I believe it is the most difficult thing in the world to see someone we love in pain – either physical or emotional. Life isn’t fair and it isn’t just. Sometimes people suffer and it just doesn’t make sense. I pray that you know the strength you have to help support someone who is suffering and that you can detach from the outcome which truly isn’t in our control.

What is in our control is to continue to love them. So much of pain and suffering is controlled by the mind. This is good as we can actually with our minds reduce the pain (biofeedback, meditation, Lamaze, etc). This is bad in that the more we focus on the pain, the more we resist accepting that this is part of our reality, the larger it looms and the more it takes over and becomes THE central focus of our life.

I don’t believe that anyone else’s suffering is caused so that we can learn by it, but it can be that we do learn from someone else’s suffering. In this way it can at least transform the suffering and give it some meaning in our lives instead of just a senseless thing that happens. This is one way I have learned to deal with suffering a bit in my life. I accept that the world has suffering and that no one is immune to it. But that the suffering that I see around me that isn’t mine can be a reminder to me in the moment to be present and focus on the blessings of my life that I take for granted every day, because one day those blessings may not be there and I will reflect back on how I didn’t realize how much blessing I was actually in.

In Genesis 28:16 Jacob says, “God was in this place and I did not know it.” I bless all of you that read this that you take a moment and look at the blessings that are in your life right now that you take for granted. Blessings are in this place and take a moment to know them and acknowledge them in your life.

Bivracha (with blessing), Wendie