Suffering Eclipsed

“When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish,
he will be satisfied.”

Ordinarily I start a piece by anchoring it in a vignette, specifically a personal narrative from my past. Today, though, I was struck by this quote from an ancient Jewish prophet. I’ve been reading the Bible more consistently over the past month and a half, beginning with choosing to follow along with a structured Advent devotional. I love December and the Christmas season, ranging from the trivial (our family fireplace mantle is flanked by two plush Christmas moose and we have altered the words to a Christmas classic – newly titled “Oh, Christmas Moose” – to pay them homage) to the profound (the idea that a first-century Jewish baby born to an obscure family in a backwater village could grow into a spiritual teacher whose ideas would leave an indelible mark on our collective understanding of the transcendent).

By the way, if that isn’t your cup of tea, I get it. There are a lot of reasons that the holiday season, and Christmas in particular, may not resonate with you. Depending on your religious or family background, Christmas could even bring up profoundly negative emotions. If that is you, please bear with me. I think the destination will make this Yuletide excursus worth your while.

I am in a season of life marked by profound and constant (though varied) pain, both physical and emotional, and felt that even to survive December I needed to luxuriate in the various ways that I derive meaning and joy from the season. For me, the narrative of the birth of Jesus is central. According to the ancient writers, his birth is the literal embodiment of love. God, who is love, chose to be born into the suffering of human existence, so that he could show his love to humanity. Leave aside for the moment whether you believe all of that – you must admit that it is a beautiful idea if it were true, right? Whether or not you will grant me that, it is an idea that gives me peace and joy, and I decided to lean into it as much as I could. So most days this Advent season, I followed along with the daily passages, reflections, and prayers. And it was refreshing and nourishing for me. I also found the structure and consistency to be regulating and stabilizing.

So I decided to carry the pattern into the New Year. I found a free devotional and have been following along (most days). Today’s reading was hard for me at first. Chapter 53 of Isaiah (written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus) is primarily about the ways in which Israel’s savior figure was going to suffer on behalf of his people. At first, as I lay here reading about the pain he would suffer, it only made my physical pain worse. The story of the Bible is that Jesus suffered in place of me (voluntarily), enduring pain on my behalf out of love for me. But while that love itself is encouraging, as I read those verses today, I couldn’t help but focus on and identify with the pain he felt. So that I didn’t initially experience the passage as uplifting or encouraging, but just… painful. It felt uncomfortable. I wanted to turn away.

But when I read the conclusion of the passage, the relief I felt was tangible:

“When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish,
he will be satisfied.”

In some ways, I struggle to elaborate on the words above, because they are already so meaningful. And they connect directly to what we are trying to accomplish here with Flourish, my wife and I. One of our main messages is that healing is possible, especially when employing the tools of neuroscience, behavioral science, and spiritual practices in concert. And knowing that healing is possible is so important. But healing from the pain is only half of the story. If anything, knowing that the pain is worth it is even more important, and harder to believe, if you have ever felt anything really painful. That’s why those words are so profound to me – because they address that deep question: “Is it worth it?” That deep longing for pain to be meaningful and purposeful, not capricious and random. Whether you come from a Christian background, another faith, or none at all, most of us know what it is to ask whether our pain has a point. That’s why it feels like this truth stands on its own, without my adding anything to it.

My mind, though, will not rest until I continue with this train of thought. I am fascinated by a connection between this passage, my own experience with pain, and the thoughts of some medieval Catholic mystics (I am not Catholic, but I am fairly ecumenical – if someone has a good idea I don’t much care what faith tradition it comes from). But in order to explain what I mean, I have to first talk about something hard that often accompanies chronic pain.

To begin with, I have to introduce a fairly brutal fact: if you are in enough pain for long enough, there is a good chance that your brain will offer up automatic thoughts about ending the struggle with pain by ending your life. This topic is incredibly emotionally charged and stigmatized, so I hesitate to bring it up, but talking about it openly is one way to loosen the stigma’s hold. It’s simply a fact that our brains will suggest this to us if we are in enough pain, whether emotional or physical. And learning that fact actually makes those thoughts much easier to cope with, because it means if you’re having those thoughts, there’s nothing wrong with you. This is just the automatic functioning of your brain, albeit in a way that is very unhelpful and difficult to handle. That said, if you’re in this place and you’re struggling, there is no shame in admitting your struggle or asking for help.

For others, the way they dismiss these thoughts might be different, but as I have wrestled with such thoughts, the easiest way for me to set them aside is to think about my family – my wife and sons – and the impact that my choices have on them. My sons, especially, need me. The role of a father is paramount in their lives and will be as long as they live, but especially now as they are becoming young men. I have other reasons to choose to dismiss those automatic thoughts, but I don’t need them. My sons are enough.

