Suffering: A Book Brief

10/31/09 Librarians are notorious for “book talking.” Therefore, I just have to tell you about a book I read yesterday, Grace Disguised, by Jerry Sittser. A book a day: One of the advantages of being horizontal and having no agenda.

This book, little in size but big in insight, was especially thought provoking for me as I was already contemplating the universality of suffering. His subtitle is “how the soul grows through loss.” Sittser gives credence to the transforming power of grace in the face of those losses that we all suffer. The loss of a life as we once knew it---before the catastrophe, job loss, divorce, terminal diagnosis, chronic illness or death of a loved one. These circumstances of loss or suffering happen to everyone---believer and non-believer alike. Pain is definitely no respecter of persons. It is our responses that make the difference.

Journal jottings:
Circumstances are not as important as what we do with those circumstances. But there is no prescribed/guaranteed way or timetable for facing our darkness and walking through it---it’s different for everyone.
You can’t quantify or compare suffering. Whether sudden death or a death to life as we once knew it that lingers until we die---what defined us as a person before, is no longer there to hang our hat on. It’s the “new normal” (MP term) and it’s hard. But God………..

Catastrophe interrupts the orderliness of life that I prefer. It puts a “sudden halt to business as usual.” (Sittser, p. 33) One of the worst aspects of loss/suffering is the sheer randomness of it. Quadriplegic and only in his 20s, two melanoma bouts and now Lyme disease, paralyzed and blind, MAC and breast cancer, uterine cancer, MS, Parkinson’s, MSA, strokes and sudden deaths from “routine” medical procedures, aneurisms…………….and these are just losses and sufferings of God’s faithful ones this past year in only my little realm of the world.

Even in loss and grief (suffering) we can still choose to embrace the miracle of the moment. (pleasant, present tense of life today) How? God’s grace---it’s a gift that is there for the taking.

It’s not what happens to us that matters as much as what happens in us. Sittser’s decision to face the darkness led to overwhelming pain but showed him that the experience of loss itself did not have to be the defining moment of his life----though it forever altered his life---instead the defining moment became his response to that loss. ”Darkness, it is true, has invaded my soul. But then again, so has light. Both contributed to my personal transformation.” (Sittser, p.45)

This is indeed a book for aching souls---those on hard journeys ---journeys that they never could have even imagined and wouldn’t have chosen. Yet, it is a reminder of the availability of God’s grace, not after the darkness of pain and suffering has passed, but even in the midst of it.