Death. How’s that for a dramatic opening? Sadly, I have lost count of the number of people I have witnessed dying. Initially, I was certain I wanted to remember every last one. For a time, I condemned myself when I had even a momentary lapse in my ability to recall names and details surrounding another loss of life. I suppose it is actually a mercy that I have been able to forget. At least in a way that I am not haunted by some of the tragic moments I have witnessed. Still, there are individuals and their loved ones that have impacted me in indelible ways. It’s their suffering that often lingers.
Sometimes their suffering is met with a tangible grace and a defiant joy. There have been life-giving moments in the face of death that seemed to push back the inevitable and hold a space for the divine. There is a purity and a weightiness in those moments that can’t be described. Still, I know, each time I have been invited into it, I’ve been changed. There are others whose lives have been cut short and there is simply nothing beautiful about it. There is a weightiness in those moments too. But, it's the kind that feels suffocating and no description will do it justice. Either way, at the risk of sounding syrupy, or maybe self-serving, I am grateful I get to show up for them, I am. I’m grateful I got to be the one whose life intersected with theirs even if the circumstances surrounding our encounter, was more often than not, something no one wanted to have happened.
Sometimes I wonder how it was I ended up being a chaplain to begin with. To be sure, there is a story behind it. For now, you’ll have to trust me when I say, I did not choose it, and I wanted to avoid it, I just couldn’t, so here I am. When asked, I have often described my vocation as the worst best job I have ever had. Entering into another’s life, at what is often their worst possible moment, and sometimes just breathing with them as their loved one takes their last breath, is a sacred privilege, it just is.
Being mortal, meeting death, is an inescapable reality. That being said, somehow the process of dying or sudden loss of life, often comes as an assault to the way we thought, or perhaps hoped, life would be. I have seen otherwise capable, intelligent, seemingly rational people, lose their ability to navigate the present upon hearing their loved one has passed. Death, our own mortality, as heavy and mystifying as the thought might be, speaks to a jarring disconnect between our reality and an innate knowing, in the soul of our DNA, that it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
A short time ago, a young woman barely into adulthood, bled out. A code crimson was called over the intercom. I had never heard one called before. I almost didn’t respond because it was not one of our codes that are listed on my badge, or one we regularly respond to. Honestly, I couldn’t even remember what it meant, but I went anyway. While every attempt was made to stop the blood loss, it just kept flowing unabated, pouring out from every cavity.
It was not long before the patient’s mom had to face the cold harsh reality that she was going to have to say goodbye to her only child. A child, who from a young age, was tormented each day by a fractured mind. A child, the shattered mom explained, who for the past 2 decades was on a hell-bent mission to quiet the unrelenting pain – and that morning it ended, at least for her loved one.
Of course, not all suffering is that tangible or graphic. Nor does it always impact others in such a life-altering way. And still, suffering, whether dramatic or imperceptible to those around us, is an unyielding adversary – at least that has been my experience.
Suffering … can be an unscrupulous brute or arrive in gentle waves that have the capacity to relentlessly undermine one’s equilibrium. It is an equal opportunity invader. Whether subtle or overwhelming, it can arise seemingly out of thin air and yet often has roots that are traceable, pervasive and interwoven into the fabric of one’s past. But, it is not content there…left unchecked it somehow manages to almost mockingly threaten one’s future.
We live in a culture that worships at the feet of convenience and comfort. We seek after quick fixes. We strive to eradicate the sins of the past by elevating contextual virtue and when that doesn’t right wrongs, we create safe spaces where the huddled masses are called to collectively suffer and compare wounds as they fester – our ways are not working. We live in a culture where certain kinds of suffering is shamed. Where mental illness is at best managed…at a distance. Where those in the throws of chaos and pain are modern-day lepers. And, in their despair, they are a blight on our shining cities and we are…bothered.
No doubt, one of the more perplexing caveats about suffering, in light of my theology, is that suffering is an existential reality permitted into one’s life by God. The same God who scripture tells us can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. That God. The one Whose word promises He withholds no good thing from us. The same God whose timing allowed for the suffering of Mary and Martha and wept Himself, before raising Lazarus. The same God who permitted John the Baptist…the one sent to prepare the Messiah’s way, to languish in prison before getting his head lopped off. The same One the Psalmist tells us is good and does good. And yet suffering persists…WHY? Many platitudes have been adorned on t-shirts and bookmarks that attempt to make that less favored truth palatable. I know, I have bought them in every color. They don’t work. But God…
...but God intended it for good... Gen 50:20
But God will redeem...Ps. 49:15
But God is the strength of my heart...Ps. 73:26
