SUFFERING

I recently wrote the following letter to encourage friends of mine who are going through a difficult season of illness and caregiving. Perhaps you can relate and pass along your own uplifting thoughts and prayers. Names have been changed, but God will know exactly who it is you’re praying for.

 

NOT ALONE

Hi Jen. As yours and Fred’s good friends and shepherds in years gone by, on behalf of my late wife Dixie and me, I thank you for including me in sharing your life and the challenges you face right now. You’ve meant so much to us both over the years since first we watched you come to faith as followers of Jesus, and especially you, Jen, in your continued friendship with Dixie, long after our pastoral season together ended.

 

I’m sorry for this illness with which you are both dealing, not just Fred. This is a ‘together’ kind of experience, for the one needing care as well as the caregiver. And when weariness prevails, depression also slips in.

 

It may be hard to even pray, to believe, when the one you know and love, the one you’ve chosen to live with and share life with is suffering. That’s why, in times such as this, others of us who are Jesus’ followers and who know you well are here. To pray with and for you, to encourage and comfort you, to lift you up in whatever ways we can.

 

WHAT OTHER’S HAVE SAID

I cannot fully appreciate what you are going through because each one of life’s circumstances is unique, but I’m reminded of what Tim Keller says in Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering (perhaps quoting Corrie ten Boom who much earlier said the same thing): “You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”

 

And I’ve always loved the wisdom with which my wife, Dixie, wrote during her final months about walking in the shadowy valley—that for shadows to exist means the sun (the Son) is also here with us.

[1]

 

Victor Frankl, one who certainly understood suffering, wrote in one of my favorite books, Man’s Search for Meaning, “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”

 

And from Thomas Merton’s, The Seven Storey Mountain, “The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.”

 

Finally, it is Jesus in John 14:16-17 who promises: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (Italics mine).

 

THE HEALING POWER OF HUMORI

I hope these reflections are helpful, my very dear friends. And, Jen, you did ask for some humor to be shared if appropriate. Well, he was not always ‘appropriate,’ but he remains (along with Will Rogers) one of my favorite humorists, Mark Twain, who wrote: “There has been much tragedy in my life; at least half of it actually happened.”

 

Much love, prayers and blessings to you both.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1]Read Dixie Tanneberg’s compelling story in the memoir, Sacred Journey, a story of courage and grace, framed in her final 18-months of suffering with pancreatic cancer (Hartline Literary Group, 2016, available on Amazon.com).