When Trouble Comes 1/1/2023

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

Two consecutive blogs falling on major holidays is making me feel a bit of pressure if I’m honest. I don’t know that I did all that well for my contribution last week and that only intensifies the weight that I feel to produce content worthy of my first piece of the new calendar year.  I won’t call it an oppressive weight but, I really do want to do good work.  What if this happens to be one of the few collections of words that you experience today?  I want the little bit of literature (seems a bit bold of me to call it that since I am somewhat skeptical that anything I write fits the definition) that you take in on this first day of January to be something meaningful.  But here I sit with this dilemma. With what to do I start off the year?  What do people most want or need to read about?  I suppose that question has a pretty subjective answer. I think I’ll address it from the perspective of someone living in my small-town neck of the woods.

My little community has not had the easiest year.  They say trouble comes in threes but apparently my little area didn’t get that memo for minimum numbers.  It has been one thing after another for us as of late.  It wasn’t even spread out over the course of the twelve months either. I think the bulk of our woes were all wedged miserably into the second half of this year. I do not know nor claim to understand why such a small area would have so many cases of difficulty and heartbreak befall it but as we all know, life very frequently does not make a great deal of sense. In pondering it, I guess the why is the most difficult of things.  We all know bad things happen and while we don’t like it, we can cope with it until it hits home. When it touches those we know and love then sorrow tends to mingle far more with anger and confusion.  It becomes a toxic and powerful cocktail.

One of the earliest was the end of a local girl’s struggle with cancer. She was only a teenager and her battle had begun while she was till a child. She had traveled thousands of miles for medical options and had tried countless experimental treatments in the hopes of remission. It was my understanding she even achieved it but clearly it didn’t last.  She touched many people though with her courage and her strength. Her funeral was held in a college football stadium. Not a small community college either. This stadium holds nearly ninety thousand.  I cannot say how full it was but for it to be a viable option says a great deal of the impact she had. 

As I was writing just now my daughter ran and bounced on me for an unexpected hug. I ran my hands through the long hair she is bless enough to still have, closed my eyes, and squeezed her. She said it was too tight.  She has no idea it wasn’t nearly tight enough.  Holding her brings me to reflect on the next tragic story.

Another little girl was only seven.  What started as her catching a simple virus going around school ended up with her needing a double lung transplant that she did not survive to receive.  I feel the weight of this one particularly heavily because my daughter is halfway to her seventh birthday. She has on several occasions caught viruses at school. This isn’t an odd occurrence.  Most of us don’t remotely imagine the little things like a bug from school taking a child from us. I can’t think of a comparable pain and this too has cast its dark shadow on our little area.

We’ve had at least one more young person that we have lost. I don’t know the details on the young man. I am regretful that I do not know. I didn’t even know about his passing until I saw that there was going to be a prayer vigil with pictures of all our local lives lost.  There was a 3^rd grade teacher at my daughter’s school as well that was only middle aged. The day after Christmas another teenager was lost to a car accident. To top things off, starting Christmas day most of our community was without running water after several days of frigid temperatures burst pipes and drained the entire water supply.  As I type this, we are just now able to use our water without having to boil it first. Perhaps this isn’t pain, but it has proven a struggle for many.

I know, I have given you a sordid tale of heartbreak and trial.  I suppose I have done so to say that you are not alone in whatever darkness you face.  I cannot pretend to understand whatever it may be.  And maybe, like many of these, you are facing something that you cannot for the life of you understand.  Suffering is indiscriminate in whom it chooses to visit.  But I do know a few things.  I know gems are not things of beauty until they are broken and cut and ground. I know that gold and silver are not in their most pure and valuable forms until the impurities are burned away in the fire.  I know that while the views are lovely, nothing grows on the high mountaintop. It is in the valleys where growth occurs.  And as much as I loathe admitting it, tests are where we show what we have learned.

I don’t know what trials you face. I don’t pretend that they make sense. I certainly don’t claim to have the answers. I do know that you can make it through them though. And you can do so because you aren’t alone.  You may think you are.  And I daresay there will be a small sinister voice that tries to convince you that you cannot cope with what you are facing.  Maybe that voice won’t say you can’t cope. Maybe it will simply encourage you to be angry and lash out because what you are facing isn’t fair.  This little voice could say all sorts of things that will sound perfectly reasonable.  The path that all these “reasonable” things will lead you down is covered in black ice though. But you aren’t alone. Life isn’t fair but it was never promised to be. Rain falls on the just and unjust.  All I can tell you is when the load is too heavy you need to ask for help. Friends and family are a good start but ultimately, they can only do so much. Ask the One who flung the stars into the universe and knows each of them by name. Go to the One who knew that all this would happen to you before you existed and knows how your story ends long before the first chapter of it was ever written. In fact, that’s a good analogy. He knows your entire tale so turning to The Author is the best bet to move through the difficult volumes. Ans when you are at a loss, just let Him have the pen.