When suffering comes to stay

My family and I are currently nomadic. Living on others’ couches, trailers, and mattresses, we are in transition. Originally from Vancouver, having lived overseas in East Africa for five years, we are now alighting temporarily in Ontario. It’s been painful and beautiful and confusing. We never intended to be nomadic. 

But even when we had a home, I felt like I was wandering. I’ve been, in fact, wandering for 13 years: wandering through endless sleepless nights. Ever since my first child of four was about three months old, I have relentlessly struggled with sleep.

When a condition like insomnia hits, you start by doing everything you can to figure it out. You see all the doctors, you take all the medicines, you do all the things one ought to do to fight it. It is foreign, it is terrifying, and, like an unwanted guest, you make every effort to throw it out.

But when illness or disease persists, when it stays and makes a home in your life, you have to face it instead of run away from it. As the dust settles, you start to have to wrestle with what your life is now and not with what you wish it should be.

For God is a God who is in the midst of what is. 

It is in that wandering space, through endless laments, that I have learned deep and abiding lessons. I share these lessons in a book I have penned recently called Waiting is the Night.

Let me share a few of them with you.

Envy & bitterness

When you are wandering, fighting your own or another’s chronic infirmity, illness, or disease, and you are waiting for answers, it is so easy to fall into envy. It’s so easy to compare and wish another’s reality for yourself. You didn’t choose this, you don’t deserve this, you want to fight it, and there are others who will simply not understand. Not only will they not understand, but they will not empathize with you, not really.  

And right there, waiting for you in that space, is envy.

It will always be there, ready for you to put it on, because we all have different struggles and pains in this life than others.  

Resisting envy comes from a deep and powerful place within you – the place where your trust is rooted. Does God really have good for you? Is God limited in the good things he can do for you or others? Will God have as much good for you as another? What if it doesn’t seem fair to you right now? What if it feels as if God owes you something better? 

When faced with envy, I was forced to look face to face at the areas of my own unbelief. God is able. God is enough. God will provide. God’s plans for me will be better than I imagine. God is trustworthy. Bitterness is a false relief. It feels good for a while to put bitterness on, but it only destroys your peace and your relationships.

Abandoning God

In the midst of our own disbelief about the reality of our lives, when we are rattled and worn, and pained that we are dealing with an illness or injury we never planned, we can also be tempted to give up on God.

We start to think that God is just simply gone. God has abandoned us in our circumstances and there is no way that God is the same as he was before all this has happened.

I had to reflect, during the worst bouts of my insomnia, on the many sufferers in Scripture: those who waited for God to do a miracle, and it didn’t come (yet). The waiting is relentless. It seems like it will never, never get better.

I was tempted to abandon God. I was tempted to give up and forget that God is still a miracle-working God. I was tempted to believe God will not come through. I was tempted to think that if God doesn’t heal that must mean he is not working. 

But even in the midst of suffering, God can still rebuild and renew. God can still restore and refine. When I abandoned my cause into God’s hands instead of abandoning him, God was able to carve a way forward for me through it.

I still struggle with insomnia, but I know now what it means to live moment-to-moment, to hang on to truths for my very salvation, and to trust God’s presence through the darkness of another long night. I have learned what it is to abandon my fears instead of abandoning God.

Making our own way

Often in our lives, boundaries are set for us that we wouldn’t have chosen: boundaries such as childlessness when we want children, singleness when we want a spouse, illness when we want to be healthy. 

We have limitations we are not comfortable with. When our nose is to the wall of a limitation we cannot break down, we feel the outrage. This is not as it ought to be! Aren’t we meant to be free? To be fulfilled?

We rush past the significance of our weaknesses and the power of God’s strength and seek a way to make it on our own strength. We so desperately don’t want to be limited that we find ways to be limitless. We spend more. We try to trade our bereft circumstances for dreams of other ways to be fulfilled. We’ve lost so much, so we deserve it, don’t we?

But God, in his mercy, rescues us from our own waywardness. He sits us down, faces our reality with us, salves our wounds, and reminds us that even though we are limited, we serve a limitless God. He can still use us. He can still use this for his glory and for our good. We need to trust, and wait, and be faithful with our experiences and watch God work.

Lament. Trust.  Abide.

Over the years I have learned many things on my knees, facing another relentless night of sleeplessness. But most profoundly for me is how God has used it to shape me as a person. I am a different nurse than I was before. I am a different mother. I am a different co-sufferer. I sit with the sorrowful more and offer fewer platitudes. I cry at the heavens with others, instead of offering pithy solutions. This world is a hard place and I know how hard it can be, but then I also know the goodness of God in a way I never did before. God is able to carry me, moment by moment, through the sleeplessness. God is able to bring meaning from desolation, purpose from loss, and joy from mourning. When I grieve and lament, God laments with me. When I let go, God holds on. And when I abide in him, I can face another sleepless night. Insomnia hasn’t had the final say.