My "Suffering" Testimony

         If you have been keeping up with my blog, just a little bit, you will know that my church has been on the topic of suffering for this past month and it is a good topic because the way they teach it is: God is there with you through the suffering and here are the different ways He is with you and good reasons why. It has made me thinking about the kinds of sufferings that I see around me and little and big sufferings that I have been through myself. I mean we live in a world of sin and suffering whether we like to admit it or not. I love that one night during the sermon there was a baby crying in the service and sirens going off outside and it was only a couple reminders of the different suffering in the world.
          I am making a big choice tomorrow night at church and I just thought I needed to share my "suffering" testimony if that is what you can call it. It kind of explains why I am doing what I am doing. I will say that in a strange way my "suffering" testimony started when I moved to AR but that is understandable for me. It is the first time that I had been so far away from my family and without their help for a long time. I had to make almost every choice on my own and it also doesn't help when you move to a place for a certain reason but that is a whole other story that won't be told on here.
           I will admit that the first full year here in AR was probably my worst. There is nothing like trying to fit in with a group of people that you have nothing in common with. There is also nothing like moving to a place where don't know anyone at all. I was trying to fit in to this business group of people and they were nothing like me at all. They all talk smart and serious and then here is me who hangs around kids all day for my job. Slowly, I felt like God was pulling me in another direction but it was hard for me to let go and trust Him.
           There were nights that I would get into my car after hanging out with that group and just start crying and yelling at God because I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea what the feeling that I was feeling was. This was all new to me and hard. I had no one around me to talk about it with because everyone else had been year for quite a few years before me. Then I notice that God started to bring people into my life that just moved here or moved here not to long ago and things got better. I started to relate to a lot more people and not only were those people new too, they also had close to the same interests as me and for that I was grateful.
             That was how my first year in AR went and then I had seasons of suffering and non suffering here and there as the years went on up til now. I lost my jobs a couple of times and had to learn new things there and go through them again, which is never easy. Then, while in AR, I lost the last two of my grandparents and a grandpa like friend to me. Not only did I lose them, I had to watch them go through sickness and hurt. I regret still to this day not seeing them as often as I should have. With those things going on, I knew my parents were hurting too and I couldn't be there for them because my jobs were taking up so much of my time and energy.
              Then there was this one job that I went through suffering every single day when I was working there because of where I worked. I worked with abused children and it doesn't get anymore suffering then that. When you see those children like I did and know why they are like that you just want to hurt someone so bad and sometimes they are so smart and cute that you just wonder why someone would do that to their child. I tried to hold it together for the longest time but it finally got to me and to where I wasn't being supported or encouraged that I had to quit. It was just so hard seeing those children so behind developmentally and hearing cuss words come out of their mouths and seeing how they could defend themselves and throw fits because they had to to keep safe.
               Then seeing the babies, the newborns, at a shelter because their parent was on drugs with them and just things like that were horrible. Just seeing them not trusting any human bring because of what was done to them. There were some children that came in so dirty and head full of lice. Some so much that we had to cut their hair short to get rid of them. I still shake when I think of them. That job right there gave me a whole new meaning of suffering and of what love really is. I think a lot of time we take those 2 things for granted and think they are little things that will never happen to us but we are so wrong. Why do you think God gave to this earth to save us?
                Looking into the eyes of those children even night while rocking or patting them to bed, made me see God more and more. Holding them while they were throwing their fits, while they were hitting me across the face, cussing me out, biting and pinching me, and even kicking me made me think of us and God a lot. Is that really how we treat God sometimes? Like that is the question that would cross my mind a lot while working there. Yet, still, He puts up with us and cared enough to die on the cross for our sins. There was a lot of soul searching that came with that job and I think that is where all of this started.
               Something else that really gets me is that no one else really seemed to see the children or the situations like that. It just seemed like they saw the children as children and didn't care. They seemed to be too busy with other things that they didn't care about the children like they really should have. I know it isn't a perfect world and other things need to be done but still they could have make it look like their top thing on their "list" especially the little ones that couldn't defend for themselves. The little ones that needed a voice to speak up for them and yet that was all I was doing.
               Sorry, kind of got on my soapbox there for a bit but so far I think that is my biggest suffering story of my life. Now don't get me wrong. I also suffer from Anxiety, another kind of suffering, and have for most of my life and I finally got a handle on that here in AR and got it under control but nothing compares to the children. As you can see, suffering comes in a lot of different ways, both big and small. Each of us has a different way of handling each suffering but there is one things to remember: "It isn't God that gives us the suffering, it is the world. It is, though, God that gets us through the suffering and makes us better then ever before. It is Him that turns rocks into diamonds and ashes into beauty."