It Matters

The last year and half have been so painful and hard, the hardest of my life.  I went through a bad break up, and I've had a really hard time moving on.  One of the biggest obstacles for me has been the feeling that if I let myself move on, the years that I spent in that relationship will be wasted.  I've felt that if I let the relationship not mean anything now, that it never meant anything, and I can't bear that thought. I want the man I was with to know that he mattered, and I want him to know that I mattered too.

I feel silly that this has been so difficult for me.  The worst thing in my life is a break up, and there are thousands of people in the world that are dying in terrible ways and families being torn apart, and I'm sure they all want it to matter, too. There is so much suffering, and so much longing for our hurts to matter, and what do I really have to complain about?  But there are days that the pain is almost debilitating.

Contemplating all of this pain, in my own life and in the world, has led to a question that's been burning in my heart: is life good? Is life good, or is it hard and ugly and just something to be endured a breath at a time?  I asked my mom this the other day.  She had a beautiful answer.

"Well, I think life was created to be good, and I think that there are still traces of that," she said. "But the world is fallen.  There is a lot hardness and ugliness in life, and there is a lot of it that just has to be endured.  There are some wounds and struggles that we'll carry for the rest of our lives. God is good though, and He won't let our scars go to waste.  God works all things for the good of those who love Him, and He sees our pain. When we get to heaven, He will have turned them into something beautiful. He doesn't let our struggles go to waste."

Which is to say, it matters.