Hope

We don’t understand Death.

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My cheerful topic of discussion in class yesterday was Death. What is it? Why do we avoid it?

I’m starting to think the curriculum was designed to hit close to home for me since I’ve lost some people recently and been pondering the subject of death. As I wrote about in my last post I am a fan of Resurrection.

However if we go by what my classmates seemed to think, it doesn’t look like most people see much sense it the idea of resurrection. Many people embrace the idea that death is the end, and we should just accept that.

Everywhere from real deaths to fictional ones, I find this. Some folks are still holding out for their favorite character to come back to life, the soul crushing response by some other fans? “They’re dead and gone, deal with it.”

Well, ouch.

Seriously, is that really the most sensitive thing to say? Don’t stomp on my hopes.

Characters dying never bothered me too much as a kid, usually they were the evil characters. Of course I didn’t like Obi Wan Ken-obi, but then he comes back. And it’s sad in other stories too. Not a lot of examples come to mind. There’s Beth from Little Women, but I stayed away from sad books as a kid.

As for real life, I’ve only known four people who’ve died. Known them well. I remember my first brush with losing someone was a nice woman at my church who died. I didn’t know her very well, I just remember her always smiling at me. My mom told me she went to heaven. I believed it, and I still do, so I wasn’t bothered.

However since then the people I’ve lost have all been ambiguous at best, I’m not sure if they went to heaven. A few I really doubt.

It’s the worst part of being a christian, having to believe that not everyone gets to live happily ever after, and worse, that they could have if they’d opened their hearts. Rejecting God is a choice.

Yet Death is one of the things that makes it hardest to accept God. Especially a loving God. Though we all intellectually know death happens and the world goes on, when it happens to us it’s still a fresh shock. We are suddenly unsure f ourselves, and that makes us unsure of what we believe. This doesn’t happen to everyone. Some people handle death with peace. But they are the exception, not the rule. Most of us are left feeling uncertain. Some never recover from that, most of us do, but we never feel the same.

That’s not to say we are the worse for it. Death, like other ills, is a matter of how you handle it. It can make you stronger or weaker.

In my class my teacher brought up the idea found in some poetry on the subject, that love ends with death. There is no love between the dead and us. We love them, but it’s not a living, growing thing.

I’m not sure that’s true. Many people continued to feel connected to their dead family or friends. I don’t really myself, except at certain moments. The interesting thing about love is that it preserves your memory and therefore a little bit of yourself. When you’re gone, you’re not entirely, if someone loves you. A part of you, not your own consciousness, but your memory, stays with them.

It’s something science hasn’t been able to explain. Loving our lost ones is not biologically helpful to most people. yet we still do.

I am not sure that the dead no longer love. I believe that those who go to heaven love even more, but from afar. We can’t hang onto them, because they have no need of us anymore.

Most of grief isn’t really coming to terms with the dead, but with yourself. Asking how you can deal with this, how you can go on. Some decide hey can’t, but that’s not the right choice.

I think because we’ve removed the comfort of religion and core values, death has become too much for many people. Now  they have nothing to make it seem less terrible.

And the answer most come to is “We don’t know.”

There is no faith in saying “I don’t know.”

I’ll admit, I don’t know what happens to every person everywhere who dies. OR even to the ones I know. That’s my uncertainty, and that’s my grief. Not knowing.

But what I do know that I know that I know, is that Jesus is real. And that he is love. And though God does things I don’t understand, there’s a reason He holds the keys to life and death. I  know that I’m alive now in a way I never was before knowing Him. I know that He changes lives. I know that He enables people to die with courage.

You might wonder, why does God let people die at all if He really conquered death? The Bible says in 1 Corinthians that Death will be the last enemy to be overthrown at the end of time.  Why is this?

A couple of reasons might present themselves. If we never died our bodies would be pretty useless. At old age, death is a mercy if you will be transformed.

More than that, if death was overthrown now, all the evil people in the world would never die either. Can you imagine that?

Even more than that, God wants us to trust Him with our lives. It’s what sets us apart form nonbelievers. If we didn’t die, there would be no need of trusting Him.

We are promised the fruit of the tree of life when the new heaven and new earth are made. We will be eternal then, in fact we already are, in our spirits.

That sounds nutty to many people. The things of God are foolishness to the world. What else would you expect?

