Follow-up Questions on "Does God Will or Need our Suffering?"

[[Dear Sister Laurel, at the beginning of the year (January 26, 2025 Does God Will or Need our Suffering?) you wrote, "What you are looking at in your Dx is both a terrible uncertainty and an equally terrible certainty. I will certainly pray for you, and I ask that you pray for me as well. At the same time, I encourage you to do all you can to refuse to allow your diagnosis to take over your identity. This would be the worst kind of betrayal of either yourself or of God. God has made you much more than your illness and he has called you to witness to the power of his creative love. I think that is the only way to really manage serious chronic illnesses. We must find and witness to the larger hope to which we are called --- the larger life, meaning, and purpose that allows even suffering to be transfigured in Christ. " 

I wanted to thank you for this comment because I have struggled with chronic pain so much that sometimes it feels like it is just swallowing up my whole being. My doctors have urged me to not let this happen, and I have shared what you wrote about this. They agree, though they wouldn't use the language of a betrayal of God like you do. But pain has changed me, and it often seems to be the only thing I know or can see or feel. It affects everything, so how do I hold onto my identity? I am not who I once was before my Dx; I am not who I want to be or was trained to be. I think I am not even who God created me to be. How do I keep from losing my identity altogether and letting myself be swallowed up in my pain?. . .]]

Wow! Thanks for saying this yourself, and for your really excellent questions!! I understand firsthand what you are asking about and have struggled in some of the same ways. I will say that one of the ways having a spiritual director is helpful is the way they can help us maintain perspective when we are unable to see clearly because of whatever it is we are suffering or that is otherwise going on. When I work with clients, I sometimes use the image of the director seeing more of the forest when the client is only able to see the trees (or a single tree or two!). Sometimes we joke together about having one's nose stuck in a particular knothole that one can only see that much of the world around them, or themselves, for that matter! Thus, the SD can usually see the forest more clearly in some ways, and that can be immensely helpful. So let me reflect back to you some of what I see from what you have written.

The first thing I see from all you have written and in almost every sentence is the distinction between you (I, me) and your illness and pain. You have changed. Pain is almost the only thing YOU know or see. "I am not who I once was." "I think I am not even who God created me to be," etc. In each of these sentences, you stand as a person struggling with something that is an intimate and significant part of your life, but which is also NOT you. It causes you pain, yes, and it also causes you to be uncomfortable with what it is tending towards, namely, swallowing up your identity. But you see, you are uncomfortable with this and are concerned by its possibility; you are speaking about the difficulties it brings in its wake. It is NOT YOU, nor do you want to allow it to become you!! All of that underscores that your suffering is something you experience AND, at the same time, is not YOU. I think it is critical that you hold onto this piece of truth. It is fundamental and is the basis for any choice you may make in the future about yourself and who you will be despite your suffering.

The second thing I see from what you have written is some of your grief and loss. These are real and substantial, and I am really sorry that suffering has made these a reality for you. You have lost a self-image that helped you negotiate the present and determine who you would be in the future. It helped you to decide on and secure training and education. It helped you dream about possibilities for yourself and the world you touched. It was part of who you were, yes, I get that. But it was only a PART of who you were and also, as a memory, who you are now.  You still have your training and education, your memories; all of these things (and more) make you who you are in the present. You still have the values that made you seek training and/or education in the first place, for instance. You are a person who grieves the loss of important aspects of yourself in the past, yet you are more than these at the same time. The fact that you were more than these and sought them out to help you be who you were in concrete ways hasn't changed. You are still more than these things, and though you have new limits, your deepest potentialities have not been lost. Yes, you are called to live these potentialities in a different way than you once envisioned, but the potentialities of your personhood themselves have not been lost. By all means, recognize and grieve what has been lost, but don't mistake it for the deeper reality you still are and are called to live in new ways.

The third thing I see or hear from what you have written is that you are a seeker. You have faith. This means you are open to life, to newness, and to the God of life and meaning who comes new to us at every moment. In my own experience, chronic illness and pain, especially, challenge us to develop our theologies of and relationship with God. Both are critical if we are to develop the new self-image and most foundational confidence in ourselves that is rooted in God and the grace of God. If our theology is flawed, so will our relationship with God be flawed (and vice versa); if our relationship with God is flawed or inadequate, so will be our self-image or self-concept. Each of these interrelated pieces affects the other. The situation you find yourself in today requires you to develop (or adopt and personally integrate) a theology that has room for weakness, limits, and even flaws and failure, without betraying the Creator God of love or your own commitment to life in the process. 

