Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “suffering”
@bethvogt Our Thanksgiving holiday is complicated this year. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. It is 2020, after all. A world-wide pandemic doesn’t take a day off so we can observe our annual holiday traditions. Some of us have already decked our halls with fa-la-la-la-la because we just need a little Christmas right now – not later. Then in …
@bethvogt There are times grief throws us to our knees. We gasp for breath even as we try to grasp hold of what we’ve heard. It can’t be true. It can’t be . . . A longtime friend, someone I love and respect – someone who has shown me kindness again and again – died by suicide a few …
@bethvogt My son Josh and daughter-in-love Meagan stopped by our house on Monday. “How are you?” A simple enough question, right? Not these days. My son Josh is white. My daughter-in-love Meagan is black. Meagan backed away from me. From responding. “I don’t want to cry. I can’t cry … I won’t stop crying …” And then I held …
My youngest daughter, Christa, is home for spring break from college. Only it’s not the spring break she planned on. It’s not the spring break hundreds of thousands of college students planned on. After I wrote that last sentence my husband, Rob, Christa, and I paused to do some quick mental math and decided the sentence should read “millions …
My son-in-love, David, lost his mom when he was 10 years old. Losing your mom when you’re a young child? I see the faint flicker of his heartache in David’s eyes whenever he mentions his mom. All of us are familiar with the companionship of grief. Throughout our lives, we all must learn and relearn the halting steps of grief …
@bethvogt I was still in elementary school when I learned that tragedy – sorrow, grief – doesn’t take time off for the holidays. All the houses in our neighborhood were decorated with lights, festive wreaths on the front doors, a few lawns decorated with statues of snowmen or reindeer or candles. All the houses, save one. One of the …
@bethvogt Get over it. Those three words just may be my least favorite words. Ever. Quite honestly, I’ve heard the words more than once in my life. Way too many times. Sometimes they’re disguised in the phrase “Don’t be so sensitive.” Three different words – same intent: Get over it. A number of years ago, I shared a struggle with …
This week has hemorrhaged heartache – and the week’s not even done yet. We’ve all watched the news or read the headlines, grappling with the horrific actions of others. And no matter how many times a news anchor or a journalist attempts to better explain the who and how of the tragedies, their words can’t strip away the pain. …
Reality, Forgiveness, and an Apology by @bethvogt Bullying is a hot topic these days. It gets talked about in schools and covered in the media. Experts discuss both cause and prevention – admitting that solutions to bullying are not simple. About 1 in 3 U.S. students experience bullying. Yeah, that statistic bothers me … but I grieved when my daughter …
Everyone suffers. I don’t think anyone would argue with that statement. We might argue with with how much someone suffers — whether someone’s suffering is worse than another person’s … or ours. We might argue with the wrongness or rightness of the suffering. But no one get’s a bye on suffering. The question then becomes suffering plus what allows us …
