Real Life or just living? Embrace suffering.

No one lives a life free from pain. 

Pain and loss are unavoidable.  I’ve been thinking about loss this week. The loss in my life and the losses of people around me.  I have a dear friend who was left by his wife and ended up being divorced by her this past year.  I’m 27 and this is actually the second good friend of mind whose wife has left him.  Several close couple friends of our really would like to get pregnant and have had miscarriages in the past year.  I don’t really have any idea what that would be like, but speaking with them, it seems as if it has been deeply painful, especially for the women.  I know friends whose closest circles of friendship have been torn apart through affairs.  I’ve hear stories of growing up with alcoholic fathers.  I’ve sat and talked to guys who have shared about sadness and loneliness that simply won’t go away, that is always just beneath the surface.  I’ve seen the affects of incest within families.  I’ve talked to friends desperately waiting for their adoptive baby to come and live with them.  Engagements being broken off, watching loved ones die, depression, physical abuse, emotional abuse, rape, firings, moving away from friends, and friends moving away.  1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before age 18.  1 in 6 boys are.

We all experience loss. 

I moved from Indiana to Michigan between 2nd and 3rd grade.  One of my first friends in 3rd grade in Michigan was George.  We drew aircraft carriers during class, played football at recess, and rode bikes and played Nintendo after school.  We stayed friends throughout middle school and into high school, and my junior year in high school we were part of a group of 5-7 guys who were pretty good friends.  Winter of my junior year George died of a heart valve that was pointed the wrong direction.  He had it since birth.  It was undetectable.  It’s funny too, because George was a great athlete.  He played some varsity football his sophomore year in high school.

I remember thinking that my heart would always hurt, that I would never enjoy life again, that my future only held pain. 

I cried a lot. 

I mean, what are we supposed to do with loss, pain, the screwed up hurtful stuff in our lives? I’ve been meditating on Jesus’ teaching this week that whoever wants to be a disciple of his must renounce himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Jesus.  I’ve been haunted by Eugene Peterson’s translation of the phrase “take up your cross.”  He says in The Message, “Don’t run from suffering.  Embrace it.” 

Embrace suffering? 

Why?

It reminds me of what Jesus teaches in his Sermon on the Mount (Talk on a hill, creative title).  He is pronouncing blessings, we call them beatitudes today.  I’m not sure why.  I think we religious people tend to prefer to put things into confusing language.  Maybe it makes it seem more special or holy or something.  Any ways, Jesus is saying blessed are these people and blessed are those people.  We don’t really have any direct equivalent to the word ”blessed” Jesus was using here.  It carries the meanings of being blessed, fortunate, and happy.  Some might say, “Lucky are those…” or “Jump for joy when…” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” 

Fortunate are those who mourn?

Embrace suffering?

I was directed by a couple friends to a book this week as I was thinking on the topic of loss and suffering.  It’s called, “A Grace Disguised,” by Jerry Sittser.  When Jerry was around 40 years old he and his family were in a head on collision with drunk driver.  His mother, wife, and one daughter were killed.  He and his three other kids survived.  He wrote the book years after this event, not so much to tell his story, as to share what he learned through it.  To share his reflections on his loss.

Not long after the accident he writes about having a dream, he says, “I dreamed of a setting sun.  I was frantically running west, trying desperately to catch it and remain in its fiery warmth and light.  But I was losing the race.  The sun was beating me to the horizon and was soon gone.  I suddenly found myself in twilight.  Exhausted, I stopped running and glanced with foreboding over my shoulder to the east.  I saw a vast darkness closing in on me.  I was terrified by that darkness.  I wanted to keep running after the sun, though I knew that it was futile, for it had already proven itself faster than I was.  So I lost all hope, collapsed to the ground, and fell into despair.  I thought at that moment that I would live in darkness forever.  I felt absolute terror in my soul.” 

We are terrified of pain and loss aren’t we? 

I am. 

We run from it using busyness, alcohol, television, shopping, pornography, a new relationship, food, video games, anything but sitting and feeling the hurt. But we know the hurt is still there, it doesn’t just disappear because we distracted ourselves from it.  We avoid it for a time, but we don’t experience comfort.  Jesus said those who mourn will be comforted.  I don’t believe he was making a statement about the experiences certain people have, that some people will experience loss and these will be comforted and others won’t.  I mean, everybody experiences loss.  The question is rather what will we do with the loss. 

Will we mourn?

Will we embrace the suffering that comes to us?

Will we enter the darkness?

Sittser writes, “I decided from that point on to walk into the darkness rather than try to outrun it, to let my experience of loss take me on a journey wherever it would lead, and to allow myself to be transformed by my suffering rather than to think I could somehow avoid it.  I chose to turn toward the pain, however falteringly, and to yield to the loss, though I had no idea at the time what that would mean.”

No more distractions, just embracing the pain.

 Why?

