Suffering

The Right Perspective

In the most recent issue of The Lutheran Witness, Janet Frese reminds us to view our present suffering through the lens of vocation. She is writing specifically as the wife of a deployed chaplain, but, as is true with most Christian suffering, her words of wisdom apply to any cross we may bear, even the cross of barrenness.

Being separated during deployment is an enormous sacrifice. You become a situational single parent, bravely juggling a myriad of new roles while praying fervently for your spouse’s safe return…Putting deployment in the framework of vocation gives perspective to some of its challenges. Vocation is found in your present circumstances, in the here and now – not where you wish you could be. Parenting alone is difficult and certainly not ideal, but for the moment this is what God has given you to do. Serving the United States in the midst of war is both exhilarating and frightening, but this is the work that God has given your spouse to do at this time…[W]hile you wait for your loved one to return, remember that God does not leave you to fend for yourself. He has given you a community of believers, and He gives you a unique vocation through which to serve others.

You, in your barrenness, have a unique vocation through which to serve others. Yes, you do. It may not be the vocation of mother that you want, but your vocations of wife, daughter, sister, friend, babysitter, knitter, lawyer, or whatever are still distinct, special, singular, and specific to you.

If you are not sure what your present vocations are, simply look around and ask, “Where am I, and who is my neighbor?” Your answers to those two questions will make everything clear.

(To read Janet’s full article, snag a copy of the August 2012 issue of The Lutheran Witness.)

True Compassion

My husband drew my attention to an article in the most recent issue of Gottesdienst. Think on Rev. David Petersen’s words:

Compassion leads to action, but is not action. It is identification and suffering with the afflicted. The old saw “misery loves company” usually means we like to bring others down with us, but we might turn it around a bit. We might see the example of our Lord and recognize that compassion loves by joining misery. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15 ESV).

Compassion moves the compassionate to action eventually. That action is often material aid, practical assistance, or comfort to relieve the afflicted, or the proclamation of Law and then forgiveness and hope in Christ. But even before the action there is the sympathy and identification. Sometimes, maybe most times, those who are hurting need to hear and know that their hurt is valid and is also unjust. Strangely, it is comforting to know that our mental anguish, our sense of frustration, and our anger are legitimate reactions to a sinful and unjust world…

The first response to suffering isn’t a solution or a fix, but pain. This pain carries with it the realization that nothing afflicts any of us that is not common to man or that our Lord Himself did not endure in the greatest and most terrible measure. This is different from gratitude. It recognizes that it could have been us, such as we hear in the oft-used John Bradford line: “There but for the grace of God go I.” That is part of it, to be sure. But compassion is suffering that is felt in the heart and mind because someone else is suffering and shouldn’t be. They are like sheep without a shepherd. That sad plight moves the heart of the observer first to pity; then comes gratitude and action.*

* Petersen, David H. (Trinity 2012, Vol. 20, No. 1). “Praying for Pity’s Sake.” Gottesdienst: The Journal of the Lutheran Liturgy, 9-10.

Comfort Food

When I’m going through an especially rough patch, I eat. You know those times – waiting for test results, receiving “the call” about a friend’s new baby, being bombarded with questions about your family life, wondering when or if you’ll ever add to your family. In those moments, I rummage through my snack cupboard. (Yes, I’ve upgraded from a drawer to a cupboard.) I’ve eaten my share of chips and popcorn. I’ve licked the ice cream bucket clean. Then I feel guilty about eating all that stuff and finish off with some yogurt and blueberries.

While those food items may make me feel better momentarily, they don’t satisfy completely. Do you know what helps me even more? There’s food that satisfies even more than the salty and the sweet. It’s the Body and Blood of Christ. In Him is full and complete satisfaction. He gives me my daily recommended allowance and more. He knows exactly what I need to remain balanced and healthy. His food cleanses my body of sin and makes me whole again. I can have seconds and thirds and fourths. The Lord’s Supper is an unlimited food buffet. Now that’s comfort food.

Baby or No Baby

You’re okay. Really, you are. Baby or no baby.

(Yes, I’m talking to you.)

In fact, in Christ you are more than okay. You are victorious. You are made new. You are eternal. You are beloved. In Christ, you are fruitful with or without a genetic reproduction of yourself.

