Why I’m Thankful for a Hard Life

From Sarah:

I feel like we talk about how difficult life is here often. Too often. I don’t harp on it because I want your sympathy or I think my life is worse than yours and I want you to know how blessed you are. I share because God is always teaching us through the difficult things in our lives, not the easy stuff.

Living here has been a HUGE growing experience for Stefan and I personally, spiritually, and emotionally. We’ve been forced to face the nasty, dirty, black heart inside and fall to our knees and praise God that he is a forgiving and loving God, not just a God of justice that gives us exactly what we deserve. It is WAY too easy to live life in the shallows, secretly harboring the thought, “I’m really not a bad person. I know God saved me, but he didn’t need to work to save me as much as he did for them.” I know, because I still fight that lie. Laying in bed, chatting as we fought jet lag our first night in this country, I actually debated with Stefan that I thought I could go a day only sinning once or twice. I failed to recognize that we live a life of constant rebellion. We must fight the flesh every minute of every day, because our flesh is sinful. We were born with this disease of sin, pulsing through every vein, pushing against every cell, crying out, “ME! ME! I am the most important!”

When we moved here, my eyes were opened to life in a totally new way. Suddenly, I had to fight to make anything happen, even the simplest things, and I had to face the devil inside that cried, “Unfair! I should have… I deserve… I am used to…” When suddenly struck with the desire for a Red Robin burger, instead of hopping in the car and driving there, instant gratification in an hour or less, I now plan for a week: I have to spend time online researching how to make it, buying cheese from one store, chicken from another, buns from yet another. You never realize how useful a car is in helping you string together errands till you realize that you are limited in stops by how many bags you can carry and still count out money from your wallet. At yet you fight stopping at home because it means a trek up seven flights to put down a few bags. But in the end, when you bite into that burger, there is so much more satisfaction than there could ever be from something bought an hour after you craved it, no matter how much it doesn’t resemble the “real thing”.

God is teaching us patience. He is the perfect example of this loving patience as he holds our hand through the same lessons over and over. And He has blessed us so much through this life! Not only inter-personally through relationships with brothers and sisters (foreign and domestic) and showing himself to us even in those that haven’t yet had their hearts softened to the truth, but even within ourselves. This culture reflects the glory of it’s Maker, even though sometimes all we choose to see is the sin nature that has corrupted it. These people have taught us that independence is not king, and relying only on yourself is pride and sin. They have taught us to question, “What aspects of my morality have been dictated by my culture?” and “What does the Book really say on those issues?” “Have I defined myself by my country, my culture, or my faith? Or some synchronistic mix of all three?”

I hope that each and every one of you has the chance to face difficult situations that bring even more difficult questions one day. If that means living in a foreign culture, I encourage you to embrace that. But even if that means that you live life more intentionally, more thoughtfully, that you learn how to question the foundation you’ve built your life on without seeing a drastically different one, I hope you embrace that too. And I know there are situations that you have faced and learned from that I will never be asked to go through and I hope you can share with me what has God taught you. I am praying for you, my friends, that God gives you a hard life. This time here really is the blink of an eye, and what a shame it would be to be comfortable for a blink and then find that you are totally unprepared when thrust into the presence of pure holiness.

I heard somewhere recently that when we get to Heaven, our place there will fit like a glove, more Home than any other place we’ve known. It will fit so well not because it was created for us, but because we are right now, through a hard life, being molded and shaped to fit that place in Heaven.