You are now and always my Home
Long-suffering is on my mind, here and tomorrow. As we entered this new chapter, a commitment to stay in an entirely new dwelling place with her is long-suffering.
Suffering is endurance. Enduring every broken and unmended chapter of our lives now having to find its safe place with each other. Enduring the pain that is unspoken or emotions we can’t openly convey. Enduring moments of tension from the depths of our restless heartaches, we stay put. Enduring all the misunderstanding of what we meant to communicate but hardly able to talk it out without hardeningi. Enduring the paralytic tendencies to shut down and step away because we had endured many of the torn pages in the chapter of our previous lives. Often we read them on our own. Enduring to reread and understand as we both go back and revisit those pages with more awareness on ourselves and what we’ve longed for.
Suffering is patience. It squeezes every ounce until the last drop. It will blow the fuse and it will break us down. Suffering produces patience, but patience won’t always yield to peace. Patience won’t always make way for understanding, patience won’t always listen, and patience will find a way to control something else instead of overcoming. That is why patience is suffering, for, with self-control, true patience builds a firm foundation. Patience also knows our limits, our pet-peeves, our cynicism, our pride, our self-centeredness, our weariness, our weakness, as well as our strength and meekness. Our home isn’t going to be perfect, but it will surely have a foundation built to last. Because patience will create a lasting reward through our suffering when we’re together.
Suffering is bearing. Just as the world's suffering and corruption He bore, our own suffering is bearing each other while the Maker of our dwelling place protects our own. Just as we endure the deepness of our forgotten ache, its looming from our past we must bore for it is not removed from us but it was brought into its perfect work. To refine a masterful Home. Controlled and considerate of one another's unpredictable suffering and such that is haunting. If no such bearing is reserved in this Home we trust in, then we will hardly live out the graciousness that comes from what He bore for us. A life we can fully live as one. He bore all the suffering beforehand as if it was His. Therefore the lasting sufficiency of love and graciousness we now can bear. Fully embracing our whole-self over our put-together self. To barely toughen up when we lay down. To soften our hearts when we provoke our inability. To stray not away from each other when we easily choose pride for our preservation. May we bear all the shame, guilt, anger, fear, and sadness of each other simply not because we can remove it. For so we can remember that they no longer belong to us, today.
Suffering is hope and it brings assurance to what we can’t utter, understand, and realize. Hope gives it clarity. It shows not final answers but questions to answers we never asked before. Hope is giving every chance of an opportunity to find peace, certainty, comfort, and security. Hope allows us both to know that our Guarantor promises us newness and constant redemption. Our guarantee is not before us but beyond us. We can feel all that goes against hope and fall apart but hope will always give us certainty. He has given us everything that’s eternity.
Suffering is believing. We believe that all things will work out. It may be everchanging but also growing just as we are learning ourselves and each other daily. Believing is surrounded by hope, it is undeniable and indisputable. Believing is transformative. It reveals what you want to know, and it cures what you’re hurt from. Believing comes with countless objections. Lies latches on us like how it preys on depression. It proves its validity. It creates a narrative that is always in favor of accusation. We may be bent over backward over our broken chapters and dysfunctional mechanisms, but our faithful God perfects our faithfulness. That our Home is anew and reconciled. Where our family is, where our Home is also just as we are the temple, we are His dwelling place.
And above all else, Long-Suffering is love. This will be the hardest to swallow. It wallows us up to denying that love is not easy but it is never a burden. Although love can carry burdens, it is meant to ease the weight. Love is complex made simple. Yet to us it is complicated.
Because suffering is family and that too is complicated. This is were long-suffering has been rooted. Not everyone knows family but believe it or not, everyone belongs to a family. That is quite the hardest to accept when one is abandoned, left behind, taken away, sold, rejected, abused, and reprimanded. Even when you think you belong; how deep is that love, and how transcendent is that bond.
In our Home, both will come to rest forever but it will be stormed, waver, and shaken on perishable soil. Even if our Home is planted on solid ground, it’ll still need work. Though it is our safe sanctuary, secure on the days ahead it will not falter on the high places; Unless we bring it down to low places. Suffering here is not a permanent ground, surely our expectation is upon happiness, success, and prosperity but it comes with a cost. The cost is suffering and it will be long, as long as love that’s lasting. Since our Home is His dwelling place and we are His temple, our family is known and seen with a promise at hand. This I tell you that long-suffering is not the promise rather permanence of perfect loving. That is what long-suffering brings us.
You are now and always my Home, whether we suffer long or briefly, periodically, or often, we are at Home together. We belong to each other. We are forever a family of one and will then be a union of many. Your dreams will partner in my dreams, and my hopes will share in your hopes. Our sorrows will rest on each other’s shoulders, but His peace will bind us together. Our joy will conquer the days of darkness but not eradicate the imperfection of this temporary age. For at the coming age our suffering will be no more. The Home we long for we are living and belonging hereafter. Our Home is transcendent, our Home is us.