Thoughts From Year Five: Home

I have finally entered into living my 5th year with Chronic Pain. So since I passed my anniversary of having chronic pain, I've decided to write a quick blog post about trials and pain. So here we are.

I don't see myself having a bright future. Nor do I see life turning out in a way that I'd want it to. As the pessimist I am, I've let my trials dictate the future I'll have. I figure it will all go wrong; especially if my pain stays here forever, and I will have to deal with it forever. Which will definitely be a hindrance and cause conflict.
Of course, I don't usually think that there's something wrong with thinking you'll have a bleak future, but tonight while going back and highlighting some quotes in a C.H. Spurgeon book I've been reading, I realized how many were just on trials and heaven.
This one stood out to me in particular,

"We do not know what will happen to us between this and heaven, but we can easily prognosticate the aim and result of all that will occur. We are harps which will be tuned in all their strings for the concerts of the blessed. The tuner is putting us in order. He sweeps His hands along the strings; there is a jar from every note; so He begins first with one string, and then goes to another. He continues at each string till He hears the exact note. The last time you were ill, one of your strings was tuned; the last time you had a bad debt, or trembled at declining business, another string was tuned. And so, between now and heaven, you will have every string set in order; and you will not enter Heaven till all are in tune. Did you ever go to a place where they make pianos, and expect to hear sweet music? The tuning-room is enough to drive a man mad, and in factory you hear the screeching of saws and the noise of hammers, and you say, "I thought this was a place where they made pianos." Yes, so it is, but it is not the place where they play them. On earth is the place where God makes musical instruments, and tunes them, and between down and heaven He will put all that is within them into fit condition for blessing and praising His name eternally."

That really struck me. What a way it is to look at trials as the thing preparing you for Home. When I think of the future I think of it in a pessimistic slant. And I realize that while things might end up awful for me one day, that isn't my only future. My future is Heaven.
All of these trials will just be preparing me for Home. I might have a horrible future here on earth, but it's only preparing me for my Brightest future-Heaven.
And to me, that is something to wake up another day for.

"What joy when altogether the jewels shall be put into the casket! Think of what they shall be gathered from! From poverty, from sickness, from beds of dust and silent clay they shall be gathered; from slander and rebuke, from persecution, and from suffering, from the lion's jaws, and from the flames they should be gathered, ten thousand times ten thousand of them, from sin and suffering to sin and suffer no more." -C.H. Spurgeon

God Bless,
   A.W.