God’s Megaphone

The conclusion I dread is not, “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like.” –C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Why does God allow children to get cancer? Where was he during the Holocaust? Why would a good, all-powerful God of love allow suffering? It’s a question as old as the written word — 2,500 years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, argued that a loving, sovereign God can’t exist in a world so full of suffering (or evil):

“Is God willing to prevent evil (or suffering), but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Anybody who has experienced suffering firsthand (everyone, in other words) knows this is not just some philosophical exercise to be bandied about in the hallowed halls of academia. It’s personal. It’s real. When my daughter was nineteen, just over twenty years ago, she was struck by some mysterious bug that inflamed her brain and spinal cord, leaving her an incomplete quadriplegic. I’d really like to know: How can my Jesus let my baby girl suffer so?

A few weeks ago, I came across a different slant on this ancient question in Brennan Manning’s The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus:

There is an intimate bond between the suffering of Christ and the conflict and suffering in each Christian life … Our Christian vocation is our heavenly Father’s invitation to enter into the sufferings of Jesus Christ … for the growth of others … We can say to the God of our dark journey, “For what it’s worth, here it is. Take it and use it. Use it for the hungry, the homeless, the lonely …”

I tried to resist Manning’s words at first. Asking Jesus why has never gotten me very far, and I’ve had plenty of occasions to ask as I’ve witnessed Michelle endure so much pain: endless kidney stones, pulmonary embolisms, and grave infections that put her in the ICU over and over again. All the days and months and years she has spent alone in her apartment, praying countless, unanswered prayers for healing as every typical milestone — finishing college, launching a career, getting married, having kids — passed her by. Why? All these years later, God is still keeping mum.

But Manning’s words kept bobbing to the surface of my consciousness these last few weeks, nagging at me to reconsider them, and so I have been turning them over in my mind. What if Michelle’s pain is being used for others? I have no idea how that might work, but what if it’s true?

***

Thanksgiving night my wife, Julie, and I are getting Michelle ready for bed, stepping in for her full-time aide, María, who has a rare day off. Michelle steers her power wheelchair into the bathroom and stops at a ninety-degree angle to the toilet. I fold the footrests up so her feet can touch the ground, and I undo her safety belt. I crouch down, wrap her in my arms, and count “one, two, three.” She lurches to her feet. I reach down to her bottom, lift her off the ground, and rotate her to line her up with the toilet.

“Are we good?” I ask Julie who is checking to see that Michelle is lined up with the toilet seat.

“Yes. That’s good,” Julie says. “You’re good.”

Julie pulls down Michelle’s sweats and peels off her disposable diaper, the pungent smell of urine filling the cramped space.

“OK, Michelle,” I say, “one, two, three …” She sits down, still wrapped in my arms, and I check to see how she is resting on the toilet. The left cheek of her bottom is hanging over the edge of the toilet seat.

“Hang on,” I say, lifting her a bit and torquing her hips to balance her out. I stand back up to check her again, holding her by her shoulders to keep her balanced. “OK, you’re good.”

Michelle nods and mouths a silent “thank you” to me.

“Got her?” I check with Julie who reaches out to hold her steady. Julie nods. I grab the walker and position it in front of Michelle so she can hold herself upright on the toilet. Julie and I leave the bathroom and I put the soiled diaper in a plastic trash bag to be taken to the dumpster when we leave. It’s like the first few years after Michelle got sick when she lived with us.

“How did we do this every day?” I ask.

“I have no idea,” Julie answers, rummaging around in Michelle’s bureau to find some pajamas.

“OK,” Michelle calls from the bathroom.

“Already?” Julie asks. “Such a quick pee-er!”

“Let me know when you’re ready for me,” I say.

“Oh, I will,” Julie says with a smile, as she heads back into the bathroom. “Don’t worry.”

I notice the top of the refrigerator is filthy, so I find a rag and some Windex under the sink and start to work. I’m only half-way done when Julie calls for me.

***

I am proud of the life Michelle has fought so hard to create for herself, but, sometimes, from up close, it just seems so God-damned difficult. Over the years, I’ve learned to lock away my grief and anger over Michelle’s plight, but that’s impossible when Julie and I step in to take care of her. I had hoped that Manning’s insight — Jesus uses our suffering to heal others — would offer me a bit of solace. I love the idea that Michelle’s suffering is helping people in ways I can’t even imagine. I pray it is true that Jesus is using her pain in that way. Every last bit of it.

But, honestly, it seems a poor trade.

