Some things just hurt. They go beyond our ability to reason, to comprehend and to accept. Some things we will never be able to fully understand. The death of a child, the sudden loss of a loved one, the onslaught of tragedy or suffering or hardship which we endure just by living full lives, or the seeming unfairness and inequity of how things play out in life are all truly difficult tastes and realities to swallow. I wish I could pass along a trick which makes everything easier; but I can give you a way to make peace with what seems hard to handle, accept or process.

Once we learn to accept that we aren’t here for our purposes, but that we are here by God’s choice, His design, at His timing, with the parameters and specifics of life He has assigned to us personally and exclusively for His purposes, we can be at peace with life! It doesn’t mean that we will be able to tolerate everything which occurs to us, or to process all things which we must; it won’t even mean we’ll always be amenable to God’s will for us. After all, we cannot help but want what we want, when we want it, because we have egos which drive our desires and drives. But in accepting our role in God’s plan, for His purposes and according to His will, we learn how to put God at the center of our lives with each progressive day we live! Each day we draw nearer to Him, growing in our relationship with Him and towards Him, we learn and practice relegating our ego to a secondary position. By putting God first, we are able to accept things which others find intolerable, which we ourselves would have found intolerable once when our egos were a priority! We are able to remain at rest and in peaceful contentment progressively more and more each day we learn to let God be the center of our lives.

By making this choice to focus on God at the helm in every aspect of our lives – our will, our desires, our wishes and our emotional reactions to life as it happens – all becomes secondary to our trust and faith in Him! This is maturing in our relationship with God; our process of learning to put Him first for our own sake, honoring Him through our faithfulness, obedience and trust. And the rewards for our increasing maturity in our relationship with God are more peace of mind, better emotional control and more contentment for life!