God Only Knows

It's been a wrestling match, in my head, for several weeks now. Because I write to find out what I think I have felt compelled to address this thought sorting, to capture it in type. But I start - then I stop. Nevertheless, the struggle between my head and my heart should not be at a standoff so I am determined to try to find a conclusion.

It started about ten years ago. I was still involved in exchanging ideas and perspectives in online forums with people I only came to know by their 'handle'. I don't have a clue how it started rolling but over the course of a year or so stories started coming at me from different people. Some were even close to home, family and friends of family. Stories of abuse and/or neglect, desperation and despair from childhood or marriage, parents or spouses. Stories of fear and struggles to hope for an end to the situations, some quite desperate and heart breaking.

Just when I thought the stories could not get worse - they did. I felt called to put these in writing and to make it into a book. I know how so the mechanics were not the brick wall I had come up against.

I had multiple email exchanges with some who were more than willing to tell their stories, as though they never had anyone to listen to them before. But there were others that were in person interviews and I have to say it was a tough job because all I could do was lend an ear and offer sympathy. I did stay at a Holiday Inn once but I am not a trained therapist.

Over the course of a couple of years I actually had enough material to publish a reasonable size book but I just couldn't. I set it aside for a few months, to reassess, then I'd go back to begin the editing process. But, once again, I had to quit for awhile. It took me to such a dark place to realize just how much suffering there is in this fallen world. If I had ever thought that I had had troubles in my past I could only praise Jesus for all the grace He has given me compared to what others have gone through.

[There's that opened eyes through contrast issue again.]

Several more years passed. I conceded that I had given up on the project. Then a recent incident stirred me to go back and look at the stories with a fresh eye. What I discovered was exactly the same as before, except for one thing that I realized was missing - closure. It was as though the pain in the stories could never stop or be counted as finished or a lesson learned or a way to launch because the original pain was encased in the text of the time it was composed.

That's the thing about the written word, whether fact or fiction, stories need beginning, middle and end to satisfy the reader that the time spent reading was worth it. I realized most, if not all, of the stories I had collected were still hanging in the middle stage. I knew I would have to go back to interview the contributors to see how it all turned out and that was impossible and not going to happen.

But in the bigger picture, after rereading the anguish and desperation, the anger and dysfunction for all the mental, emotional and sometimes physical abuse, I saw something else, perhaps more important.

No denying that life is messy and there is no such thing as a perfect living biography. Utopia does not exist here on Earth and the best we can hope for is opportunities to learn lessons that can give us a hand up when we need the knowledge. We all have our paths to follow. We are individuals with our own composition of personality, experience, things we know and don't, POV, strengths and weaknesses. And thus we are truly autonomous.

We do not have to be crafted by our circumstances. We do not have to be shaped by what others think we must be. We can choose to be better than those who seem compelled to shrink us. There are certainly times when it seems we are helpless and while it might be true that our bodies can be captured in one way or another - nothing and no one can have our minds if we determine to keep those for ourselves.

From my perspective this is best accomplished by allowing God to keep what is most important - our souls. We were forewarned we might suffer tribulations in this life. Regardless what some damaged humans can do to other humans, if we are surrendered to HIs will for us, if we consider the hardships that others have endured and not just survived, but thrived, many even to rise to be stellar examples for others, those who can say they can have my body but not my soul - then we can hold on knowing that there is a purpose for everything.

We have free will which is just another way of saying, we can choose to be beaten down and emptied by someone else's flawed character or we can choose to rise up and survive knowing that we are stronger, if not better, for the experience. Which then provides opportunity for us to serve Him by being the best examples of overcoming.

Nothing disarms satan better than refusing to be defeated.

God Only Knows