Step Into the Pain

I was speechless.

In an airport on a trip recently, I listened to a halting voicemail message from a close friend, telling me of another friend's unexpected death. Scott had died very suddenly while working a second job. He was 44 and seemed in the peak of health. He was an athlete and a radiant believer who lived his faith as a basketball coach (his first job) and deeply loved his wife and family.

My heart ached as I considered the plight of his widow, who has been a close friend since 1973 and a part of myhome church's ministry on many levels. Traci was left with three daughters. The loss is devastating.

My mind whirled as I sought a quiet place from which to call my friend. I pondered the fact that she is a counselor who can easily recite all the stages of grief. She has comforted many who have faced loss themselves. But this time the agony was hers, not someone else's. When she picked up the phone, I heard the pain and emotion in her voice and realized I had no idea what to say to her.

I mumbled and fumbled around awkwardly, letting her know how much my wife and I loved her. There was not much else that could be said at the moment. I longed to put my arms around her and share her pain, but couldn't do that from 1,000 miles away. I promised to see her when I got home and hung up.

How does someone handle that kind of loss? How do you survive when the bottom drops out?

At the risk of being simplistic, I believe one key that I've seen modeled by people who have weathered deep pain, and emerged better for it, is that theylean into the pain.

I've watched how two other close friends, Rex and Connie, have processed and grown through the loss of their young adult son – their only child – to suicide five years ago. Here's what I've observed in them and others:

They stepped into their pain honestly. Sitting with Rex (we're in a small group together each week with a couple of other men), he never sugar-coated his situation, questions, or feelings. He demonstrated to our group that He has enough faith in God to tell Him straight-up what he thought of allowing his son to die. That kind of honesty can be brutal. It's messy. Rex knew he had permission to say pretty much anything with us, and still be safe. Wounds don't heal if you just cover them up.

In the Old Testament, David lived in this kind of transparency with God. Phrases like “how long, O Lord?” echo throughout his Psalms. His words were painfully honest. And yet, God called him “a man after My heart.” He wrote in Psalm 22: 1-2:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent (NIV).

It's important to remember that although these words were prophetically pointing to what Jesus said on the cross, they were first poured out of the heart of David as coming from his own experience. David leaned into his pain honestly.

They stepped into their pain in community. Rex and Connie are part of prayer groups, support groups for survivors of suicide loss, and other small groups. With believers and unbelievers who share this common thread of suicide loss or care for loved ones with mental illness, there is a safe place to practice being honest with others who understand. Sometimes friends want to love you, but simply don't “get it.” There is a unique fellowship among others who have experienced the same wounds. People heal more quickly when they are intentional about “bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

They stepped into their pain redemptively. As they have deepened in their growing understanding of the power of God's Spirit to heal their hearts, Rex and Connie have sensitively shared that reality with others who have faced a similar loss. They are salt and a hopeful light in relationship with people who know only the salt of tears and little hope. I've thought many times how they are living examples of 1 Corinthians 1:3-7, “comforting others with the comfort with which they have been comforted.”

You probably have sung the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul” many times. The words were penned by Horatio Spafford in the midst of gut-wrenching pain and loss. Spafford was a successful Chicago lawyer and friend of D.L. Moody. The Chicago fire of 1871 almost ruined him financially. His only son had died right before that. In 1873, he planned a vacation to Europe with his wife and four daughters.

At the last minute, Spafford had to stay back in Chicago, but put his family on a ship, intending to follow as soon as he could. The ship went down in the Atlantic in 12 minutes after a collision with an English ship, and only Anna, his wife, survived. She sent a telegram of two words: “Saved alone.” But in a time before cell phones and the Internet, he had to wait nine days in anguish for that message.

Horatio Spafford boarded the first ship he could get on to reunite with his grief-stricken wife. The story goes that he asked the captain of the ship to tell him when their craft was passing near the site of the collision, and it was there that he wrote:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea-billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Spafford could have buried his sorrow in a bottle of whiskey in his bunk. Most of us would have understood if he had. But he chose to step into his pain instead. Spafford poured out his heart at the cross, and found that the cross was enough…that God's well was deep. How many multitudes have been ministered to by that decision?

Another heroine of the faith was Corrie Ten Boom, who survived the horror of several Nazi concentration camps. She lost her sister Betsy…her father Casper…and other family members. But she stepped into the pain, and her words ring true with us today: “There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.”

Rex and Connie…David…Horatio and Anna Spafford…Corrie Ten Boom…they show us that when we lean into our pain, God is strong enough to hold our weight.

I'm praying my friend Traci will be sustained by the same truth. I'm praying you and I will, too.