Siyach

“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.”
African proverb

This quote just appeared in my inbox on one of the many inspirational emails I get. As I read it, I am sad that it is true.

As I write, I am living in the aftermath one of the most traumatic events that I have experienced. More traumatic than my father’s life, and ultimately suicide; more angst-ridden than my late teenage years; an event that has left me functionally as a single mother, taken one of my children, deprived the others of their father’s presence for the foreseeable future.

This experience, which ironically began on April 1st, is no joke. I keep expecting to wake up and find it all a terrible dream, but unfortunately every morning I wake only to the ongoing sadness.

I ask God, did it really need to be this? Was there really no other way to achieve Your will in my life? Could you not have offered some supernatural protection? And then, when I think of all my pain, and the pain of my children, and the pain of my family, and realise that God feels this way about ALL of His children that are in pain I ask Him, how on earth do you cope? With 6 billion people on the planet, all of whom are so dear to Him, and with so many experiencing bitter, bitter pain on any one day, how are you not driven insane? How can you think past the pain?

Of course, He is God, and his almighty-ness is not hampered by such human concerns, but nonetheless… what a concept that he would feel this amount of pain on such an enormous scale.

There is so much sadness in this world. Yet, I have been fortunate. I have escaped a great deal of the sadness. The past four years I have felt content in my marriage, my church and friends, and with God. I have been happy.  I have my children – they make me smile, they look after me, they love me.

Today has been a hard day, and this morning they caught me crying, and so at bedtime both of them, individually, told me that if I found myself crying again I should come to them… or else go to YouTube and look up a High School Musical 3 song to cheer me up .

And at the same time they are hurting. While I sit here writing, one of them is singing “Jesus loves meeeeee… He will help me feel better, better, better, when I’m saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.”

And so, what do I need to become skillful in? Well, patience for one thing. Patience with little people who really are not out to get me when I’m having a bad day. Gentleness, not to take out my frustrations (mostly with myself for not being better organised so that now I didn’t have to rush to get something done) on the children. I know they don’t really do “get organised quickly”.

Gentleness is so hard to do. Another quote has just drawn my attention…

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
Leo Rosten

I think that is right. Gentleness is difficult to do. Only a strong person can do it … a skillful sailor.

Letting go is another thing that I need to become skillful at. Letting go of expectations, even “reasonable” ones… reasonable they may be, but I have no way of making them happen, so why try to control them? Letting go of trying to influence – even in a positive way. There are times we are called to exhort and encourage, but sometimes we do it not for the other person, although we will tell ourselves that is the case. Often we do it to manipulate, to inflence, to “encourage” someone to take a chosen path – OUR chosen path – for them. It may well be a great path, even a Godly path. But if there is any selfishness in us, then we sin. We do it for ourselves, not for the other person, or for God.

So… if I must experience this pain… if tears must roll down my face simply because I see my children sing an Abba song… or simply because they do… well, let me become a skillful sailor through the experience. Because I am damned if I am going to experience this, and not come out better in the end in SOME way.