My husband and I went to go buy our yearly Christmas ornament today. It’s a wonderful tradition. I saw some Christmas pigs and was reminded that my mom liked pigs, but I never understood why, and I let the thought pass without even mentioning it to my husband because it really didn’t matter to me. Then, I found an ornament that memorialized a lost pet. We lost our Jack Russell Nicky this year. I showed it to my husband, and we decided to buy that one with our yearly ornament to remember Nicky. My husband said it made him sad, but that he wanted to remember Nicky.
I felt like it was bittersweet. I still feel sad when I think of Nicky, but at the same time I also remember all the love that we had with him. He was a very special dog. My husband and I have been watching cooking shows all day and this fact might be affecting my writing, but in every dish the chefs make they say they want balance of flavors. Nothing too sweet, too salty, too bitter, or too sour, but a balance of the four for the perfect bite. Missing Nicky makes me think of balance in life. I don’t want to only have happy experiences or just sorrowful experiences. I want to have a wide range of experiences so that I get to have a balance in my life where when I get to the end of it, I feel like I had a full life where I got to experience life.
One of my biggest problems with “Christians” is that they try to sell the idea that once you are “saved”, then life will be wonderful and if not in this life, then after you die, life will be wonderful in Heaven. I don’t want that. I want to experience sorrow and pain. I want to experience that amazing bittersweet feeling of loving someone or some animal and having lost them. It hurts and I would never want to lose someone, but at the same time, it’s a part of life. And it’s a part of life that is special because when I feel that bittersweet feeling I understand how much I loved, but also how love lives on beyond death.
In the same sense, I don’t want to have OCD, I don’t want to have panic attacks, and I don’t want to have migraines. However, pain is a part of life. If I never felt pain, I would never understand what it means to surrender myself to God when I don’t feel strong enough. I wouldn’t understand how God’s love heals and what an amazing gift it means to know that even in pain God won’t abandon me.
I guess that’s the most difficult part to explain to anyone. I have been in pain that I thought I couldn’t stand. I prayed to God for help and eventually the pain subsided, but God’s answer to my prayer wasn’t immediate relief, but only that He wouldn’t abandon me. Knowing that no matter what happens God won’t abandon me is one of the greatest gifts ever and I wouldn’t really understand that unless I had pain.
Life isn’t full or balanced until I surrender myself completely to God and dive into the pool completely, become fully immersed and experience everything. Faith is knowing that I can’t swim, but also knowing that God will be my life preserver.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
