A Faith More Valuable than Gold
Part I | Hurting, Healing, and Learning to suffer well
“Sometimes He calms the storm
With a whispered, ‘Peace be still.’
He can settle any sea,
But it doesn’t mean He will.
Sometimes He holds us close
And lets the wind and waves go wild;
Sometimes He calms the storm,
And other times He calms His child.”
(From the song “Sometimes He Calms the Storm” by Benton Kevin Stokes and Tony W. Wood)
In all honesty, I wish I was writing this from beyond the storm, simply looking back, having persevered and reached the other side. But that is not the case, as the storm is still raging. What I do believe is that as much as I want that, there is something the Lord wants to do through this as I share in the thick of it.
To give insight into how hard this has been to even write, I started this months ago, thinking I was fully aware of what I needed to learn and share about, and then I spent months in a place where the lights all seemed to shut off, and I was unable to come back to this and add any words. I had absolutely no idea when I first started this article how deep the suffering would go, how hard daily life would be, and what it would mean for me to allow the Lord to pull me up again. I pray it brings comfort and a reminder to anyone who needs to hear it: you aren’t alone in your suffering, and there is purpose in it.
I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to muster the courage to stand up and walk to the bathroom. In pain and terrified to attempt this journey, it felt more like I was climbing to the peak of a mountain rather than making a trip down the hall. I put my face in my hands, and I wept. “God, why!?” I cried out… “Why is this happening?” I wept for a while until my husband came in to check on me, held me, and helped me to the loo.
A few weeks prior, life was finally getting back to a “normal” state after enduring many postpartum challenges and then months of back-to-back illnesses that ravaged our home. I had hope for health and the new season as Spring started to show its face. Images of frolicking in the meadows of the English countryside with my family, seeing our littlest one experience his first Spring, baking cakes topped with flowers, and basking in the warm sunshine kept me going through the endless difficulties. In March, on the very day I felt healthy again, we went on an errand, and after a normal motion, squatting down to talk to my daughter, I stood up and felt something odd in my knee (a knee I had surgery on 9 years prior for wear and tear from 17 years of football/soccer). The knee wasn’t ever what it had been before, but was something I became used to. I had no idea, even after that odd feeling in my knee, the storm that was about to hit our home. I had no idea that 10 months later, I would still be dealing with this affliction that has completely incapacitated me, with no idea if/when I’ll be fully healed and functioning again. When suffering comes, it hits like a freight train, and there’s no clear direction of where you’re about to go.
After getting diagnosed by a Physiotherapist with Hoffa’s Fat Pad Syndrome (an inflammatory condition you can read about here), I felt hopeful. I had an answer, and I assumed that things would go up from here. I was wrong. What I didn’t expect was that this particular ailment was notorious for being extremely irritable and difficult to get through, with intense pain, difficulty doing anything normal (such as simply standing), and continuous flare-ups being hallmarks of the condition. I felt all the same things I’ve experienced when grieving. I could not accept that this was happening. I took to Google to soothe my fears and instead set off a news ticker in my mind that looked like this:
“Incredibly painful area. Full of nerve endings. Notoriously difficult to heal from. Inflammation cycle is vicious. One of the more unknown, difficult knee injuries. Expect a long recovery and even then, no guarantee it will be fully healed. Difficult. Painful. Irritable. Hopeless.”
I saw all of those beautiful images of the season I thought was coming engulfed in flames and falling down around me in a mist of ash. I have spent many days and nights weeping until my entire body ached. Some mornings, it was the first thing I did when I woke up.
Pain, whether it be physical or emotional, is notorious for making everything else fade away while it forces itself into the spotlight. And it does need to be addressed, or else it will consume us. If we face it and break out of that dark tunnel it creates, our hearts can be changed in the midst of the situation. I will say with all honesty that these past 10 months have been the hardest months of my entire life. Some days I’ve done better at this “seeing outside of the pain and suffering.” Other days have stretched into weeks where I sunk to depths I have never been before. I have become so weakened by this due to being unable to function, that it felt I had withered away. I am having to relearn how to walk. I have wondered so many times why this is happening. But through it all, the Lord has beckoned me, opened my eyes, mind, and heart again, changed me, and nudged me to write this.
Here are the insights and revelations I will be thoroughly exploring in this series:
Suffering well
Unhealed Trauma
An unlikely answer to prayer
The mind/body connection
Suffering Well
One of the things this trial has shown me is that I do not exactly handle suffering well. With entrenched, unhelpful coping skills brought from childhood and the desperate desire to escape hard situations combined with the way the modern-day world perpetuates this concept of avoiding suffering at all costs, I seem to have no idea what to do when suffering comes other than to attempt escape. But what if there is no escape? Oh, the toll our fruitless fighting takes on our body, mind, and soul. But what if we accept it, sit in it, and endure it? What might happen then?
We’ve been taught by the world that suffering is wrong and has no place in our lives. Yes, suffering is terrible, and the amount of it in the world is overwhelming to consider. What is often missed when the topic of suffering is brought up is that we live in a fallen world, meaning that with the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, sin came into the world. With sin came suffering in all its agonizing forms. Suffering is inevitable in this world; how we view and respond to that suffering is what matters. As Paul David Tripp puts it:
“You never just suffer the thing that you’re suffering, but you always also suffer the way that you’re suffering the thing… (as it) draws out the true thoughts, attitudes, assumptions, and desires of your heart.”
The Bible has a lot to say about suffering, but you will not find within its pages that suffering can or should be avoided. Jesus Himself is called “The Suffering Servant” in the Book of Isaiah. He is our example of suffering, even to the point of death. He suffered unimaginably as He took on all the sins of the world while hanging on the cross.
