Learning Through Trials

The weekend was full-on, really full-on. It would be up there with the hardest weekends of being a parent, so far. I'll spare you the gory details, but it just left me exhausted and despairing, and hugely frustrated.

I recently heard the idea that God runs us through certain trials and hardships, repeatedly, until we grow from it and learn an important lesson. This is what this situation feels like to me.

It feels like He is trying to get me to grow and trust in Him, and to learn to still be able to be content and at peace in the midst of these difficulties, but instead each time I face the trial, I quickly bow out, get angry and resentful, and don't learn the lesson.

Behind this thought process is a very immature view of God that I keep falling back on: if You loved me, You wouldn't let this happen to me. In this thought, I am totally disregarding what I actually know to be true, when I'm in my right mind- that God intends everything for our good, and uses everything to make us grow.

God doesn't test me because He likes to see me falter and have difficulties. This is incompatible with the good God that He is. Instead, He puts me into the flames, to purify me by burning away all the rubbish, to just leave the gold, which is the only thing that can withstand the heat.

He burns away my self-reliance, my pride, my selfishness, my anger, my immaturity, to bring me out a stronger, more capable, more peaceful person, with a deeper trust, reliance and love for Him.

But until I'm willing to let go, and learn to grow through the painful things in life, while they are happening, without jumping to resentment, my guess is that I'll just keep returning to the start.