Suffering seems to be out of your hands because, when you are in it, you are in it.
 
Or you try to throw your experience of suffering into someone else’s hands, perhaps a doctor’s, perhaps your husband’s or wife’s, your employer’s, or your friend’s, or your child’s, or to Me. You toss the responsibility to someone else, and, sometimes, from your point of view, responsibility means someone to rescue you, and, sometimes, responsibility means someone to take the blame.
 
Sooner or later, the whole suffering retracts, and it’s gone away like a wave in an ocean. Waves come and waves go, and you remain.
 
It is a miracle when a wave of suffering washes away from you. Suffering is experienced like a bill collector who won’t leave your door, and you are desolate, and you weep, and you feel you will never regain your strength, and the sun will never come out again. Sometimes the experience of suffering is gone just like that, and, at other times, suffering seems to take its own sweet time.
 
It certainly seems like suffering goes after you and that it latches onto you with or without warning. Here’s the thing, beloveds: Suffering doesn’t have to manhandle you. It is one thing to have suffering hold onto you, and it’s another thing for you to buy the idea that you are suffering’s hapless victim. Suffer, if you must, but don’t carry a sign in your heart that says:
 
“Victim once again. Put upon by life. Initiated into victimhood. Anointed a star victim in the world. Most voted Top put-upon victim.”
 
It is not a badge of honor to feel like a victim. Victimhood does not give you merit.
 
It may well be that you have been a victim sometime in your life. You may have been mistreated. Because you were a victim once does not mean you have to always be a victim. What is the thing to do? Whether you fall into a pit or are pushed in, you are the free-wheeling agent who climbs out. I have said it before, beloveds: “Be your own rescuer.” You. Get out of the victim mode.
 
A victim is helpless. You are not helpless. Nor are you merely a survivor. Oh, no, being a survivor is not good enough. Perhaps you wore a black suit yesterday. Change your suit today. You don’t keep wearing the same suit or the same dress. Yesterday, you were a survivor. Today be like the horse at the gate that you would bet on. You are in the race. You are running today now, not yesterday, now. In this more laid-back race I propose, you don’t have to reach a record. You don’t have to compete, even with yourself. You just have to get out and go around the track of life today.
 
You are not to be stepmother in fairy tales who looked in the mirror and asked: “Who is the fairest of all?” In your case, you are not to ask: “Who has had the hardest time of all? Who is the greatest prey of all?” You are not to court victimhood.
 
Nor is being hopeful good enough. Hopeful is also leaving you to the mercy of the winds. Changes do come, and they do seem like a gift, yet you are not waiting for mercy because that makes you a half-hearted victim.
 
You don’t have to be the bravest of all in life, either. You don’t have to be a dazzling hero of your own life, yet you do have to get out of the world mode that says you are subjected to life. You are the one who meets your life. Don’t assume a role in life that leaves you at life’s mercy. All that is asked of you is to keep walking down a country lane toward the sun.