For a while I wondered why we are meant to suffer. This is a primarily Christian perspective, but I feel that this life is the only way we our able to get to heaven. Every day we have is a gift, and we are blessed in ways that we fail to see all the time. I have all of my limbs, I have a roof over my head, and while I am down to my last eleven dollars, there are still people who love me enough to make sure I'm fed.

I loved reading a grief observed by C.S. Lewis. He once described God as a surgeon, which as a nursing student, is something I can understand:

"The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed – might grow tired of his vile sport – might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless."

I feel like this world is preparation for something eternally better. If I can say that I am experiencing loss, it means I was given something to lose in the first place. If I can say I've had a bad day, it means there were some good days around it.

I feel like, the same thing that makes this world such a terrible place (free will), is also what makes it so amazing. Sometimes life is not what you wanted it to be. And it's never what you imagined it could be. But that's the beauty of it. That's what makes the impossible possible. All we can do with it is keep living. Because life stops for nothing. But isn't that the beauty of it? That cancer patients live on, that people rise above abuse and hard circumstances, that we are able to live to try and see a better day... that evidence of the strength of the human spirit is all around us?

If I look back on all the things I viewed as tragedies in the moment, I can almost always find a silver lining. It's a good thing I wasn't elected president of my class and that I didn't get my RA position because, though I didn't know it at the time, I would be struggling with end of life issues with my mother during the time those positions were to be held. And my mother's cancer, while terrible news, has helped me come to Jesus to find security in life that I've never known before. And for her, it has helped her live day by day (look up the song "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw). We just have to trust that there is a reason and a purpose - even if we never find out what it really is.

Forgiveness and trust is at the root of all healing.