I was recently reminded of a time when I was a new mom. Somewhere around month three of that torturous time I was convinced that my baby was doomed and I was a failure as a mother. Through tears, I described my failure to a friend. She said, “It sounds like it was a really bad morning.” Her interpretation of the tempest known as infancy was a totally new thought: A bad morning? I had concluded that all was awful, forevermore!!  This pain could be temporary?  Huh…I felt a weight lift off of me almost immediately.

There’s something to this idea that our pain is not going to last forever. It’s called hope. When we know that pain won’t be forever, it makes it possible to face the pain that life hands us. Even the really big pain. There will come a day when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away.

Another (older) friend of mine just talked to me about having a different perspective now that he is a grandparent. With life experience, he knows that whatever season we are in, it will pass. (Cue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w for a fun video.) The pain we experience in life is real. And, it is temporary… though certainly not as temporary as we would like.

That being said, it’s helpful to have others in our lives to remind us that all this pain is temporary. Well, sometimes it’s helpful. Sometimes you just want to hit them in the face… Timing is everything. Nevertheless, those outside the tempest remind us that we can get out of bed today, we can take the next step forward, we can maybe even smile because this too shall pass. Hang on. And lean heavy on God’s new mercies every morning.