And that’s just what I see in this passage – Jesus’ children (spiritually speaking) are listed as one of the primary reasons that his suffering and death will be made worthwhile to him. And his family is described as emerging from his sacrifice – his children will be “born” because of his willingness to endure suffering. So the analogy is even more profound than what I experience as I resolve to stick around for my kids. This is where the medieval Catholic mystics come in. This analogy of childbirth jumped out at me because it reminded me of a note that I recently bumped into on Christian Substack that compares Jesus’ suffering to the pain of childbirth:

Cards on the table, I’m not sure what I think of the idea of Jesus’ side wound as a yonic symbol, and I won’t fault you if you find it odd or uncomfortable. But I agree with the larger point that there are beautiful parallels between childbirth and the account of Jesus’ suffering. It reminds me how Jesus himself used the analogy of childbirth when predicting his own suffering:

“It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world.”

What pain could be more worthwhile than the pain of childbirth? New life, at the cost of profound pain for the suffering parent. There is something beautiful too, about elevating what is expressly and exclusively a female experience by associating it with the divine. There are undoubtedly parts of the church that have elevated men over women and some that continue to do so. But if we closely examine Jesus’ heart towards women from the gospel accounts there can be no doubt how highly God regards his daughters and how much he treasures them. And the creation account suggests that women, in their femaleness, reflect something of the image of God in a way that is distinct and irreplaceable. Again, this feels like I’ve stumbled on something profound that doesn’t require any embellishment or explanation. And it speaks deeply to the question of whether my own suffering could ever be “worth it.”

I see it now – the worthwhileness of our suffering has everything to do with our impact on others, with what we accomplish on their behalf. That ties in profoundly to our deepest hopes for Flourish. If my pain is ultimately just about me, it is a small and insignificant fact in the broader accounting of things, even if it is much too large for me. And it just doesn’t feel worth it to feel so much pain if it has no significance outside of my subjective experience. But if my experience of pain and the lessons it has taught me could allow me to become a source of good in someone else’s life (or hopefully, many someone else’s) that would be worth it. I don’t know how to explain it, I just know that for me, it is deeply true. My hope is that our work at Flourish could speak to people from many spiritual and philosophical backgrounds who are asking what to do with their pain.

We all suffer. But what if our suffering could be worth more than just a lesson in reality? What if its meaning could be bigger even than ourselves? What if the beauty and love and life that emerges from it dwarfs and overshadows the pain, until it is only a distant memory, a faint scar?

“When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish,
he will be satisfied.”

This is the lesson that emerges to me from this passage, the medieval mystics, childbirth, and my own life: if you want your suffering to mean something, you must discover how to love others in and through your suffering. That means suffering on someone else’s behalf. I can see that most clearly in Jesus’ suffering or the pain of a mother in childbirth – they suffer so that the ones they love can have life (spiritual life in the one case, physical in the other).

For others of us, the path forward may not be so obvious, perhaps because there are many ways for us to love others in and through our pain. I see this in the suffering of people around me – physical pain, chronic illness, addiction, grief. I hate to say it, but before I experienced chronic pain I was less capable – and even less willing – to step into others’ experience of pain. My own pain has made me more attentive and more responsive to their pain. It enables me to better recognize their suffering, validate their experience, and express empathy. I can choose to love in and through my pain by choosing to be present and emotionally available amid the overwhelming urge to medicate, distract, or numb the pain away.

And you, dear reader – I hope to serve you in and through my pain. My hope is that talking about my experience of pain helps you in processing and dealing with whatever pain and suffering you experience. You too will have choices in your own pain, ways to love and serve others, even as your pain naturally draws your focus inward. I don’t feel qualified to exhort you to focus outward in those moments. Too many times I have succumbed to my natural tendency to focus on myself, on the intensity of my pain and the difficult emotional states it brings. But there’s no shame in failure, though it often feels that way. So despite my failures, I will exhort you. Choose to find meaning in your suffering by moving outward from your pain to reach out to those around you, offering mutual comfort and support. Suffer well, on behalf of others, and you will be satisfied by what is accomplished through your pain.

That’s the hope I’m clinging to in my own suffering, though I am still in the process of living it out, and it’s the blessing I want to speak over you as well. I hope, I pray, that this will be your experience. After all I’ve said, I must admit that I only see this truth dimly in my own experience. I have just enough clarity to take the next step. Let’s take that step together, expectantly. Let’s look outward from ourselves to seek meaning in our pain through our relationships and our impact on the lives of others. Let’s embrace our pain and seek to be satisfied with what is accomplished by it.