Feeling the pain

This week I am feeling the pain of seeing someone I love, suffer.
Suffering is hard to deal with, especially when its ongoing.
The how to keep holding onto hope, or allowing hope to hold onto me.
The sheer weariness of keeping going when every step brings pain;
Dealing with the fall outs and repercussions ...
But there's a particular degree of sorrow that comes when someone we love is suffering
The grief of knowing they are hurting, ill or heartbroken.
The helplessness of longing to take it all away but not knowing how..
We feel that grief when our partners, parents, children or friends are going through awful things.
This week I've felt it for my Hearing Dog, Goldie.
Out of the blue he had to have emergency surgery on an abscess in his neck.  One day all was as normal - playing, loving, cuddling, working to alert me to sounds and enjoying life to the full;  the next he was stretched out on an operating table and left with a big open wound under his chin with virtually his whole chest shaved and left raw.  For 3 days I had to hold his head back, stick the nozzle of a syringe into the wound and flush it with water.  He hated it and so did I!  How could I explain to him that I was only doing this to help him heal?  As far as he was concerned, I'd first abandoned him at his time of greatest need and was now prolonging the torture.  Could he really trust that I loved him?
I wonder if you feel that way about God sometimes?
When life just doesn't make sense?
When you're hurting and overwhelmed?
Why is He letting this happen?
How can I really trust in His love when I am hurting so much?
My heart aches as I see Goldie desperately trying to escape the discomfort, racing frantically, rolling, scratching, yet still wagging his tail when he sees me coming and gently licking my hand.
Does he understand how much I love him and care about his pain?  Does he know that I would do anything to help him and that its still OK to trust me even though he can't understand why he's got a hole in his neck or has to wear green bandages on his paws?
And I suddenly felt God whispering to me:
'I am never detached from your pain beloved one.  Do you know that I feel it as if it is my own?  I carry your sorrows and weep with your tears.  I ache when I have to allow things that you cannot understand and you feel frantic and lost.  When you hurt, I hurt too and lovingly took your wounds to the cross that you could know the power of my healing love. I am always working to bring you into deeper wholeness and healing, as you are working with Goldie to restore him back to his true self.  Just as you long for Goldie to know he is loved, so I long for you to relax in my love and care, to trust that I am for you and feel your pain. '
As I took in the Father's love these verses from Isaiah 63:9 came to mind:

'In all their distress he too was distressed and the angel of his presence saved them.'

God feels,
For me, for you.
He carries us and weeps over us.
our pain matters to Him.
And He draws close to touch us and minister healing love to us.
We may not always understand what He is doing,
But it is always for our good.
To make us whole, free and full joy.
And He made us like Him, that we too feel pain and grief for our loved ones.  We long to bring help and transformation, to carry their pain and give hope in their suffering. And through Him we can.
Feeling the pain, empathizing, weeping, rejoicing, praying ,acting -
The greatest gift and responsibility of being made in God's image and being part of all He is doing.



Tracy Williamson is an author and speaker working together with blind singer/songwriter Marilyn Baker for MBM Trust, an itinerant ministry of music and teaching.  www.mbm-ministries.org
Tracy lives in Kent, sharing a home with Marilyn and Tracy's Hearing Dog, Goldie.  Tracy recently released her new book A Desert Transformed