In one of the sermons of Bishop Dale Broner of Word of Faith Family, he says, schedule your fun moments because pain will schedule itself.

Unlike my illustration, you do not see adversity coming, well, sometimes you do, but sometimes, many times it catches you off guard. Journeying through that experience is like an eclipse, the solar or the lunar one, whichever you choose. The sun and the moon, one real, one shadow, approach each other, in a journey that they slowly merge, sometimes, we experience total darkness, sometimes partial, and sometimes, its just a phenomenon we hear about.

Pain will schedule itself.

In the beginning that ache in you chest that things are about to get thick, that sixth sense telling you things are about to crumble, or just you gravitating in life, oblivious to that which is about to come. As the circles merge, reality hits and you try to deny, then you accept and everything gets so dark you can barely remember your name, or call your friends, or speak to anyone. Some fall so low, basic hygiene becomes a problem, you can barely get out of bed, let alone go to the shower or dress up for an event. Getting out of the house is “gynomous” as my son calls big things. Then the cloud clears and you can start to walk, see, talk, figure things out. And as the circles disconnect from each other, you become you again. But are you really you? After the total darkness, because only you can experience that, you can either grow from it and become a totally new person in pursuit of your future endeavors, leaving the pain and the moments behind as a lesson for you only to look back on and remember as case C, or you can carry the pain with you wherever you go, become bitter, and critical, swearing many things, calling on fire and brimstone, cursing, but all in all, bitter and cynical about life, as B; or you can remain the same, unchanged, no lessons, no growth not even one lesson, such that if the same event happened, you will just float through the events the same way, as A.

Whichever direction you choose, after encountering adversity, change of direction or the trajectory of your life is inevitable.

To the spectators, just like the eclipse, there are those who will see the events in your life, whether by intuition or because you choose to involve them, there are those who will walk with you and experience the total eclipse with you, and there are those who will just hear about it many eons to come.

It is okay, when pain schedules itself, sometimes, you actually do not choose who stays and who goes, sometimes, life just sifts people away from you, sometimes, people are experiencing their own eclipse and sometimes, just like the eclipse randomly becomes dark in random places, there are random people who will walk into your life and uphold you through the darkness. This is the moment to count the graces of everything, everything that was sifted away, everything that remained, everything that came. Because everything has a purpose.

The same Bishop says, people come to our lives for a reason, a season and a lifetime. Sometimes, adversity tells us on who is for a season, who is for a reason and who gets to be the lifetime. And in life, we only get to appreciate each moment. Whether its the reason, the season or the lifetime…

And that is pain…