To wonder about the purpose of suffering in this world is a very
human dilemma. Frankly, there is no
clean, sustaining answer to the traumas of life. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a purpose
to be ultimately derived.
That’s secondary for me in the present context.
What I really want to focus on is how we endure the traumas of
life.
So much of life can feel like we’re just going through the motions,
until, as the old song says, “at 4:00 PM on some idle Tuesday”[1] life changes, and suddenly
we’re thrust head long into a tailspin, and that is usually a pile on, because
with one crisis often comes four or five—a series of unfortunate events.
For me, it was losing my first marriage, my home, everyday
access to my children, the need to change jobs, the wrestle with alcoholism,
the loneliness and grief, amid the terror of thoughts I had no idea about—as a
then-36-year-old in 2003, I’d never suffered before. And in 2014, losing our son Nathanael to
stillbirth came in a season where there were two other equally momentous
challenges thrown down as our gauntlet to endure.
It’s a cruel twist of fate when we’re trauma-triggered because
when we most need the resources of endurance, least are they accessible or
present at our disposal; harkens us to the supports we dearly need that others
can provide or loan to us.
I’ll never forget talking with a parent who had lost a young adult
child very tragically, suggesting that she epitomised courage in stepping out
each day. Poignantly, she said, “No, it’s
not courage, but endurance.” The more I
reflected on what she had said, the more I had to concede that though it seemed
courageous to me, it is more about endurance which implies courage and so much
more.
When we enter a period or season of suffering, so much of it is
irreparable. So much suffering involves loss and grief where we are catapulted
into a new reality that we must at some stage accept as our new normal. So many people I know hate that term, new
normal, and understandably so. I
remember back in 2003 a wiser person telling me that I was entering “a journey”
[of grief]; at the time I can remember resenting what I had heard. The truth was too stark to handle.
Enduring the traumas of life is the hardest
skill
to master, because it is a character skill.
I often think of the motion picture “The Revenant” (2015) as one
way I have thought grief works in re-arranging our philosophies of being. For me, something was killed in me in 2003-2004
that no longer needed to die in 2014. I
was more resilient in 2014 for what I’d endured in 2003-2004.
For me at least, enduring the traumas of life puts the rest of
our lives into better perspective. There
is a depth of gratitude in me now that has a direct referent back to the
traumas I’ve suffered.
I know that I hold life lightly, much lighter than I previously
did, and my philosophy of life and death is implicitly spiritual, and therefore
sustainable these days.
WHAT we are in this life is how we behave and
interact with our world and the people around us.
We are here for a short period of time, and the Bible reminds us
that we are like grass, we “flourish like a flower of the field… [but] the wind
blows over it and it is gone.” (Psalm 103:15-16)
These are some of the things that suffering teaches us, and I
don’t know a person who hasn’t drawn significant meaning out of suffering as they
had reflected over it at the end of it.
The purpose in suffering is, in fact, enduring
it.
There are many lessons to be learned within it, yet the paradox
is WHEN we are suffering that is the time we least want to be learning, and least
have the resources demanded of such a season.
The unfairness of suffering is that it comes when we least
expect it, when we have the least resource to deal with it, when we are most
vulnerable and susceptible to all types of peril.
Surely now if you’re in that place of enduring,
hold on and get your support, one day at a time,
endure this time, because better times are coming,
where your endurance will pay handsomely.
[1] The full lyric of Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen): “The
real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried
mind; the kind that blindside you at 4:00 pm on some idle Tuesday.”
