I live in South Carolina and for days we have been wondering what effects hurricane Florence would have. Though it was downgraded from a category 4 to a category 2 before landfall, it has certainly been destructive. For some it has been truly devastating. Suffering comes in all sorts of ways, but when it comes from something that we have absolutely no control over, it causes its own sort of anxiety. And hopefully, it provokes deeper thought.
Control over our lives is pretty much an illusion, anyway. We certainly have the ability to choose different paths. But our vision of what is down those paths is very limited. It is often the unexpected, good and bad, that shapes ours lives. And sometimes what is painful redirects us to a better path. Years ago, someone wrote “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn…”
