Where There Is Pain, There is Jesus

I was standing alone at the grocery store when I found out I had Appendix Cancer. The burden of having to tell the people I love something so awful weighed on me very heavily – even in that singular moment. It still does and I don’t want to be associated hurtful and sad things. There is a sense of guilt and shame that sits in my heart, as though I have done something terrible. I feel it when I find myself in the throes of deep physical pain and my children have to bear witness. I don’t want them to see this side of me and the guilt is unbearable…on top of that pain. Logically I know it isn’t true, but it feels the same way. It is a difficult thing to explain and I am trying to learn to stop carrying it. And yet, if there is anything in this story that Jesus is writing through this chapter in my life, we all have to learn to hold both the hard and painful things alongside the wonderful and happy things. My children included. I can’t and I shouldn’t protect them from hard things in life. The truth is plain and simple: Life is hard. Lately, the things Jesus says and does in the gospels just hit differently when life has been pared down to simple, visceral…survival.

Pain. I have never been so familiar with it as I am today. It has always been a fleeting thing that comes and goes. I have been battling pain since it first sent me to the hospital last April. The week before Christmas, I hopped on a plane with my family to go home for the holiday. I was looking forward to seeing my parents, my brother and his family, and friends from my childhood. But by the time I stood up to get off the airplane, something shifted with this cancer taking over my body. I have been in and out of the hospital trying to manage pain and complications ever since stepping off that flight. Pain only hits harder the longer this cancer has time to spread and grow. There are times when I simply cannot see or feel anything except pain and now if I want any relief at all, I must be on multiple pain medications 24 hours a day.

Last night, I found my body encased in so much pain despite the medications, I simply cried as I climbed into my bed. I picked up my Bible and my two devotional books ( “My Utmost For His Highest” by Oswald Chambers and “Upon Waking” by Jackie Hill Perry) and through my tears, I began to read out loud. I find myself paying very close attention to what Jesus does, says, and asks these days. In John 13, Jesus was having dinner with his disciples when he stood up, took off his clothes, wrapped a towel around his waist, and began washing his disciples’ feet. A very necessary but dirty task meant for lowly servants to do. Peter argued with Jesus about it: “Jesus, you shall never wash my feet…”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

Jesus finished washing the disciples’ feet, he put his clothes back on and returned to where he had been sitting. And as I read the next sentence out loud, Jesus asked both the disciples of 2,000 years ago and he asked me here and now:

“Do you understand what I have done for you?…”

And my heart broke into 1,000 pieces as I answered, “I just don’t know.”

And we sat in that space for a few minutes. I continued reading and some things began to crystalize in my mind. Sometimes I cannot see for the pain. But Jesus comes near when I cannot lift my eyes. God doesn’t need us to reach hard enough for him, or make ourselves worthy…he comes to us. He understands our humanity perfectly and declared it was good from the very beginning. Instead, Jesus stepped out of the glory of the heavenly realms and humbled himself, coming as a baby to a poverty stricken family in the desert. He took off his clothes and got down on his knees to wash his disciples’ feet. He endured the shame and torturous death of a common criminal so I may live even after my body dies.

So, even as my body suffers and my finite being cannot grasp anything beyond this moment, Jesus bends down from on high to be near me. The things I see and feel right now are temporary. I will not be in pain forever but it sure feels that way sometimes. 2 Corinthians 4:18 reminds us:

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

I think we forget that our physical bodies are temporary. God is eternal. My circumstances with terminal cancer are driving that message home in very uncomfortable ways, especially for me. Facing our mortality can be painful and terrifying but it can be beautiful, especially if Jesus is the eternal hope we cling to. Maybe I can learn to be more comfortable with managing pain publicly if other people, my children included, can somehow begin to see this thing that Jesus has done for us more clearly.

And yet…If I can’t see Jesus beyond the pain I can feel, that is ok. He doesn’t require my striving to be acceptable in his sight. Of all the gods I have ever studied or read about, Jesus is the only one who steps out of heaven and meets me where I am. It seems that I am just starting to understand this thing that He has done for me. Even if it hurts. And that is so simple and so good, I don’t have to have lofty theological insight to know that the Eternal is right here and now, sitting with me in the middle of the pain as we wait for the day when my faith and your faith will be made into sight.