Recycling Pain

God is...

This past week I have been pondering on how this mysterious God of ours, who somehow lives within each one of us, can grow us through suffering.  It brought me to see God as the Ultimate Recycler taking heartbreak, shame, guilt, rejection, abuse, fear, anger, abandonment, or whatever, you can fill in the blank, and use it for our transformation.  This, however, is not an automatic, quick, one-sided process.  It does require our full participation, awareness, patience, trust, and work.  

It seems the very first step in the recycling process is learning to sit with the discomfort, letting pain be pain and mystery be mystery, and trust good will come from it.  And while sitting with my pain, I have found breathing and praying eventually reveals the next step needed toward growth. 

I would have never volunteered to be widowed at age 33, with three young children, but it did bring me to know a capable woman who could provide for her children, could learn to balance a check book, maintain a house, yard and car, and lead me to develop talents I didn’t know I was capable of performing in the world of work.  I would have never opted to lose my youngest son at age 21 to mental illness but it did make me more aware, compassionate, and less judgmental of others.  I would have never chosen abuse and Alzheimer’s disease in my parents but it taught me to see God in all things, to know I was worthy of good self-care, to look for my complicity in any trouble, find my voice, and lead me to know true forgiveness and reconciliation.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “…it is the law of all progress that is made by passing through some stages of instability and that may take a very long time.”  What if we could all trust the Divine recycling process?

Suicide Survivors

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I am a suicide survivor as are my son Michael, daughter Mary and my brother Joseph.  Terminal mental illness took my husband Frank in 1975, my son Joe in 1988, and my sister-in-law Kathryn in the early 1990’s, and now my cousin Sally’s son Jake this past week.  There is little else in life that can compare to the dark jarring upon hearing news of this irretrievable loss.  When our loved ones’ pain and anguish ends, ours escalates with astounding intensity.  Our lives are forever changed and we are faced with accepting what is.

My experience of accepting this dark pain has led me to know a mysterious God who can transform us through darkness.  I remember the exact moment when I began my long healing process after the death of my husband and son.  After my husband’s death it felt like someone had cut me in half lengthwise with a meat cleaver and there was this long jagged wound leaving me half of what I was.  Sometime after his death, I was on the phone with a relative who said, “You know the pain will get better.”  I responded, “I don’t care if it ever does.”  With that acceptance I felt a subtle shift within that slowly began healing my wound.  After my son’s death the physical sensation was of a black hole in my chest where my heart had been.  I remember walking down into the basement one night, which seemed to even intensify the feeling of emptiness in my chest, and thinking I embrace this darkness as a sign of my love for Joe.  And again there was that subtle shift that slowly began returning my heart. 

This mysterious God of ours can use the pain of terminal mental illness, or any pain, to make us a more aware, compassionate people.  In my experience, the transformation begins by accepting and honoring our pain and then letting God grow us into a more caring people.  I can’t think of a better tribute to the kind and gentle soul we knew as Jake.

Deeply Connected

God is...

Have you ever felt deeply connected to someone or something and experienced a kinship and empowerment through that connection?  I think those are the times we can become aware of the God energy flowing through us.  And even though that energy is always within, it seems awareness of it comes easiest in either times of great sorrow or great joy. 

When I struggled mightily with my aging parents’ care needs I felt that kinship and empowerment in the natural world, and sometimes from others.  It is that God energy, and the learning that came from it, that I share in God Never Hurries.  I wrote … It was a time of heightened consciousness and vivid dreams.  I awoke one morning with words floating in my head.  I did not remember a specific dream, but there were these words that wanted to be put together.  I reached for my bedside pencil and paper, and here’s how they became arranged: 

God is in the sunshine,

God is in the rain.

God is in the wheat field

And in the sky again.

God is in the birds

Who sing to you and me.

God’s also in the puppy that

Plays so gleefully.

God is in the mountains,

God is in the sea.

But best of all, don’t you know

God’s in you and me.

What if we really looked everyday for this mysterious God living in all people and all things?