Bad Things In Our Lives...

Has anything bad ever happened in your life?

Ok yeah, that's a rhetorical question for sure.

It’s tough to swallow as a believer that The Lord who loves us allows bad things to happen in our lives. Whether that's the passing of a loved one, an accident, a spouses betrayal, whatever, it's tough.

But we have to reconcile that it happens. We have to find the path to understanding. Sometimes that path looks a lot like just breathing, simply breathing because breathing can be hard when life goes south on ya, breathing ourselves into accepting:

"I don't understand it, but I trust Him for allowing it."

Now let's all be honest. This is one of the hardest places to get to emotionally and mentally. It's easy to talk about it when things are going well. It's easy to talk about it to other people. But it's an entirely different thing to swallow after something bad has happened, to you.

Pausing for a moment. All that said, I think it's important to say this as well:

• Not every situation is the same as Job's story in The Bible
• Not every situation is the same as Jonah's story in The Bible
• Not every situation is the same as any of the Apostles' story in The Bible
• Not every situation is the same as Esther's story in The Bible

What those mean is that not everything is a test. Not everything is saving an entire race of people from destruction. Not everything is life and death. And not everything is disobedience or sin. We should not assume we know why something has happened. We should ask and wait for The Lord to maybe inform us, if He chooses to.

But on the heels of that, I do however believe there is something that does apply to most situations.

God allows the bad in our life to give us the unavoidable process of learning from it. So we what we learn can help others in the future.

This might sound odd, especially depending on what's happened in your life. If you've had to grieve someone's passing. This concept can make sense. However if you've been violently abused, this gets harder to stomach doesn't it. And that's just being real about it.

But this is our opportunity to remember that it is our nature to think about ourselves. Every single human has and does and will on this side of Heaven. But The Lord is thinking about us all, and thinking about our lives that can help other people's lives. And that does change things, even the horrific things. Because once we take our sole focus off ourselves, we can often times see more clearly how we're here to help others as well as ourselves and our families.

And if we all stop and think for a moment. How many times have we heard someone talking about the support they got from someone else, someone else who went through the same thing?

How many times have we seen support groups for specific life traumas?

How many times have we felt appreciation towards someone because they truly related to you and what you are going through?

We see and talk about people who have had bad life events helping others.

It's good to remind ourselves of this. But it's best to try to think about this once the rain of fire has stopped. Once the pain has slowed. Once the terror has subsided. Because let's be honest here. Thinking and hearing about this while the violence is happening or the pain is throbbing, it's not a good time.

Heal yourself, so you can go out and heal others.