Why do I have to endure so much pain

I spoke with a minister about everything that has been happening to me over the last few months, and I got told that "we are only sent what we can endure" that has left me thinking WHY? why do I have to endure? why am I unable to just have a normal life? why do I have to endure misery? what is this all about???????????

I will explain a bit of what has been happening.

I recently set up a thread about what has been happening to people on the countdown to 21st December 2012.

Well, I have lost my job as a manager after working towards and gaining qualifications that out did any of the current managers that are employed by the company that I work for (cronyism- but that could be just my sour grapes) anyway, I also had to crash my motorbike as a bad driver decided that I did not have right of way on a roundabout and pulled out in front of me, so I ditched the bike rather than go through the side of a Mitsubishi shogun and break my neck. The delay in the insurance company dealing with this is unreal!

Next, my mother is having to go through a lot of tests and delays in treatment for "shadows" that are appearing in her lungs. The surgeon that initially did the biopsy did not go into the lung far enough to get samples of what is causing the shadows, it was a non operational biopsy, and that has lead to a 2 month delay while my mum goes through various tests to see if she will survive an operation, but even after those tests they may still attempt another small biopsy. WTF!

Next, My Grandmother has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that was only found just over a week ago but it is that aggressive that it has already spread to her liver, and we have been told that we do not have long with her. So, as you can imagine I am beside myself with grief and worry. This also brings me to my moral issues.

I have been going to the hospice every day and spending hours there, but I never actually get time with my Grandma. I get there about 11am so I give the nurses time to feed, clean and make sure my Grandma is comfortable (I don't go in during these time out of respect for my Grandma) now I do not mind that.
Then my Grandma's nephew comes in with a distant relative, so I leave as to not crowd my Grandma and give others a chance to say hi, the more distant relatives come and go through out the day, and I am left to the relative room, and then I am able to get in to see her for a few minutes before the nurses come back in to move my Grandma and clean etc and I leave again to let the nurses do their job.
This goes on and on with various relatives in and out of grandma's room visiting through the day. I am getting so upset, I understand that everyone wants to see her but out of the 8 hours or so that I am there I only spend about 30 mins tops with Grandma due to all the "relatives" that are of no relation to me (2nd cousins, husbands and wives of cousins etc) coming and playing the upset relative.
The moral part of this is, do I just let everything carry on? am I being selfish? should I just say enough is enough?

So back to the thread title: Why do I have to endure so much pain? and what is the religious purpose?
I suppose I am looking for answers to the question "Why me?"

reply to post by chelsealad

I spoke with a minister about everything that has been happening to me over the last few months, and I got told that "we are only sent what we can endure" that has left me thinking WHY? why do I have to endure? why am I unable to just have a normal life? why do I have to endure misery? what is this all about???????????

He did not know the answer, so he gave you an answer that he gives all that asks this question. Everyone wants to know why, they do not want to hear some canned response, they want answers.

So back to the thread title: Why do I have to endure so much pain? and what is the religious purpose? I suppose I am looking for answers to the question "Why me?"

Life is all about learning. From each experience you grow and become stronger.

No one here will know the exact reason why, only Father will be able to give the exact reasons.

Why do I have to endure so much pain? and what is the religious purpose?

You don't and there isn't.

Religion does not have the answers and religious types can't handle this fact.

There are two paths you can walk.


The path of faith or the path of logic.

One is mired with pain and suffering......the other rejoices in the life that the creator has bestowed upon us.


My glass is half full.

What is yours?

See there's this thing called life.

It sucks for everyone at points.

If you live long enough those close to you will die

the world moves on because it does not revolve around you or anyone else

There is no lesson other than the fact that if there is a creator he/she/it doesnt give a f*** about anyone

Wow, to have your life

The world is not a very nice place. It is broken and so are all the people on it.

Jesus said that we will not find peace and happiness here, the promise of Christianity is not for the here and now, its for the future that we have in him. This world is pain, Christ teaches hope in the next life, not this one

if the world was perfect we wouldnt need God.

Everyone endures pain, pain teaches us we are not in control.
We all endure pain, that pain points to the hope of Christ restoring this broken world, Christ freeing us from pain.

reply to post by chelsealad

All I can offer is Daniel 12:10, which is talking about the end times - "Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand." God purifies us through difficulties and trials. Accepting and learning from them is your best hope for making your difficulties come to an end. And, as hard as it is to accept, the trials of your mother and grandmother are their own, to purify them. It's painful to see, I see it myself in my own parents, but they have to work through them in their own way, as you must work through yours.

Life is indeed about learning, and nobody enjoys homework.

reply to post by OccamAssassin


My glass is/was always half full. I could always see the good and the reason behind a lot of things that happened in my life, I could see what I needed to learn and advance through that.

