Suffering

It's 6am and I've been up for three hours, the consequence of coming off a long weekend of night shifts.  I read for a while, but as often happens to me, eventually I was driven to write.  And so here I am.

My hands are healing, I think, and my feet.  In retrospect I've been through this cycle a dozen times before and just didn't recognise it.  It matches what my neurologist told me about my disease.  It's a cyclic dance, led by demyelination, followed by damage to the axon, the long delicate wire of the nerve cell, as it loses its insulating myelin sheath.  I lose some function.  Then comes whatever healing the body can muster and some degree of functional improvement - all set against the relentless drumbeat of the disease state itself.  So I get worse, and then I get better, sort of.  What matters to me now is that I've crossed back over the invisible line that lets me use my right hand.  I can write again, so I can do my own paperwork at work.  I can hold a glass in my dominant hand without thinking about it.  I can put my car in gear without reaching across my body.  I can type a bit.  I'm definitely not back to normal.  I still wear a wrist brace (like this one) on the right about half the time since it's very fatiguing for me to control my wrist and fingers simultaneously.  I prefer to use a big silly-looking pen that's easier for me to grip.  I've switched my mouse to my left hand and don't plan to switch back.  And at this point I still can't really do repetitive tasks that require fine motor skills - scissors, suturing, chopping vegetables.  But it's so much better than it was.

Obviously it's going to get worse again eventually.

I've been thinking lately about suffering, and about God's purposes in allowing His children to suffer.  I have found myself crying out to Him this summer in confusion and pain.  Why, God?  Why this?  Why now?  Why my right hand, the hand I rely on?  Why should I suffer like this?  It's a hard question, and a nuanced one.  It's different from painfully pouring oneself out to serve others,  different from the direct and expected consequences of sin, different again from persecution for my faith.  This just... sucks.  It sucks every day.  And nothing I or anyone else did caused this.  I think the temptation is to see suffering as meaningless, just a random consequence of living in a broken, messed-up world, but Christians don't have that philosophical out.  We trust and believe that we have a personal God, one who cares for us and is invested in us.  So why the suffering?

Yesterday I sobbed through a talk given by Joni Eareckson Tada, a lady who is a staunch believer in Jesus, an author, speaker, and artist, and a quadriplegic since the age of 17.  I highly recommend that you listen to the talk, although if you're not dealing with personal hardship/ disability it may not resonate with you.  She confronts the endless gauntlet of her daily life (you'd better believe that being a sharp mind trapped in a useless body involves suffering) with a matter-of-fact courage that frightens me.  She does not spare anyone the harshness of truth.  I'll give you an example.  For anyone, but especially a quadriplegic, to say, There are better things than walking.  There are better things than the use of your hands, is deeply shocking, right?  But with reflection I've realised that of course that is true, especially for a Christian.  Jesus is better than anything.

The goodness of God is the truth that sustains a person through even the deepest darkness.  I thank her for reminding me of that.  Joni Eareckson Tada exemplifies for me the concept of suffering well, something she touches on in that talk.  It's hard for me to get my arms all the way around the idea, but I think it's a mixture of day-to-day grit and unswerving, joyful faith in a good God.  I don't know how to do it yet like she does (I'll grant that she's had fifty years to learn how to suffer well and I've had, like, two months).  But I think most people never learn how.  It's just not guaranteed.  And I think it's a lofty goal but a worthy one, this idea of suffering well as a Christian.  I have this disease.  There is no getting rid of it.  But to suffer well... if that is my race to run in this life, God grant that I might achieve that.