"No More Night..."

My brother had to put his dog down yesterday.  “Mighty” was a timid, sweet Chihuahua who accidentally got into some de-con at a friend’s house.  

Sometimes the acute suffering of a human life becomes a very heavy thing for me.  I love my job.  Thrive on it, actually.  But sometimes I come home from my job with a heavy residue of sadness from the pain that I am exposed to hour after hour, day after day.  Today, talking to my brother and hearing the story of saying goodbye to his little companion of several years pretty much put my already currently fragile ecosystem on tilt.

My brother has lived an unusually sad life... 

Horrible multi-faceted abuse from infancy into toddlerhood by his birth family

Adoption by my family at 3 years old

Painful peer rejection through childhood and adolescence

Drug abuse

Prison time

Three mental illness diagnoses

Constant metal health med regulation (and disregulation)

On oxygen for COPD

Diabetes and heart disease

Lives alone in a trailer park…

Now without Mighty.

And I am sad.  Very sad.

We were never built to be fully and deeply at home in this broken mess.  And some days I feel this very acutely.  My brother will be fine.  Today, talking to him, he cried way less than I did during the conversation.  But he is a flashpoint of my deep weariness with human suffering right now.

Here is what else I know about suffering – it is a gift.  It is a “severe mercy”.  It breaks through my stupor of a drug-like search for happiness where it cannot be found.  It redirects my search to an Eternal Source.  Others have paved the way in this search…

“And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight…”

-- Horatio G. Spafford (who knew what he was talking about – read his story if you don’t know it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Spafford)

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

 --  St. Paul (who knew what he was talking about – read his story if you don’t know it 2 Cor. 11:23-28)

I want to have a very loose grip on this world. 

I want to release the demand I often have that this broken world make me fully happy, gratified and comforted.

I want to let the discomfort and pain of the temporal existence drive me to an Eternal Comfort – a deeply refreshing Living Water.

I want to live in light of the Hope of all being made utterly right.

David Phelps- No More Night