I totally CAN'T handle it!

After reading this article  http://natepyle.com/confronting-the-lie-god-wont-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle/ I felt compelled to speak again.
Have been waiting for the 'right time' to begin writing in blog form, and this gave me the emotional shove to do it.

I'm sitting in a big pile of crap.  I am.  My life has forever changed, I am grieving, things have happened to me and my family that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.  And, in this pain, people want to help.  They want to give me a solution, or extend hope, or even placate me so that they can feel better and not have to absorb any of my grief.  It's scary to sit with someone when they're hurting.  It's easy to feel inadequate, or useless or intrusive if you have nothing to offer but kind eyes and a quiet tongue.  However, I can tell you, that often that is all I want or need.  The things that are pressing into my life and causing pain are things that will not be easily solved, erased or fixed.  There is no clear solution, and in every way it looks as though my struggle will continue for a long time to come.  That's just life.  Loving me (and others who also wade through pain) sometimes means just sitting with us and hurting some too.  Shouldering a bit of the burden.  Reminding us that we are not forgotten, or less than, or alone. 
One of the things that has been said to me often through this is that God doesn't give us more than we can handle.  I know that this sounds lovely coming off of well intentioned lips, and is meant to be some sort of strange compliment in the middle of pain, but... it's just simply not true.  Walk it out- continue down the road of what that means- if God doesn't give us more than we can handle- then are those whose lives are fairly easy less competent?  Are they less faith-filled, reliable, intelligent?  And if God gives us what we can handle then does that mean that those who have pain heaped into their laps in lions shares are saintly?  special? set-aside? God has no need of us.  It is we who need him.  And when do we recognize this more clearly than in the middle of searing pain?  Often it is our pain, our inability to 'handle' it that pushes us into his lap, crying out for mercy, relief, comfort.  Because ultimately we are unable to comfort ourselves sufficiently.  We need him.  He knows we need him.  My circumstances have driven me to need him to handle it.  I know I am unable to handle what I am experiencing.  Strangely enough, there is comfort in that.  Knowing that to get out of this crisis, He will have to move mountains.  That my life itself will speak to his grace because there will be no way i can take credit for handling it.

I'm thankful I can't handle it.  I'm thankful that I am close to the one who can.  Now I just have to remind myself of this in the moments i think I'll never make it to the other side.....