I do not hate and I am always willing to see the best in people. I accept and I move forward.

But somehow this all seems different, even before the devastating news regarding my Grandma's health. I now feel as though I am at a breaking point. I am not conventionally religious I do not follow any church but I still have faith, in a sense.

But maybe you're right

reply to post by chelsealad


Let me answer your questions with some questions.

When did Jesus ever tell you it was going to be easy following him? Do you think you're any better than the first generation of believers who were being boiled alive in oil and burned at the stake, and thrown to lions and gladiators for sport? Get real man, if you can't handle emotional pain do you think you're going to be able to handle it when they come to take your head, or cut your testicles off while you watch? Quit belly-aching and move on soldier

Stop asking "why me" it rains on the just and the unjust alike. I've had far worse than you fall on me and it's by the grace of God i haven't put a gun in my mouth and squeezed off a round. You get up, when you fall down and you keep going and you push up when the world tries to push you back down. It doesn't stop ever, until we die or Jesus returns whichever comes first. There is no such a thing as defeat until you stay down and stop picking yourself back up.

Learn patience. Take everything that comes with the patience of a saint. If there's one thing you need now, that would be it. Quite obviously (to me at least), that is what your life is trying to teach you. That is the clear message.

Take the time to pray a good bit more than you might normally do. You needn't do so in a chapel. Just while you're in one of those situations where you ask yourself "Why, God, why?" instead ask with patience. Your answer will be heard clearer and clearer with practice.

Have a great deal of faith in all things working exactly as they're meant to. In 2007 my descent into my own private hell began with me questioning much as you are here. From that I have grown more than you can ever imagine. Take this opportunity to do the same. This is fertile ground for it. See it for the gift it is. It really is much more of a gift that you can appreciate right now.

God created the angels, supernatural beings who will never know sickness, pain or death, and with full knowledge of their Creator, and instantly a third of them fell from grace, trying to take over heaven. So then He created us, imperfect beings who were born to suffer, know pain, know doubt, and die. Why? How could He possibly be so cruel?

He isn't. He made us this way so that we could appreciate all the wonderful things we will someday have. By suffering sickness, we will appreciate a life without sickness and pain. By suffering the sting of death, we will appreciate our immortality. By experiencing ignorance and doubt, we value knowledge and faith. And because these wonderful gifts have a cost-- our love for and belief in the Father-- His gifts have priceless value. They are things we must strive to have. They are not free.

God is not injuring you. He is strengthening you. He is teaching you. Have faith and be strong.

Originally posted by chelsealad

I suppose I am looking for answers to the question "Why me?"

I believe at some point or another most of us approach this question, you are by no means alone....but I think there is rarely an answer to be found. Chasing answers to this question tend's to deplete people's energies which can be used better in trying to deal with the situation.

Just as a side note.....it's times when we feel completely crushed and at our weakest that we are infact at our strongest.....we just don't realize it at the time.

Hoping you come upon better times soon

reply to post by CosmicEgg


I think you're right lonewolf, I need to stop belly-aching.

CosmicEgg, your post does make sense.

I do need to be more patient especially with the relatives that are trying to push me out and those that do not like me for being my mother's son (family history is not that great) and I do feel myself being nicer towards them the more they are hating me, so the more they hate me the kinder I am to them. Not 100% sure that I do that to piss them off more or that I generally feel sorry for them.

So, it's not the passing of my grandma that I have to deal with, which I am coping with, it is the patience that I need to learn due to the ill feeling or hate that the rest of my relatives are projecting towards me for what ever reason they seem to think.

Interesting! Thank you

I know my response may not be seen as a popular one, but my hand to God I am not saying these things maliciously or in an unkind way. I am a firm believer that everyone goes through things in life, but that it is the way we perceive it and cope with it that makes the difference. I am very sorry to hear you lost your job, these are rough times. But please know that this isn't just you that has lost their job, it isn't a personal thing, it just sucks. You can dwell on it and sit around wondering why me, but why? Just get out there and start looking for a new job or maybe even start doing your own thing. Nobody is owed a job as far as I am concerned. Hubby and I didn't like the options out there for someone with no degrees so we started our own computer repair company 11 years ago. We taught ourselves along the way, but we made our own job since there wasn't much out there other than minimum wage jobs. I could have gotten upset over this and tried to put it off on someone else, but companies are in the business of making money, not providing jobs.

I am really sorry to hear about your accident, that is awful and makes me angry for you that the insurance company took so long. How are you doing now? Have you healed ok? Again though, one of those things that just sucks when it happens, but sometimes there are no great 'whys' to be had. Sometimes # happens, but what sort of person do you want to be? Do you want to be the person who sits around nursing the wounds and crying 'why me?' or do you want to keep living life and just accept that it happened?

