Charlie's Monument

You know how when you're feeling good, you're feeling really good, and you feel like nothing can top the natural high you have -- and that life can't get any better?

And then there are those times when you're feeling really, really, low....sometimes perhaps to the point of not wanting to go on; your despair and heartache have taken over and you are absolutely certain that no pain in the world could be worse than yours?

Well here's a heads up, folks -- no matter what we each go through during our lives, our highs and our lows are REAL to each of us. We cannot compare ourselves to others. We cannot sit there and say "but why does he/she have that and I don't?" We cannot think that our pain is more severe than someone else's, or our joy more exquisite. For each and every person out there has their own package of experiences. Depending on their own unique strengths and weaknesses, their trials and their triumphs are as real and as devestating/glorious as YOURS are.

That's the great thing about humanity. We cannot compare ourselves because the human spirit is immeasurable. I guess some people may believe this makes each of us islands unto ourselves, but that is not the case. While we may not be able to compare specific experiences in our lives to others, there are always friends and family out there who have gone through the same highs and lows as we have -- and they are there for us and can understand those feelings even if they can't specifically empathize with the situation you may be in.

But that's what we have to try to do -- accept and understand one another and not judge. No one is better than anyone else. And this we know because there is One who suffered greater than us all. There is One who felt every high and low, every bit of joy and every bit of suffering, emotional, physical and spiritual, that every human being who has ever existed and ever will exist has and will experience. And He is the one who has commanded us to love one another. And that means bearing each other's burdens, mourning with those who mourn, and comforting those who stand in need of comfort. There is One who has descended below us all -- and if He can do that, I think we should at least make the effort.

Charlie's Monument

God, before he sent his children into the world, gave each of them a carefully selected package of problems.

"These, He promised smiling, are yours alone.

"Only you have the special talents and abilities that will make these problems your servants, and no one else may have the blessing these problems will bring you.

"So, go down to your birth, and to your forgetting.

"Know that I love you beyond measure.

"The problems I give you are a token of my love.

"The monument you make of your life, with the help of your problems, will be a token of your love for me."

Your Father

Reference: Charlie's Monument - by Blaine M. Yorgason