survival tool.

But it has also become the way I view reality, which  I’m very careful about sharing because the last thing people need to hear in the face of struggle (and who’s not struggling?) is some cliché “I’m sure there’s a reason for it all.” *barf*

…

I usually like to write something that I feel will inspire people or make someone feel good.

But lately… that’s just not where I am.

I want to be inspiring and energizing for my lil church group, but I’m feeling insecure.  But even now I think of their beautiful smiles.  And I remember that they probably feel similarly about mine.

For some reason I feel that life is so worth it, so beautiful, that it somehow outweighs the suffering, the evil… but I couldn’t tell you why.  And sometimes I don’t believe that myself.

I’m sometimes really pissed… and I guess all I can say,

all I want to say,

is that we’re going through this together.
We’re togethering through.