Making Sense of Suffering
Excerpts from Where are You God? Suffering and Intimacy with God by Janet O. Hagberg
- Then disappointment said to me, “Let us journey on our way together.” Leading with a limp. To know disappointment, so that I might be a blessing to others. This brings the most glory to God.
- I embrace my disappointment as my teacher on my journey toward God. God transforms disappointment into His Face. And Disappointment comes and wrestles with me until I allow the death of this dream.
- I will not let you go unless you bless me. I shall now be called “wounded healer.” The wound I have endured at Disappointment’s hand has made me whole. And Disappointment blessed me.
- Wounded Healer. Bringing a message to a world in need of all that I have learned.
- Embrace the pain, without becoming a martyr. Making meaning of the pain.
- Joy emerges from pain well attended.
- We naturally care more about others when we have been to the bottom of our own wells. We are drawn to alleviate suffering for others.
- Intimacy with God is more possible as a result of pain and suffering than from almost any other life experience.
- I can live with pain and at the same time experience joy, good will and intimacy with God.
- Intimacy with God transforms suffering. Reclaims suffering. Redefines suffering.
- Bringing forth a new part of myself that becomes a gift to others. Vulnerability, transparency, expectancy, watchfulness.
- Entering this deep place inside is where Christ is. Learn who I am. Learn who God is.
- Even when I thought God was gone, I could hear movements around me in the dark.
- In my pain, in my core, the depth of myself is the light that illuminates the darkness. In the stillness. The waiting. The inner dance.
- I did not intentionally choose suffering, it chose me. To grow me toward my True Self. For my own sake and for the sake of others.
- In my suffering there is a dying and a rising that becomes a new source of hope.
- Our human experience of suffering takes us into the depths of our humanness and to the outer edge of our faith, bringing us face to face with God.
- Our understanding of God is revealed, challenged or confirmed most dramatically in times of pain.
- God suffers along with us. Showing us only the next step, for that is all we need to know.
- The deepest lessons the heart has to deliver to us become accessible only when it is ruptured.
- Intimacy does not eliminate the awesomeness of God but incorporates it.
- If God appears to not be doing what I want, then things are likely not my true heart’s desire. God’s will is always identical to the deepest desires of my heart.
- Eventually I yield myself to God and it becomes bearable.
- “Lord, I had heard of you only by hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” Job 42:5.
- So much of suffering is unwillingness to let go.
- The deeper the pain, the more potential to feel God’s presence.
- The losses we suffer are a necessary part of the developmental process.
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