Facing Our Pain and Not Avoiding It
“…And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Romans 5:2-5
I didn’t want to get out of bed. I dreaded the day to come. It was mid-April and we were at the height of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City. The hospital systems were being strained, job loss was mounting, and the numbers just kept going up. There were 722 deaths in New York City on April 17th, bringing the total to 12,199, with over 6,000 new cases confirmed in a 24-hour period. A collective grief reverberated through the boroughs. Fear and anxiety were palpable, seen in the tense expressions and overheard conversations on the street. The sound of ambulance sirens was constant, their activity corroborating the bleak headlines, making the numbers more personal as they transported the sick to the Brooklyn Hospital Center a few blocks from our home.
Many of you know our family story. We have two boys, Oliver, age five and Judah, age seven. Our oldest son, Judah, was born with a rare genetic condition that causes significant disabilities. Judah uses a wheelchair for mobility and cannot stand or walk independently. He requires a feeding tube for the majority of his nutrition. He also has severe communication delay resulting in difficulty expressing wants and needs.
Before the virus hit, life was not easy. Many days, it was an accomplishment to make it to bedtime. When the schools closed on March 16th, we lost all support for Judah instantly. Before the closure, Judah was supported and assisted by a team of special education professionals: two teachers in his classroom, a one-on-one aide who helped him with positioning, mobility and toileting, a learning support specialist who tutored him individually, OT, PT, Speech, and a Hearing and Language therapist, along with a nurse who took care of his feeding tube each day. We also had two home health aides who came once or twice a week to give Sarah and I time to go on a date or run errands. Raising a child with special needs is really hard, and we depend on a lot of people to help us do it.
So, by mid-April, after thirty days of non-stop caregiving, we were worn down. Our bodies were depleted, our minds and hearts overwhelmed by the prospect of school remaining closed, and no physical help was in sight. And like many of you we had a recurring choice to make:
1. Avoid the crushing weight and pain of our circumstance by coping through addictive behaviors, escaping through entertainment and forgetting all semblance of following Jesus
2. Face our pain and go deeper into the waters of sadness
As we chose to face our pain, we realized the pandemic had reopened our grieving over Judah’s condition. It meant facing the hard truth of his disabilities again, and all of the loss associated with it. Our proximity to his care magnified his struggles and we became aware of how very different his “remote learning,” experience was from his typically developing peers. It caused us to cry out to God, revisiting our theology of suffering, the body and the resurrection. We remembered anew that we needed God to help us think rightly about our lives and our boy. We followed this process of facing our discomfort and reorienting our minds and hearts in other areas as well, from financial insecurity, to loss of work productivity and long-term vision for ministry.
As we dealt with the hardship head on, we found ourselves growing stronger. For the first time, I felt vision and hope returning. There was a growing sense of satisfaction as Sarah and I accomplished more than we first thought ourselves capable of. I was more aware of Jesus in my daily life, more dependent on him and less fearful of the future.
I wrote to a friend on May 9th, “I find myself praying and thinking about Christ more and more. In the night when I get up with Judah, I find myself praying and just thinking about Jesus. I have been memorizing scripture (Psalm 20) for the first time in a long time. I think the crisis has revealed idols in a fresh light and simple things like grocery shopping have become an opportunity for prayer and gratitude.”
As I further described this experience on a call a few days later, a co-worker remarked, “It seems like you are experiencing some of the fruit Paul writes about in Romans,”
“…And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Romans 5:2-5
Although Paul was writing to Christians dealing with suffering far different than ours, I believe the process he describes is applicable to walking through hardship as a Christian today. For us that has meant facing our pain and not avoiding it, which has led to faithfulness, resulting in hope.
It has now been 108 days since we lost all support for Judah. As the city begins to reopen there is hope for “returning to normal.” For our family, that hope is deferred, for even normal is not normal for us as we deal with the challenges and complications of raising a son with special needs. We long for heaven, for the resurrection, for the end of pain and for being with Jesus face to face. And yet, “…hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” We have hope for the future, which helps us endure our present circumstances, but we also have hope for today because God is with us. We have opportunity for communion with God today and this taste of glory makes us long for the day when that communion will be fulfilled.