“Once an old woman at my church said the secret is that God loves us *exactly* the way we are *and* that he loves us too much to let us stay like this, and I’m just trying to trust that.” – Anne Lamott
Growing pains hurt. We are collectively going through a lot of growing pains these days. I remember clearly, one summer when I was a young teenager going through a lot of physical growing pains. I must have been having a major growth spurt. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to a total throbbing ache in my legs, night after night. The pain was so persistent and nagging, I thought that it would never go away. But of course, the pain did go away, once my growth spurt was over. The pain was intense enough that I remember having it, but it got resolved, naturally, once my body had grown into its adult proportions.
That’s how growing pains work. They are painful enough to remember, but not painful enough to do any real major harm. In fact, that ache is just a reminder that a real and major metamorphosis is happening. We will never forget the collective pain and angst that 2020 has brought to the world, but we will come out of the other side of it all, stronger and wiser and better than before. The important thing is to remember that God/Universe loved and supported us before 2020, God/Universe loves and supports us through 2020 and God/Universe will love us when we reach the other side of all of this tumult. The important thing to remember is that no matter how intense the pain is, it is temporary, and in the meantime, we are always being held in the hands of a Great Love. Always.
Good morning, Nice post, as always. I wondered if by growing pains, you are referring to the fight for social and racial justice?
Hi Pam, I think that I was more referring to an overall revolution in the way that we look at our lives and how we are living. Certainly, the outrage over George Floyd’s death (and all of the other injustices that came before this ‘tipping point’) is part of this, but I also think that the coronavirus has slowed us all down enough to really reflect on the way we go about living our lives, both individually and as a society. I think that there are many things that have been brought into sharp focus for all of us, with these major, major events happening in 2020 and so profoundly affecting all of us, acting as major catalysts for change. You can’t have growth until you realize there is a need for change and evolution. It is painful to realize that you need to change and to go through the fearsome process of change, but the end results are always worth the initial growing pains, to me, at least.