Giving dignity to those who suffer

Prompted by a student of mine, I have been thinking about struggle. I have often wondered about the fact that struggle seems to typlify some lives more than others. To try to make sense of struggle, some people universalize it: "We all struggle and suffer." Who can argue with a statement like that? It's true that we do. However, I often become bothered by such a naive statement of reduction. I believe I can quantify and qualify struggle better since I am a parent of a child who has struggled with autism/schizophrenia/adhd, and the combination thereof which has impacted his daily life. However, I don't wish to reduce the suffering of others, yet I see two big differences to consider when normalizing some kinds of struggles.

1) Some struggles involve a chronic painful nature. They are not episodes or stages, no matter the intensity of these. This struggle has been there from the beginning or for a long time, both in the past, the present, and the future.

2) Some struggles have an all-encompassing nature. This kind of struggle involves multiple outcomes such as the inability to have relationships; to hold a job; to go to college; to be safe in a school environment; the inability to get out of a bed;  out of a chair;  to speak to others; to have a stability of health whether physical, mental, or emotional and etcetera. Life itself can be threatened by these struggles which includes many chronic and encompassing barbs.

I'm sure there are more, but these are what I can think of right now.

In thinking about my student who struggles with mental issues, I can see that his fight is fiercer than the normal adolescent, who is also suffering from various things. His fight is both chronic and encompassing for him. To compare many others' struggles with his is like comparing a cancer to a cold. If others did that his mother would say, "They have no idea," and she is right. She knows about the mental institution, the run after the suicidal son in the night, the continous psychiatric visits, the chronic worry, despair, need for full reliance upon help, the courage it requires.

I like the example of Christ who recognized each person's dignity in their struggle. He knew the great fighters during his day:  the woman who touched his robe; the leper banned from community; the mental anguish of the demon-possessed man. He gave them dignity when they were normalized or blamed or shunned. Great sufferers of the Bible are depicted also as heroic in their fight for light. I think that we can learn much from these examples. We don't have to laud or give an award to those who have greater struggles, but we can give them dignity and respect without trying to take that away from them by reducing their struggle through inadequate comparisons.

My friend who recently lost her husband to brain cancer and her home to a fire wrote this morning about her necessity in resting in Christ's arms through her suffering. She also referenced a hope-filled and dignity-providing verse to those who suffer; a verse which gives purpose and hope and comfort to those who go through certain intense fires. She underlined the meaningful part to her. I'm glad this verse shows the understanding vision and care for those who struggle, both normally and greatly. May we believe in it. Amen.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5  ³ all praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. ⁴ He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. ⁵ For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ. 

Clinging

Finally finding the campus of College of the Ozarks, I lined up to wait to hug my friend who just lost her husband to brain cancer. She was my best friend in high school, radiant then as she is now in her faith. She was radiant at the end of the line, almost like a bride.

But, the deal was that the earthly healing she "claimed" in the name of Jesus was denied to her husband. Way down the aisle in the chapel, he was cold and pale.

Throughout the 11 month ordeal, my friend would send faith-infused updates. Her labor for healing resulted in a glowing testimony of amazing hope and assurance that her husband would be healed. I forwarded these to friends because of their power; I dared to hope that God would show himself, that he would involve himself, that maybe I could hope too in connection to my prayers for my son.

Yet, as the updates came, finally came an admission  that the healing might happen in heaven. However, I have never seen such a demonstration in expectancy that God would deliver healing upon earth, even to the last moment.

Her last update on Tuesday stated that her husband was now in heaven. However, he "is alive and well" in a recovered body and looking into the eyes of Jesus.

When I approached her at the visitation, she dry-eyed squealed out my name, and we clung to each other crying. Once upon a time, we had been high school best friends dreaming about boyfriends and husbands and what God would do in our lives. We were both earnest, faith-full girls. We both trusted in good futures.

We both have been down hard paths.

My friend has lost her gift, the man whom she treasured more than anything else. Brain cancer. Life gone. Prayer denied.

Yet there she was quite radiant, whispering to me that Vince didn't suffer due to God's grace in his last hours. I was happy for her.

However, I cried much driving back.

For her. And, that God didn't allow us hopeful onlookers some more, solid, unquestionable proof of his existence and reported upon active care.

