Some far away
Some search for gold
Some dragon to slay
Heaven we hope is just up the road
Show me the way, lord, ’cause I… I’m about to explode
Carry your world, I’ll carry your world
Carry your world, I’ll carry your world
Carry your world, and all your hurt.
-Atlas, Coldplay
Sometimes my pain is so overwhelming that all I want is to slip into slumber and forget it all. Is this what we were made for? To experience such agony and grief, that all we want for is its end?
My pain is so often centered around relationships. The difficulty of loving; of losing; of working through the brokenness. My greatest longing, and my greatest satisfaction, comes through relationship. I want the intimacy with God, with my family and friends so badly, that sometimes I think it can never happen- and I look to heaven as the answer. I look to the future, instead of the present.
But what if the intimacy, the answer, is in the moment-in the pain? We do all that we can to numb it, run from it, get to the end of it as quickly as possible. My counselor says that “Jesus is in the pain.” It’s certainly not where I want to meet him. Yet if that’s where intimacy and God are, that’s where I need to endure.
Jesus endured such agony in Gethsemane- asking his friends to share his grief, only to have them fall asleep. Asking his father if he might have changed his mind, only to be met with silence. Contemplating his death, his suffering, and bearing the burden of all. Suffering in total loneliness, he embraced the pain and walked his way through it.
I can meet him in my pain, knowing that he has brought me here, just as God took him to Gethsemane. Love lays its life down. Love endures the pain. Love finds intimacy in the hopeless loneliness. He wouldn’t bring me here if he wasn’t in the deepest heart of it. And I can know him and see him in ways that I could not in the light of day. I can know myself, and know him, in his and my own sweet passion, if I will stay there, and walk through the pain.
So I will choose to lean into the pain, into Him…
“God, show up for me!!”
Matthew 26:36-46 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” 39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” 40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” 42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” 43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. 45 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!