a suffering life.

I’ve been a Christian for, well, as long as I can remember.  I’ve always embraced the truths of the Bible.  I’ve had my seasons of straying, but mostly I’ve wanted to know and follow hard after Jesus.  I’ve sincerely wanted to serve Him with my life.

But three years ago I had an awakening of sorts.  It’s a difficult awakening to put into words.  Maybe the best way to say it is, “I once was blind, but now I see.”

I see.

I see Jesus, loving me.  I see Him, calling me closer.  I see Him forgiving me—not just that one time at my conversion, but every day forgiving me.  I see Him beckoning, tugging me away from my idols.  I see Him asking me to stop trying to be enough and to let Him be enough.  I see Him offering me more freedom than I knew was possible.

I see grace.

I started to see grace in people around me, in the most unexpected ways.  I wanted what they had.  I wanted to love like they loved.

I saw that love in a friend.  I’d felt it over the years—an acceptance, a compassion, a sense that she is a safe person.  And after my awakening I recognized it for what it was: grace.

So I told her what I saw.  I told her I want to be like her.

And what she said in response baffled me.

She said, “Jules, I have suffered a lot through the years.  I believe God in His wisdom has used that suffering to make me into the person I am.”

What?

So I’ve had my awakening.  My heart longs for more of it.  For more of the deep, deep love of Jesus that is bringing me this joy than I’ve ever known.  My heart longs to have that type of love for others.

And she’s telling me that the way to more of that grace is through . . . suffering?

I didn’t understand. But that very day, with trembling lips, I began my prayer, “Father, make me like her.  Make me into someone who knows Your grace in my very core, and someone who spreads grace to people around me.  Do whatever it takes.”

That was the scariest prayer I’ve ever prayed.

And, something I’m now beginning to realize, is that from that point on my life began to take a different turn.

I wish I could tell you the turn it took was one of me becoming a more loving, more patient, more grace-filled person.

But instead, it was a turn toward pain.

I took a huge risk, I asked God for something, and the ways He has responded brings a flood of tears even as I sit and write this.  It brings a heart-load of unanswered questions and hurt and disappointment.  It brings more awareness of my sin, more humiliation, more brokenness than I’ve ever known in my whole life.

It brings the prayer, “Is there any other way?”  And, it brings the prayer, “But not my will, Your will.”

Most of all, it brings this discovery:

Waking up to grace is waking up to pain.  You cannot have one without the other.

All of us want the grace.  None of us want the pain.  And as much as we refuse to receive the pain, we also say “no” to grace.

That realization has taken three years to sink in.  It’s still sinking in.

I’m not writing this post looking back on the suffering.  I’m writing from in the middle of it.  And, from just one person’s limited experience, before I can look back and say, “Everything makes sense now,” I want to share with you three things I’m learning.

1.  Suffering will not make you feel more saintly.  People will look at you and think you’re more saintly.  But you know the truth.  Suffering will bring up a lot of junk in your heart.  Which in a way is like brokenness on top of brokenness.  There’s what happens to you, then there’s the way you respond to what happens to you.

And we are very weak—I am very weak.  I’m just a hairs’-breadth away at all times from bitterness and hatred and cynicism.  From fiercely defending myself when my sin is exposed.  From shutting people out of my life.  From shutting God out of my life.

Rich Mullins said it best:

We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made,
Forged in the fires of human passion, choking on the fumes of selfish rage.
And with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart,
We must be awfully small, and not as strong as we think we are.

Through hardships, big and very little, I’m learning that I’m awfully small, and not as strong as I think I am.  And I’m also learning that while it’s a humiliating lesson, it’s really a lesson of freedom.

The greatest misunderstanding of my life is believing that humility says, “I’m a wretched person.”  No.  In truth, humility says, “I’m a small person.  I’m a weak person.  I think I know what I need and what other people need and what God needs from me, but I’m usually wrong.”

