I believe in suffering

So I took some grief for my middle-of-the-night poem about fog. Well I had another strikingly clear stream of thought, but this time I was in the shower at our friends house in Rochester this weekend. It was so vivid I rushed out of the shower, ripped a piece of paper out of notebook in their office, and quickly scribbled down my thoughts. It is along lines of the once NPR radio show and now book This I Believe. Check the books out, they are fantastic reads. So here you go...

I believe in suffering. Suffering is often seen as negative but I believe suffering is a powerful teacher and confidence builder. You body and soul don't know their limits until stretched to their endpoint; along the way is suffering.

Our country has a soft underbelly, I believe largely because my generation hasn't suffered. I want for material things, my grandmother knows better. When you live through the Great Depression, fois gras and steak seem like luxuries. Only simple foods in butter and lard are needed so long as there is food on the table for the entire family.

I haven't suffered nearly enough. My story book childhood was smattered with few setbacks, but overwhelmed by relative luxury and privilege. I lost my grandfather in my early 20s, that is the high water mark of my emotional suffering.

I have trained for endurance, marathons and triathlons. Voluntary physical suffering that has taught me how incredibly much my body is capable of handling. I want for more suffering; cold, physically stressed, mentally forced to adjust to a natural environment full of challenges.

I believe in suffering because it gives me the lens to how much more we can do. I begin to understand my responsibility to fulfill a great debt to God for giving me such a beautiful and capable mind and body as well as a physical and emotional world in which that mind and body can flourish.