Pain is natural, a byproduct of our human condition.  We sinners are blessed with free will, and with that, license to hurt each other, both physically and mentally.  Our mere existence in this world invites pain.  These frail, human bodies cannot escape the laws of biology and physics, nor their companions, illness and injury. 

If we think about it at all, most of us struggle to place God’s role in our world of pain.  Does he cause us to suffer?  Or does he merely allow it?  If he merely allows it, isn’t that the same thing as causing it, since he has the power to stop it?  Does he punish us with pain?  We watch as bad things happen to good people, and we want to know what God has to do with it.

According to self-help books, people in the psychology business, and what you sometimes hear from the pulpit, pain is God’s way of refining us.  

            Hearing that can flip your world on its head, and if you’re not careful, it can make you angry with God.  It makes more sense that pain would tear us down, and when we turn to the Lord for comfort, we don’t want to think of him as having anything to do with causing our suffering. 

I’m not sure I can form words and sentences sufficient to encompass the experience of losing my father.  The pain was and is multi-faceted, and felt differently by everyone.  The pain of his diagnosis tasted like fear.  Fear of the unknown, fear of loss, fear of the known in the form of twin specters of my grandfathers, both of whom died of prostate cancer.  My mother’s father died a mere two years prior to my father’s diagnosis. My maternal grandfather fought the disease for sixteen years.  I do not remember a time he wasn’t sick.  I do remember the side effects of his treatment, and how it chilled us all to see my father begin to have those same hot flashes and sudden sweats.

            After my father’s surgery, we found out he didn’t have clean margins, meaning parts of the tumors were left in his body.  That pain tasted like dread.  He began radiation therapy, and we felt the pain of hope, but not for long.  Then came the long-term hormone therapy, the pain of watching him suffer as the cancer spread to his bones.  The memory of my grandfather’s metastatic bone pain echoed around my head every time I saw my father wince, and I wanted to weep.  But Dad didn’t want us to cry, so I held back the tears while I was with him, only to dissolve every time I got to the interstate on my way back home.

            Anger.  Oh, how I was angry.  Looking back, I’m not sure the anger had an object.  It was amorphous, the result of my Type A personality trapped in a situation over which I had no control.  I felt the opposite of refined.  I was ready to throw open the window and yell to God, just as I had countless times before, “I’m refined enough already!  Just stop!  I have plenty of character, you don’t need to build any more!”

But the truth is, way back when I first started yammering at God about not needing any more character, thank-you-very-much, I was too young and stupid to realize exactly how much strength and character I didn’t have.  Whenever pain struck, whether in the form of death, illness, depression, or family strife, I found myself shattered, bruised and battered, unable to comprehend how there could still be weddings and parties and newborn babies.  Didn’t people know the world had ended?  I’ve lost count of how many times the world has ended, and yet here we are.  One Sunday I gave my anger to God on an offering plate, and I have never wanted it back.  Instead of anger, I want to understand.  I want to put a reason to suffering, for it to have counted for something.

In total, we spent twelve years watching my father caught in the grip of cancer, edging ever more rapidly and painfully downhill. During this time I never turned away from God, but it took me years to learn to turn towards him.   Six years into Dad’s illness, I married, and it was then I began to study God.  The thirst to know him has been a constant in my life since I was quite small, but in that journey one needs a guide, and I didn’t know enough to go looking for one.  Now I have the blessing of being married to my spiritual teacher, and through Bible studies together, Sunday school, and our own conversations, I began a relationship with God that wasn’t limited to Sundays.

The end of our time with my father came abruptly, with an early morning collapse, an ambulance to the hospital, near death in the ER, and then two weeks of hospital Hospice.  Those two weeks redefined pain for all of us.  I reached for God while bending over the hospital bed, holding his hand and trying to offer comfort and amateur nursing without crushing the central line.  During the nights I spent in his room, on my knees by the bed, I tried to pray but ran out of words, listening to his breathing grow ragged and rough, sprinting to find a nurse every time the pain pump beeped to advertise its emptiness.  I implored God to fill me with strength, and envisioned the Holy Spirit standing behind me, one hand on my shoulder.  As he lay dying an agonizing, traumatic, uncontrollable death, God strengthened me enough to hold his hand and talk to him.  The nurses told us that even though he was unresponsive, he could likely hear, and so I told him it was ok for him to go.  I told him not to be afraid, that God loved him, that through God’s grace he was saved, that he was going to a place where there was no pain, not to worry, that all of us would be ok.  For hours I talked to him and to God.  His agony was so great that I implored God to take him, to release him from his broken body.  I implored my father to let go.  As the hours wore on and the pain seemed worse, I even told him at one point, “Daddy, if you see a light, please, go towards it.  It’s ok.  Please, it’s ok.  You can go.”    

Do I think God caused my father to suffer?  No, I don’t.  Physical pain and illness are a part of life here.  Do I think God used that suffering to produce something positive?  Absolutely.

All this is not to say the pain has been fun, or that it’s gone or ever will be gone. I’ve learned not to run from it, but to face it.  My goal is not to get past, but to get through.  My therapist calls this part “the work of grief.”  It’s horrible work, and there are days when I want to retreat, to pretend it didn’t happen, to hide in that familiar warm place we call Denial.  But when I turn towards the hurt, confront it over and over, it gets infinitesimally less painful each time.  I don’t like this place of grief, this dark, cold place with its stream of images flashing before my eyes, the cruel pictures vivid no matter how many Xanex I throw at them. I know that God will not leave me here forever, but I also know, after grieving for a mere half a year, my stay is far from over.

This week marks six months since my father’s death, and every time I begin to take a breath and think, “ok, I’m fine, it’s all going to be fine now,” something happens.  It’s usually something small; playing ball with my kids outside on that first crisp spring day, the smell of one of his old shirts, or reaching to dial the phone before remembering that I can’t call him anymore.  I had a crisis of grief upon the death of my electric toothbrush, because I couldn’t call my father (an oral surgeon) to ask him what type of replacement to buy.     

Here I have to give God credit.  He has made this pain a gift.  Peeling off the wrappings of suffering, I have uncovered a personal relationship with the Lord and forged a better relationship with my earthly father.  And then there’s the ultimate gift: the certainty that he’s in a better place.

I bought a new toothbrush.  I try to tell my kids about their grandfather.  And sometimes the smell of those old shirts makes me smile instead of cry.