Suffering

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I grew up in the Catholic church, and it always seemed like there was a lot of talk about suffering. There were prayers in repentance for our sin and the suffering we caused, prayers for the dead who were suffering as they waited for heaven, prayers to make our own suffering "useful" to help alleviate someone else's suffering, uniting our suffering with Jesus's suffering on the Cross.

I just didn't get it. If God is love, and God wants us to have an abundant, joyful life, why all the focus on suffering? As a teenager, I received baptism in the Holy Spirit which means I grew in understanding of the Holy Spirit and as I grew, I experienced the fruits of the Holy Spirit in my life. I finally knew what joy was and I knew what it meant to have a relationship with Jesus, something that was a fairly foreign concept to a Catholic girl growing up in the 70's and 80's.

Knowing that it was possible to live a more joyful, victorious life, I still wondered why it seemed like my own church focused so much on what I viewed as "the downside of Christianity". I've always had the optimism of knowing God was bigger than whatever I would face in my life, and that he was able to bring good out of any situation. "And we know that all things work for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Roman 8:28.

And later in Romans 8 (v. 38-39), God promises that "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Those promises sounded pretty good to me - promises to redeem anything I could possibly face and to bring good out of it, promises to never be separated from him. Until I faced my first episode of true suffering. It shattered my dreams of a happy, healthy, and financially stable family; it destroyed the picture that I'd had of a perfect marriage; and it sent me into the depths of depression, bitter disappointment and complete distrust for the God I'd previously trusted without question.

My husband, at the age of 37, with four children, ages 11 and under, had a massive stroke that left him permanently disabled. When he came home after being hospitalized and in rehabilitation for six weeks, e was barely able to walk by himself or make it to the bathroom on his own, let alone work or provide for his family.

Over the next ten years, we would deal with at least two more strokes, each of which robbed him of more of his mental and physical abilities. We also endured bankruptcy, a catastrophic flooding of our home, as well as two smaller floods that required expensive home restoration, and numerous other calamities. Some of these occurrences were probably normal wear and tear for a life, house and vehicles with six family members, but some that just made us feel like someone was picking on us. So it wasn't even just a single event of hardship that was over in six months or a year; it was, and is, a challenge that we will likely live with for the rest of our lives. And this isn't even to say that I can understand my husband's suffering. He has to live each and every day with only half of his body functioning in the way he wants it to. The other half has to be dragged around like a rag doll, and he is carrying the weight of it, day in and day out.

For the longest time, I was just pissed. Pissed that God had allowed these things to completely destroy my dreams for a perfect husband, family, and life. Okay, I didn't even want perfect, but just "nice" and "happy". I was pissed at myself for not having enough mental, emotional, or physical wherewithal to just bounce back and keep going with a life that was completely different than the one that I'd prepared for.

It wasn't long after Al's first stroke that our youngest daughter came to me and expressed her fears about what had happened to her Daddy. She was in second grade, I think, and it was hard for her to understand that he had just changed overnight. I told her that when things like this happen in our lives, it's an opportunity for us to trust God more. Her very young and honest response was, "But how can I trust God if he let this happen?"

I didn't have an answer for her. I struggled for a long, long time with trusting God after he took my own fragile plan for my life and family and crushed it like a crystal goblet in a hydraulic press. Don't laugh at my analogy - I love watching hydraulic press videos on YouTube because it's so satisfying to see things pulverized! Seeing my own plans and expectations pulverized is a much different story.

But I think her question reflects the essence of our struggle with suffering. How can we trust God when things go horribly wrong, or at least horribly different than what we want or expect for our own lives? It would be much easier to trust a god who gives us everything we want and protects us from all possible heartbreak and sorrow.

The whole world wants a god who can give us everything we want and keep the bad stuff at bay. They want a god who will snap his fingers and correct everything that's wrong with the world. We had that perfect world offered to us once but free will and the sin of our first parents destroyed that for us. Without getting too theological here, we basically live in a broken world.