Whatever Jesus is accomplishing through her pain can’t be worth the hell she has had to endure. It’s like the promise that God works all things together for our good (Rom 8:28). Though it’s a beautiful hope I cling to, it has never offered me much comfort when it comes to Michelle. I know Jesus loves Michelle, and I really do believe he is all powerful. So there has to be a very good reason her life has turned out the way it has. Right? Why else would he allow her to suffer so? For surely Jesus could find another way for her as easily as drawing a breath.

Yet he chooses not to.

And with that hard truth I have plunked back into the despair that awaits me every time I try to figure out how Jesus can just stand there, twiddling his thumbs, while Michelle’s suffering stretches on and on. More than twenty years in, the pain never goes away for long.

But I have learned a few things from suffering along the way. Each of us is going to have to come to terms with our own suffering. The meteor strikes, wiping out our former existence; the cancer comes back and it isn’t looking good; the tires don’t hold on the rain-slicked road; the person who was supposed to complete you takes off. The “before” where we were living offers us few tools to deal with the “after” we suddenly find ourselves in.

Over thirty years ago, I was diagnosed with Multicentric Castleman disease, a rare, allegedly fatal disease with no known treatment. After a couple of years of chemo and an experimental stem cell transplant, a remission took hold and I’ve been healthy ever since. My illness taught me well, not master to apostle but iron plow to soil, tilling me up and making me fertile ground for the itinerant teacher from Nazareth who walked his desert paths over two thousand years ago. The first thing I learned was that I had absolutely zero control over the things that really mattered, the things I’d always taken for granted: my health, my strong, young body, all the physical feats I was so proud of. It upended my identity. It was humbling.

My newly right-sized ego created space for a reservoir of empathy I never held before. I saw for the first time how universal suffering really is, the second lesson from my suffering, one I couldn’t appreciate until I was being put through the wringer myself. The fates hadn’t singled me out for an especially cruel treatment. Now that my eyes had been opened a bit, I could see others were enduring far worse every time I visited Stanford’s Oncology Department. I was able to let go of some of the emotion I’d attached to my predicament — it was so unfair, I was too young. Why me?! I was still terrified that I might die soon, of course, but my suffering became a little more tolerable because my perspective had shifted.[1]

Another thing my illness taught me was that, if we let it, suffering can bring us closer to God. As C. S. Lewis says, pain is God’s megaphone. Nobody reaches for God when everything is peachy keen. I was a young, hard-charging striver with an ego so overfed it took a fatal disease — a two-by-four to the head — to wake me up to the fact that I needed God. I was able to take my pain to Jesus (over and over and over again). Compelled to walk long miles with Jesus, our time together taught me how to love more deeply and widely. As Zosima tells Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, “All is Ocean. All flows and connects so powerfully that if, in this life, you manage to become more gracious by even a drop, it is better for every bird, child, and animal your life touches than you will ever know … Cherish this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to people!”[2] Suffering made me a better husband, father, son, brother, friend, boss, employee, neighbor, human being. Through me, Jesus brings a bit of his love to those in my small circle and, even though I reflect only the faintest glimmer of his light, Jesus’ love has power. I’ve seen Jesus use my suffering, as Manning suggests, to bring a bit of healing to others.

The final lesson, something I know for sure, is that I don’t have to suffer alone. I kept giving my struggles to Jesus (over and over and over again) and he kept showing up, calming me in the wee hours long before dawn, offering me a bit of rest whenever I drew near, slaking my thirsty soul with what he calls his living water. He refreshes me so whenever I invite him in.

I am grateful for my illness. It showed me the lie I was living — my entire life had been built on the assumption that I was in charge. It taught me where I am in the pecking order: way down at the bottom with no control over anything that really matters (yet, paradoxically, also treasured by the One who breathed two trillion galaxies into being). Suffering pushed me into the wide-open arms of Christ (“‘Bout time, buddy,” he must have thought), and he’s been with me every step of the way on this beautiful catastrophe of a life.

***

Getting Michelle into bed is a lengthy process — another transfer to her bed, a couch pillow covered with incontinence pads tucked beneath her knees, a hard foam pillow placed under her feet, triangle-shaped cushions wedged on either side of her, all her necessities set up where she can reach them with her good hand: morning pills, a ChapStick with the top off, cell phone, water bottle, TV remote, and iPad. We listen as she maps out every step, checking to make sure we’ve done it correctly before moving on to the next one. If we get something wrong, nobody is going to be around to fix it until the next morning when María returns.

When it’s time to say goodnight, I don’t want to go. I always hate leaving her alone in her darkened apartment. She is so vulnerable.

