Comparative Struggles

I've been struggling with a concept lately. I think I may have even eluded to it in an earlier post. But lately, I'm been trying to come to grips with struggles. Some days I feel like I'm drowning in a massive whirlpool of doom, like nothing is how it should be, and like I could just crumble into pieces if one more thing went wrong. But then someone loses their husband to cancer. Someone's heart breaks over a friend's divorce. Someone's whole world is falling apart.

My first reaction is guilt. I feel bad for feeling so out of control in my own sufferings which seem so insignificant compared to others. I feel so bad that sometimes I don't want to or find it hard to articulate my struggles to others, thinking that they certainly are going through or have gone through worse.

In my prayer group at work, I hear one woman's stories of her husband committing suicide, her daughter's alcohol addiction, and her employer's abuse of her time, and I think, How dare I think that I'm even remotely suffering. Because her struggles seem so much deeper and more painful than my crazy day at work, my endless to-do list. I hear another woman recount the passing of her mother, father-in-law, and her family's wait for her mother-in-law to pass soon. What loss. What grief.

I am amazed by these women and their strength that they given by God. They have a resilience that I wonder at. And I can't handle a few bad days in a row at work? So, I am stricken with guilt, with shame, that I can't pull myself together over my little struggles.

But how can I reconcile these things? Because the fact of the matter is that I am still stretched too thin, I am still struggling (take a look at my last few posts for confirmation of that), but I see how much worse it could be, how much more that I could be asked to struggle through. Perhaps this is a maturity issue. Maybe I'm not nearly as spiritually mature as I think I am. Perhaps it's a tolerance issue. Similar to physical pain tolerance, is there an emotional pain tolerance? Why is mine lower than the women I look to for guidance? Maybe it's a wisdom and experience issue. Perhaps the more you go through, the more God guides you, or the more you lean on His strength, and the more you can handle. 

And I think the only way we can be taught to handle struggles in our lives is simply to live through them. Maybe I do not handle struggles all that well because God's grace has kept me from many. I have lived such a blessed life, with very little drama or issue. I haven't had cancer, I haven't been divorced, I haven't lost any of my dearest friends. Perhaps only living through my current struggles can teach me to deal with any more. 

No matter what, I continue to struggle with the idea of struggles. I am so very thankful to have lived through so few, but I falter easily at the new struggles that come around. I don't want more struggles, but I want to know how to deal with struggles. And I feel guilty when I compare my struggles to those that have been through so much more. All I can do now is to pray that God grant me some sence of understanding and wisdom in the matter and some peace and maturity to deal with the issues at hand.

And through it all, God is good, God loves me, and God's will is always best. I know this without a doubt.