Complicated Hope

It’s okay to not be okay.

     It’s okay to be angry.

            To be sad.

                  To be disappointed.

These emotions are all part of the complex makeup that is the human being, the pinnacle of God’s creation.  He made each feeling and emotion.  In fact, they are the essence of what makes us Human.

Somewhere along the path of humanity, we began teaching that these emotions were wrong and should be hidden instead of learning how to experience them while not letting them control us.

As a young mom, I once took my screaming child to his room and laid him on this bedroom floor.  Though my nerves were at their frayed end, I managed to calmly tell him, “son, I understand that sometimes you just need to cry.  You just need to be sad.  It’s okay.  What is not okay is to expect to use these emotions to control others.  It’s not okay to let these emotions rule the rest of your day.  So scream, get it out and then let’s move on.”

It seemed that giving him permission to “feel” – as well as taking away the audience he had gained in his sister –  helped him move on.  He felt the grief of the moment and recovered.  The emotions were not bad.  They just were.

Somedays I feel stuck in grief and can’t move on.  Things I could not control in life.  Things I was never meant to experience.  Situations that were never meant to be have been too much a part of my reality.  And I grieve what was lost and what never was and what never will be.

I remember my words to my son and let myself feel the pain.  I let myself be Human.  Frail.  A finite body that harbors an immortal soul.   I go through the days.  The habits.  The rituals.  Knowing that one day I will awake and this pain will be part of my past and that it has made me more aware of my fellow humans who also suffer.

My suffering then becomes a catalyst to helping others heal.  In reaching out to help someone else, my own pain becomes redeemed and the enemy’s defeat much more real to me.

Feel the pain.  Sit in the suffering.  Then let God lift the clouds and as He does, Celebrate!

Pain is temporary.  

     Grace is Eternal.

          That is our Hope.