The Beauty of Suffering

If you would have told me a couple of weeks ago that I would be spending ten days in the hospital, that my lung would collapse, not just once, but twice, that I would have two separate chest tubes put in that would cause excruciating pain, and that I would find myself absolutely GRATEFUL and OVERFLOWING WITH JOY because of it….I would have rolled my eyes and laughed in your face. You see, before any of this lung stuff happened, I was already feeling so discouraged and overwhelmed by my circumstances. I was so done with pain and sickness, and I just wanted to escape life. Or, more accurately, I felt uncomfortably out of place and longed to be picked up and put back in a life that resembled something more like my own.
I didn't realize it at the time, but when I agreed to submit to God and choose to do chemo, I was only "kind of" submitting. I was moving forward with my hands open, but really only just enough to say "yes" to God. I was willing, but I was not happy about it. I was willing, but I dreaded it. I was willing, but nothing in me actually believed that I would be able to get through it. I knew that pain and sickness and difficulty awaited me, but I was unwilling to spend much time contemplating it. I just kept telling David that it felt like I was mistakenly placed in someone else's life. Is seemed foreign and unpleasant.
Okay, so fast forward to my stay in the hospital. When I agreed to have my port placement surgery, it was based on the assumption that it would go smoothly and feel easy compared to my last two surgeries. So, imagine my frustration and surprise when this simple procedure punctured and collapsed my lung. In the 15 years that my surgeon has been performing this procedure, I was her very first patient to walk away from it with a punctured lung. I eased her guilt by letting her know that if it was going to happen to someone, I would expect for it to be me. It is merely up to par with everything else in my life as of late.
What I could not have known, however, is what a gift it would turn out to be. God, in His great wisdom, knew that it would be the very thing I needed most. It's hard to put into words exactly what it was that took place inside of my heart during those ten days in the hospital, but I will share it with you to the best of my ability.
So, being stuck in a hospital room for 10 days…not fun! Having your bed alarm turned on, so that you cannot even get up without calling someone for help…humbling, and not fun! Having chest tubes in your body…extremely painful (like flopping around in bed, wailing kind of painful)…also NOT FUN!
Now, had I been given the choice ahead of time; had someone come to me and said "well, we can puncture your lung for you so that it will collapse. Then you'll get to spend a week in the hospital and endure even more pain than you are experiencing now….or you can choose not experience any of that, and just go on with life the way it has always been", I would most certainly have chosen the latter. Who in their right mind would willing walk into such hardship? Not me! And yet, with chemo, I had the choice. I could have said no. In fact, most of you know I wanted to say NO! I wrestled so much with the fact that God was asking me to willingly walk into 20 weeks of sickness, fatigue, pain, and hair loss. All I could think about were the many things that I did not want to do. Thinking about them made me sad and scared and overwhelmed. To avoid these feelings, I kind of shut off a part of myself. I was just going through the motions and doing whatever I could to keep from feeling present. I did not want this to be my life, and so a part of me just pretended like it wasn't.
But you see, I had forgotten something so very important. I've known it for a long time, but for some reason, it just didn't feel true in this situation. God's truth, however, is always true. No matter the situation, it will never stop being true. Of course, I am not proud to admit that it took a collapsed lung and ten days in the hospital in order for me to remember it, but I am truly grateful that God went to such great lengths to remind me of it.
This is what is true: pain is never inflicted on us just for the sake of experiencing pain. We serve a God who is not only loving, but also a sovereign and powerful healer. With one touch of His robe, He could restore us, heal us, and take away our pain. But He understands something that most of us only get bits and pieces of, and it is this: there is great beauty in suffering. And when I say "beauty", I am not just talking about something pleasant or nice to look at. Instead, it is a powerful, life-altering beauty. It's the kind of beauty that causes your spirit to leap so high with joy that you can almost reach the heavens and feel the tangible presence of Christ himself.

During my long hospital stay, I had encounter after encounter of this transforming beauty. There were so many doctors, so many nurses, so many residents and med students that I got to share Christ's love with. One of the med students even told me how in awe she was of the joy that I clung to in the midst of this "shit storm" (her words, not mine). Then she sat at my bedside, held my hands, and we prayed together. Then we cried together.
And not only that, but the many ways that God allowed me to be touched and encouraged by others…it almost felt greedy to accept such an outpouring of God's goodness. The fact that Mark and Joni Williams would be in the same hospital, at the same time, just a couple of doors down from me….. who but God could have arranged such a masterpiece of circumstances and events?  The gift that this beautiful couple gave me was something that I would not have gotten very far without. They blessed me with, not only the will to fight, but the courage to stay present in the fight. In the same way that a runner, at the end of their sprint, passes off the baton to the person in front of them, Joni and Mark pried open my fingers and handed off the fight. Their suffering had given them the eyes to see what I was doing wrong and the permission to help me do it right.
And so, I say all of that to say this: somewhere along the line, I had forgotten that suffering was not the only thing that awaited me in this battle with cancer. Yes, there will be suffering, but beauty will always walk right alongside the suffering. And with that, perseverance and character and hope.
As miserable as my recent experience was, the beauty that accompanied it ended up being so much greater than the suffering itself. So much so, that I would do it all over again if asked.
There has never been a season in my life that was ALL bad ALL of the time. Goodness and beauty have always been intertwined with the bad. What caused me to forget that, I cannot say. But I realized that the reason why I felt so uncomfortably out of place in this journey, is because I was walking it with my hands just barely open. And here lies the problem: THAT IS NOT HOW I DO LIFE! I normally live life with my hands wide open, knowing that God will most certainly do great things in and through me. And so, of course, everything felt uncomfortable and foreign. Before, I was just waiting for chemo to get over with, so that I could start really living life again. By the end of my hospital stay, however, I professed to David that I could finally say that I no longer felt like I was living in someone else's life. Instead, I feel alive and present. And not just that, but I actually feel excited about what lies ahead; not so much the suffering, but rather the beauty that awaits me...burried deep in the trenches of my suffering. For this gift, I am truly grateful.