My conclusion: Either I believe the Bible, or I believe nothing…and that doesn’t seem to work out too well.

Until next time–Natasha.

The Resurrection Arc.

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Hey fiction buffs! You’ve heard of character arcs before, but did you know there’s different kinds?

Yeah, probably if you read or watch any TV show that’s fictional, you knew that. I’m simply being dramatic.

You might know of arcs (and for you non-buffs, an arc is how a character or plot develops from one point, usually an immature one, to another, usually a better, wiser one. Typically the arc is what shows us the point of the whole story, but there are negative arcs that show one good guy turning bad, or a good guy slowly giving up on their cause. These are the bad example arcs that are meant to be a warning.) But have you heard of a Resurrection Arc?

Most arcs follow a pattern and this one does too. It’s actually pretty widely used, but since it is often misused, and people are now knocking it, I thought I’d write a defense of it.

All arcs are meant to change the characters and show them something they did not see before. Some arcs are a part of the plot and the characters learn by dealing with the challenges of that part. That’s what category I put a resurrection arc into.

A lot of things kick off arcs. The most famous is getting a challenge like being chosen for something, or the sadder common catalyst is a character losing someone close to them. Sometimes just witnessing a tragedy is enough to do it, other times the character has to lose their soulmate for their arc to begin.

However, there’s another really cool thing that kicks of some arcs. And it’s a resurrection. A resurrection can happen one of two ways. Either it’s a character literally coming back from the dead, or from being almost dead, or they just thought they were and it turns out they weren’t; or something else can be restored to a character that they felt they lost. In fiction especially this can mean a gift or power, or it can mean a belief in something they had lost faith in. It’s popular now for a memory to also be something that helps a character in this way.

In older stories resurrection is often just straight up someone’s coming back to life. This theme appears in fairy tales way more that we realize. Often it’s intertwined with redemption. Many of Anderson’s lesser known stories involve resurrection, and even his most famous ones that have had those elements removed in the retelling.

In modern fiction Death has an oddly compelling presence. Take “The Fault in Our Stars,” or almost any dystopia fiction now. Death is everywhere, often very young people are obsessed with it. (Funny that it’s often older people writing this stuff.) I always loved life, I was happy when nobody died. I considered “The Lion King” a sad movie, (and that part still is.) But of course, Mufasa isn’t really gone, and that can be part of a resurrection arc. Realizing that death isn’t so powerful. It’s why you won’t see this arc in the death-shadowed stories I just mentioned, unless it’s in some twisted, unholy way. Frankenstein’s monster is no example of resurrection, just to be clear.

Life wins out in the end, and love. That’s the message of resurrection arcs in a nutshell. But the complaint, which I’m sick of hearing, is that they don’t create lasting stakes.

Since the Avengers franchise took off, fans have been growing dissatisfied with happy, everyone’s alive, stories (like they don’t all hate it when their friendly neighborhood Spiderman gets knocked off, please.) While I find the constant whining about it to be stupid, I do note that there’s something to be said for making things a bit more realistic.

It’s not that no one dies that really bugs me, it’s that no one gets hurt for very long, no one loses anything in their lives, and no one seems to be affected for longer than two films by any traumatic experience. Also I fail to see character growth even when they are.

In truth, whether characters live or die has nothing to do with depth. Action flicks that kill off henchmen by the dozens aren’t known for being deep. And Chick flicks that don’t kill anyone, or else do it in a more drawn out, romantic way, aren’t necessarily shallow. The Notebook is dumb for most of the movie, but the ending always gets to me because it is saying something profound about love.

That said, I think people who knock resurrection arcs are missing their potential. It’s not always a cheap cop-out to have a character not stay dead. In fact, often it’s a very good catalyst for growth in both them, and everyone else.

When a characters is resurrected, everyone has to reconsider what life and death means to them. They have to ask themselves what they are willing to sacrifice, and what they aren’t. But most of all, it changes the dynamics of how they see the antagonists. Maybe there are things more powerful than whatever the evil stands for.

As for the character who comes back themselves, they get a chance to change things about their lives that maybe only losing them gave them the clarity to do. Or they impart some wisdom on the other characters that they couldn’t before. Resurrection means restoration.

If we no longer like that, it is because we have grown more hopeless. It’s more cool now to just accept the crap in you life and deal with it, then it is to hope for a change. People encourage you to give up on hoping for others to change, for things to turn around. Be the force, they say. Well, that’s fine in its place. But what about when your force isn’t enough?

