I honestly don’t know if Heaven exists and I truly can’t say I know what’s beyond this life. But what I do know is that I often long to go home, wherever home is beyond this plane of existence. Why?
Because I’m tired.
I’m tired of watching the world destroy itself. I’m tired of seeing people backstab each other. I’m tired of all the judgments. I’m tired of seeing so many people I know implode and lose their lives at their own hands. And I’m tired of the lack of unconditional love from human beings.
Why has our world become so selfish? Why have so many fallen into the rut of taking care of and worrying about themselves first while placing everyone else second?
Wouldn’t this world be so much of a better place if we placed everyone else’s needs, wants, and desires ahead of our own?
I should talk. I placed my own first and foremost for years. I was brought into this world by a family who used their money for happiness and I eventually did the same. I even lived with seven figures at one point and thought it would buy my happiness here. It didn’t. And I was miserable.
But in the past four years I’ve been going through some type of transformation where I see the world so differently. Take last night at a meeting I was at for example. There I learned from a friend that his partner has been suffering immensely with some serious health issues and is afraid. My old self wouldn’t have cared and instead just been relieved it wasn’t something I was going through. But as I said goodbye to him when the meeting ended, I felt something different inside of me. I felt tears well up my eyes and a pang in my heart, and somehow connected to my friend’s pain. So if there is one thing that’s transformed within me these past few years it’s that. It’s me thinking more about others and feeling compassion for what they’re going through. I only wish others were the same, especially when it comes to how they deal with me.
Most have no understanding of how much pain I’ve been going through for so long now. And everyone always wants to understand exactly what it is I’m dealing with and then offer me their advice, thinking they have the answer. But all I have ever wanted through any of this is to receive a warm embrace, to have others cry with me, and to hear how I’m loved and that they will be praying for me. Sadly, I don’t get that. Instead, I watch as people avoid me. I catch wind of rumors about me and some even go as far as unfriending me on social media. I’m sure that’s mostly because people in general don’t know how to handle someone who’s in great pain, especially for long periods of time.
I usually tell others now if they truly want to understand, they should read Job in the Bible. It’s a simple story really, about a man who went through incredible suffering that was not of his own doing. And while he may have not been perfect, he owned that and did everything he could to still serve God. Yet he kept suffering from loss. Loss of family. Loss of health. Loss of financial ability. Loss of his mental state. Loss.
Job eventually curses the day he was born and then his three closest friends visit him, where each try to convince him his suffering is because he must be doing something wrong, especially in the eyes of God. That there must be some area of his life he needs to change. All this does is cause Job even greater pain. Eventually God speaks to all of them and immediately rebukes what Job’s friends have been saying to him. He also reminds Job that Job can’t see the greater picture for what he went through. And then God ends Job’s suffering by returning him to an even greater state of being than Job ever had before.
I know it’s just a story in the Bible and I have no proof if it’s even something that ever happened. Yet it still gives me hope and faith for all of what I’ve been going through and it helps me to cling to the belief that my pain and suffering will end one day soon. Regardless, the only thing I long for until that happens is to be surrounded with unconditional love. To have people embrace me and not offer their advice. To have them not try to figure me out or tell me they think they know what I need to do. That’s all I really want and that’s what I feel this world is missing so much of.
Maybe I see this as clearly as I do because of all of what I’ve gone through and continue to. Nevertheless, even in the midst of my suffering, I still find a way to offer my love and compassion to everyone else, because that is what the power of God gives me.
So while I may long to be home with God, wherever that is, I also live with hope for not only my own healing, but for the rest of the world. Hopefully one day we all will see things a lot more clearly, where we have the desire to place another’s suffering in front of our own, and where we live by unconditional love and nothing less…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
