Suffering

Last month, I started writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, and I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts.Today’s post asks us to consider all the ways people suffer.

I’m not in a mindset to write as much about suffering since I’ve seen my father’s suffering through illness and death so recently – and it has left some raw wounds not yet healed – but I am in a mindset of certainty that once the suffering is over, there is great reward and comfort in the arms of a loving Heavenly Father. I can imagine the desserts at the buffet are pretty tasty, too, and calorie-free, but I have appealed to the Lord to please ban Dad from the dessert table until we get his house and storage rooms cleaned out. I have a secret hope that there is a big screen TV in Heaven and he’s having to sit in a time-out chair and watch us clean it all out while all the other angels up there are swooning over the cakes and pies. We asked Dad so many times to please let us help him clean up and get some affairs sorted out, but we were always met with his insistence that he had it under control. And his attitude.

His definition of ‘under control’ and ours were on opposite ends of the spectrum. Nothing was under control. Most things in his house, health, mind, and world were, in fact, spinning out of control. This, too, I’m convinced, was all a part of his suffering in not being able to admit he could no longer function – – and having too much pride to accept the help he so desperately needed.

I’m convinced: we are all suffering. If we were to all sit in a circle and generate ideas about the order of the worst kinds of suffering, we might could gnaw all the meat off the bone with our stories.

And then, there is Romans 8:18: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. And herein lies a Haiku to remind us of this truth:

Amen.