Dear Friends,
The pain started as a stiff muscle in my shoulder — the kind of feeling you might get if you “slept the wrong way” or if you unwittingly tweaked a muscle. But it didn’t go away. In fact, quite the opposite. As I write this, it’s all I can do to sit still and attempt to type. The pain is intense and comes in waves. I don’t know which is worse — the pain or not knowing what is causing it. This is now the third day of this endurance test. Thankfully, my doctor friend will visit me later today and assess me, hopefully giving me insight into both cause and solution.
I’ve thought a lot about pain these last few days. Honestly, I could hardly think of anything else. To the best of my ability, I fulfilled commitments and didn’t complain. But the pain was always just beneath the surface, tempting me to withdraw, to be impatient, to focus only on it, and on finding a way to relieve it. Perhaps the worst is the failure to know what is causing it. If I’d crashed into a wall, or felt some kind of tearing, or sustained an injury while playing floor hockey, that would somehow make things easier for me. My ignorance is frustrating.
Some of you know these things much better than me. It’s extremely hard to focus when you’re in pain. It’s hard to be kind or attentive to others. The temptation to curl up and withdraw is almost overwhelming at times. In fact, it’s hard to even think about any Christian virtues, let alone manifest them — or to think about anything else, really.
So, imagine my chagrin (and gratitude) when, in my quiet time this morning, I read these verses in Psalm 116: “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications.” “I kept my faith, even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted’; …” and then this verse in Hebrews 2: “It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Suffering is the great test, isn’t it? It cuts to the essence of things. How can I endure? How much can I endure? What happens when I come to the end of myself and am humiliated and helpless? What happens if the pain doesn’t go away or, worse, it increases? How can I possibly live with this? What can I even do when the pain is like this? Can I trust God now? Is he enough for this or am I really only a fair-weather believer?
From a place of suffering (I freely admit and hope it’s temporary but it’s no less real or painful right now.), I offer these observations: I am not alone — God cares; people care. I am still able to pray and to trust — uncertainty doesn’t change this. Endurance requires enabling and God enables. All the disciplines I’ve ever learned and practiced bear fruit in times like this, producing endurance and even gratitude. I am so far from perfect. I am much weaker than I perceive myself to be. But, I am still loved. God is still present. I take great comfort in knowing that Jesus himself was perfected in suffering.
Make no mistake. I’m not ready to welcome suffering. But I do welcome the test. I have work to do in growing in faith and endurance. I have more to learn about trusting and resting. But, mostly, I have to keep learning to trust the Lord for grace — that always sufficient reality that not even suffering can eliminate.
Blessings!
Doug