I remember a time in my teens when a woman just barely a generation older than me told me that most people suffer one great tragedy in their lives, and then they move on, wiser for the experience. I remember running a few of my life experiences past her and asking if she thought any would qualify. (To note: all would have qualified as “trauma” in today’s frame of reference.) In hindsight, I think she was too young to be making such sweeping observations. Life is full of peaks and valleys — moments of suffering, moments of celebration, and even a few sweet entire seasons of relative ordinariness.
Suffering will come. And it will come again. Wisdom tells us to be ready for suffering. It tells us that suffering is a part of life, and that we will be called upon to carry crosses that are quite heavy at times. To think one has had her fair share and that suffering has come and gone, never to return, is to be woefully ignorant of the realities of life. We prepare for suffering by staying connected to Our Lord, by seeking him even on the days when we have no furtive plea to beg. We encounter him in Scripture and learn to recognize his voice. We cultivate a habit of constant conversation, so that prayer when all is dark and hard is a conversation with a familiar friend. Mindful to live in the present, to not borrow trouble from the future, wisdom tells us to prepare for the time when suffering comes by building a scaffold of both contemplative faith and prayerful community.
When it comes, don’t shrink from it. The first impulse is to beg God to take the suffering away, to ask him to let the cup pass. And then there might be ranting and pleading and wailing when it seems like prayerful pleas fall on deaf ears. There is another way. With calm assurance that the Lord walks with you, open your eyes wide to the suffering that he allows particularly for you.
To learn to suffer well is to learn to live well.
Adversity is a school of discipline. Prosperity is a school of discipline. Both scenarios are spiritual crossroads. They tap into what is at your core and elicit a response. Chances are excellent that you have some garbage that needs to be routed out of your heart. You might be blissfully unaware of its existence. Pain will shine a light on it. So will success. It’s just a matter of time. The discipline happens when you reach the decision point: Accept that what you see is real, then make it the point of change. Transform your life. Renew your mind. Build on the insight afforded you. Both pain and prosperity afford you opportunities to be wiser about human nature — your own, and that of others.
Sometimes pain is the more effective teacher. There is a real danger that prosperity lulls one into believing that they can power through on their own. They grow further and further from God because their ego drives a wedge between them. It takes much longer to learn the lessons if prosperity is the teacher. Pain tends to drive us to our knees. There, we have the option to surrender to his providence with full faith and no small bit of courage. Or, we harden our hearts with bitterness toward answers we don’t want.
As Tolkien reminds us, suffering can darken our hearts or it can bring us wisdom. Prosperity can darken our hearts or it can bring us wisdom. Neither will leave you where you were. The question to ask yourself is, “Where do I want to go from here?”
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