…for they will be comforted.

That there is an aspect of God, a stretching of our souls, a depth of relationship with the Holy that we would never taste if we choose the route of distraction.  The great poem-prayer writer David wrote this about God.  “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.”  He is near to the broken hearted.  The Hebrew phrase from broken hearted here is a combination of two Hebrew words.  The first means heart, as in the center or middle of a person, her deepest innermost feelings.  The second is a violent word.  It means to burst, break, rend, tear, hurt, be wrecked, or be shattered.  We use the phrase broken heart so much in our culture I think it loses its power. 

The Lord, YHWH, is near to those whose deepest parts have been shattered. When we are shattered, genuinely broken, we find the Lord is near.  As we enter into our loss, embrace suffering, mourn, the God of the universe draws close to us.  He is near.  Paul writes about this to the Roman church and paints a picture of the Spirit of God right beside us in our moments of great pain.  That when we don’t even know what to pray for and can only get out groans, the Spirit is with us praying for us to God the Father.  It’s like, at this lowest of moments, God doesn’t leave, but he draws near, and begins to carry our weight.  His ear is near our mouth as we sigh and groan, he listens to every word, he steps in where we run dry and intercedes with the Father on our behalf.  And there is an intimacy with God that would not be known if we had run away from the darkness. Embrace suffering. Only those who truly mourn can be truly comforted. 

We must enter the darkness. 

This is following Jesus. 

The scriptures describe him as, “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering… he carried our sorrows.”  Jesus knew tears.  He wept on multiple occasions.  He knew pain, his life ended with the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”  God does not comfort us out of his stoicism, he comforts us out of his suffering, his sorrows. We enter the darkness and He is with us. He has gone before us.

He is with us. 

And because he has gone before and because he is with us, we have hope.  Not happiness, not shiny smiley faces. But we do have hope of redemption.  Resurrection.  After Paul finished writing to the Romans about the Spirit’s interceding for them when they are in great pain, he writes this, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”  Paul doesn’t make the silly statement that everything is all good.  No, evil and pain and hurt and suffering and real and are not good.  But, he knows that the God of reality is able to bring good from any evil, that God is always at work to bring redemption and new life in every single situation for those who love him.  And so we have hope.  The hope of resurrection, life from death, both at the end of time, and in small ways every day in our lives.  The hope of forgiveness, renewed joy, restored relationships, intimacy with the Father, the hope of gratitude.

 I’d like to leave you with the last few pages of Sittser’s book:

Yet the grief I feel is sweet as well as bitter.  I still have a sorrowful soul; yet I wake up every morning joyful, eager for what the new day will bring.  Never have I felt as much pain as I have in the last three years; yet never have I  experienced as much pleasure in simply being alive and living an ordinary life.  Never have I felt so broken; yet never have I been so whole.  Never have I been so aware of my weakness and vulnerability; yet never have I been so content and felt so strong.  Never has my soul been more dead; yet never has my soul been more alive.  What I once considered mutually exclusive–sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, death and life–have become parts of a greater whole.  My soul has been stretched.

Above all, I have become aware of the power of God’s grace and my need for it.  My soul has grown because it has been awakened to the goodness and love of God.  God has been present in my life these past three years, even mysteriously in the accident.  God will continue to be present to the end of my life and through all eternity.  God is growing my soul, making it bigger, and filling it with himself.  My life is being transformed.  Though I have endured pain, I believe that the outcome is going to be wonderful.

Lynda, Diana Jane, and my mother Grace have gone to death before me.  Someday I too will die, as will Catherine, David, and John.  As long as I remain alive, I want to life as joyfully, serenely, and productively as I can.  My heritage has set a standard for me, and I feel honored to uphold it. 

The supreme challenge to anyone facing catastrophic loss involves facing the darkness of the loss on the one hand, and learning to live with renewed vitality and gratitude on the other.  The challenge is met when we learn to take the loss into ourselves and to be enlarged by it, so that our capacity to live life well and to know God intimately increases.  To escape the loss is far less healthy–and far less realistic, considering how devastating loss can be–than to grow from it.  Loss can diminish us, but it can also expand us.  It depends, once again, on the choices we make and the grace we receive.  Loss can function as a catalyst to transform us.  It can lead us to God, the only One who has the desire and power to give us life. 

Lynda and I planned our wedding with a great deal of care.  We paid more attention to the meaning of marriage than to the details of the wedding, and this fit Lynda’s personality well, for she was always more interested in depth of ideas than in appearances.  We chose to sing one hymn, “Be Thou My Vision.”  I chose that same hymn for the funeral.  It captures what we believed when we were married, what I believe now, and what I will continue to believe until I go to the grave.

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;  Nought be all else to me, save that Thou art; Thou my best thought , by day or by night, Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise, Thou mine inheritance, now and always; Thou and Thou only, first in my heart, Great God of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true word; I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord; Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.