I gradually learned to trust God again, because throwing tantrums, getting drunk, addiction to pain killers and sleeping pills, and losing myself in video games were not drawing me closer to Him. It was the fall of 2017 when I had a breakthrough in which I finally began to trust again. I was at a retreat in our church called, "Healing the Whole Person". The substance of it was that our sin and rebellion rise out of the hurts we've experienced in our lives. We try to protect ourselves from being hurt again, so we cut off relationships, we hold on to bitterness, maybe we turn to drugs or alcohol to numb the inevitable pain, we spend money frivolously on things we think will make us happy.

I was angry at God and had been throwing a years-long tantrum because nothing was turning out the way I wanted it. And all that happened during that retreat was that God simply revealed himself to me as a loving Father. I had never known Him that way before. The Holy Spirit gave me joy and power and the ability to pray; Jesus was my savior, my lover, my Lord. But God was just...God. I didn't really know who He was until that day when I let him hold me in his arms like a child, comforting me in all my hurts and disappointments, reassuring me of His undying love, despite the things in my life that still didn't make sense. Little children don't understand the discipline of their parents sometimes, and they don't know why they can't have everything they want. But their parents know that the child needs safety and structure, not necessarily unlimited playtime and snacks. So when the child is upset, the parent just comforts them. He holds them, He reassures them that He is indeed giving the child great and wonderful things that the child cannot understand yet.

God didn't cause suffering in my life or my family's lives. But he allowed it for a purpose, and I will likely never know the full reason until I'm home in heaven. And, in every moment of heartbreak, frustration, sadness, loneliness, discouragement, and grief, God was there with me. God is with me now. In every moment I'm sobbing uncontrollably because I just want to hug my daughter one more time or hear her giggle, in the times I feel like I can't possibly survive til the natural end of my life without my sweet child here with me, in the increasingly frequent instances where I have no idea how to find a job and earn money from home as we're nearing the bottom of the savings barrel. Whether I know it or not, He has a plan. But even more important, He has me.

He will not let me go. He will not drop me in the wilderness and leave me defenseless. Oh, I will most certainly be dropped in the wilderness again, but He will be with me. And because I'm encountering His great love more and more, I'm learning to trust more and more.

So, why all the focus on suffering? Look at the world around us. No one is exempt from heartbreak and pain. We are suffering. It's part of life on this earth and we have to understand how to survive and thrive in the midst of it.

To not address the state of our fallen world would be negligent and frankly, stupid. There are churches that only focus on the good, happy feelings of Christianity and They. Are. Dangerous. Don't be fooled by that smiling, charismatic pastor who is promising you that if you only believe, you will get that better job, you will get that bigger house, you will marry that gorgeous man or woman. He stands there in his mega-church with his mega millions and his mega mansion and talks about "thinking your way into happiness" which is utter bullshit and not even remotely Scriptural. His message is dangerous because he's promising thousands - hundreds of thousands, even - that if they just believe and claim some dubious truths, they will escape suffering and have everything they've ever wanted.

But is he reminding them of Who they need?

I, for one, need Jesus.

There is nothing and no one else that we need besides Jesus.

So why focus on suffering? Because it's the way the world is: broken, diseased, wasting, full of anger, hatred, and pain. (Wow, Jen, you're kind of a downer - the antithesis of these prosperity gospel guys.) The world is this way because of sin, and this world is not our forever home. But when we connect, really connect with the living God, even here on this wretched earth, we will see miracles and we will see transformations dry deserts to springs of living water, and ultimately we will see Him in perfect paradise where there will be no more suffering, no more pain, no more crying, no more sorrow.

We can and should also focus on healing. And joy. And victory. And hope. And all the great things that God promises because even though we live in a wounded, painful, and limping world, He is with us and gives us what we need to survive, and even to thrive. I have no doubt there will still be terrible days when I can hardly get out of bed because I'm too weighed down by grief and days I'm too overwhelmed to do anything but stay alive. But I have already experienced a deep joy in knowing God is in control and that no matter what I face, He is with me.