Suffering, pt. 2

I'll close with a personal example. I haven't told this to a lot of people, but the first two months of my summer were terrible. Spiritually and in general. I ended last semester in good shape academically, but my body was ruined. I gained something like 15-20 pounds (gross, huh?) I was breaking out like crazy. And because I was breaking out, I would sometimes lack the confidence to attend social functions or church-related activities. If you knew me last semester, I think you knew something was wrong/going on. And that's it. I was just lacking in confidence--embarrassed of what I looked like in front of the mirror.

I came home and it was hard for my parents to recognize me. The first month I lived in my house watching Korean dramas, tennis videos on Youtube, and TV. I was afraid to meet up with a few of my high school friends because my skin was just so bad. Going through this experience, I wondered how I wasn't depressed through it all. Indeed, while I was in my vegetative state, I constantly thought about this.

To compound to my physical/confidence problems, I stopped engaging with the Word. Maybe it was the excessive TV/drama watching, but I no longer felt a desire to read the Bible, much less literature. I started having vivid dreams about something I had watched during the day. Sometimes, I would forget whether something happened in real life or in a dream since they were starting to become the same since I basically never left my room. You'd think this would be a cool experience. You'd be wrong.

How did I pull myself out of this quandary? Well, in some ways, I didn't pull myself out. I was pulled out by my internship at a software company that had me working from 9-5PM, Mon-Fri, leaving me little time for dramas. Finally, a support group of one (I will not mention this person’s name) helped me. To you (you know who you are), I am eternally grateful. You saved my spiritual life. You saved me from myself.

In July, I sought to improve myself. I had already started going back to the gym in June. I was hitting the treadmill and weights and as often as I could. I started taking oral medication my dermatologist prescribed for my acne. I stopped watching TV as often and completely stopped watching Korean dramas. I started reading the Bible again. I started reading literature again. I hung out with my high school friends much more consistently. It was a hard period, but I can say that at this moment, I feel physically, emotional, mentally, and spiritually healthy. I feel happy.

Of course it was difficult. You don't know how many times I wanted to stop running on the treadmill or cycling on the bike. You don't know how hard it was to hit the gym for an hour after a 8-hour-long day. You don't know(or maybe you do) how hard it was for me to start reading the Bible again. It was definitely a matter of training myself, every single day and moment, even when I hated to do it.

If you read the very first post of this blog (not the intro post, but "What I've Learned From My Muslim Friend"), you'll see I quote Romans. I did this not because I knew the Bible well, but because that was the first book I read over the summer. Why Romans? Because that person ("support group") saw that something was wrong in my life, wanted to help, and suggested I read Romans.

I wrote that blog post on a Sunday (8.15.10). Why's that important, you ask? Because that was the first time I went to a church this summer.

Coming back to GCC on August 29th, I knew I was weakened spiritually. But in that service (held in Bassone), I figured out what I had been missing: the Holy Spirit. God still loved and cared for me, but I had denied his Spirit a life in my heart. That's why I was looking for satisfaction in passive entertainment.

What was the first step in my transformation? Tangibly, it's that friend who reached out to me over the summer. It was the Holy Spirit, giving me encouragement in the midst of suffering. It was God ministering to me through the Bible. It was Jesus, who gave me an example of the person I wanted to mold myself after. I needed to realize that there was a problem in my life: sin.

I began with suffering. We all suffer. We all have our share of struggles and failures in life. In the midst of that suffering, what will give you hope? I don't think earthly pursuits can give you encouragement to overcome your problems, nor can anything else in this world. When we suffer, we can be glad because we know God wants to make us stronger. He wants to teach us through the experience. Becoming a better person isn't an easy process. It's painful. But we know the most worthy person of all also suffered the greatest injustice. We know his name. His name is Jesus.