Unforeseen Reflections

I am in the middle of the book by 

Madeline L'Engle, Two-Part Invention,

where her husband is sick with cancer and she writes

how while she wishes with a friend that they could just

take the suffering away,

and then they realize that they must not do this,

as it would also take away human freedom.

*

And then I listened with new ears to my husband 

reading the story in the Gospel of the Crucifixion of Christ

and I realized in a new way how Christ choose to suffer for us

and had to suffer for us and that just like

Madeleine's husband had to suffer through the cancer

alone, so Christ had to be crucified and feel that aloneness,

that suffering on the Cross,

where He kept loving and forgiving others. 

And I had to hear and as it were watch Christ suffer

and could not 'fix' it, had to have Christ die so that we could live.

*

It's given me a lot to think about

in terms of accepting the lives I see around me,

that while I can care and certainly pray,

I can't and must not even think of trying to 'fix' 

what I see... 

it that makes sense.

*

It seems somehow to be about respecting whatever

God is allowing, respecting the freedom and calling of others,

and allowing absolute freedom to choose what life and even suffering

that a person lives with.

*

Of course I don't mean in this to condone or ignore abuse or something of this nature,

but that a lot of suffering in the world is simply 

not mine to solve as it were, much less understand...

and I realize also that I am not someone that can solve things

or be that which can support such suffering; 

each one of us has a journey that is often

undecipherable and that we must just be focused

on the mercy of God

and keep asking for this mercy..