News of a young suicide

soft rain and sad news. together stay.
you cry in sound for him who cried into his grave.
his parents wail and pour and pound and wish
their birth had not been born. soft rain and
sad news. a boy forlorn and torn.


why him? why us? why let the rain let on?
oh god, we tried. we trusted in you, our son.
soft rain turn hail, striking us down, incensed.
we welcome your smashing pellets
into our dual-death soft-templed despondence.

Steep

Suffering compresses itself at times upon us at various points of our lives. Still, it does seem that certain people suffer at greater rates than others due to unfortunate situations. A young man was killed here recently on his motorcycle; his mother burned to death in a car fire a couple of years ago. The father/husbands stands alone, shaking. A tragic woman in my bookclub lost a son and a husband within a year.
Now my morning running friend is going through myriad difficulties. We walked/ran this morning (due to injuries), and she poured out some of these ills. Life is tough for her; she's resilient, yet things are definitely steep.

Please, Lord, be the God of care and receive her prayers for light and blessings.

Leaning upwards

I should never feel guilty about floating around my flowers here at my lovely home. Yet last night at the Bible study I attend on Thursday, it struck me again how unfair life can be, and I'm glad for the beatitudes, promising good first to those who suffer here.

Many of the women struggle with poverty, addiction, racial, family issues which are foreign to me. When the sweet woman next to me, squirming baby in arms, tried to tell me about her DFS visit in order to find housing for herself with a drug record and an abusive man in her life, I could only listen and offer to pray. Sounds quite mild, although prayer is a rope.

The women just reminded me, though, of what is often distant to me: the trials of rising above circumstances, thick and heavy ones, the suffering. When I choose to draw near to it, and not just go to a more comfortable study in my affluent white church, I am made aware. It's difficult to be aware because pain isn't enjoyable to look at. It reminds me of the comment that Mary Sheehan, the anti-war mother who lost a son said recently that Americans are more interested in who wins American Idol than who is dying over in Iraq.

It's easier to look away and become distracted and indifferent. I came home last night with her baby's smell all over me, after taking turns with him. She's got an uphill to still press against. I pray for her and the other women there and ask for help in not avoiding how I can help. To not look away. To not become buried in my bounty.

The precious name of Jesus gives hope to us all. Amen.

Hensley

The fact of the turnoff, behind brushy hilly growth, materialized at the last minute, and I swung the wheel to the left, to the narrow gravel road, up a jot, to the drive, though the open ornate gate. A small rectangular really of a field. Could not have been more than 50 markers. I drove up a faded, grassy, gravelly lane to mine and spotted his face smiling above his sixteen year old shirt selection of a day, of an eternity. Wide white collar above a tan bodice with white sleeves. His hair feathered into style, longish in the back, wide wings. His eyes' sparkle hidden by the glaze, yet known to those who remembered, whom he loved. Including me, a young and everlasting girlfriend.

Old plastic blue dirty flowers were leaning over next to his stone, contrasting with the bright new Memorial Day attire of those next to him. I pushed in my bright yellow irises and saw a future mission. Where were his parents? I think they moved to Ohio. They haven't visited for a while. Am I the only local one left for him and this cold stone? Why is the cedar tree closely planted? What are the roots destroying down below? The practical questions when one suddenly becomes a steward again. And then it hit boldly: the short life, one unlived, the parent's dream cut short, the wreck, the sadness, the unfairness snuffing a bright spark.

My son and I drove on, up curvy Highway 5, where trucks sail away, where tears are blinked. Twenty-six years ago. It still appears to shock.

Laughing Song
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by,
When the air does laugh with our merry wit
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

When the meadows laugh with lively green
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing Ha, Ha, He;

When the painted birds laugh in the shade
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread,
Come live & be merry and join with me
To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, Ha, He.

William Blake

This week has caused a need for a laughing song. William Blake writes in his Songs of Innocence and Experience about the division within us : the reality of innocence blurbing out within a reality of experience and its grief and pain. There's both. We retreat again and again within us to a longing of a world without guns, to a place where there's laughing, and childhood awareness of joy. We need it now and always. We need a song about laughter, although we know the song of tears too.

May the hope of a future lessened burden of grief somehow land upon those who are deeply grieving over the loss of innocence which can never be erased from their experience. Amen.