Your mom's situation while scary and sad is NOT happening to you, it is happening to your mother. She is the one enduring this, not you. If I were you I'd be researching every possible alternative treatment and helping her through this so she doesn't have to endure it on her own. Just love her and be there for her if you can. Although even with that said, I don't know what I would do if I were in your shoes. My mother means everything to me, but I could never make it about me, know what I mean?

I am sorry to hear about your grandmother as well. I recently lost my own grandmother or as we called her Granny to cancer. She was diagnosed with cancer about the same time that my Papa had to be put in the dementia unit of the nursing home because she simply couldn't care for herself and him too. She did chemo and radiation and it was so hard to see her slowly dying like that. It wasn't even the cancer that did the worst damage, it was the treatments. Then my Papa stopped eating and Granny said no feeding tube, just let him go. He died three days after he stopped eating, it was awful to see him wither away and die like he did, simply awful. The day of his funeral my Granny got the test results back that said the chemo and radiation didn't work, that the cancer (uterine) had spread through her entire body. We moved her in with my cousin and I moved in too so that my cousin and I could be her caretakers. For three long weeks we watched her die, I can't even describe how hard this was. But I had to remind myself that my job was to be there for her, to take care of her, love her and let her know that it was ok to leave this world. I didn't want her to worry about any of us, I just wanted her to go out peacefully knowing that everything would be ok. I knew that I would allow myself time to grieve after she had passed on because her illness and death had to be hers. I couldn't make it about me and my grief, that would have been selfish of me. If you want more time with her then you need to get past the excessive manners thing. Make yourself a fixture in the room, I'm not even kidding. People will move around you. But this lets your grandmother know that you are there to see her through till the end and that you are not going anywhere. Stop worrying about crowding, these are her last days and I can imagine she wants to see everyone. Other people will see that you are a fixture and that to see her means seeing you too. I say this out of experience as I had to do this three times over the past two years. I didn't even mention my cousin who was actually more like a grandparent that died just the month after my Granny. Those three we jokingly called The Three Musketeers! They were a huge part of my life and I miss them dearly. They all died within three months time, first Papa, then three weeks later Granny, then a month later "Shorts" (my cousin.. he was a football coach in his younger years and was very short 5' and that is what the players called him.. p.s. he coached Patrick Swayze in football!!"

Anyway, you really just need to be more assertive in order to see her more. Don't get hung up on hurting peoples feelings, if your grandma wants you to leave, she will ask you to leave the room, otherwise sit your ass down and stay put! That was my motto while going through the death of three loved ones anyway.

At first glance reading through your post I can't help but feel sympathy for you. I still do, but I got to thinking.

How many people here have lost a grandparent? I have, all four. Two I never even got to meet.

How many people here have lost a parent? I have, both of them. I was 40 when my Mom died and now my 40 year old daughter continues to bitch at her mom. I told her she was damn lucky to have Mom to bitch to because I didn't when I was her age.

How many people here have gotten into an accident? I have, with my motorcycle, like to near have killed me. I got lucky to get away with a bad concussion and a wrecked bike. Insurance? Ha ha. I had none, but I was technically at fault even though the car was speeding so I had to pay for the damage to the car. There went a summer's earnings.

How many people here have been laid off or fired from a job? I have. Well, I did tell my boss it wasn't my fault he couldn't read because the order to NOT put mustard and onions on the hot dog was right there in plain sight. And the time I got laid off was hardly my fault.

Not to belittle these things you have related, but they are the kinds of things that inevitably happen to everyone. Older relatives all die, every last one of them. Sometimes what happens to you isn't "fair" from any objective sense of the term. And sometimes, as in your case, they seem to all happen at once.

It's natural to feel pain in these situations. How much pain is your own choice. Just realize you're not alone here.

reply to post by chelsealad


Patience with everyone, much more toward yourself than you're currently giving. I won't attempt to analyse the situation with your short blurb up there about what you're experiencing, but I have noticed over the course of my life that we're least patient with others when we're hypercritical of ourselves, or generally insecure about our own self. I have recently spent many hours speaking to someone whose voice sounds much like the one you're using here. I would venture that there is a lot of error in perception going on. I think you could consider that you're not being maligned or criticised by others as much as you might think, but that others are actually dealing with their own emotions about things and you're perhaps misreading their signals due to your own emotional situation.

Prayer and practicing patience will help you sort through those things. When you pray, give time to quiet your mind and your heart and wait for answers. They will come when you are ready. I promise that. Until then, know that you need more practice! It's very hard to be patient with oneself - I know at least as well as anyone else would. I spent the best part of my life being far too demanding and self-critical. It's no good. Don't do it. You miss out on a lot of happiness.

