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Some people seem to go through life so easily.  No major traumas upset their world.  No catastrophes throw their lives into chaos.  No irreconcilable loss sends their days into darkness.  I have to admit there have been days when I have asked God why life is so unfair.  I can't tell you how many times I have sat through a women's gathering and listened to women moan about how hard their lives are because their baby is crying at night and they are tired.  The whole time I listened, I was living with the knowledge that there was a black secret in my home causing me anguish these other women couldn't even imagine.  One time I heard a woman share her testimony about how she went through a period of two years when her teenage son was straying and living in rebellion and how hard that was.  While what she experienced was very real, I sat in my chair and wrote in my journal,  "Two years?!  How about 14 years [of watching a family member stray and having to deal with the results of their sin as it affects my own life]!  How much longer, God?!"  While the other women in the room were impressed and inspired by her endurance and tribulation, I grieved in silence and solitude. 

For years I thought of myself as God's chamber pot.  In my mind, a chamber pot is the least honorable vessel a home could have.  It's only purpose was to hold waste.  I read Romans 9:21 which says, " Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?"  I thought that God had just made me a vessel of dishonor and who was I to complain?  He can do with me whatever He desires.  I was just God's chamber pot -- necessary but not something you'd show off to company because you liked it so much!

What happens when life is unfair?  I never thought my life would go down the path it has gone.  We tend to think that hard times are reserved for people who abandon God, backslide or rebel and go out into sin.  But what about when trouble finds us in spite of doing "everything right?"  What about when we don't "deserve" the junk that comes our way?   I grew up in a Christian home, was saved as a child, never rebelled and always desired a life of full-time ministry.  What I experienced was sexual molestation, spiritual abuse, financial hardship, miscarriage, infertility, marital abuse, I've watched my children suffer, I've sometimes feared for our lives, I've feared the loss of my children to the state, and I've endured over 14 years of marital pain.  How unfair is all that?

There are a lot of us whose lives have been more or less defined by the scars of our undeserved pain.  I have thought many times about Joseph in the Bible (Genesis 27-45).  Talk about someone who didn't deserve what happened to him!  When we look at that story we view it from the perspective that we have heard it a million times since our childhood.  We know how the story ends and don't think about it much.  But Joseph was an ordinary person, who walked out that "story" over the course of a lifetime.  And for many years of his life, there was no "end" of the story in sight.  God had given him a glimpse of the future in his visions as a child, but there was nothing tangible to hold to in the long dark years of slavery, injustice and abandonment.  When hope was held out it was snatched away again.  When things seemed to be turning around, they fell back into even greater, or continued, darkness.  

Have you ever walked there?  I know I have.  What do we hold onto when life seems like it will never get better -- when it seems we'll never get to the "end" of the story?

Here's how the Word has encouraged me --

Rom. 5:3-5  "And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;  And patience, experience; and experience, hope:  And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."  This verse tells me that one of the results of being patient through suffering will be the love of God broadcast in my heart.  When I walk the path of hardship with patience, leading to experience, then leading to hope, I also see the truth of God's hand of love toward me!  And I can say from lots of experience that this is TRUE!!!

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