And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us
Suffering. Endurance. Character. Hope. This is a long chain of uncomfortable traits to endure before we get to Hope. Too long. I wish we could go from Suffering directly to Hope, but that’s not the way it works. At least not in my world, and not as Paul sees it.
Suffering is a great word, because it acknowledges both the external thing that caused the pain, as well as the internal reaction to that pain. There have been times when I’ve been faced with pretty minor inconveniences. A difficult situation at work, or an unpleasant boss. My suffering is great, mostly because of how I’ve responded to the unpleasantness. There are other times when the unpleasantness is significantly more dramatic; my sick loved one is hospitalized or put in jail because of their illness-induced behavior. My suffering is real.
And when I get to the place of suffering, all I can do is endure it. Sometimes the external problem goes away – the difficult situation at work clears up, or my loved one is released from jail. Until then, I endure. And sometimes, the situation does not resolve itself. My sick loved one will always be sick, and we will always have episodic crises for the rest of our lives. Thanks be to God, they’ve been relatively stable for the past six months, a record since the onset of the illness. The degree of my suffering is somewhat dependent upon those outside factors, but perhaps more dependent on how I react. And in all cases, I must endure the suffering.
And while enduring, I suppose it’s building character. Of all of these traits Paul delineates, this is the one I least like. To suggest that my suffering is building character hardly feels like a fair trade. I suppose character is something we should have, as it defines us, to both others and ourselves. But I don’t frequently think about my character. I tend more to think that it is what it is. I suspect my character has, however changed since I’ve suffered through my loved one’s illness. I just don’t think about it much.
What I do think about is the hope that results from the suffering and endurance. Living through two episodes of incarceration for my loved one and a dozen hospitalizations in the past three years makes me realize that each episode concludes. So while we are all experiencing the crisis, I am definitely suffering, but I’ve also got a greater amount of hope, having lived through previous crises. That makes the suffering easier.
As we experience suffering and live through it, we are being desensitized to the fatalist nature of suffering. Instead, we learn that we can survive and we begin to hope, in the midst of the suffering. Not that it’s any picnic, but through experience we know that we come out the other end.
In the middle of crises with my loved one, I find myself hanging on to the notion that there has never been a day that hasn’t ended much better than I’d feared. I always lay my head on my pillow knowing I endured, and I did my best. During the day and during the turmoil, I rest in that hope that I’ll reach that moment of pillow peace. And that sense of peace comes from God’s grace to get me to that feeling of hope. Again and again.
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