What I am especially thinking of here is avoiding a theology where God (and/or personal sin) is/are made responsible for your illness or pain. God does not will your suffering and is not the source of it. (Unless you have done something to harm yourself as part of what you are now suffering, neither is your own personal sinfulness.) What God does will is to be present with you in your suffering in a way that can transfigure it and the whole of your life into a source of blessing and even joy. Your own faith can be a source of real comfort, consolation, and encouragement in the strongest sense of that word, but it cannot be that if God is distorted into the source or reason for your suffering. When that happens, we tend to feel an at-least-unconscious resentment toward God, and the legs are cut out from under genuine faith which is a profound form of trust. 

When you ask how you keep from having your identity swallowed up by the reality of your pain, my immediate response is to remember and keep reminding yourself who you are and are called to be, both despite and also in the pain. Your pain may be a redwood-sized tree in the middle of a forest of bonsais, but the forest is real and (forgive my mixed metaphors) while the redwood dominates everything, attention to the other parts of the forest will reveal real beauty and life you can cultivate that is every bit as valuable as any you may have lost. Also, I would really encourage you to find someone you can trust to talk with regularly, someone who can maintain a healthy perspective and help you to do the same. As noted above, if there is someone nearby who does spiritual direction, talking with them about this exact thing can be really helpful. Accompaniment, another way of speaking about spiritual direction, refers to traveling with someone on their life journey and providing ways to assist them to keep on their God-given path in spite of all of life's obstacles, limitations, and barriers.

There are many images in Scripture that are helpful to those who suffer from chronic illness, as you are. Two of my favorites include the reminder that we are earthen vessels holding a treasure. God continues to delight in you and to know the treasure you are, despite the earthen vessel's fragility and tendency to brokenness. The second is also from Paul and is something I use as the motto of my religious life, namely "My (God's) grace is sufficient for you, my (God's) power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor 12:8-9) These are the essential truths of a transcendent God who chose incarnation as the way to reveal Godself most fully and exhaustively. They express both the value of our lives to God and the limitations to which we are subject. They reflect the lessons you are learning now and the lessons your own life will teach others as you are faithful to your call. Pain will not prevent that, or at least, it need not!

The key to remaining and growing as the person God has made you to be is remembering both parts of the various distinctions I drew above, namely that YOU are not your pain, YOU are not your diagnosis, YOU are not even your self-image, etc. You are far more than these, even when they fill your vision and your body with pain, disappointment, grief, and so forth. If the quotations I provided above are helpful in staying in touch with the whole truth, use those. Remind yourself of the various things the Scriptures also say about us, namely, that we are precious to God, that we are imago dei and Temples of the Holy Spirit. Sit in quiet prayer whenever you can do that and allow yourself to get in touch with what is deeper than the pain and loss, deeper than whatever dehumanizing seems to have occurred, deeper than any mere self-image. Traveling with and in God to these really deep places can put you in touch not only with the God who created and loves you, but with the Self you are most truly. Anything in your daily life that puts you in touch with who you really are most profoundly can also be used to empower and strengthen you if you approach it mindfully, so please let yourself do that.

One final suggestion I have has to do with the idea that chronic illness and disability can be a vocation, a call by God that serves the Church. It does this not by focusing on, or letting oneself be known mainly for the illness, disability, or associated sufferings, but by witnessing to the God who redeems these things and gives them meaning despite not having willed them in the first place. Consider that perhaps this is something God is calling you to, that is, to a life with and in God that puts the suffering in the background (or, better, in the shade!) and focuses everyone's attention on the life and meaning God has created you to express and reveal to the world in this way. This would be your unique way of proclaiming the Gospel. Your suffering is real and important, and at the same time, it needs to be redeemed, that is, given a new meaning and value by the God of life. Consider that you might be being called to do and be this for the sake of the Church. While other Scriptural texts will also speak to you, let the Beatitudes be what you try in your life to give full witness to!! Each of these really is a matter of holding both sides of the truth you have expressed together. In and despite your suffering, let yourself both be blessed by God and appreciate the blessing you are to the Church and world!

Know that I hold you in prayer. May Christ's peace be with you!!