Produce and Product

There's this saying that a lot of Christians say and it goes like this: "God will never give you what you can't handle." This is my interpretation of it: "God gave you a dysfunctional childhood/bad acne/three nipples to toughen you up for the shit that you're going through now as an adult."

I hate that saying. It's totally meaningless! Like, what is even the purpose of saying it? To make the sad and angry person feel better? Like, oooooooh they can "handle" it so they must be super "special." Do you think while they're going through a crisis like the death of a loved one/divorce/sick child that they care at all if they're special? No. Or do they thank the Lord above that they're "strong enough" to handle all of this? NO! At that seemingly God-forsaken moment they want to all of a sudden be not special or strong. They want to be NORMAL. They want their biggest problem of the day to be that they can't find the fucking cucumber on the self-checkout computer screen at Walmart and they could care less if God thinks they're weak because some idiot didn't organize the technological produce section properly.

I have a thought. I have a few, actually, but some have slipped through the cracks of my irrational anger toward the ever-growing problem of finding produce on the self checkout screens. I believe that shit happens just because we are alive. It's not because we're anything special, or that we're stronger than the next guy. There's no reason. It just is.

Everyone needs a reason or a label so that we can fit our pain into a box, put it in a category and file it somewhere. If we have some sort of control over it then we can beat the pain and we win. But maybe pain doesn't need to be conquered. Maybe it needs to be felt.

There's a verse in the Bible (somewhere in the book of Romans) that I have appreciated over the years when I've felt the sting of life and it goes like this: "...we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." I like this verse because it brings me out of the middle of my pain and helps me to see the big picture. If I allow myself to feel the pain I'm in, I'm going to eventually come out the other side as a much better person than when I started.

It's not because I'm strong or special that I was dealt the pain card in the first place but I am willing to let myself feel it. It's not going to be pretty, but there's a finish line in every marathon. I may be bloody and bruised and have stress fractures in my feet but I'll come through the finish with my head held high.