What about when all the kick-rear skills in the world won’t save you? What about when you’re losing heart and nothing else will help? What about when someone simply can’t save themselves?

Resurrection is what solves this, and nothing else can. It’s a restoring of life and hope and faith to someone who had lost heart. It’s the only thing that makes redemption fully possible. Because though a death may redeem someone, it only sticks if life comes out of it.

Resurrection, in the end, is what breeds humility. What engraves the inevitability of our own need for someone to intervene on our behalf into our souls. By overcoming mortality, it reminds us of it.

It’s not cheap. It’s often the hardest thing to do well.

I for one will never get tired of this arc, until next time–Natasha.

I pick an awkward subject as a final post before vacation.

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Hellos everyone, sorry for my long delay, I have had some writer’s block lately. Once I got out of school I felt like I just wanted to chill around my house doing nothing very important.

But I’m leaving for vacation today so I guess that’s not going to be an option anymore. I’ll be gone nearly two weeks and won’t be able to post. So I want to make this one count.

And with that in mind let’s talk about something awkward.

I’ve been watching videos by this youtuber who’s a professing bisexual. Which normally I’d stay far away from but my sister convinced me to give him a shot.

I don’t hate non-straight people, but it’s uncomfortable to be around someone with a lifestyle that you feel is wrong in may ways. Though I guess to a Christian, anyone else’s lifestyle is wrong.

Which maybe explains why I feel uncomfortable around unbelievers in general.

This kind of awkwardness has been pegged as just being too out there to handle other people’s difference by those who dislike Christians. Some think we’re just too close minded and immature to tolerate other points of view.

But intolerance is not always a sign of immaturity. You’d not tolerate fleas on your skin or even on your dog, and it’d hardly be mature if you did.

People who go through life believing our goal should be to harm no living thing aren’t really being realistic. The world is set up for us to have to fight and overcome obstacles form bugs to bureaucrats. Things get hurt in the process, I wish it was always the bad things.

That said, the alternative sexual sub culture is still something I am not sure how to deal with. I can’t avoid it at my school, or in my state. And when I meet those people I’m generally surprised by how normal they seem until I know.

This you-tuber is actually a brilliant, talented fellow, who seems to be struggling with his sexuality and his frustration with being lonely.

Yet he came to a surprisingly mature frame of mind in one video, and I was puzzled.

This may have changed my perspective on homosexuality or bisexuality. Don’t get me wrong, Is till believe it’s a sin.

And I still find it repulsive.

But if I’m honest, it’s not like I’ve never felt the temptation. I’m starting to think there are probably few people who haven’t.

It’s actually normal for young teens to have what seems like homosexual feelings when puberty is first beginning. Your body can be confused for whatever reason. Then it changes. I’m not a young teen anymore, but I had that problem.

And I was totally embarrassed about it. And nowadays, in this society I think people are even more embarrassed because we don’t want to be told to embrace it and be gay.

How does a christian youth deal with feelings like that? Or how does anyone who wishes to be normal deal with those feelings?

Some have chosen to accept what’s popular now and just be gay…to my surprise this doesn’t always mean an actual sexual lifestyle, but just that they identify that way and think it fits them. I think the appeal here is simply to cease the struggle. Only it doesn’t work.

And I’ve been tempted to make that agreement plenty.

The Bible terms homosexuality as a strong delusion. Which means it’s extremely hard to realize it’s a delusion. The person in that is so blind that they don’t even think of it as sin, and in biblical times it was even more of a problem then it is now.

As much as the publicly gay propaganda annoys me, I’m realizing that the regular people who struggle with that problem don’t necessarily want applause (and thanks Hollywood for yet again making the situation worse than it already was) they just want to feel normal.

I think that’s where the torture comes in, and as much as they try to accept not being normal, I can’t help but think it’s just not going to happen.

Because homosexuality is not normal, biologically and spiritually speaking.

But I did notice something in the Bible that might shed some light on this subject. In the Bible God speaks of the Church as his bride, meaning men and women, and King David spoke of God as delighting in him and pursuing him.

Does that mean (and there are sects of Christians who will say it does) that God is okay with homosexuality.

No, I think you’d have to throw out Romans and Corinthians to believe that. And some of them do, but I don’t.