I didn't have enough space above so I'll finish here. Perspective is very important here. Yes things happen, yes some of it sucks, but not everything is about us personally. Let me give you an example using myself. I am a mom of four boys, but I have lost a few children along the way. I got married young, had children young, went through a period that we were very poor and had nearly nothing. Our home was almost foreclosed on and we barely managed to do a short sell in time to avoid the foreclosure. Then my daughter died late term in my pregnancy (my third child). Burying your child is one of the hardest things ever done. Later on I got pregnant with twins and lost midterm too. My father had a massive heart attack and was pronounced dead while my mom was on the phone to me, I heard the paramedic call it. Thank god there was a doctor there working on him and I heard him say "no, wait.. I got a pulse". He was technically dead for 8 minutes. I sat on the phone listening to all of this and hearing my mother crying telling me Dad was dead and not being able to do a damned thing about it. She was in Washington state and I was all the way in Colorado, talk about helpless feeling. He was in a coma for weeks and then they put him back into a drug induced coma so he could heal up better. My niece died at 11 weeks old due to pneumonia.. the list goes on and on, but suffice to say I have lost more people through my life time than I care to admit. To be blunt, a lot of bad # has happened in my life.

These things however do not have to define a person. They did not happen TO me, but I had to grieve and or cope with the situation at hand. My perspective was not one of 'why me', but rather 'life is too short to get hung up'. I love those while I can and I deal with the bad stuff and move on. Stop caring WHY something happened, it did, so cope with it! Whining about it or sitting and pondering the why of it all will not change a damn bit of it. You say "why me?" Why must I endure.. and I say 'you don't have to endure anything', it's just called life. A lot of what people hurt and angst over isn't actually about them at all.

The other perspective is one of 'why me' and finding ways to focus on how negative things effect them. Dwelling on matters and focusing on the pain doesn't make pain go away, in fact it is my opinion that it only intensifies and magnifies it. A person with this mentality often times looks to others for sympathy and connection and this isn't really a bad thing, but it can be crippling if not balanced.


You are not your circumstances, deal with the circumstances at hand and continue living your life. Find joy and love even though the hard moments and you can come out the other side of it feeling like you did what you could with what you had and not regretful that you didn't do enough.

reply to post by chelsealad

I need to stop belly-aching.

No you don't. This makes you human. It's how some of us handle stress. Better to talk about it than to let it boil and fester in your mind until you wind up in the looney bin. There are no good answers, but not letting off steam is the worst answer.

Hope your life calms down soon.

reply to post by chelsealad


There are two types of suffering. One is a result and the other a cause. In the end, ALL suffering causes reward.

Believe it or not, what I just said is the meaning of life. It can then be reduced to love. Love is the will to give and receive rather than take. How do I connect giving and taking to suffering? Here is a simple example:

If you smoke, you get cancer. This is a simple example of 'taking' a reward that ends in suffering. This is the suffering type that is a result. When we sin, a debt is created and we pay the debt.

If you reverse this, you see the other side of suffering. What happens when you work out in the gym? Health is gained. What made the difference? You suffered first. Suffering for something is giving. All gifts must first be earned before they can be given away. God's will is to give and receive only. Earning what is given is a prerequisite.

Think on this, then ask yourself a question. For each of the sufferings you witness, tag them by their cause. Are they the result of a previous reward taken, or are they suffering that produces reward later? You are suffering time for your grandmother. You are suffering patience (a developed virtue) with relatives. What ALWAYS comes from suffering first? Reward. Count on it.

What of the other suffering you can identify? If you suffer as a result of a bad choice, the only remedy is to master what has mastered you. Why is life so hard and why is SUFFERING the point of life? We are immersed into the waters of life and the trials of fire for one reason: To rise to NEW life. Every life is better than the one before. Jesus said, "You must be born again."

Baptism is the Christian symbolism for immersion into water. Read this thread: Your New Robe (Body) and Crown (Mind) are relative to your life today.

It's always darkest before the dawn of a new day. What you learn today is passed on to other tomorrow. Love others. That's the only thing you can give.

reply to post by chelsealad


I don’t know what your relationship with God is like but I will offer what I can. The bible says that God disciplines everyone he loves. I don't think discipline is always what we may think it is. To me discipline is found in every trial put in front of us.

I know a lot of people come to God at their lowest point. For some of us, myself included, it is not until we completely loose faith in our own ability that we give ourselves over to God.

Is it possible that God is trying to show you that you need more help? Is it possible that God wants you to come to him for help through this trying time? I imagine that in him you will find the answers.

Whatever path you choose may you find peace.

It's a SIN to question God's reasons. If you'd read the Book of Job you'd understand.

"Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." -Job 1:20-22

And Romans explains it too

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. -Romans 5:1-5