Take this in remembrance of me.

"Take this in remembrance of me, Christ had said. Participate in the suffering of Christ, Paul had said. And yet Americans turned forgetting into a kind of spiritual badge, refusing to look at suffering for fear they might catch it like a disease. They turned the death of Christ into soft fuzzy Sunday-school pictures and refused to let those pictures get off the page and walk bloody into their minds. They stripped Christ of his dignity by ignoring the brutality of his death. It was no different from turning away from a puffy-faced leper in horror. The epitome of rejection. Some would even close the book here in a huff and return to their knitting. Perhaps they would knit nice soft images of a cross."
    ¹ from "When Heaven Weeps: Newly Repackaged Novel from The Martyr's Song Series (The Heaven Trilogy Book 2)" by Ted Dekker

You know - I get this.  I totally get this.

Even when I was young - like preteen and teenager - the book of Acts used to scare me so much.  
It was like - what if God wants me to be like Paul!?  I can't do that.  I don't want to do that.  No way!!!

And then when things started happening to me - bad things - it was really like "Why are You doing this to me?"
I couldn't deal with it.  

For me, it wasn't just the blood of Jesus.  Not like that's anything I should even use the word "just" with.  But I was young.  And it was Paul that scared me to death.  I knew I'd never be asked to be Jesus.  But Paul - that's a different story.  And it's not like Paul was the only follower of Jesus that suffered.  Heck - they all did.  I din't want that.

It never occurred to me to do what the quote above says - to make it into a soft fuzzy Sunday-school picture.  Probably because there was already so much fear in my life - and this was just one more thing to be afraid of.  But I did get the part about look(ing) at suffering for fear they might catch it like a disease.  It was a disease I didn't want to catch.  No way.  I didn't need any more suffering.  I never did get the "spiritual badge" because I never could forget.  I certainly did close the book - more than a few times.  But the image of suffering and the fear that went with it - I couldn't get rid of that.

So what changed?

I think part of the problem was that I'd never really been introduced to God.  The "whole God".  

Sure - I knew about the God of the Old Testament - the God of vengeance.  But I never really understood just how many chances the people had - and how they had so many opportunities to avoid the wrath of God.  But they had chosen not to.  I never really understood the concept of true justice.  After all - at that age, we still think we can do anything and get out of the consequences - if we even believe there really are actual consequences.  Some of us seem to never grow out of that stage.

And yes - I knew about Jesus.  How He loved us.  And how He talked about how much the Father loved us.  And I really wanted that - so much!  

So then - why, if I was trying to follow Him and wanted Him so badly - why all the suffering?  Should I not be rewarded for what I was doing?  Back to "Why are You doing this to me"?