Blindsided by Tradgedy

From J.E. Tada's More Precious than Silver

When tragedy blindsides you and almost knocks you silly, you are understandably bewildered. You fee confusion and panic. You may be afraid that more hardships will come on top of it all. You may feel a thousand things. But at some point...if you don't stop feeling and start thinking about how to attend to the circumstances you find yourself in, you'll freeze. 
Yes, intense suffering calls for deep emotions. People weep...we should weep (!). God weeps. But there is also a time to think. What you think about God influences your friendship with Him. It affects how much glory you give Him. But your imagination about God (especially in the midst of tragedy) isn't reliable.

I have, like most people, had many impossible things hit me. Always out of no where. Even my anorexia/bulimia hit out of no where. Hard things usually sneak up on us, in my experience. Which, I think, is why they are so difficult. 
My R.A. hit me in one single day. I was fine when I went to bed, and woke up with "glass shards" in my joints, and drenching sweat with receding fevers. There were other symptoms in the "sneaking up stage", but I did not know them for what they were. 
Some hard things we bring upon ourselves. Sin, like tragedy, sneaks up on us--quite frankly sin is a tragedy, and sin causes and has caused all tragedies. It is not necessarily our own sin that brings tragedy upon us---generations of sin may be our curse. 
RA was and remains a tragedy for me. I have lost so much: freedom, possibly the chance to raise a family due to continued extreme illness, my career, and many of the housewife things I hoped to do. It is a tragedy to me, and to those closest to me. I do not think it was any sin that brought me to this--at any rate, my conscience at this point is clear. 
That does not mean my tragedy hurts any less, or is less devastating. One verse popped out to me so strongly once I was well enough to prop a Bible against a pillow and read. John 11:35: Jesus wept. 
To think that my Lord and Savior was so moved by the death of a friend, one who believed in Him from all I see in surrounding Scriptures, and would be in Paradise, I felt as if He wept with me and my tragedy of illness. Whether He does or not, I cannot say....but I know as a person who has spent years in animal husbandry...on the rare instances an animal sheds tears (there are times, and not caused by irritation), I shed tears with them. I know that the Good Shepherd has been here on Earth, and knows what we face. And that helped and helps me face my tragedy of illness.

One thing about being so ill is that at various times there are periods when I am well enough to consider God. Then I am overpowered by the amazing things He has done and the amazing God that He is. While we face our tragedies brought on by a world poisoned by the sins of generations...He is standing firm, not tainted by the evil of the world, and has become the strongest support for us to lean on. He will always stand firm, loving and true, providing "shelter beneath His wings". I could not face RA without my Lord. I could not have faced many things without Him. So lean on Him today...don't face tragedies alone-even if the tragedy is that the two year old of the house has lost all her socks....lean on Him to have the strength to not react to "tragedies" no matter how big or small, but to be able to face them with the strength that shouts to others how real and wonderful our King is.
Peace to you.