No real time to write these days but I’ll be damned if the Muse isn’t whispering in my ear this evening.  I’m not entirely sure where She plans to take me, but since Her visits are so infrequent, it would behoove me to pay attention….

First of all, I finished Statistics with an A by the skin of my teeth.  The probability of me getting an A in a math class—let alone an online math class—is small.  Ta Da!  And that’s all I can regurgitate from those six weeks of heinousness.  Learning a completely new online classroom format AND math is really as close to the threshold to hell that my imagination can muster.  The silver lining (there always is one) is that I FREAKING DID IT.  I really don’t know how, but I freaking did it. Go, Me.

Anyway, today is Monday.  6:51pm. I worked Friday, Saturday (seriously a day from hell), Sunday, today, and I signed up to go back in from 11p to 3:30a because they desperately needed someone and I desperately need money.  But I am tired.  And when I am tired, I get contemplative, emotional, withdrawn, and philosophical, not necessarily in that order.

Right now, I’m thinking that Life is Hard.

Life is good and life is strange and life is beautiful and life is a highway, but life is most definitely hard.

I’m not much of a Catholic anymore, but lately I’ve been having an old song we used to sing in church (good old Catholic college days) run through my head:  “Refiner’s fire.  My heart’s one desire is be holy, set apart for you, Lord.  I want to be holy, set apart for you, my Master, ready to do your will.”

It’s the refining fire part that’s sticking to my soul.  I’m not sure what I think of organized religion or Jesus or Christianity, but there is humanity in refining fire.  Maybe it’s not about me serving a/the Lord or being holy, but certainly there is something to be said for what happens to our hearts, our souls, our personalities when we go through suffering.

Suffering is innately lonely.  We can have people who can empathize/sympathize, show compassion, offer a hand out, offer a hand up …. But ultimately suffering is a lonely business.  Whether I believe Jesus is God, the story is still profound.  And lonely.  There’s the appeal of the God-Man, right?  That this almighty being suffered like we suffer.  Suffered MORE than we suffer.  And stayed kind and good and just and merciful and LOVING.

That’s the sticking point for most of us.  That we will experience suffering is inevitable.  What we do in the midst and beyond the suffering is the revelation of our soul.  What does the fire reveal in its absence?  Is everything dust, unrecognizable?  Are we hardened or are we strengthened?  Do we become desolate and dead and barren or does regrowth occur?

So philosophical (says the girl with no actual knowledge of philosophy).

But those big questions don’t matter when you’re enduring the pain.  Or even when the pain has just ended.  All most of us want is to get back to the way things were before the suffering started.  What I always tell my patients is that, really, we don’t want to go back to that place.  That place leads us directly back into the suffering.  We want to walk/crawl out of the suffering and blaze a new trail.  That’s the hard work, but that’s the path away from that past pain.

For me, refiner’s fire is revealing who I want to be post-pain/suffering.  That’s different for all of us.  That’s the loneliness and the mystery.  The fabulous part is that the revelation isn’t something that happens TO us:  it’s what we choose to create/reveal.  Scary.  Still a little painful.  But a CHOICE.  We don’t always get to choose the suffering that befalls us (although I certainly do a great job of putting myself in some situations that are more likely to cause me pain).  We DO get to choose who we become in the aftermath.

School is the new journey.  School is me choosing and rebuilding.  It’s scary; it’s hard; I’m not always sure that I’m gonna make it … but at least I’ve made the choice to try.