Stop minimizing your suffering.
I'm not talking about complaining. We can certainly complain less during Lent.
I'm talking about trials. True suffering and crosses in your life.
Too often we gaslight ourselves: "Others have it worse"
And that is true. There is incredible, heart wrenching suffering in the world.
In every corner of it.
But your suffering matters to Him
and He wants to accompany you and your trials.
Our God suffers with us.
Your trials are still yours
and no one else’s.
They are unique to you as you are unique in the world.
The Lord wants to walk with you.
Don’t push Him away when He wants to journey with you.
Don’t go through it alone, my friend.
Let Him in.
Let Him walk with you, because He also suffered.
Let Him show you His wounds and comfort you.
There’s a reason for purification in all of this
that is just reserved for you.
A reason that may not make sense.
Trying to make sense of that reason can be so terribly painful. Agonizing.
Even when it seems that we're standing alone staring at the devil in the face,
amidst a deafening silence and an excruciating loneliness and desolation,
He *is* there with you.
That is the mystery of our faith.
And it's not an easy mystery to grasp; to live.
Even the apostles who themselves saw the Lord and walked with Him,
even after He told them what would happen,
they doubted, suffered, wept, and despaired.
Yet, unlike Judas, they never despaired to the point of denying the Lord the gift of letting Him in their hearts and souls so they could be redeemed.
Lent is when we circle back from Christmas and we're reminded that Emmanuel,
"God with us," also suffers *with us.*
Let Him in...
