How do you hold suffering?
Why you've got to go through it for the deeper life
Thanksgiving is just around the bend and there is so much to be thankful for. But for many, there is a lot to grieve alongside the gratitude. There is a lot of suffering.
A favorite children's story, Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, features a family of kids who take off on an adventure that involves a river, mud, wavy grass, a snowstorm and eventually a bear. Throughout the book there is a refrain:
We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no! We've got to go through it!
I have always thought there is spiritual significance to the tale and the reality that in life there is hard stuff (the rivers, muds, snowstorms, and caves of life) that you can't get over or under, but instead, you've got to go through. I am not the only one who got this idea. Someone made the book into a short animated film with a layer of a girl processing grief "you've got to go through it."
You’ve got to go through it.
The book ends with the tragic realism and the comfort of family. You’ve got to go through it. People you love will be with you. But, the way of the deeper life of God does not end there only. All the suffering that comes your way can be used for your spiritual maturity and transformation into who you are created to be in God.
In our first experience with God, an invitation from Jesus comes to make our home in God through the comfort of the Holy Spirit. We have a sense of being known and loved as we have never been known and loved before. Either concurrently, or soon after, we have a growing conviction of our sin and the separation between God and ourselves. We recognize our need for holiness and repentance through the work of Jesus on the cross.
As we mature in Christ and our faith journey lengthen and deepens, we have opportunity to experience the deeper life in God through the cruciform door of the abandonment of the self in God. This invitation comes with both the fire of God in our Spirit—a strange warmth of the Presence as John Wesley famously said— but also from the taste of suffering on our lips.
Suffering and the full abandonment to Jesus are woven together as the work of grace in our lives. Human suffering (whether it is physical, grief, sorrow or emotional pain) is the doorway to the deeper work of God in our lives.
Why do I say "the" instead of "a"? Intentionally. The human condition is shot through with suffering whether it is our own personal story or our neighbors' story. If we have not tasted suffering, the door into the deeper life of abandonment to God will not open to us. We are not ready; our faith is too immature. Also, if we spend all of our days insulating ourselves from experiencing suffering or suffering others, we will be unlikely to walk through the door of abandonment to Jesus and the deeper life. Insulation and the deeper life do not go together. The earthly experience of the pain of this life, accompanied with our heartfelt desire for full abandonment to God is what moves us into the deeper life. Suffering is woven into the nature of the cross. To know Jesus is to fellowship in His suffering.
This is not to say that we desire suffering, willfully bring suffering upon us or another person, or that God makes us suffer. It is not to say that we should seek out suffering as some sort of higher experience. It is the opposite. God does not desire us to suffer, but uses what is as a doorway. But the human experience is to suffer because sin is in the world. Until all things are set right in God, this is unavoidable. Some people will suffer more, some will suffer less, but to be alive on this planet is to experience pain, loss and grief. But when it comes, suffering is the doorway to the deeper life in God.
James 1:2-4 tell us to "consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything". Maturity and completion in God are the work of the Spirit in us over time. The process of sanctification (full abandonment to God) is this journey of becoming so deeply human that we become who we are created to be in God.
There are times when we receive the hardship of life with strength and times when we receive it with weakness. In times of strength, we are buoyed up by our community, and the practices of prayer and fellowship will bring strength.
But sometimes we bear suffering with weakness. We feel lost to the dark that immerses us, the lives of people we love, or even the suffering of people geographically distanced from us. Instead of feeling strong, we feel overwhelmed with isolation, grief and pain.
Whether we bear suffering with strength or with weakness, it is there within the dark crucible in which the refining fire of the Spirit does the transforming work of the Cross in us and through us.
The test of our souls is not our ability to be "emotionally well enough" to deal with our reality. The test of the soul is not how much we can bear or how tough we can be.
The test of the soul is to Whom you are abandoning yourself to even in the darkest moment. The revelation of Jesus through abandonment to self in your soul will actually impress God’s being upon your being in time. This is the test and work of the soul—to become more like Jesus—through the power of the Holy Spirit.
George McDonald gives us a character story of a woman who is running for her life at night through a thick, dark forest. McDonald says something like, "and when the dawn came, she was surprised how far she has come." This is a picture of our maturity in Jesus when we emerge through a season of trial. We may feel lost, unmoored, and in the dark during the hard times, but when we continue to seek abandonment to Jesus in the midst, we can be confident that our soul will grow and mature. We will make it through to the other side.
Let me say this: some of us suffer with mental illness, memories of past trauma, and circumstances out of our control that keep us from feeling as though we ever “get through it.” While healing through the Spirit can and does happen (instanteously or over time), it is also true that some people never fully experience the feeling of the transformative grace of God in a way that seems like they “came through". This is not a comment on anyone's spiritual maturity. Perhaps instead, the person who seeks the deeper life of God without a breakthrough of seeing past the dark, may only be that much more hidden in God.
It’s worth it, this going through.
You’ve got to go through it.
But you are not alone, and the going through will take you to the deeper life in God. There is purpose and freedom ahead.
Timely encouragement, love everything you wove together.
I feel like you need to put all these posts in a book. Because I often print them out to go back to again. This is deep and powerful. Keeping this perspective redeems suffering. When you can consistently view your suffering as a doorway to intimacy with the Lord rather than a cruel burden to carry, you have robbed it of it's power to crush you. What the enemy of our souls means for our destruction, God gives us the power to transform. Every fiery dart of the evil one can become instead a stepping stone to deeper intimacy with the Lord. Thank you.