I’ve never even met Kara, but her willingness to share her
story has profoundly impacted my life. I love how God can take a child of His
who is simply willing to tell others what He is teaching her, and multiply the
fruit. Maybe someday Kara will know how many people’s lives her story touched.
I don’t have a lot of followers on my blog and I haven’t written a book, but
God is revealing Himself to me, gentle and glorious and far too wonderful for
me to keep to myself.
For a long time after my dad died, I struggled – not even
with the death as much as with the suffering that came before. Diabetes.
Dialysis. Multiple surgeries, including two leg amputations. And always the
sickness. So much of what he loved was taken away from him. I suppose part of
the beauty of suffering is that it helps you see death as the ultimate release
from bondage. A most precious gift of mercy. He is free from the suffering now,
and for that I am grateful.
So I struggled not with the why of his death, but the why of
his suffering. In an earlier post, I wrote about feeling like somehow my dad
deserved better than that. After all, he served God his entire life. What God
taught me was that the suffering, the sickness, the loss of independence, the
need to let others “do” for him – all of this was meant to bring my dad to a
place where there was no more self-sufficiency, but only God.
Still, there’s a difference between seeing the good that
comes from suffering, and finding beauty in the suffering.
Nine months ago, I sat across from a neurologist with my mom
and asked the question, “Can she get better?” The answer was a sad shake of the
doctor’s head.
At that time, we didn’t even know the extent of her illness.
Test after test came back inconclusive. At one point, one doctor said to us, “I
know something’s wrong, I just don’t know what it is.” We seemed to be hearing
that a lot. Meanwhile, she was quickly losing her ability to communicate, to
swallow without choking, to remember and understand things. And when the
physical weakness started, that’s when they knew. Frontotemporal Dementia with
ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
I have watched my mom fade until some days it’s hard to
remember she is the same woman who used to lift my dad’s heavy wheelchair in
and out of the car trunk on an almost-daily basis. The same woman who cared for
everyone else’s needs and rarely allowed a moment of weakness to show. Dad was
the emotional one; she was the strong one. Only Dementia and ALS are
aggressively taking her strength away. And
I have asked the same why questions all over again.
Then, a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a blog called “MundaneFaithfulness,” by this amazing woman of faith named Kara Tippetts. I bought her
book called The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard. And
God has used Kara’s honest words about her struggle with stage IV cancer as a
30-something mother of four to change my perspective on suffering.
“What if our journey was intimately planned to be hard, and
that story is the good story?” Kara asks. “What if the glow of prosperity isn’t
a glow at all but a unique stink? What if suffering isn’t to be avoided but
received and embraced?”
And we know that for those who love God all
things work together for good, for those who are called according to his
purpose. –Romans 8:28
I’ve always known God never promised a life
free of suffering. Accepting Christ as your Savior isn’t a magic ticket to a
pain-free life. In fact, it’s the opposite. Suffering and death entered the
world the moment man made the choice to sin. As a result, they are two things
that are guaranteed in this life.
But I missed the full meaning of this verse
until I read Kara’s words. I’ve always taken this verse to mean God works
through the pain, the suffering, the messed up “hard” of life and brings something
good out of it. But what if the good isn’t just the end result? What if the
suffering itself is part of the good?
“No one ever imagines disease, heartbreak,
and horror in their story,” Kara writes. “But the God I know, the sovereign God
of the Bible, knows well my story of suffering and offers Himself at every
turn. If the honesty with which I tell my story were the limitation of His
strength, well, I would be utterly screwed. But imagine if He were intimately
involved in my story, which He is. Imagine if He showed Himself in my hard,
which He did, and what if the hard of my story is the beautiful redemption of
my today? Could suffering then take on a different hue? Could the coloring of
the hard not be so dark, so hateful and gloomy? The well-meaning e-mails that
admonish the way I speak about my story cause me to wonder at the depth of
grace that can be understood without the presence of God in the midst of our
suffering. If our hard is the absence of a good God, then how can anyone walk
in faith?”
My family and I have opportunities to serve
my mom in ways we never would if disease was not robbing her of her strength. I
don’t always know if she understands the things I’m saying to her, but I know
without a doubt she understands the unconditional love with which I meet her
every time I visit her at my sister’s house. I know she understands that same
love from my sister as she does for my mom what my mom never thought another person
would have to do for her. Beauty in suffering.
Today I met a lady at the bank who
remembered my dad coming in to do their banking. The two things she remembered
about him? He had lost a leg, and he was a kind-hearted man. As I left, she
told me she was praying for my family. Beauty in suffering.
Look again at the last four words of Romans
8:28: “according to His purpose.” The most incredible part of His purpose for
me includes His beloved Son, bloodied, bruised, and battered, hanging on a
cross and taking my punishment. He took the suffering upon Himself that was too
great for me to bear. Any suffering I or my loved ones may endure in this life
only helps us to identify with Christ, to share in His suffering on the cross, and to bask in the love of a Father who holds us close enough to hear His heartbeat through it all.
That is a love I cannot fathom. A love for which I am overwhelmed with
gratitude. A love that makes suffering truly beautiful.
I want to leave you with a few more of Kara’s
words:
“Your story is a good story. In the grief,
pain, and hard, the Author has a plan. It may feel like a desperate breaking of
your very heart, but suffering is not the absence of God or good.”
“My hope is not in the absence of suffering and comfort returned. My hope is in the presence of the One who promises never to leave or forsake, the One who declares nothing ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God’ (Rom. 8:39). Nothing.”
“My hope is not in the absence of suffering and comfort returned. My hope is in the presence of the One who promises never to leave or forsake, the One who declares nothing ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God’ (Rom. 8:39). Nothing.”
