“Is there anything you’ve learned during your years of suffering that’s been good for your faith in the Lord?”
The question from the interviewer wasn’t scripted, or at least, it wasn’t on the pre-written list of questions that are distributed to hosts before I’m interviewed on radio or podcast interviews. What you may not know about the world of Christian publishing is that part of your marketing plan includes a press kit sent from your publicist to numerous media outlets, complete with copies of your book, an author bio, and a list of questions (written by you) expressly for interviews. I’ve written the questions for all of my press kits, so most interviews cover very familiar, repetitive ground. And, since I wrote the books the questions revolve around, I can also talk about the books until we’re all bored.
Most of the time, the hosts stick to the questions or to slight variations thereof. But occasionally a host will go off script, and I actually love it when they do because I enjoy formatting and articulating answers in the moment. A decade of leading a weekly women’s Bible study around my kitchen table has taught me how to think quickly and root my answers in Scripture. The weekly expectation to be able to answer questions about the Bible on the spot has been some of the most valuable training I’ve ever had in my life. I love an on-the-spot question, and I don’t mind saying, “I’m not sure how to answer that. Give me a week to do some study and we’ll circle back to it.”
That approach doesn’t work quite so well for an interview though, especially a live one. So on this particular day, the off-script question needed to be answered concisely and quickly.
“Is there anything you’ve learned during your years of suffering that’s been good for your faith in the Lord?”
Boy, is there.
I could say so many things about who I was before an autoimmune disease started eating at my bones and who I am now with nearly twenty years of this condition behind me. I wouldn’t say I’m thankful for the pain I’ve learned to live with, but I am deeply thankful for the tool that pain became in order to make me who I am now. I’m thankful for the hands that held that tool so deftly, so carefully, so precisely, knowing how much I could take and how far to push. Kind hands. Sovereign hands. Trustworthy hands. His tools are sharp, but his hands are kind.
Before my disease onset, I’d already begun unraveling what I’d been taught about the Lord. You see, a chronic pain disease is not the first tool the Lord picked up to shape my faith. The first tool, the one that surprised me with its quick, sharp, definitive cuts was childlessness. The shock of infertility took my breath away. The persistence of it broke my heart.
Eventually, there were two adoptions. There were two boys who healed the cracks in my heart and showed me that family means all kinds of things besides blood. Between the two boys, though, my body started quietly rebelling. I didn’t know there was a gene that lived in my bones and connective tissue, a gene that my body would do its level best to annihilate. If you want to know what the definition of futility is, it’s your immune system attacking your skeletal system because it thinks your bones and connective tissue are dangerous enemies. It took six years to get a diagnosis for the crippling pain that destroyed my nights and wrecked my health. It took another seven years to find a treatment that worked.
“Is there anything you’ve learned during your years of suffering that’s been good for your faith in the Lord?”
In those thirteen years of unrelenting pain—of brain fog, skin rashes, digestive issues, muscle pain, joint pain, head pain, chest pain, bone pain—I did learn some things that were good for my faith. Here is what I learned: the Lord is with you.
I don’t mean a seen presence in the room, of course. Night after night, for years on end, I walked the floors in pain alone. I rotated ice and heat and tens therapy, standing, sitting, walking, crying, praying, doubting. So many nights alone I watched for the sunrise while my family slept in the dark hours. I waited for the long shadows of night to be absorbed by dawn, and I read my Bible. I was awake, always awake. So I read and read. I was hungry—so desperately hungry—to know if the things I’d always believed about God were true in the middle of the dark night of the body and soul.
“Who are you, Lord?” I’d ask him. “Show me.”
He’s with you. He loves you. He’s working. He’s keeping. He’s faithful. He’s sovereign. He’s holy. He’s good. He’s trustworthy. He’s with you, with you, with you. Pages and pages of Scripture, dotted with ink and smeared with tears—they taught me everything I know. Oh, how I love God’s Word. It has been the balm of Gilead on the darkest nights of my life.
___
I wonder sometimes, though—if not for the pain would I have been that desperate?
I can’t unwind the threads of God’s sovereign ways, but if I could find the thread marked “pain” and I snipped it, would I find another one in its place that leads to this kind of desperation? I don’t know the answer to that, and even if I spent a week studying, I’m still not sure if I’d know.
What I do know is that the Lord is good and he does good. And it was good that I was afflicted with the years of pain. How else would I have learned to run to his Word? How else would I have torn down the image of him I’d held in my mind’s eye and rebuilt it with actual Bible-born truth? How else would I have learned that I can live with pain if I can have Jesus in it? The thing is, we all want Job’s faith but without Job’s suffering. And I’m not sure that’s really possible. It was good that I was afflicted because that’s how I learned to love God’s Word. It’s how I learned that my compass wasn’t my heart but rather the Spirit who dwells there. It’s how I learned that God doesn’t waste suffering but produces perseverance and character and, best of all, hope.
“Is there anything you’ve learned during your years of suffering that’s been good for your faith in the Lord?”
Yeah, your favorite verse about him working all things together for good? Turns out, he’s really good at that. The Lord has dealt well with me, even with an incurable disease. Maybe because of an incurable disease. Twenty years ago, I recognized his shadow from a distance. Today I find shelter beneath it.
Teth
You have dealt well with your servant,
O LORD, according to your word.
Teach me good judgment and knowledge,
for I believe in your commandments.
Before I was afflicted, I went astray,
but now I keep your word.
The insolent smear me with lies,
but with my whole heart I keep your precepts;
their heart is unfeeling like fat,
but I delight in your law.
It is good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn your statues.
The law of your mouth is better to me
Than thousands of gold and silver pieces
Psalm 119:65-72
Author’s note:
This is the ninth essay in a series of reflections on Psalm 119. Each article bears the title of the stanza of the psalm from which it draws inspiration. This is 9 of 22.
