Suffering With HopeMuestra

Suffering with Others

Dealing with physical pain and its complexity often means acknowledging there are no quick solutions or formulas. Frequently, what the sufferer needs most is not answers but a loving presence and lasting commitment.

Both the sufferer and those who care for them need to be committed to faithful suffering. They are called to be full of faith in God and faithful to one another, even amid the challenges. They are called to tell the truth about the pain and hardships, even as they are faithful to point one another to Christ crucified and risen. For this to happen we need each other. It is not merely the caregiver who always upholds the wounded one. Far more often than is readily admitted, the one in pain brings courage and perseverance to the caregivers: it is most definitely not a one-way street. Each has gifts to offer and gifts to receive. This dynamic must be recognized and honored if there is going to be genuine love and care over an extended period of time. Normally this is not a short-term sprint but an exhausting marathon.  

Commitment is not a popular word these days, weighted down with images of unwelcome duties, drudgery, boredom, and limiting one’s options. Counterintuitively, commitment often works in the opposite direction. Commitment can take the agony out of making a decision: the decision is made, so one gets on with it. And this commitment—that of a sufferer and a companion, and in some ways of the larger community—requires that they ask what faithfulness requires. 

Much of the emotional anguish of suffering (as with the rest of life) comes from taking on a burden that isn’t ours. The would-be helpers have taken on the burden of curing the pain, and they can’t deal with their failure to cure it. But what is our true burden, the yoke that Christ gives us? To love God and love each other. This will be difficult enough without adding burdens that are not ours. So, a true commitment of sufferer and companion(s) to each other entails a continuing investigation of God’s work in this suffering. It will entail continuing pain, and it may last for years or a lifetime. 

From Embodied Hope by Kelly M. Kapic.