Suffering from a sufferers perspective.
Someone recently asked me this question...
Where is God when one’s life falls apart is one of life’s biggest questions. What’s the difference between how you would have addressed this question as a pastor or theologian, compared to someone who has been through devastating suffering and loss?
As I considered this question and how differently a theologian, a pastor, and a sufferer all address the question of suffering, I thought a three part answer was warranted. I've answered the question from the perspective of a theologian and pastor .....
Today I'll tackle the answer from the perspective of a sufferer.
The sufferer has it the worst. He doesn't know that when the worst day of his life comes, it is only the beginning of bad. At the beginning, he is in shock, so he doesn't notice that he no longer has the story that he lived by, the story that made his days make sense.
We were blessed in the early, rootless days of our suffering because we had true friends. Our friends gathered around us. They listened to our wails, our hollow spiritual affirmations springing from shock not faith, ridiculous assertions that have no other purpose than to keep you from questioning aloud the rightness of what God has done to you. Our friends had no explanations. They just held us and cried.
In addition to our friends, from the beginning of our trauma, God broke through our darkness with glimpses of his unconditional love. I write about these encounters in the book. His love did not take away our pain. It helped us to find the grace to endure the pain.
When King David was in the pit, he counted on God’s compassion to lift him out. I chose to believe God would do the same for us. Not because our souls are so strong, but because our God’s compassion is so great. And he did bring us up from the pit. Not as quickly as I had hoped, and not in the ways I thought he would. And not before I was dragged through days of greater pain than the day of Scott’s death. I can't point to any single act or moment of final healing. It was a whole series of unanticipated graces that kept coming until one day I could find only the sweetness of Scott in my heart and none of the pain of Scott.!
