The Cancer Patient On Floor 5

I’ve thought a lot about the intersection of suffering and faith. They seem to meet each other in the middle of that road like a car crash. Disorienting, confusing even, meshed together.

You can’t live this life without suffering. We all face it. From “small” situations, to life changing situations. But during my time near those who have faced suffering, I began to notice that Christians have a hard time feeling their emotions while they suffer.

In the midst of suffering we say true theological statements, which is good. We want to remind ourselves and others of true promises from God. But when someone is suffering (or we ourselves are) and we recite “God has a plan”. What are we actually saying?

Yes, we believe God is in control and has a plan. What a beautiful truth that is when your life is falling apart! But I have seen these true statements lack the nuance necessary to allow people to both trust in its promise while also still feeling what they feel.

I struggled to put this into words until one day.

Wintery Morning At the hospital

During a shift as a hospital chaplain, I remember meeting with this older lady who had been re-diagnosed with cancer.

After you work in a hospital as a chaplain for a while, you learn to decipher when people are speaking to you a certain way because you're a chaplain.

One of the gifts that I tried to offer patients I saw, was a safe place to be honest about how they were really feeling. I didn’t force it, I simply gave them space and opened the door to honesty. It was up to them to enter. And it was ok if they didn’t.

I remember offering some questions that allowed her to be honest, I even gave her an example in my life where I was struggling trusting God, but honest about how it was hard and sad. She started to open up.

But anytime she said something remotely honest, like "I do trust God... but I'm really tired". Her sister would always interrupt and say "oh honey, remember the Lord is your strength". She had one of these spiritual responses to everything "negative".

I remember asking her sister if she was hungry and pointing her to the vending machine, maybe she could take a breather. When she left, the patient looked at me with tears in her eyes.

"Thank you. I know my sister loves me, and I do love God, but I just feel like I can't be honest with her because she has a spiritual answer for everything. She shuts me down and I just say those things to make her happy."

In that moment I realized, maybe some of us use spirituality as a wall or a block to feeling real emotions. Instead of a comfort for our real emotions.

Dual nature of Christian truth

The Psalms give us a blueprint for trusting the life-giving promises of God while still feeling what we feel.

Consider Psalm 40. David says both:

my iniquities have overtaken me,
and I cannot see…

My heart fails me.

and

You are my help and my deliverer;
do not delay, O my God!

David states how he feels:

For evils have encompassed me
beyond number;

and

your steadfast love and your faithfulness will
ever preserve me!

No Extremes

It’s easy for us to fall onto two extremes on this spectrum :

1- We slide into the extreme of fatalism, negative outlooks, and hopelessness.

Why? Because we only sit in our negative feelings. I’ve done this, it’s easy to do. Especially when life seems especially dark.

2- Or we slide into the extreme of Toxic positivity. Where we never feel any hard emotion or feeling, and we tell ourselves or others true Christian statements but use them in such a way that does not allow us to see suffering in reality. That it is hard. That we feel sad, hurt, angry, bitter, lost.

The balance

But like much of the Christian life, it is about the balance. Feel what you must feel. God designed our emotions. It is good for us to cry when we feel sad. It is ok and normal for human beings to feel down from time to time. Some days it is sunny. Some days it rains. The earth needs both. Blocking yourself from feeling does much harm. Did Jesus himself not cry?

It’s not good to bypass your emotions.

But we’ve also been given much hope from God. Not in a way that absolves our pain in this life, but hope that amidst the darkness, He is near and He is at work.

So we use the promises of God to encourage.

Feel what you must feel and then preach God’s promises to yourself. He meets us at the messy intersection of faith and suffering.

Navigating it with you

Josh.

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