The Meat Grinder

Is life is a classroom, a playground, or an adventure?  I think life can be a great many things to people and even multiple things at once.  There can be so many experiences which bring happiness and joy, such as the birth of a child, catching a big fish, making love with your special someone...  I have striven to always look at the beautiful things in life.  To seek wisdom in the journey.  To find comfort and focus in a path laid out by others.

I've walked this path with great enthusiasm.  Found beauty in the uniqueness of my situation.  Many lessons have been handed down to me of what to expect and how to handle what I may find on my journey.  My oldest son didn't talk till he was five.  For the most part he only made a sound that was like an elongated E.  It was very hard for me to see my son as anything other than a late starter.  Nothing in my background taught me how to handle this.  The only thing I knew was how to love.  As the years have gone by his speech has developed at a rapid pace.  Now there are times he won't
stop talking.

During those early years it was almost impossible for us to know what he wanted.  He could never tell us if he was hungry.  He couldn't let us know that normal, everyday sounds caused him pain.  I had to learn through trial and error.  Frustration was the dominant theme through this process as I learned to help my son grow.

The contrast between the beautifully laid out path I expected, along with its predictable milestones, and what my life turned out to be has been a hard one to see and accept.  Just like those early years of learning to communicate, there were many hard lessons learned through pain.  My life has been filled with many experiences that, like my son’s speech, have been filled with things that just don't fit in with expectations set by the predictable path.

Instead, I have found that I'm not actually on a path that has clearly marked signs of where to go next and what to do when you get there.  I have discovered that my journey is more like passing through a meat grinder.  I have been placed in the top with the happy expectation that I know what awaits me at the end.  Never did I know that, in passing through the grinder, I would be aware of the pain as I got broken down and ground into meat and forced through an opening to be put on a plate.  Often I turned myself over to the Lord asking thing like how do I survive?  Why does it have to hurt so much?  What do I do now that I've been turned into something else?

Never did I receive any answers, except when the next difficulty came.  I discovered then that the answer was the same as the first: I was to be placed back up on the meat grinder to go through it all over again.  Through each turn of the crank, I get to feel as if I'm being ripped apart, and all the while I keep casting my eyes about for relief looking for answers and help, looking for a lifeline.  But it never came.  The only “answer” to be had was that I get to go through to be ground again.  Once back on the plate and out of the grinder, I thank my Lord for my pain as a good boy should.  Yet never have I once felt the comforting warmth of a job well done.  Over and over again, for me, this grinding process repeats without a word from up on high.

Then finally one day I realized that I'm broken beyond use.  No answers for me, no comfort to be found.  It seems as if I've been forgotten and left to rot.  It's up to me to pick myself up as there is not even the butcher left to throw me away.  Thanks to the meat grinder, I've learned there are no answers to why I've been forgotten.   I'm too ripped apart to hear anything that might be said anyway.