Everybody suffers. Everyone experiences loss, betrayal, pain, hardship, illness, different kinds of deaths. Everyone goes through difficult transitions. Everyone, at different times, is compelled to grieve or mourn. Everyone's had someone sin against them. Suffering is all about equal opportunity: it doesn't recognize education, class, race, age, morality, or gender. Suffering comes to all of us eventually. Sometimes we can see it coming at us and we can bunker down against it; sometimes it blindsides us, and we're left flat on our back wondering: what just happened? Is this really happening to me? And yet, only we Christians are called to pick up our cross and carry it- so we see that God expects something different from us as opposed to everyone else who suffers. And that is what this article concerns itself with.

As a young Christian, I was often in the way of hearing other Christians discuss their difficulties, concluding that those particular difficulties were their 'cross to bear'. Frankly, that line of reasoning never made much sense to me: how could hardship, over which one usually had no choice or input, be one's cross to carry, when, to carry one's cross, as Jesus did, required choice, deliberate decision and conscious faith? Were suffering and carrying one's cross  (or, put another way, honoring God) really the same thing?

I have seen certain people suffer, and in the process lose all faith in God, or degenerate to their most base natures. Some have become filled with venom, bitterness and resentment. Did they 'carry their cross'?

Last year I read a book that had a profound impact on my perspective regarding hardship, and helped direct my current line of thinking. "Man's Search For Meaning" by Dr. Viktor Frankl. In relating his experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi death camp, at one point he writes: " the way in which a man accepts his fate and all the  suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified, and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forego the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."

So then I discovered a few things: taking up my cross isn't suffering - it is my response to suffering. When I suffer I am always left with choices, which is the ultimate freedom. As a Christian, I take up my cross when I choose Christ. I also realized  that I can  be unworthy of suffering, like a student who refuses to do the course work required in a given subject, consequently fails that subject, and is required to repeat that subject until the student learns finally to do the work. In the same way, I will continue to repeat the same kind of painful response to suffering until I learn  the answer to suffering: choosing Christ.

Five years  ago I began to suffer from chronic migraines. I began going to bed with headaches and waking up with them for days on end.  I lost my appetite. I lost my drive, and my will to work. I became overwhelmed by the smallest things: getting into my car to run an errand became impossible. I felt disconnected, lost. My  sleep became erratic, and I was always exhausted as a result. I felt self loathing like I had never experienced before. I lost interest in everything: my art, my career, my friends, the world around me. I couldn't focus or concentrate. For four years it felt like I was trying to live life underwater: everything in slow motion, far away, exhausting, sad and grey. My world was no bigger than the walls of my home, sometimes the walls of my bedroom, for days on end. Frequently I wouldn't leave my house for two weeks at a time. I began to pray for God to take my life, and then would awaken with tears, because waking meant another day with pain, despair. I tried to tough it out. I tried to spiritualize my way out of it, "correct" or "disciple" myself out of it. I tried ignoring it, but my life ground to a halt. Finally, some friends came to me and lovingly said that I needed to get assessed for depression. In my heart, I already knew that was what I had. There was an overwhelming amount of depression in my family history, and it had been very damaging. I had seen only extreme examples of it in the church, and those individuals had been destructive influences on others, and towards themselves. I had seen a lot of people use their depression as an excuse for sin and a lack of personal responsibility over the years, and had come to the conclusion that the illness must be the result of a weak character. A weak character was something I never wanted to be defined by. However, with my husband's support, I got treatment last year and have been doing markedly better ever since. In facing up to my illness, I have learned many things. Being in denial about suffering is futile. Spiritualizing pain is futile. Escaping into memories of some golden past is a waste of time. Anger, resentment, bitterness not only doesn't help, it only adds to the weight of an already difficult situation, and destroys any possibility for growth or sense of meaning to develop.

All this led me to a bigger realization about suffering: suffering is morally neutral. It isn't the punishment of God; it isn't the whim of God because He's indifferent. My response to suffering is what gives the situation its moral value- or not. Suffering is an opportunity: to draw near to Christ in understanding Him, to grow beyond our human thinking, to live life consciously and with awareness, and finally to take part  in Christ's nature. All this, only if I choose to take hold of it: " I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death." Phil.3:10.

Suffering  can become for me the path to God. So in this way it presents itself as an opportunity, and also as a ministry: helping others to know God at deep levels via the most powerful, and most misunderstood path that exists. Helping others to see what we possess: no one can take our experiences, our choices, or our God from us. In this, we can demonstrate tremendous freedom. Also, that our lives, not in spite of, but because we suffer, now become all about our unique and God-given purpose: since no one else can suffer- and therefore honor God- as I do, no one else can fulfill the task set before me to rise to my God. I  am called, as many of us are, to participate in this powerful and much needed ministry.

"But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only few realized that." - Man's Search For Meaning