So, cast all of that stress and anxiety about having a baby on Him who gives you life, saves your life, and sustains your life. Put a towel over your mirror and give your reflection a break. (No peeking!) Let’s not gaze at our navels today. Instead, let’s rest beside still waters in those luscious, green pastures to which the Good Shepherd has led us.

He who restores your soul will tend to all of your needs and disappointments and sorrows and joys, right now and forevermore, baby or no baby.

I promise.

Why I Love Katie’s Book

How is it possible that Harriet Beecher Stowe never met Katie Schuermann? Perhaps Harriet was given the gift of prophesy…

“There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.”

-From Uncle Tom’s Cabin, pg.99

“Oh, Thou of Little Faith”

Question Submitted: I have been with my husband for 10 years now. To be honest we never used any type of sexual protection. I’ve been pregnant one time, very shortly, maybe for two weeks, and then I had a miscarriage. In 2009, and every year after, I have received prophetic words all from individuals who do not know that I was diagnosed with endometriosis, ovarian cysts, and an anteverted uterus. By faith I believe and speak that I am blessed through Christ Jesus. Therefore, I say I no longer have those diagnoses. Now, all have said the same thing, “The Lord is going to bless you and your husband with a child.” I believe it, have fasted and prayed and sought on the Lord concerning this. And, to God be the glory, He has given us revelation on the details of His will. He revealed that we are having a little girl and has even gave us a name. I have even seen what she will look like. Therefore, what is the issue?

What do you do when you get discouraged?

Growing up I didn’t desire to be a wife or mother, and then suddenly in 2008 the desire came along with all of the negative doctor reports. I know the desire to be a wife and mother is pleasing to my Lord and is from God, because, like never before, I have this wonderful & overwhelming desire to be a mother and to raise our children in holiness. Yet, discouragement creeps in, and this past week it came on hard. Insert a scene in which my husband is standing with a look of sheer helplessness as I stood in front of him crying, heaving, snot-nosed, shaking, emotional, with incomprehensible words spilling from my mouth. The only audible thing he heard was, “No one knows that even while I am up there leading praise and worship, I just want to cry, fall to my knees and cry, yet I don’t because I know my position requires me to minister to another at that moment…but it…(crying)…hurts…(crying)…sooo…oooh..oh.ooh(crying) bad…”

It was (to say the least) a moment that I know many who are waiting on the Lord to bless them have experienced from time to time. Yet sadly, I felt bad and called myself pathetic for not having faith and for allowing emotions to get the best of me. God had given me my visions of His will, therefore I should not be discouraged, right?

“oh thou of little faith..”

I said all this to ask: What do you do when you have done all that you know to do and are at a point where you feel so helpless that you are in a state of despair and close to giving up on the hope of having a child? I know that God is able and will bless, but how do you overcome the moments of impatience?

My dear sister in Christ, you are not of little faith. You are simply tired and worn out from bearing the weight of your cross of barrenness. It is exhausting to want something you haven’t been given, and it is even more taxing to put your trust in prophecies that have not yet come true. You are weary, my sister, not faithless.

Perhaps, some of your weariness comes from the task of discerning whether or not those prophecies and visions came from man or from God or from both? Perhaps your doubt is not in God but in whether or not the promise of motherhood is really from Him? I am not in a position to confirm whether or not those prophecies and visions concerning your own family life came from God, but I can tell you with assurance that God is not the only one who makes such prophecies and gives such visions. The devil, false prophets, and our sinful flesh are also eager to chime in with their own voices when it comes to the things we hear with our ears, see with our eyes, and feel in our hearts.

So, in what can we put our trust? We can put our trust and faith in the Word of God in Holy Scripture. That is the one, safe place where we can be certain that it is God’s voice we are hearing, not the devil’s. It is in His Word that God has most definitely revealed His will to you and your husband regarding what He has planned for your life, and you can put your faith in that even unto eternal life.

Here is the hard truth that comes from God’s Word: Outside of giving you the Child Jesus to save you from your sin, God has never promised in His Word to give you a child of your own.

Yet, God promises you so much more in His Word, and – Joy of all joys! – He keeps His promises. God promises to love you (John 3:16, Romans 5:8); God promises to save you from your sin (Matthew 1:20-21, Mark 16:16, Romans 6); God promises in baptism to adopt you into His family and make you an heir of heaven (Galatians 3:26-4:7); God promises to never leave you but to faithfully come to you in church through the reading of His Word and in the Holy Supper (Hebrews 13:5, Matthew 18:20, Exodus 20:24b, John 1:1, Matthew 26:26-29); God promises to provide all that you need to support this body and life (Matthew 6:30-32 and 10: 29-31, Colossians 1:17); and God promises to work all things, even your barrenness, for your eternal good (Romans 8:28).