I can be small.  I can be weak.  If I’m going to wake up each day and hold on to hope, if I’m going to confess and repent, if I’m going to forgive, if I’m going to trust, it’s all Him.  And the days I don’t do those things, the days I fail in every way, it’s Him that brings me back and forgives me and breathes hope into this stubborn, hard heart.

2.  Suffering is not something you look for, and never something that makes you more righteous before God.  But, if you are serious about learning grace, your life on this earth will be a suffering life.

Pastor Tim Keller preached a powerful sermon called Praying Our Tears, and in it he said something that stuck with me: “So often we think that following Christ will solve our problems and make us happy.  But when we become a follower of Jesus, we cry more, not less.”

As Christians, we awaken to pain—the pain we cause God and other people through our sin.  The pain of this broken, hurting world.  The pain of daily dying to our own rights and desires and reputation.

And with this, I’m learning there is something that happens when you have been made broken and have faced this pain: People come to you with their own brokenness.  Not just Christians, who look and think like you.  Non-Christians.  People who couldn’t be more different from you.  People who never shared a thing with you when you were strong and whole.

Now they come and sit with you and share their stories—in all shapes and forms, but more often than not, stories that will break your heart with the depth of pain and evil that is in this world.

You try to tell them your tiny amount of suffering is not even worth mentioning compared to theirs.  You feel ashamed for complaining about anything, ever.  But they don’t care.  All they see is that you are broken and they are broken.  And that is enough for them.

You receive these stories as gifts.  You carry them tenderly, with awe and with grief and mostly with the honor of being trusted.  You will protect them with your life.

And somehow in this process, you learn about grace.  You learn that God works in unexpected ways.  You learn that He is powerful, and that His love is more personal than you ever dreamed.  You learn that this very day—this very moment—He is relentlessly seeking and saving those who are lost.  You learn that no one is beyond His reach.  You learn that nothing, nothing is wasted.

And you bow your head and worship.

3.  Suffering makes you dream different dreams.

I used to dream about ministry, about influence, about impact.  I thought those were good dreams.  And I think they were good dreams.

But God has allowed suffering to strip away my dreams.

The temptation for me is to stop there.  To say, bitterly, “You took away.”  But if I stop, if I listen, if I wait, He starts giving new dreams.  Unexpected dreams.

I no longer dream about ministering to people.  Instead I dream about just being with people.  I dream about living life with the people around me.  I feel so weak, and when I look back over the course of my life, I see that I’ve needed to learn way more than I’ve needed to minister.  I’ve needed to listen way more than I’ve needed to speak.  I still do.

I see that more often than not, the very people I’ve set about to “minister to,” have been the ones to change me.  They’ve challenged my stereotypes and widened my world with their stories and their joys and their heartaches.

I’ve learned that people know when they’re your ministry, your project.  They don’t need your ministry.  They need your friendship.  And, perhaps more importantly, you need theirs.

I’m learning—through months of silence, of confusion, of doubt—that the “what” and the “where” that our family does next doesn’t matter so much as the “who” we open our lives to.  Both the “who” that we know now and the “who” that we have yet to meet—the “who” that aren’t statistics, but living, breathing, complex people that we can’t fit into a box, the “who” that will change us even as we try to love them and repent before them and share our hope with them, the “who” that is everyone from our children to our neighbors to our coworkers to our friends.

So that is me, right now.

Some days these lessons come peacefully, most days they come with a storm of tears or yet another painful reminder of my sin.

I think the main thing I want to say to you today in conclusion is that I don’t regret that prayer three years ago.  Right now, before I know the end of my story, before I know how God can use it for good, I wouldn’t trade anything.

God is with me every single day.  He’s nearer than my own skin.  He loves me, not because of what I can do or what I can offer Him.  He loves me just because He wants to.  He’s made my life immeasurably rich with all kinds of people whom He also loves.  He uses everything to teach me that He is enough.

That is a grace sweeter than anything.