Trust the Process

Processes help us see things about ourselves, the people, and the world around us.

Do you ever think about the processes we each go through? You know those processes that reveal to and help us see things about ourselves, the people, and the world around us? Clearly they look different for each of us but what we may have in common is when we repeat the same process(es) over and over and over again. Crazy, huh? But it happens!

Take for instance the process of forgiveness. Oh, let me tell you, the process of forgiveness is one that we will do multiple times over. I think sometimes it's stuck on one cycle or speed, like some menacing reminder of what is going on in our lives and what once again we have to give up and let God handle. And I can tell you from my own personal experience, it's not an easy process to go through the first time we do, so to know that it will come up more than once in our lives...sometimes more than once in the same season(s) we are enduring, can prove itself to be taxing on our emotions and feelings. We will experience highs and lows. Sometimes those will be like riding a roller coaster with all the ups, downs, twists, and turns but that is exactly what process can feel like...an emotional roller coaster with too many variables to handle all at once.

"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." — Romans 5:3-5 NIV

There will be occasions that we'll expend way too much energy on the roller coaster of emotions as we go through life attempting to exert our control. However, when we encounter trials and struggles in life, we can feel completely out of control, going back and forth on the roller coaster of emotions. In turn we may let those emotions to any given incident dictate our ability to endure and cast doubt on whatever may come next in life. But it's okay. It's okay not to feel upbeat and positive all the time. It's okay to feel down and to feel doubt. It's okay to experience a myriad of emotions. Yet it's not okay to stay in any of them. That is a process in and of itself that we have to learn over and over and over again. Maybe it needs to be on a stuck cycle...looming over us like a menacing reminder of what we need to do...what we need to process...what will help us move forward.

Will we find ourselves repeating the same process? Of course! Will we find ourselves consumed with our own suffering and hurts? Probably! Will the suffering of others affect us? Absolutely! But, if necessary, enduring the same process will ultimately free us of the emotion or feeling going on! It takes a lot of enduring and it takes time to process. It takes time to move on and heal from any suffering inflicted on us, both of our own doing and from others. However we'll eventually both understand and learn that time moves us forward (God's time-not ours) and time heals us (God's time-not ours) from those emotions of things endured!