Straightforward

Suffering is when someone chooses to bear pain, inconvenience, or loss.  One has chosen to acknowledge pain, to let it take its course, and to be patient with it - and whatever that may bring about in the meantime - because healing is better than shoving it under the rug.  And when the better thing ahead comes, one will be better prepared for it.

This is a loose definition of suffering.  It had to be looked up because I had the "Chicken or the Egg" syndrome going on inside of me:  "which came first, pain or suffering?"  One can choose to endure pain; therefore, it causes me to believe pain comes first because one must experience pain and then choose how to handle it.  But then, I have to ask, does suffering cause more pain?  If one chooses to bear up under pain, inconvenience, or loss, does that create more pain in the process?  (Are we then sometimes doomed to seasons of torment?)

I ask because all of us experience pain.  I experience pain.  What do we do with it?  Where do we take it?  Who do we become as a result of those choices?

Simplify it.  Have you ever watched children play?

Most times we can tell between the good, the bad, and the ugly situations.  The good stirs our hearts. Children play in harmony, one will defend another, or perhaps one will help another learn something new - or even share without prompting from a parent.  The bad makes us watchful.  It looks like the occasional fight, stealing toys or positions on the playground from each other, and the all too familiar name-calling.  The ugly might put a lump in our throats.  Several stronger ganging up on one helpless, severe violence from one to another that has no repentance at any point, or making fun of one to the point that he or she is brought to tears.  

I think it is safe to say that nobody (except someone with severe problems) enjoys seeing a child hurt.  To see an innocent child crossing the monkey-bars and then see another maliciously knock them off - whether he did it to enjoy the monkey-bars himself or to see if he could knock them off to put them down - is something that angers a person who loves justice.  The child was innocently enjoying the monkey-bars and doing nothing of ill nature to the other.  So why should he be knocked down?  Only the perverse person - someone who perhaps has been bullied and is a bully - would enjoy seeing something of that nature.  (This is someone who does not believe in justice; therefore, believes that control and manipulation are where true power is held.)

How about peer pressure?  Have you ever seen a child contemplating what to do with peer pressure?  It doesn't even have to be a bad thing but just because she doesn't want to go to that particular activity, she becomes an outcast because "she did something different" and they chose to be insecure about it.  She's out of the "normal club".  Whatever that is.

She is maligned, slandered, gossiped about, pursued maliciously, abused, and hated all because she did something different.  She was honest.  She was straightforward.  She rocked the boat.  

Have you ever seen adults play?

I have relocated for the fourth time because I chose to be honest.  I chose to do something different and people came after, lied about, and abused me.  My employers put me out of work because I refused to be dishonest and to be intimidated by them.  I lost all all my friends.  I lost some family too.  And for all of it, I don't regret it.

This isn't a pity party nor is it a bitter rant.  What can I do with my suffering but be straightforward about it?  I'm grateful and I have to pass that on.

How long I lived to please other people, when it was never enough for them.  How long I was the "yes" lady, when I didn't even think about to what I was saying "yes".  How long did I think I had many friends, when all they did was flatter.  How long did I believe that I was living the life that pleased God, when He had told me to do other things for quite some time.

Do we go throughout each day, experiencing pain, but never suffer?  If we never suffer, we will never get better and actually enjoy the greatness ahead.  What is the alternative to suffering, you ask?  Numbness.  Booze, sex, eating, working, vacations,...anything and everything that we think can keep us busy or distracted enough to deal with and get healed from pain.  Facebook, Twitter, Google,...things in and of themselves are not bad.  But when we use them to avoid the truth, they become aides to vices.  

Are we honest people?  We seem to buy whatever the media sells and yet we can do so much better if we just fess up.  We're all the same flesh and blood with just different colors of skin.  No one can look down on the other.  But are we so afraid someone will have a bad opinion of us?  Are so prideful that we cannot get past the social media site and have an honest conversation anymore?

Or are we just that scared of what we will find if we are truly honest with ourselves?