What this means is that God has placed the desire to be romanced in men as well as women. It’s actually a human quality. And a Divine one too, since God loves to be adored.

I feel bad that personality traits such as creative expression have been pegged as feminine or gay for such a long time. It’s not gay to like things that are considered girly, since all of those things were once considered manly anyway.

Men used to have the market on creativity. I think it would be stupid to say all those artists composer, poets, and actors were gay. Many of them were quite the opposite to an unfortunate level.

The secular world is right about one thing, people who choose the gay lifestyle do have repressed feelings. But I don’t believe at the core those feelings are sexual.

Boys who decide they have gay tendencies may feel that way for many reasons but I  think one can be that they don’t feel it’s okay to have more tender, mushy feelings.

I never found those kinds of men to be unmasculine just because they had softer sides, but I guess that’s not how a lot of people grew up seeing it.

Honestly, even homosexual men still have that innate desire to save people, to be the hero. Oddly enough, this may be evidence even in how some of them now flaunt it publicly to get praise. Supposedly that desire is supposed to be masculine.

But here’s the thing, I’m a woman. And I admit, I find other women attractive. Girls actually feel threatened by each other because they can see each other’s charms, sometimes more than men can honestly. But I would not ever want to marry a woman. It would be like marrying myself and who wants that.

As a woman I do like the thought of being rescued, often more than I’ll admit to myself. But I also really like the thought of saving people.

Both men and woman like to feel that their spouse has got their back and would rescue them if they were ever in danger.

The difference is a man might blame himself if he is unable to save his wife from some things beyond his control.

I think homosexuality has appeal because it takes less work than heterosexuality. There’s less homosexuals out there, so dating can be prolonged and avoided, and maybe the truth is they don’t always really want to date that badly. They just don’t want to be alone. Gay people tend to have a lot of platonic friends of both genders. But full commitment… how often does it happen?

Also when your’e the same gender there’s not that annoying gender clash problem. Which is hard to deal with, though in the the end worth it.

I’ll always prefer some things about girls to guys. Like how they aren’t always as rude. But if I had not guys in my life, it would be boring, and predictable.

In the end I think that a lot of sexual confusion is going around period. Even I’m not immune to it, though I wish I was. I struggle with wondering if I have perverted desires. And why I’m admitting this on the public internet is because I know that’s everyone. I doubt anyone has not felt slimed by the corruption going around, and event hose who have sexual mores I think are wrong can be disgusted by how much sexual sin is flaunted.

I guess I’m coming to see homosexuality as not the worse inescapable sin that ever existed. It’s pretty bad, but the people who commit it aren’t always bad through and through. They still have God given gifts.

I do still believe no one can ever be truly happy or satisfied who is living in sin. But I guess it doesn’t mean that they’ve abandoned all their good qualities. And I still blame the media a lot for my overly negative perceptions of homosexuals.

The sin is terrible, but the sinner can be a mixed and mixed up bag. That’s what I’m trying to say.

I don’t have the solution yet. I know God can deliver people even of strong delusion. But what I don’t know is how Christians can help yet. I think I lack the experience. But I’m hoping my attempt at getting a clearer perspective on it will help me at least. I still believe that I owe even homosexuals unconditional Christlike love, just because they are still human beings.

And for the record, if someone reading this views them as the spawn of Satan or something like that, remember that all sin is repulsive and we are all sinners. It would be nice if we could say they were worse, but sometimes a person can have one fatal flaw and in all other respects be overall better than us. WE all have something that rips us up and U think compassion with wisdom is a better path to take.

I’ll never change my mind about it being a sin. But maybe I’ll learn to  deal with it the way Jesus would.

Until next time–Natasha.

Stuck in Groundhog day.

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Groundhog Day. Funny how an ordinary holiday has now become the symbol for having infinite chances.

I think Jumanji turned that on its head though, by pointing out that we only ever have one life. The idea that we could have more is as bizarre as a video game.

Even if you believe in Eternal Life, like I do, we all still believe that what we do on this earth matters. You’ll notice that almost all people have a sense of this, no matter what they believe. We all feel like our days here are adding up to something.

The Bible says “So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12.

“Show me, O LORD, my end and the measure of my days. Let me know how fleeting my life is.”  Psalm 39:4.

Our days are adding up to something, but the Bible reminds us to not just mindlessly accumulate them, but to count them, and measure them, and see what we are adding up to.

