Partners in Pain

Oh Lord my God, my partner in Pain,

You are not my Partner only to come to my rescue and deliver me out of all suffering. No sir! You have never said, “No stretching HER, no wrenching or twisting of HER heart, no agony of HER spirit or HER body. 

But ahhh, yes! When the covenant promises find their end result, the inheritance will be ALL mine; a life with no more sorrows, no more wrenching pain, a body raised up incorruptible, no more sickness, no more death, no more wrestling with agony from inside or from without. Yes, one day it IS coming, but until then, you have promised me that I’m going to get some scars that I, like You, will carry with me into eternity. Scars that for all eternity will be reminders that we laid down our lives in exchange for the others life. 

Every part of my flesh wants to be delivered from this! “Remove this cup from me! I don’t WANT these things to happen this way,” is my plea! I would like to have a covenant partner who just delivers me from all pain, who comes to my rescue and says, “NO WAY” to all things soul wrenching! Instead I have a covenant partner who walks close beside me, hangs onto me, keeps me held up so I don’t fall beneath the load; one who has told me by His own life that people will see and know the True God and desire Him when they see people who live in the reality of their world, who hurt like they do; people who have fightings within and fears without and they walk the path of sacrifice and suffering…..STILL CLAIMING ABUNDANT LIFE!!! No pain or heartache able to put out their hope; something inside them that cannot be destroyed no matter how horrific the blows.

I tell you, people will sit up and listen to a life like this! They say, “She knows what real life feels like and yet, there is a strength within her that I need.” People want to know how to live in the reality of a broken and hurting world because as much as we long to claim that it is otherwise, we ARE living in a broken and hurting world. We ARE living in one!!! 

So, how can we make it? We have a covenant partner who knows how to sacrifice. He tells me, “No, child, you CAN’T do it, but I can and I am here to do for you what you are too weak to do. I know how to hurt. I know how to suffer. I’ve done it. I know how to sacrifice…..to degrees unknown. And child, I know how to come out on the other side as the victor. Take my hand, hold on tight, and I will walk you through it.”

Someday, my Lord, I hope that our scars will show, like yours. Some people want to go into eternity without a single scar to show for it. They want YOU to be the only scarred one and they to have gotten off scar free. Not me, my Lord. I want eternity to tell the story that I thought this partnership to be worth something. I, like Paul, want to carry on my body the brand marks of Jesus, saying, “This relationship was worth some scars to me.” You will carry your scars for me forever, but I don’t want it to be a one way street. You are worth something to me; You are worth some scars.

Strange, strange scenario. The one with the most scars in the end will receive the most reward, for they are the ones who thought You most worth it. There will be a lot of people there who will have a lot more reward than I, for many have suffered far, far more. But where and when you do allow me to suffer, I will consider it an honor to tell the world, “He is worth it. He is worth it!!!!!” 

For THAT, my Lord is what You have told the world about me!