You have asked me the question, what do I do when I have done all that I know to do and am at a point where I feel so helpless that I am in a state of despair and close to giving up on the hope of a child? I CRY, all snot-nosed and heaving like you described above, trusting in God’s promise to wipe away every tear on the last day; I CEASE putting my hope in things which God has not promised to me in His Word; I CLING in faith to the promises God has given me in His Word, namely, His promises to love me, save me, and never leave nor forsake me; I WAIT on Him in prayer, trusting that whatever He brings my way is for my eternal good; I SEEK first His kingdom and His righteousness, believing that God’s grace is sufficient for even childless, barren, little me; and, I REST in the knowledge that God loves me and cares for me in Jesus, even when I fail to do the things I just listed.

You are loved by God in Jesus, dear sister, just as you are, with or without a child. We don’t always get the things we want in this life, but we do get the things we need. God promises that for us in His Word, and you can trust that promise to come true.

So You Wanna Complain?

There’s a psalm for that. Yes, you can complain to God about your situation. This world is full of injustices, and barrenness is one of them. God is fully aware of our childless home; He knows the desires of our hearts. Thus, He invites us to bring our sorrows and hurts to Him. When we complain to God, we give evidence to our faith, that we know God is gracious and merciful to hear us and has the power to help us.

Even more, God tells us HOW to complain. There are psalms of lament in the book of Psalms. These psalms show us that it is good and right to complain to our heavenly Father. The very words to use in our complaints are given to us by God Himself.

So what’s in a psalm of lament? 1) a complaint to God about what has gone wrong and God’s failure to help 2) a plea to God for help 3) a confession of faith in God’s goodness 4) a promise of praise for God’s help

Psalm 13 demonstrates all four of these components.

Psalm 13

1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,

4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

6 I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

A psalm of lament gives voice to our sorrows and shows us how to complain. When our lives don’t go as planned, we hurt. It seems as if God has abandoned us, and that makes us angry. This is where Satan enters. He seeks to skew our vision and desires to turn us away from God. Instead, we run with those hurts and angers to Jesus. We unload it on Him, for He alone can take our anger and heal our hurts. Thus, God uses our anger to teach us to rely on Him for all of our needs, both of body and soul.

Share your feelings of sorrow, hurt, and anger with your pastor. Go to him; he is God’s man for you in your time of need. Your pastor will help you complain to God (He can give you a whole list of lament psalms) and will also comfort you with words of God’s grace and mercy.

So go ahead and complain. God wants to hear from you. In fact, He has given you the best words to use – His own.

Suffering

God Himself causes our suffering. He is not the cause of sin, mind you, but He is the cause of our suffering. [p.32] Those are the words of Dr. Gregory Schulz in his book The Problem of Suffering: A Father’s Hope.

As I read Dr. Schulz’s book, I began to think he had a window to my heart. As he shared the struggles of pain and suffering surrounding the death of two of his children, he asked why these things could happen. I asked that same question surrounding my barrenness. He wrote based on his experiences as a father and a husband. He asked why suffering happens. He questioned suffering in the world. I asked those very same things. Dr. Schulz pointed me to Jesus, the only relief from suffering.

We experience death, pain, sorrow, and grief. How can suffering come from God? Suffering is real. Suffering hurts. Suffering drives us to our knees. Suffering demonstrates to us that we are mortal. We cannot cure every disease. We cannot prevent death. We cannot administer the drug that takes away aches and pains.

No, our only relief lies in Jesus Christ. He took all of our sin sicknesses and sufferings and ingested them into Himself on the cross – for us. We are made holy in our baptisms. Once baptized, though, we are signed up for a lifetime of suffering.

There is great temptation to say that our suffering will come to a fairy-tale ending in this world. On the contrary, in this world we will have pain and sorrow. It would be foolish to insist that our suffering is going to have a glorious finish. This is a sinful world, and while we dwell in it, we will not be safe from sin. When the body and soul of the believer in Christ are united with Jesus, THEN all suffering will end. This is why we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “But deliver us from evil.” True relief is peace in Christ.

