This past week I had the opportunity to speak to a lady who is starting down a very difficult road. This woman recently received a difficult cancer diagnosis. The road she is beginning to travel is the same one I walked down 16 years ago. This sweet woman found out she has melanoma skin cancer and will have to have a procedure in the near future to remove it. When I was informed of her diagnosis, since I had walked that worrisome path myself, I went to minister to her. In our conversation I tried to encourage her and give her hope. Even though everyone's body is different and every one reacts differently to treatments, I wanted her to know there is hope in what the doctors could do and there is hope in her relationship with God. While we talked I mentioned to her how people don't understand, unless they've been in that situation before, how you stop listening when the doctor says you have cancer. I could see a light come on in her eyes when I made that comment. She knew she was talking to someone who knew what she was experiencing. Part of the reason she was able to be encouraged by our visit was because the more we talked, the more she realized that she was hearing from someone who truly knew how she felt. She knew that she was dealing with someone who had traveled the same difficult road she was beginning to travel.
Sometimes we look at the hardships in our life as difficult circumstances that we would rather avoid. No one enjoys physical, emotional, spiritual or any other kind of pain. We can be left battered, bruised, and scarred by the difficult roads we travel in life. Often times we look at those experiences and think "God, what good can come from this?" We see it as nothing but pain and think its only purpose was like the old adage "What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger." We can turn our experiences on those difficult roads into opportunities to care and minister to others. God uses those difficult circumstances to bring about not only our good (Romans 8:28), but also His good in other people's lives. We should look at our experiences as an opportunity to be a guide for others who start down the same road we've traveled. There is comfort in knowing that there is someone out there who has faced the same exact struggle you are facing. It is encouraging to hear them describe how they faced the same challenges you are facing.
In my years of ministry I've had the opportunity to minister to several people facing the same kind of cancer I faced. I've had other difficulties in my life that have allowed me to more effectively minister to those facing those same difficulties. But we don't have to be called by God to pastoral ministry to be used by Him to minister to those around us. The man facing the role of caregiver to his wife struggling with dementia can minister to others as no one else can. The woman abused as a child can minister to others in a way only she can. The parent who has lost a child can minister because they know the pain a parent faces in that situation. Those made a widow or widower after decades of marriage can only be consoled by those who have experienced the same life-shattering loss in their own life. Don't view the difficult roads you've traveled as something meant to destroy you. View them as something used by God in your life to bring hope, peace, and comfort to the lives of those traveling the same difficult road.
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