This is a hard one.

We tell ourselves that bad things happen for a reason – until they happen to us.

We can take the ‘little’ bad stuff but the ‘big’ bad – not so much.

It’s not that we don’t have the faith to accept our pain as our purpose but rather we wish we could choose the which pain will be that purpose.

We can’t.

God chooses how He uses us and our gifts.

He decides the impact we will make in this life.

And if we understand that we have the opportunity to live a life far more enriching than any we could have imagined.

3 Steps to Accepting Your Pain as Your Purpose:

1. Surrender: 

We must surrender to our unwanted outcomes.

We must use our own free will to do everything in our power to make our situations better. However, if door after door closes or regardless of our efforts the result is still the same – it may be time to accept we are being turned in a new direction.

We can ‘Fight God’ or when the time comes accept that a marriage is over, a job has ended, or other painful realities exist in our lives.

We must let go and surrender to our unwanted challenges before our pain can become our purpose.

2. Examine:

Nothing is harder than confronting an unwanted truth.

But we must and it’s critical to examine and be open to why this might be a part of our calling in life.

Does this experience make you more empathetic or insightful? Could it help another person confront that same difficulty or trauma? Does your knowledge motivate you to do philanthropic work or additional research in that arena? Is it so painful that instead, you choose to make quiet financial contributions?

What does it all mean?

We must examine our troubles in conjunction with our personalities and gifts before our pain can become our purpose.

3. Accept:

We must accept and believe this is the path we were meant to take.

We begin life with much of our own hopes and expectations. And we don’t really like these being altered. We have built a plan for ourselves because naturally, we know what we want. We understand ourselves and our dreams.

We can surrender but if we don’t accept we won’t begin interpreting our pain as our purpose.

 

There is no greater difficulty than finding purpose in hardship.

Our greatest pain can disable us, embitter us, confuse us, and disillusion us.

It can make us better people…

Or it can make us worse.

It can exhaust us, limit us, and devastate us.

But when we allow our pain to be our purpose it can transcend us.

It can erase anger, confusion, sadness, resentment and more.

It can slay fatigue, stress, and hopelessness.

It can reveal our spiritual individuality.

(Photo courtesy of Pexels)

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