I Wish You Pain

It seems we are losing more than we are gaining, these days, Visitors. Ever feel like that?

I’m sitting under the mighty Collegiate Peaks, listening to the tumbling Arkansas nearby. A crackling pine bough campfire blazes nearby, and the scent perfuming the high mountain air is soothing.

I’ve just come back from a charity bike ride across the Florida Keys, with a peleton of like minded men and women. It was a worthy endeavor, to support an organization called “Joy International”. The men and women at Joy devote themselves to ending sex trafficking among children ages eight to fourteen.

Read that again. Eight to fourteen.

I’ve spent my entire professional life in the area of family building, and it boggles the mind that in this country I love so much, that we can allow this heinous practice.

But I can see why.

I recently lost someone dear to me to addiction. The fires of his preferences burned away a successful partnership between the two of us. The hurricane gales of his desires blew him far out of the reach of my outstretched hands. The counterfeit still, small voice of his beloved beguiled him to be alone with his heart’s desire, and it wasn’t me.

We do that, Visitors. As a nation, we allow ourselves to get distracted from what’s important. We let our heads get turned from what our God and our better selves know is right, into something that we mistakenly think will satisfy.

Jeff Brodsky, the founder of Joy International, once had someone ask him how a loving God could permit something as heinous as this to exist.

Brodsky bristled and said “HE doesn’t. WE do.”

Exactly.

It’s just the saddest thing.

So as I was driving to this camping spot, I mourned my loss. I asked God for comfort, and as He often does, he gives me music.

Listen to this one with me for a minute, visitors. It’s one of the kindest, most compassionate ballads I’ve heard in a long time.

Here’s an excerpt:

I hope you cry and tears come streaming down your face
I hope this life traps you in more than you thought you could ever take
I hope the help you want never comes
And you do it on your own’

Cause I love you more than you could know
And your heart, it grows every time it breaks
I know that it might sound strange

But I wish you pain
Wish you pain
It’s hard to say
But I wish you pain

I love you more than you could even know
Been here before and I just wanna see you grow
Want you to grow

‘Cause everything that matters most
That’s where it goes by a different name
I know that it might sound strange

But I wish you pain.

From the bottom of my heart, Visitors, I wish you pain.

Much love,

Victoria