Comfort in Suffering

On April 10, 1959 C. S. Lewis wrote to a woman correspondent in order to comfort her in the midst of a trial she was undergoing. Lewis wrote poignantly out of his own experience of suffering. . . .

"My heart goes out to you. You are now just where I was a little over two years ago -- they wrongly diagnosed Joy's condition as Uremia before they discovered cancer of the bone.

"I know all the different ways in which it gets one: wild hopes, bitter nostalgia for lost happiness, mere physical terror turning one sick, agonised pity and self-pity. In fact, Gethsemane. I had one (paradoxical) support which you lack -- that of being in severe pain myself. Apart from that what helped Joy and me through it was

That she was always told the whole truth about her own state. There was no miserable pretence. That means that both can face it side-by-side, instead of becoming something like adversaries in a battle-of-wits.
Take it day by day and hour by hour (as we took the front line). It is quite astonishing how many happy -- even gay -- moments we had together when there was no hope.
Don't think of it as something sent by God. Death and disease are the work of the Devil. It is permitted by God: i.e. our General has put you in a fort exposed to enemy fire.
Remember other sufferers. It's fatal to start thinking 'Why should this happen to us when everyone else is so happy.' You are (I was and may be again) one of a huge company. Of course we shall pray for you all we know how." Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III, pp. 1038-1039

What wise advice this is! Face suffering and the possibility of death honestly. How many people do that?
Take things one day at a time. That is one thing which suffering teaches better than anything else. And why did we think there was any other way of living in the first place? How else can one really live but one day at a time? Of course when the pain gets really bad one must just take life a moment at a time.
And then we add to our own pain by thinking it is sent from God. It is so helpful to have right theology at this point. God is not some Cosmic Sadist, though we may be tempted to think that he is--as C. S. Lewis was later tempted to think after the death of his wife. God doesn't send pain--it is a result of free will--free will given to angels and to human beings. And why has God given free will--making evil possible? Because free will is also the only thing that makes real love possible.
So then, God does not send suffering. But he does use suffering in our lives to shape us into the image of his Son Jesus Christ.
Lewis's final bit of advice is also so important: never forget, you are not alone in your suffering. There are many others the world over who are suffering as bad or worse than you right now. The greatest Christians I have ever met are those who invariably think of others in the midst of their own horrible pain. Of course, such an attitude is not humanly possible; it is a gift of God's grace.
I think the one thing which helped me most in the midst of an emotionally painful time some years ago was when a friend prayed for me and said, "Dear Jesus, take this pain which Will is feeling now into the Garden of Gethsemane with you."
That was so helpful--just to know that Jesus was bearing the pain with me, and that he would pray me through it--out to the other side of God's glorious tomorrow.

Morning Prayer:

I awake this morning

In the presence

of the holy angels of God.

May heaven open wide

before me

Above and around me

That I may see

the Christ of my love

And his sunlit company

In all the things of earth

this day.

Celtic Prayers from Iona

by J. Philip Newell

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Will Vaus

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