We do get second chances, but as you all know, not infinite ones to redo our lives. Yet in a way it is true. Every day is a new chance to do the right thing.

The secret of Groundhog Day is time management. If you knew what would happen at any time in the day, you could do anything within reason.

But I am not a machine, I can’t plan my day out so meticulously. You ever wonder why you feel so stupid when you walk out of the house without some important item that you needed to do a major activity in your schedule? (Happened to me yesterday.) How could you forget that?

Teachers can be real hypocrites about this too. Because unless you are abnormally good at remembering stuff, everybody does that. Frequently. have you ever known someone who doesn’t forget that one thing, lose their glasses by putting them on their head, go into a room without turning the light on and then try to turn it off when they leave. We don’t always focus on everything as much as we want too.

And Teachers can be all like “It’s your responsibility, and you really should be more organized. Yada yada.” And you;re reaction is to apologize and feel really dumb.

And maybe you are disorganized. But often I’m thinking “I had the paper/item right there on the table and I walked out of the house without it.”

the real reason is we’re in a rush and I recommend getting everything together the night before if possible, but it’s not always possible is it.

We tend to give ourselves leniency on things that are really important, and beat ourselves up over stuff that isn’t. You ever notice that? It’s like we feel we have to pay retributions to something, but we are too scared to face up to our biggest issues.

But if Groundhog Day really happened, the kicker is, you couldn’t get away from yourself. So the only way to survive is to become selfless. Because in the end it’s our own selfishness and not our situation that makes us miserable.

And I think if you feel like you’ve been stuck in that cycle for a long time, you might really be fed up with yourself. And that’s okay, Jesus can fix that…if you won’t accept that answer, I can’t help you. I don’t know any other way to escape from yourself.

At bottom that’s what all those minor frustrations with ourselves are springing from, from our need to get out of ourselves and do something for other people, and feel like we are connected to something bigger than us in life.

That’s all for now, until next time–Natasha.

The Unimaginable.

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I recently was introduce to the Musical Hamilton. What sold me on it completely was the end. I actually came near to crying, the tears were in my eyes. I know every girl says that about every movie or book with a sappy story in it. But that wasn’t what got to me. Up until the lat half or so of Act 2, I thought it was pretty good. But when Phillip died it got serious, and then this song. “It’s quiet uptown” got to me. I would definitely say listen to it because it’s better with music. But check out these lyrics, especially at the bottom:

 

Angelica: There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is suffering too terrible to name. You hold your child as tight as you can, and push away the unimaginable. The moments when you’re in so deep it feels easier to just swim down.

Hamilton: I spend hours in the garden. I walk alone to the store. And it’s quiet uptown. I never like the quiet before. I take the children to church on Sunday. A sign of the Cross at the door. And I pray. That never used to happen before.

You knock me out, I fall apart.

Company: Can you imagine?

Hamilton: Look at where we are. Look at where we started. I know I don’t deserve you Eliza. But hear me out. That would be enough.

If I could spare his life. If I could trade his life for mine. He’d be standing here right now. And you would smile, and that would be enough. I don’t pretend to know the challenges we’re facing. I know there’s no replacing what we’ve lost. And you need time. But I’m not afraid. I know who I married. Just let me stay here by your side. That would be enough.

Company: If you see him in the street walking by her side, talking by her side. Have pity.
Hamilton: Eliza do you like it uptown, it’s quiet uptown.
Company: He is trying to do the unimaginable. See them walking in the park, long after dark. Taking in the sights of the city.

Hamilton: Look around, look around Eliza. 

Company: They are trying to do the unimaginable.
Angelica: There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is a grace too powerful to name. We push away what we can never understand. We push away the unimaginable. They are standing in the garden. Alexander by Eliza’s side. She takes his hand.

Company:

Forgiveness. Can you imagine?
Forgiveness. Can you imagine?
If you see him in the street, walking by her side, talking by her side, have pity. They are going through the unimaginable.

