Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. -2 Corinthians 4:1-1 7
It is so easy in the midst of hard times to focus only on our pain and heartache, to see only what is most obvious and to think that no one else has ever been in our situation. This myopic view of the world causes us to miss the pain and problems in the lives of others and only serves to feed our self-pity.
One afternoon last year in Los Angeles, I was approached by a beggar who solicited some money from me. I was dressed casually, but cleanly, while he could have been a poster child for homelessness. The line he used was: “Hey, things are going good for you. How about giving me a couple of dollars?” What he didn’t know and couldn’t see was that my 12 year-old daughter lay fighting for her life in the hospital up the street. To him it looked as though I had it made and he had all the problems.
Now that the first anniversary of Kristin’s death has passed it would be so easy to focus only on the pain and heartache that her death brought. But to do that would be to miss the blessings that God sent during her illness and the courageous example she left behind her. We still hurt but the pain doesn’t seem as sharp or as all consuming as it was during the first year.
A Jewish friend of ours told us that in their tradition the first year after you lost a loved one was called the “year of tears.” And so it was. With every first seeming to increase the pain. The first meals without her, the first rain on her grave, the first birthdays, holidays and anniversaries. The sorrow, pain and emptiness grew and we wondered how others could dare to go on with their lives. Didn’t they know how much we hurt?
But now through God’s grace we are able to lift our heads up and look beyond our present circumstances and see the unseen reality that Paul wrote about. It isn’t easy to see that which can’t be seen except through the eyes of faith. It’s a choice that has to be made every day to focus beyond the externals that are so easily seen and are so often a distraction to the eyes of faith. But the only way to survive is to look beyond the pain.
- Steven G. Kay
