The Fellowship of Suffering

Some conversations reveal more than agreement ever could.

 I recently tried to speak with someone about the tragedies I have walked through over the past five years and the faithfulness of God within them, and the other person did not engage. I have learned that when suffering and faith are spoken together, it can be unsettling for some people. Real testimony does not live in abstractions or tidy answers. It comes from places where loss has been endured and God has been encountered there.

 That kind of truth requires listening. Stillness. Humility. Not everyone knows how to stand on that ground.

 Sometimes disengagement happens because a story like mine confronts what someone believes about God. Faith that has been tested by grief carries a weight that theoretical faith does not. To truly engage, a person has to be willing to sit with pain without fixing it, to witness without explaining it away, and to honor a God who remains faithful even when life has not been gentle.

 Not everyone has the capacity—or the courage—to do that.

 I am learning not to make my testimony smaller to make others more comfortable. My story is not too heavy, and my faith is not too much. What I carry is holy ground.

 And not everyone knows when to take off their shoes.