The Pain of Suffering Avoided
Don't become the person whose very existence is his greatest suffering.
I began Chapter 19 of my latest novel with a quote from one of my dad’s favorite authors, Thomas Merton. It goes like this:
Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture. — Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
When I read this the first time, I could see its truth because I have experienced it. I have spent my life in various degrees of suffering, and I have wasted years of my life trying to avoid that suffering. It didn’t work. I still suffered. In the process, I created a prison for myself from which it took gargantuan efforts to be freed.
Please don’t misunderstand. I, too, take an ibuprofen when I have a horrible headache that just won’t go away. There is virtue in taking reasonable steps to ease and relieve suffering whenever possible, in yourself and others. But avoidance is a different animal, altogether. And it is not the same as building strength to weather and withstand the suffering when it comes. Avoidance is its own illness.
The kind of situation illustrated in my quote usually comes about via the following formula: Inciting horrible event happens in a person’s life creating something like, but perhaps not exactly like, post traumatic stress disorder. The memory of that inciting event promotes fear that terrorizes over and over again. The person begins to set guard rails up all around himself to prevent the thing from ever happening again. But as time goes on, he finds it necessary to move the guardrails closer and make them much higher out of fear that they are insufficient, creating prison walls around himself that get higher and thicker and the space inside closer and more confined until he not only can’t move, he can barely breath. Worse still, the terror never goes away. It just grows until that’s all that there is.
In my life, there were multiple inciting events—an illness in childhood, the death of a church my dad once pastored, a failed relationship, and more illness and pain.
I’ll just give one specific example. After my severe childhood brush with PANDAS, my brain struggled to work properly. I became prone to obsessions and then compulsions to make the obsessions go away and ease the internal discomfort I felt.
My dad began to get my little brother and I up a bit earlier in the morning when we were 6 and 9 so we could begin reading our Bibles by ourselves before the school day started. We were to read four pages a day. This was all well and good until I got to Leviticus and Deuteronomy—very dull and dry bones for a young child to slog through. I began to skip over whole pages so I could get on with the rest of my day, and when my parents asked if I had read my Bible I lied and said that I had. This went on for a time and then my conscience began to bother me—a lot. The guilt I felt over this lie was so overpowering, I confessed it all to my parents. And the shame of having to admit what I had done was truly soul-crushing. They were always quick to forgive when I fessed up to something, but I had a much harder time letting it go myself.
For months and possibly years after, I would be reading through my Scripture portion for the day and be struck with a sudden fear and a crushing guilt, that I had been daydreaming or not really paying attention to what I was reading and was “cheating” again. This brought on incredible gut-wrenching anxiety right then and there. To ease the anxiety, I would go back a page or two and read it again, to make sure I did it right. But it didn’t help. I’d get to the end of my reading, and the fear would hit again and again and again. Pretty soon, I had wasted upwards of an hour of my life reading and rereading the same passage to make sure I hadn’t “cheated” or skipped over anything.
This is merely one example of probably thousands I could pull from my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. I had no time to rebel! I was too busy feeling endless guilt, anxiety, and compulsively confessing every little transgression, real or imagined. But the reason behind all this behavior was something I didn’t understand until I hit about 25. I was doing all of this in an effort to avoid the pain and suffering my anxiety told me was right around the corner unless I took immediate steps to avoid it.
In essence my internal formula was, “Something bad will happen if I don’t do x, y, or z.” I would then do x, y, or z and feel a little better for a time, but the anxiety would come roaring back an hour later. I little understood that I was feeding the monster with x, y, and z.
It was the same with people. If I could just shut down and not feel too much, not let people at church get too close, it wouldn’t hurt as much when it all eventually came crashing down around my ears as I was sure it would. Hadn’t it happened before?
It took dating Jonathon to realize that this pattern of anxiety and frantic mitigation strategy was holding me back in every area of my life. I nearly fell apart at the seams those nine months we dated. But that’s what it took to make me stop running from the suffering of life. (And make no mistake, if you choose to love, you will suffer even if your relationship is healthy. Someday you will have to say goodbye, stand by a grave, and it will hurt.) I was either going to break out of the prison I had built for myself, or I was going to end up alone. Again. And it would be no one’s fault but my own.
On our wedding day, I sang Jonathon a song that my family had to finish for me. I couldn’t sing the last phrase over my tears.
“Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee. Whither thou goest, I will go. And where thou lodgest I will lodge. And thy people shall be my people and thy God, my God. And where thou diest I will die and there will I be buried.”
I suppose most of the witnesses at our wedding thought that I was overcome with happiness and love. Yes, somewhat. Mostly, I was overcome with joy and gratitude. Joy that in spite of months of terror trying to decide whether to keep moving forward with this good man or run away as fast as I could, I was there in front of God and witnesses, promising to spend my life with Jonathon, and gratitude to God for breaking down the walls of my prison.
This is not to say that I don’t struggle against those old ingrained patterns. Even now, I catch myself trying to build up walls of protection from the rubble of the ones torn down to keep the pain at bay. But at least now I catch myself and I don’t confuse my dysfunction and my sinful desire to control everything with prudence or being prepared or “foreseeing the danger and fleeing.” I can see it for what it is and smash it up again.
And what has life been like since then?
Well…I’ve suffered.
“That doesn’t sound like much of an improvement,” you say.
Recall, though, that I was suffering before and that I was making it much, much worse through all my efforts to avoid it.
There comes a point, if you get to the place where you can simply accept the fact that you are suffering and will suffer at times throughout your life, that peace steals in where anxiety used to live. And when you stop with the frantic running, you can be still and know that God is God. You can allow the suffering to do its good work. It can make you so kind. It can make you so patient. It can increase your love and your compassion to such an extent that people will be drawn to you like a magnet because they can tell the eyes of your soul are not pointed inward in self-centered preoccupation but out towards them. It can brighten your smile and make you laugh like you’ve never laughed before.
And I think it is because you must learn humility to accept your suffering. You must take from God’s hand whatever He gives for the day like a child with your hands outstretched, not demanding to know how the story is going to end or the day and time this particular pain will leave. You must be humble and meek, because that is the only way you will inherit the earth.
I mentioned, in a Facebook post a while back, that I have cried more tears in the last thirteen months than I have in my entire life. But I have laughed much more than I have cried. I have basked in the exquisite beauty of flowers, swallowtail butterflies, a ray of sun lighting up a room and the soft eyes of a newborn calf in the pasture outside my house.
I’ve spent a lot of time hurting, but I have never been more aware of the beauty around me. And I’m beginning to think you can’t have one without the other. Or at the very least, the depth at which beauty speaks to you grows in proportion to your ability to make peace with the reality of suffering instead of fighting it.
It would appear that joy and tears live in the same place. That is, until Christ makes all things right.
Well…that was quite a ramble. But it’s been on my mind, and I thought I should get it out of my mind and on paper. Perhaps it will be of some help to someone.
Housekeeping!
On Wednesday morning at 7:00, I will send out Chapter 2 of The Pursuit of Elizabeth Millhouse to all of you lovely paid subscribers. I hope you have enjoyed the introduction and Chapter 1 so far. I would love to hear your feedback as you continue to listen to Elizabeth’s story.
I would be remiss if I did not offer my free subscribers the chance to upgrade to paid so they can listen, too. It’s $8 a month or $80 for the entire year.
The funds raised by this are going into a dedicated account until I have enough to republish The Pursuit of Elizabeth Millhouse and publish 27 once it’s finished. I want to thank my five paid subscribers for their support. (Last week it was four and now there are five!) Thank you, thank you, thank you! It means more than you can possibly fathom.
That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…