When enduring any personal suffering, we have to have patient endurance. The word patience in the Bible is often called longsuffering. It is right there in the word itself. Endurance is defined as “the ability to endure an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way.” This is not meant to be a quick, easy result but a continuous deepening of our faith and trust in the Lord. I have wanted to flee this situation I find myself in so desperately that I’ve often felt suffocated. I have not known how to continue on and my heart became as shaky as my body. But standing firm on the Cornerstone, Christ Himself provides the foundation we need in order to persevere so that when our knees buckle, He holds us up. Our hope is then to be directed at Him, not at our circumstances changing, but directly at the Lord who patiently endured the cross for us. We should look more and more like Him with each day that passes, offering ourselves to be consecrated and sanctified (set apart and separated from the world, dedicated to the Lord for His purposes and glory).
Jesus patiently endured as He was persecuted, chased, arrested, beaten, spat on, berated with hands and words, nailed to a cross, and then slowly, agonizingly, gave His life. He, the Lord Himself, asked His Father to spare Him from this suffering as it was that excruciating. Yet He follows those words with “not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). He was fully human, feeling immense pain, and still He surrendered to the Father’s will and knew there was a greater purpose. He patiently endured all the suffering of the world, all alone on that cross, so that by His blood, we would be set free. As Tripp states, “Jesus is not just a student of our suffering; He became a firsthand participant in it.”
When you encounter suffering, do you realize that you are being made more holy? Do you understand what it means to have the Lord working in you to make you look more like Him? Do you believe that one person made holier through suffering can make a radical difference in the world and Kingdom of God? It’s a great concern that far too many are becoming lukewarm, blinded by circumstance and sin, completely hindering the work of the Holy Spirit. But there is always hope and He is faithful to wipe those scales away when we turn back to Him in full surrender and repentance.
So what does the Bible say specifically that suffering results in? Look at these words:
”You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials so that the proven character of your faith— more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire— may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:6-7
Do you see it? Genuine faith is more precious and more valuable than the most valuable element. Genuine faith is more important than anything found on earth and it has an eternal consequence with rewards that cannot perish. Trials produce and reveal the genuineness of our faith as it is put through the fire and purified. It is far easier to stay in a comfortable place in life, cushioning yourself in a pillow fort that muffles and softens pain, but what may also happen is the stifling of your faith, which is far more detrimental than any earthly suffering.
My life has been marked by a physical limp for 10 months now, but I do not want to limp through my walk with the Lord. Our lives have been turned upside down as I’ve been stripped of normal functioning. Deep, heart-wrenching pain has overcome me as I felt I’d been ripped of who I am, unable to do the simplest tasks or feel like myself in any capacity. But I do not want to forget that my ultimate identity is in Christ. I do not want a lukewarm, “cozy” faith that checks off boxes and looks nice from the outside but that is actually doing far-reaching damage and is not serving the Kingdom. I want genuine, tested, gritty faith that has been stretched, shaped, laid on the coals, and purified. I desire to hear “well done, good and faithful servant” instead of “I never knew you.” (Matthew 7:21-23)
One of Jesus’ miracles detailed in John’s Gospel is the healing of a man who could not walk and sat for 38 years near the Pool of Bethesda. This Pool, whose name literally means “House of Mercy,” was a place that held the superstitious belief that it would bring healing to the first person who entered it once it was stirred up. This man (and everyone else there) was so focused on this pool for healing that nothing else mattered, and they were completely blind to the fact that Jesus, who could heal them, was with them. Jesus went up to this man and asked if he wanted to be healed, and the man’s response was to say that he couldn’t be healed because nobody was there to carry him. All he could see was this pool as the answer to his need, even though he was face to face with the Lord Himself. Jesus told the man to “take up your bed and walk,” and the man was immediately healed. Later, Jesus found him in the temple and warned him, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”
Jesus is aware of both the physical maladies as well as the spiritual but makes it clear that there is a greater concern for one’s spiritual health as that has eternal consequences. What struck me as I read this is that Jesus can see the state of our spiritual health as clearly as we can see the state of our physical health. He can see the wounds inside just as we see wounds on the outside. We have to trust the One who can literally see the state of our spiritual well-being and make it clear that it matters more. When we trust Him, we agree that He knows best, He knows what we need and will supply it. And when we take our eyes off that “pool,” off Google, or off the pain itself and place them on Him instead, He lifts us up, strengthens us to endure, and lovingly reminds us what matters most.
We have made decisions that were labeled as “crazy,” and we have been through some heavy trials in recent years. We have chosen to step out of a comfortable, cushioned space and onto a path that requires us to hike up our britches and wade through the mud. We have been questioned as the mud turned to tar, lit up by fire that burned as the flames licked around us. But we do not desire to make decisions based on comfort and approval. We strive to make decisions led by God with an eternal mindset, knowing that the genuineness of our faith matters, not only for us but for our children, our church, our loved ones, and all those we encounter who need the hope that only Christ can give, a hope that will never disappoint. So we rejoice! We rejoice in our suffering, we press on and endure, and we anticipate what is to come. I am so desperate for physical healing that I cannot express it in words. But as I see through the despair and the pain that marks my daily life, I know that I desire Jesus way more than anything physical. I desire spiritual healing and freedom only He can provide. I desire to be refined by Him so that He can use me fully in the lives of others for His glory. I want our children to know what it is to persevere for the Gospel. I want Him to use our suffering for far greater purposes. And because of Who He is, I trust that He is doing exactly that.
We are eager for a faith more valuable than gold.
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