Life certainly does go up and down. It has swings and roundabouts and it has varying seasons. Sometimes we are on the outside looking in. It’s the difference between seeing an aeroplane flying overhead and being in it.
It’s an amazing sight being right beneath a low flying aircraft and it’s a fun experience being inside one as it takes off. There’s a massive difference between seeing it and experiencing it.
A person may say a single sentence – eg – “I donated blood”. I reply, “Good for you!” and think nothing of it. Yet that person was telling me because donating blood is a brave event. They take 450mls of blood out of your arm, through a very thick needle. No matter how many times I donate blood, I never feel entirely relaxed. What if I pass out? I’ve never passed out before, but there’s a first time for everything. When I donate blood, it’s personal. This is my arm that you are about to plunge a fat needle into. It’s my blood.
“I donated blood.”
To others hearing it, it sounds like a good deed for the day, but it consists of so much more. Yet, if I responded, “Oh my goodness, how brave – you clever girl – wow! You donated blood. Let me see your arm. Are you okay? Can I get you something to drink? ” – it would be a bit of overkill.
Yet for the donor – it was an event. It’s all perspective.
And so it is with all our life events. Pushing out a baby is a very brave thing to do yet millions of mothers do it every day and it’s just expected that it will be done. Yet, the event is burned into the mind of the Mom. I well remember the pain and every detail of my childbirth experiences. They last just about forever. I remember being heavily pregnant with my Stacey and wondering how on earth I was going to get this baby out in the easiest most pain free way. I walked through a busy part of time and in wonder looked at hundreds of people milling about. They all had to be born. Yet it remains a mammoth event in the life of the Mom. It’s HUGE.
There is much pain in the world today and it may make us sad, but God has created us to bear the pain in small increments – individually. We suffer our own unique pain in a way that only we can do. It’s all a journey we each have to walk on our own or with those closest to us. We can console others. We can be empathetic and caring towards them, but we cannot feel the immense broken pain they feel when they are going through a trial.
That pain is reserved for us, for our trial, for the one we have to walk.
That’s how God has made us. To be able to cope with just enough so we can remain healthy and not all be broken simultaneously. Imagine if we took on all the pain of all the people in the world…we would all be broken.
But ultimately that’s what God did for us, when Jesus came to die. He took on all the pain of all the people in the whole world, so that we don’t need to be broken. He will make us whole again, if not now, in eternity.
That’s an amazing perspective.
2 Corinthians 4:18
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Keep the smile going.
God bless you!
In His Grip,
Helga xx