In this world, we will experience disappointment, heartache, death, miscarriage, and so much more. Take heart, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, you are not alone. Dr. Schulz writes: “…even the Gospel doesn’t give us absolute rest as long as we are away from home in this vale of tears. It can and does bring us the Good News of Jesus, the rest for our souls, but we still experience anger and anxiety.” [p.124] He continues: “My joy is not complete. It cannot be, until God grants us all a blessed reunion in heaven.” [p.125] God does not abandon you. He loves you, and He understands your suffering.

I commend this book to you. Grieve with Dr. Schulz. Live under the cross of Jesus until He takes you to Himself, where all suffering ends.

Incomplete Joy

On May 23 I sat in a rocking chair at a friend’s house and held a precious little girl in my arms and sang to her of Jesus’ love, Jesus’ lambs, the Lamb’s High Feast, and Simeon’s song, which boldly asks the Lord for a peaceful departure from this life. The very next day, on her first birthday, she died. It wasn’t a surprise–everyone knew that this was the likely outcome of her disease–yet it was tragic nonetheless. What once was here is no longer and there is heartache.

On May 28 I sat in a rocking chair in my own house and held a precious little boy in my arms and sang to him as well. In great irony and yet in God’s perfect timing, He chose to send our family new life in the midst of mourning another’s death. Although the wait seemed so long, when we received the phone call two weeks ago that there was finally a baby for us, we were in shock. What once was just a prayer had become a reality and is finally here and there is much joy.

You can imagine the rejoicing, no doubt. I won’t deny that we’ve had our blissful days. Yet behind it all is the knowledge, the grave reality, that it is not complete. I don’t mean that our family isn’t complete. Only God knows when that will be. I mean the joy is incomplete. Why? Doesn’t a baby make everything perfect? Isn’t it everything that I’ve always wanted? No, it isn’t.

I say it isn’t because I live in the Body of Christ, and when one suffers, all suffer. My friend just buried her daughter. I mourn with her and cry for her, even as I shed tears that come from watching my new son sleep. My arms, now sore from the new weight I’ve been carrying around, also ache for my family members and friends who continue to wait to hold their own gifts. As I pray prayers of thanksgiving for the blessed baptismal day that brought my son into God’s family, I simultaneously cry out for God’s mercy and intervention to stir the hearts of those I love who have rejected their own baptisms. Life and death, both physical and spiritual, continue to surround us all and permeate our daily experiences and relationships. The sun frequently peaks out from behind the clouds to give us a glimpe of the Light that will one day completely surround us, but the clouds never entirely float away.

Therefore, members of the Body of Christ do not move in and out of categories such as “the suffering,” “the blessed,” “the content,” “the afflicted.” We are one, and if we truly love one another we remain together, bearing one another’s burdens, joys, gifts and tragedies. The completeness comes at the end of the struggles, at the resurrection, and only then. This side of heaven there are times when we feel that our cup runneth over and there are times when our parched lips taste no relief. But the living waters flow freely between those mansions the Lord prepares for us, and I continue to long for the healing it will bring to the Body.

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11

I’ve been thinking of the hymn that starts, “Jesus has come and brings pleasure eternal, Alpha, Omega, Beginning and End,” (LSB 533). The wait for this family to be reunited with their child is just beginning. The wait for my family to be united with a second child has come to an end. I pray that the Alpha and Omega, our Lord Jesus, would grant our two families and all the Body of Christ the opportunity to walk this path of life together, focusing on His eternal pleasures, the full and complete joy that will most certainly be ours one day when the clouds all fade away and the Son shines in all His brilliance.

At Least

There are two words a barren woman loathes to hear:

“At least you don’t have children and can do whatever you want.”

“At least you don’t have to pay for babysitting.”

“At least you’re young and have lots of time to have children.”

“At least you have one child. That’s better than nothing.”

“At least you won’t have to wait long to adopt. I mean, who wouldn’t want you to parent their child?”

“At least now you know you can get pregnant.” (after losing a child through miscarriage)

These two, little words do the opposite of what you expect. They sting rather than soothe. They set up a natural comparison between God’s divinely distributed gifts which more often than naught leads the listener to covet rather than to be content. Even when these two words are offered with the best of intentions, they still man-handle the listener into seeing the world from the speaker’s perspective, and no one feels comforted after being face locked, gorilla pressed, and clover leafed.

All in favor of scrapping this phrase from interpersonal communications, raise your hand?