The last part with Angelica and the Company is so true. It stuck me as profound.
In case you haven’t been caught up in the Hamilton craze, let me explain why this is so big. Hamilton cheated on his wife. It’s was a long messed up story, but he ended up publishing his letters with the woman to the public to clear his name. Very, very stupid. And the man was a genius in other respects. (There are some pretty scathing songs directed at him int he musical. And the fans get pretty hard on him too.)
Then Hamilton’s son got in duel, much like his father would after him, and was shot by the other man while he also fired into the air. The Hamiltons moved uptown after that, hence the song.
Eliza we know carried on Hamilton’s legacy after he died, for the next fifty years. She collected letters about him, she started an orphanage. She wanted him to be remembered. She had to know that would meant he affair would be remember too. As it has been. But clearly, she forgave him. Actually it might’ve been sooner then the song suggests, or later. But they had another kid.
Funny, whenever I hear some great forgiveness story on YouTube, I find in the comments that people can’t understand how they could forgive that. It can be fictional, often it’s real life. But either type of forgiveness blows people’s minds.
And it occurs to me how little we encourage it in each’s other. On TV people are petty, and rarely ever let go of event he stupidest of offences. They nag each other. How many of us are imitating that pattern? I know I am far too often.
And I struggle with forgiveness over really serious things. I am committed to justice. When it comes time to let that go, I fine it hard.
 Christians are told to forgive everyone for each offense and show love.
Forgiveness is hard enough even when you’ve been raised to believe in it. But I think it is made harder when as a culture we feed on vengeance.
In entertainment, and the news. In politics. Of someone smears our candidate of choice, we smear theirs. If they talk bad about our party, we talk bad about theirs.
It may surprise you to know I see more blame on My own party’s side in this. Republicans and Conservatives. I think the Left does it too. Possibility more than we do. But I expect that from them. They always have. What shocks me sometimes is the contempt Conservatives show, and the lack of difference between how we talk about them.
True, we acknowledge some of them mean well, but that’s about it.
But political differences are a lot easier to forgive then something like cheating. Probably someone who reads this has been cheated on. It may make you livid to have it suggested that forgiveness is even possible. OR maybe you wish it was. 
This one puts it well. Grace and recovery form grief are both unimaginable to us. I can’t imagine the kind of grief losing a child would be. I can try, but I know I get only a small part of the picture. My Aunt and Uncle have gone through this experience now. They have been quiet about it.
But anger in understandable to, and necessary for a time. The question is, and the question Hamilton is asking himself in this song is can the anger eventually pass? Can it be quiet? And can there be forgiveness?
I understand the outrage over what Hamilton did, and I would find it hard to get past myself. But a lot of couples do. I will say this, a man may make that kind of mistake, but not be worthless. It depends on the man. It depends on the woman too.
That kind of broken trust is hard to repair. But as someone who has been on the receiving end of not being forgiven for a long time, (as many of you have no doubt,) I can’t help but feel some sympathy for Hamilton. 
Until we kill the desire, all of us at one time yearn to be forgiven and to be set free from the guilt of everything we do wrong. Eventually we let that die because we give up hope.
It’s an odd pattern that people who hate God or who give up on Him, tend to not have forgiven themselves or feel forgiven. 
Anger at God for the things that have been done to us it nearly always built on the anger of not feeling forgiven. Which is fear, really, not anger.
Because in the Bible, and in the testimonies I’ve heard, it is always after we’ve been forgiven that we can forgive.
I think we hold grudges as a kind of covering for our own nakedness. So we can say that though we did wrong, we were wronged too, so there should be pity.
That’s not what the Company in this song is talking about when they say to pity Hamilton.
They mean, pity a man who is trying to redeem himself, or trying to accept grace. Because we do hide from what we don’t understand. especially grace.
People have been killed for it. People who forgive have been hated by those they’ve forgiven.
Yet the guilty often only change after  they know they’ve been forgiven. When we get a blank slate, suddenly we feel we can rewrite our story.
Grace is unimaginable, more so than grief, because we live in pain easily, we live in freedom with great difficulty.
But what I love is that int he song, and apparently in history, it happened. Eliza did extend grace. She was a spiritual woman we know.
I guess the only appropriate way for me to end this is by telling you the good news: Jesus offers forgiveness. And maybe you don’t feel it, but you do want it. Or you did once, and it’s just buried.  Maybe it seems to good to be true to you. (Skepticism is built off that feeling) but it’s true. All you have to do is ask him for it. And follow him.
Maybe you have already done that, but do it again. We all need to revisit that often.
And if there is someone who had done the unimaginable to you, there is a chance to forgive them. They will never deserves it. That’s why we can’t understand it. But thank God, we don’t get what we deserve.  The bigger the offense, the more beautiful it is when it’s finally washed away.
Until Next time–Natasha.

