When Bad Sh*t Happens

When bad things happen to us, we often start blaming God. We believe that if he has the power to stop it, then why didn't he? We hate to hurt. Emotional pain sometimes far exceeds any physical pain we will ever experience and it is so much more difficult to overcome. There are pain pills, but there is really no good "happy pill" that will make everything better. 

When these things happen, our perception is narrowed. In our times of sorrow and hurt it seems as if the rest of the world is enjoying only good things, while you suffer. The world continues to turn for everyone else, while your world has come to a screeching halt. You feel as if you have been crushed by the weight of what has happened, and being human, you get angry. We ask "God, why me? What did I do to deserve this?!" If we don't get a satisfactory answer, then we decide that God doesn't exist anyway, otherwise bad things wouldn't happen to good people. 

The fact is, we are all going to face storms in our lives and few of us deserve it. We don't want to admit that misfortune is universal, because if it hasn't happened to us yet, we want to believe that it won't. It seems so much worse when it happens to us because only then, do we really feel what it is like to hurt.

As much as we try to be empathetic to those around us, none of us knows what their pain feels like until we experience it ourselves. And the fact is, few of us rarely share our stories with one another. We don't want to bring up the pain of the past and relive it again, so we don't tell anyone what we have been through. So the world assumes that you have had a happy life and don't really know pain. Bad things don't just happen to good people...bad things happen to ALL people. 

We like to think, for instance, that the rich have it easy and must be happy. Yet, if you talk to them, you find out that most have lived very unfulfilled lives. On the other hand, we assume that poverty brings with it terrible suffering and depression, but time, and time again, we will discover that the poor feel the richest inside. Sometimes our perception of misfortune is relative.

I have been so pissed at God in my life that I have waited to be struck down by lightening. I didn't talk to him for a lot of years. It wasn't until I looked around and saw that everyone of us has, is, or will be going through something horrible, that I realized I wasn't being fair to God.  I am asking him to play favorites. If God is all-powerful, then he has the choice to either stop all bad things from happening, or to pick and chose his favorites and make good things happen only for them.    

The thing is, I don't know the answer to whether or not God is all powerful. However, one thing I do know is that we do not live in Paradise. Bad things are going to happen. Everyone's parade is going to be rained on eventually. Evil exists and it sucks. We say that life is not fair, but maybe in a way,  it really is. Bad things happen to everyone. All of us are going to experience terrible loss, all of us are going to hurt at some point, all of us will get sick, all of us will die. Maybe it is not equal hurt...who knows? Perception varies from person to person. 

One thing you can count on is this....SH*T HAPPENS and it happens to us ALL. It is part of life. Is is part of living. The weak let it destroy them, the strong let it make them stronger. And I know that the person who is going through something especially difficult right now, is probably pissed at me for saying this. That's because what you are feeling inside feels like it MUST hurt so much more than what any other person on earth has ever experienced. That's normal. Its normal to be angry, and its really okay to be that way...for a while. 

There will come a time when you will feel okay again. Not as good as you did before this bad thing happened, you will be changed. You will be transformed. It is up to you what that transformation will be. 

You can become better and stronger and use your experience to help others, or you can become bitter and

angry and ineffectual.

I tend to believe that somewhere, a higher power exists who created the natural laws and put life into motion. It is the circle of life. We are born, we live, we die, and in the natural essence of the universe, we somehow continue. We cannot control our birth or really our death. All we can do is concentrate on our living. Yes, sh*t will happen, but what we do with it is up to us. We can make our life about living, or we can die a very slow death weighed down by our hurts, our sorrow and our bitterness. 

I don't know about you, but I want to live. I want to become the light that will help the next person who is facing their storm, find their way to safety. To do that will give honor to the person I have lost, or will tell the harm that came upon me, that I have won. I will not be a loser. I WILL overcome. And so can you.