Pain & Suffering: God Can Help!

Pain and Suffering can be really difficult to live with, especially long term-unless you find something positive to do with them.  Finding something positive to do with them doesn’t change the pain or the suffering, but it does change us.  And it does make the pain and suffering easier to live with.

Obedience.  Obedience to God (in this area) is simply a way of thinking about the pain and suffering we are going through.  This is the life that God gave us.  It’s not Heaven, so it’s not perfect.  It never will be – at least while we are still on earth.  With God’s Help, living our best life in spite of the challenges we face- is our gift to God ?

Acceptance.  Acceptance of the life we have, good and bad, is also our gift to God.  Acceptance of God’s decisions in our lives leads to a peace that only God can give.  Acceptance of God’s decisions in our lives also helps us to have a closer relationship with God ?

Redemptive Suffering.  Redemptive Suffering is a concept in the Catholic Church that our pain and suffering can be offered to Jesus.  “Each man, in his sufferings, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ”-Pope John Paul II

Is this true?  I don’t really know.  But I know that offering my pain and suffering to Jesus has always helped me tremendously.  Feeling that there is something useful to God and to others from any suffering I have gone through means a lot to me, and makes it much easier to live with them ?

A word about pain and suffering.  In my lifetime I have had a VSD repair (open heart surgery), 3 bladder surgeries, my gall bladder removed, heart failure, lung failure, various heart problems, rheumatoid arthritis, Graves disease, Hashimoto disease, TED, asthma, and now perhaps Sjorgens…Along with bouts or pneumonia and various other ailments…

I share this with you my friends, so that if you are suffering in anyway, you will know that I have shared your pain and this does work.  We can suffer much, and even if we never get truly better, God can and will help us!  If we let Him ?

And I can share with you, with God’s Help, I have had an incredibly happy life.  The best family, the best friends, and much joy!  Acceptance, Obedience and Offering our Pain and Suffering to God really, really helps.  It makes such an incredible difference!  And despite the illnesses I have had, with God’s Help, I have always been able to do everything that I truly needed to do ?

Lastly, the Holy Spirit can be a great Comforter and Friend.  Whenever I have had a little more than I can handle, the Holy Spirit has always pulled me up and out of whatever pain or suffering held me down. 

So if we are having anything happening in our life, emotional or physical, that is a little bit too much for us-we can ask the Holy Spirit for Help and He will ?