The Pain Problem.

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I saw the movie Adrift today. IF you like survivor movies, you’ll probably like it, but it’s very sad I’ll warn you.

It does have some interesting moments where the main character Tami makes choices that would be hard for us to make, and its theme of love getting you through hard things is of course timeless.

And it ties in to something I was thinking about earlier today. About pain. ‘

How do characters in movies handle pain? 9 out of 10 times?

I’ll have to fire some shots at even my favorite superhero flicks for this, because without fail the hero and villain always have a tragic back story. The villain uses pain as a reason to be what they are.

But actually superheroes are not the biggest offenders here. Any melodramatic television show you like has painful experiences as the driving force of the character’s issues. Usually they give some speech about it. Often taking it out on another character on the show.

Am I the only one who ever wants to tell these characters to get over themselves? Like they think their lives are so much tougher than most everyone’s, when in reality, they are probably better, only so much can go wrong on a show, right? Some of you have lived with the reality of one thing going wrong after another every day, it’s not fun.

These shows might be praised for showing raw emotions, but it’s not very real to me, because people rarely act that way, and when they do, it seems blown out of proportion.

It wouldn’t be saying anything new for me to say that we all suffer pain. But have you ever considered why we accept this as an excuse for bad behavior? Why does the stuff our therapy is made of justify the stuff our prisons are full of?

The child who bangs their knee and take out that frustration by hitting their sibling goes to the corner, the adult who does that gets excused because they have a hard life.

I get it, we’re all human and we shouldn’t judge each other too harshly. But it’s not right to act that way regardless.

Is our pain a bad thing? I don’t think all pain is good. Everyone knows the difference between the pain of healing and the pain of damage, for instance. The pain of getting squeezed too hard in a hug versus the pain of being socked by your brother or sister. It’s not on the same level. So some pain is clearly bad.

But what about the pain that seems to come for no reason. The pain of loneliness for instance. If you’re a Christian like me, you may wonder why this happens.

I had lunch with a friend today and we both have had trouble retaining other friends. I imagine we both blame ourselves in part for that, and sitting there, I wonder if both of us were thinking “So where does that leave us?” Do we just repeat the same pattern over and over again?

I have started many friendships that never went very far, even when I really wanted them to. And the problem could very well be with me. But there are worse people than me who manage to retain friends. Haven’t we all met or been that person who never dumps that one friend who is clearly a bad influence and kind of a basket case? Yet they get stuck with.

Heck, what about our relatives who get stuck with, though they don’t deserve it. You ever wonder why the nicer though quirky people can be the hardest to stick with? I am not sure why that is. It could be that we feel guilty for minding their humanity when we know they are good people, while with bad people we can always just complain about them. Go figure.

Many lonely people wonder why no one stays with them. There’s many reasons I suppose. In my case circumstances never seem to line up for it.

How do we handle that pain? And is it bad? How could it be good?

Well, I can’t say when or how, but the age old answer of God’s Timing is the only one I’ve got.

That’s not just an excuse to do nothing, as some suppose, but it is the acceptation that once you have done all you know to do, the rest is up to God.

Pain is not ever going to seem right (unless you’ve got a masochist side) but it can come to make you right again. I have wondered why God uses pain to shape us. But knowing human nature, I realize that nothing else ever compels us to choose as much as pain does.

Think about it, major decisions usually involve pain. Even having kids is painful. But that pushes you to a decision. A crisis fuels you to make a change. Why do people wait till their health breaks down to adjust their diet and exercise habits? Because pain makes it real.

We all wish it wasn’t that way, and I warrant you, God never wanted it that way either. But it is that way. Because we’re stubborn.

But pain doesn’t make us a slave to God. As I mentioned earlier, pain is people’s excuse often enough to do what’s wrong. And though their anger is understandable, it is not right. Because we all hurt, and we can’t make innocent people pay for what we feel.

Pain drives you to do either the right thing or the wrong thing, but which it’ll be still depends on you. The promise God makes us is not that we won’t suffer but that our suffering will lead us to Him, and not to destruction.

And that is the greatest gift of all, from my perspective.

Whatever I feel when I suffer pain myself, I know it leads me back to God.

Check out Adrift, I think it’s a good story.

Until next time–Natasha.