“You good?” I ask. She’s not “good” and never will be — the thought runs through me like the sudden thrust of a long pike. I fight to suppress this mean voice in my head, struggling to keep my happy face on for Michelle.

She smiles her beautiful smile and nods. I bend to give her a kiss. “Love you, sweet girl.” She says she loves me too. I will myself towards the door as Julie bends to kiss her good night.

“Love you, Michelle,” I call from the living room.

“Love you, too-ooo,” she answers in a sing-song voice, a call and response I cherish. I pick up the trash bag with the soiled diaper. Julie and I pause at the open front door, each of us calling out a final “I love you,” which she echoes back to us. I smile, wondering if Michelle is getting sick of all the I-love-yous. I close the door behind us and check to make sure it’s locked.

As I make my way down the hallway, I realized I didn’t finish cleaning the top of the refrigerator. An outsized surge of guilt flames up my neck and ears. I can see how disproportionate this reaction is. This is not about a dirty refrigerator; it is the smoldering shame flaring up again, the shame I carry over my failure to protect my baby girl from the hell that keeps raining down on her. I know this shame is irrational. Irrational and incredibly unhelpful. I know that a father can’t always keep his children safe in this world. Oh, Lord, I know that too well. But the visceral instinct to protect my daughter at all costs is howling in me with every step I take down the hallway. When it comes to Michelle, these waves of impotence and shame are not new, so I do what I always do, all that I can do — I turn her over to Jesus. Jesus, I pray as Julie and I walk to the car in silence, watch over her. Watch over my baby girl, Lord. Keep her safe.

***

Early the next morning I am up before dawn, sipping coffee at my desk. Manning’s book is open in front of me again. Still thinking about Michelle, I am tapping out my version of a psalm of lament into my journal on my laptop. The writers of the lament psalms felt bereft and alone, crying out, basically: where the hell are you God?! But I am sick of the grudge I have been holding against Jesus over the hand he and God dealt for Michelle. I don’t want this between us any longer.

Why do I still cling to the idea that life is supposed to be easier, anyway? What is it going to take to dissuade me of this lie? Jesus tells me what to expect and it’s not like he sugarcoats it: “In this world you will suffer …” (Jn 16:33). That’s pretty straightforward. And he ought to know, for he suffered so. He wasn’t real stoic about it, either, pleading with God to find another way at Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion, agonizing over his fate to the point of sweating blood. From the cross, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). If even Jesus fell on his face asking God to let him off the hook — the particular fate designed specifically for him as part of God’s good plan — maybe I should forgive myself for insisting on a Plan B for Michelle. Jesus hates pain and death. He must be as torn to pieces over Michelle’s suffering as I am.

This realization has a heft to it that makes me pause my typing. I don’t remember ever fully considering it. I would have thought that Jesus, secure in his knowledge of God’s Master Plan, would be tranquil and composed as he witnessed Michelle’s pain. But that doesn’t ring true. He must be as heartbroken as I am over Michelle’s decapitated life, cut short just as she was blooming into a strong, beautiful woman. I consider Manning’s book on my desk. I wonder — did Jesus deliver this book into my hands a few weeks ago to find a way to get through to me, to let me know he is suffering for Michelle, too?

For surely, we share a special love for our precious girl.

What a beautiful thought, filled with a hope that stuns me. I collapse into it, my vision blurring as I type thank you, thank you, thank you, across the page.

Maybe someday I will accept Michelle’s suffering with the enlightened detachment of a pious monk. I’m not counting on it. But maybe that’s OK. I don’t think enlightened detachment is what Jesus offers me. He wept and raged against suffering, but in the end said, “Thy will be done” (Mt 26:42), stepping into the howling void that awaited him. In the end, he released himself into the arms of his father with his last words, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46). In the end, he entered into his suffering and bore the pain for us all.

Maybe that’s what Manning is getting at; maybe I am meant to enter into suffering in the same way. Not in a holy, Christlike fashion (that is never going to happen) but with whatever acceptance and surrender I can muster up. And, unlike Jesus, left destitute on the cross, I don’t have to go there alone. Jesus is already there, his heart aching for Michelle and all of humanity.

If I bear my pain in all its fullness under the Christ’s sheltering wing, I enter into Jesus’ suffering and, in his suffering, there is healing — for me, for Michelle, and for all of this broken world.

[1] “Changing Our Relationships to Pain,” Victor M. Parachin

[2] “Cherish This Ecstasy,” David Duncan