A great deal of my early life was characterized by the kinds of suffering to which only a powerless child can be condemned. The details of that suffering are irrelevant for three reasons:

1. There are as many forms of suffering as there are humans to endure it.
2. Suffering is relative – we live in an era when everyone is trying to ‘out-suffer’ everyone else. It’s not a competition, it’s an offering.
3. It is far too easy to transform suffering into a part of our identity from which we never escape or grow beyond.

Suffering, as I’d eventually come to see, is the greatest of gifts, though in the moment it can be difficult to recognize it as such (I wouldn’t experience this little revelation until my early 40s, slow learner that I am).

The Crash

Conditioned to expect a life of anxiety, depression, and pain, I spent the first 20+ years of my adulthood behaving in ways that guaranteed those expectations were met.

When I wasn’t cheating, lying, and occasionally engaging in petty crimes, I was running and hiding. A deep and steady current of anxiety coursed through my veins and no amount of psychotherapy or medications ever really helped.

By 42 my life was fully derailed. I was clinging to a bad job and relationship, saw my kids on the weekends, and had no hope. Literally no hope.

Then came the magical and momentous day that I simultaneously lost the job I hated and the woman who no longer cared for me. In 24 hours the last vestiges of a ‘normal life’ were gone.

“Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.” – Viktor Frankl

Like a caged lion, I paced about in my quiet, lonely little house. Until, abruptly and completely, no more steps were possible. I felt irretrievably done.

Dropping to my knees, the dam I’d painstakingly built to keep back the pain broke and out came great gasping sobs I thought would never end. Always ‘spiritual but not religious,’ I turned to God: “I’m so tired of hurting. Why did you put me here? Please help me, I surrender.”

“No, you don’t,” came an inner voice. (More on that critical little nugget in another post.)

Minutes went by. Nothing. My tears began to dry. The ceiling fan rotated in a slow, steady arc. More minutes. My knees started to grow numb.

Well this is stupid, I thought. God isn’t there or doesn’t care.

Dead inside and out, I numbly wandered to my home office and collapsed into the chair. The first little miracle awaited.

The Little Miracle

My eyes roamed toward the lone bookcase in my office and immediately settled on a small, nondescript binding sandwiched between much larger books. I recognized it as an old journal I’d kept years earlier and forgotten existed. For reasons unclear, I leaned forward and lifted it from the case and opened it to a random page.

There, in those exact words (my words!) on that exact page in that exact little forgotten journal, was proof something had, in fact, been listening.

The words? They told of an anxious, lost young man who, years earlier, had plunged headlong into an extramarital affair with a colleague. They spoke of guilt and suffering and self-destruction. And they spoke of a fateful night spent with the estranged wife and the dream-state conception of their first child.

The miracle? The date flashed forward several years and spoke of that same man, again separated from his wife, plunging headlong into an affair with a colleague. Same department, same hair color. And once again, the words spoke of a single night spent with the once again estranged ex and the dream-state conception of their second child.

I had repeated history. Without recognizing it. Life, God, whatever you want to call it, was shouting at me from those pages: “Look! I am here, but you need to pay attention!”

For the first time in years, an unfamiliar wisp of joy curled up from deep within. Something had been listening. Something cared enough to send me in there to rediscover that old journal, to open it to that page, and to show me, in my own words, what I was doing with this life.

Maybe all that suffering had a purpose?