That's The Deal

Sometimes I don't know if I am afraid of who I am, or afraid of who I'm not. Sometimes I don't know if I hate myself, or just what I'm afraid I will become, or perhaps even more, not become. Sometimes, what hurts the most is what this brutal world of experience forges one to submit too. And, yet somehow, this becomes the very place, for which one finally submits to the safest place of all, and this is in the shawdow of our creator, the center of our suffering. The center of His intimacy.

Although the shawdow often does not appear as one of safety, but of death, destruction, desolation and often despair deeper than the deepest of valleys, this very place has the defining moment of becoming the one place for which we truly see that He is God, and we are not. Where the center of His heart lies in the desire to be in the center of our very soul. The one place for which our hope is either crushed, or strengthened. Crushed by the elements experience may, will, and does bring. Elements that either break us, and ironically, make us stronger. Or perhaps the far more common course taken is that of the one whome this moment causes them to run from the very purpose this elelment is intended for. This is the greatest tragedy of all.


C.S. Lewis said this,

"When I was a boy I chose safety, When I was a man, I chose suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then, that's the deal."

 It is this choice we are all faced with. It is in these moments we grow from boy to man. In these moments we are strengthened in our very brokeness and suffering. Strengthened to accept that our only hope is in Him alone. He being the very one who's gone before, any and all experience for which either will come, or has come, to pass upon me. These are the gravel roads, the muddy waters, the sandy planes, the jagged edges, the valleys, ascents, and all other terains in which we find the fingerprints of God, the center of all He is and has to offer.

 The problem is not in the journey, for that is the gift. The problem is an eye problem. Where our blindness and resistance to suffering hides the beauty of intimacy and grace. It is in this problem, I learn and find vision, those things that make up faith. And it is in this very place we find the center of all we've become, and are becoming. The center of who He is. What He is longing and working for us to be, a reflection of His Son.

Here is a clip from the movie, "Shadowlands." 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3PUhrvAxyg