pain 🌍🌱🌻

 Today is Monday, August 17th (if you didn't know that, I feel you 100%). I thought and thought about it, and I had decided not to make a post about it today. If you've been friends with me and noticed posts I've made in the past, you might have an idea of what I'm referring to. Somehow, to say it seems to strip it of meaning and sincerity, but to not say it means leaving out the true reason for me saying anything in this post. So, I lost my older brother, John Fite, to suicide 3 years ago today. No, I did not want to post about it, because it is something I will carry for the rest of my life, and it just doesn't feel appropriate to have scheduled posts about him, if that makes sense.

That said, I was journaling this morning about the human experience of pain. Pain is a collective experience, in one sense, in that all humans experience some degree of pain between birth (or not long after conception, potentially) and death, as far as I am aware. Yet it's a highly, highly intimate, individualized experience. Today being the 17th of August means, likely, little to nothing to the next person who doesn't know what it means to my family and I. They are by no means to blame for this, obviously. There are a million billion ways in which people, as well as all of creation, suffer every moment of every day. We are not meant to experience and carry this pain. The very man, the very God incarnate, Jesus Christ carried in his body the weight of all humanity's sin and endured the deepest, most agonizing pain -- complete separation from His Father. God truly knows, as completely as knowing can be known, our suffering.

Here are some questions that are pouring out of me:

1) Do you know Him?

2) Have you felt His presence?

3) Do you hate Him for all you've heard and all that people have said and done in His name?

4) Does He even matter?

5) Does this mean anything to you, and should it mean anything to anyone?

6) Did my brother's death happen for no [insert strong word that I will exclude here...] reason?

7) Do people suffer agony, torture, rape, murder, cancer, debilitating diseases, starvation, war, and more and more and more and so on for no [repeat strong word or choose another] reason?

Whatever your answer to any of these questions may be, I have likely felt the same away at some point in my few years, and I might feel the same way again today, tomorrow, or in 10 years. I will end with what I believe, and I will make it simple, because at the core, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is simple, sweet, and complete.

No, my big brother -- the one who I played Gi-Joe, Legos, Battlefront II, and so much more with; the one who hugged me that night on our back porch as I wept because he told me he had no idea what to do anymore; the one who I miss like a whole in my chest when I can actually feel the loss; the one who I love with all my heart -- he did NOT pass away the way he did, nor did he suffer for so many years for no reason. Am I suggesting some kind of platitudinal "Everything happens for a reason, honey" that someone might ignorantly say to a mother who has just lost her three-year old son that she loves with every fiber of her being? Most definitely not. I cannot fathom precisely why my brother went through all that he did, and even if I did know, I can't say that I would feel good about that reason. But I know in the utter depths of my soul that there is a God in whom all things make sense and by whom all will be made plain someday, even as He reveals truths to as in the present time. Some may call faith an opiate, but I consider Him the only thing that makes this life bearable when we get to the real horrors of it. And I have not experienced even an ounce of all the suffering in this world. God knows I haven't experienced the kind and/or amount of suffering that you probably have. But it only takes a small amount of pain, sorrow, injustice, etc. to know that things are profoundly wrong with this world and everyone in it.

So I plead with you, turn to Christ if you have not yet. He is more than you can possibly imagine, hope for, dream of. He is everything you have ever longed for and needed. He loves you beyond understanding and beyond comparison. It's not hopeful thinking, dear one. It's not kidding myself to trust that my dearest brother is finally free and whole in eternity with Jesus. This song right here captures exactly what I´m trying to express in this paragraph.

To you, John, my big bubba, I owe my eternal gratitude for your Christ-like steadfast love. Thank you for your companionship. I will see you soon -- very soon, I pray ❤

Maranatha - even so, come, Lord Jesus!

With all my love in Christ,

-- William