The Pain of Glory: When God’s Teaching Hurts

The first time I lost my ability to speak it lasted three days. I woke up from a seizure and the words were gone. My tongue had no way of reaching them. The dark pool between my mind and mouth was deep and uncontrolled. I have since lost and regained the ability to speak many times.

Whenever this happened, my dear, patient husband sat me down and had me repeat the alphabet after him, letter by letter. Consonants first. Vowels are harder because they start with voice—you can’t use your tongue as leverage to begin the sound. Once we got through the letters he would get a book and we’d alternate reading words aloud. It was sometimes excruciating to get through a few syllables. But over time—sometimes minutes, sometimes hours—we made progress until I could form a few slurred, stuttering sentences.

I remember one day, in particular, it was extremely difficult to even form the sounds of the letters. Hours later, I finally got to the point of painful, exhausting, communication…right before I had another seizure and lost it all over again.

My husband drew out the book once more and sat down. I looked at him like he was insane.

Taking out my phone, I typed: “What’s the point??”

He looked at me. “Because it’s good,” he said simply. “Speaking is good. Reading is good. And if you were a little kid who was learning to speak for the first time, you would be excited because you would see how good it is—how much more of life it gives you. It’s hard to see right now because you didn’t think you’d have to learn it again. But it’s still just as good. Better even. And the fact that it’s hard doesn’t make it less worth it.”

I swallowed down my sorrow and fury and looked back at him with a rising disgust. I knew he was right. But I wanted to say he had no idea how hard this was for me, how hard it was to form every letter, to make sound come out of my mouth at all, to hear myself make noise over which I had no control.

But every time I had to relearn, he had to re-teach me. He too had to go over each letter and word, again and again; he had to listen to my faltering language, my wrestling over sentences he could have read ten times over by the time I was done. And he had the ability to speak. Somehow, it was this important to him that I did too.

And so we began again.

B… Ba-ba-ba.

C… Ca-ca-ca.  

The whole time I tried to remind myself—this is good. This is really, really good.

It just doesn’t feel that way.

The Task of Relearning

It seems most of my college experience this year hasn’t been encompassed by learning new things—although there is that in abundance—but by learning the same things over and over. How to speak. How to breathe through convulsions. How to orient myself after a seizure when no one is there.

Every weekend of this term I have had to reteach myself how to walk. There have been times when I can barely teach myself in time for class. On these occasions, when I walk outside on my own, it is obvious to everyone around me that I am struggling. Only I know that I am struggling less than hours before. Each slow, shaky step with Jeeves clunking along beside me is a hard-fought battle won.  I must think through every action, while every neuron between brain and muscle fire a conscious and deep-seated war:

Focus. Lift leg, shift it forward—don’t let it spasm out too much—balance, lower, pause. Focus. Next leg. Chin up. Don’t look at your feet. Look at where you’re going. That person’s staring. I must look ridiculous. Smile. Chin up. Don’t think about what they’re thinking. Walk straight—as straight as you can. Focus. Sing. What’s that song I was listening to earlier? The pain. Don’t think about the pain. Try to make it auto-pilot. Just get to that building, then the next one, and the next. Focus. Lift leg. Balance. Chin up. Focus.

I try to meet every stare with a smile.

I never thought I’d have to reteach myself the motor skills I learned as a two-year-old. But when I’m stuck on the apartment floor after a fall wondering how on earth I got here again when I thought today, today might be a break from my body failing me, the agony of that moment is not encompassed by the brokenness of my body, but by the sorrow of my heart.

No matter how many times it happens, the floor feels foreign. But the sorrow is familiar. It was there long before I got sick. And facing that sorrow, that ache, that turmoil of spirit, and bringing all that brokenness to the foot of the Cross, is the thing I must really learn again and again.

I have fallen into depression and doubt more often than I have fallen on the floor. I have wrestled with shame far longer than I have the humiliation of my symptoms. I have cried out to the Lord from a place of desperation that long pre-dated physical suffering. Anxiety was present before I lived alone. I lacked control of my life and future before I ever was made so keenly aware of the fact. I battled pride long before I struggled for dignity.

Through death, through suffering, through loss, through grief, through pain, God is reteaching me lessons he has taught me all my life, bringing me back to battles I need to fight over and over.

The hardest lessons I’ve had to relearn were a battle long before I got sick.

The Faith of Relearning

While not all of us are faced with the task of relearning how to speak or walk, we each know the vulnerability of experiencing something we hoped never to experience again. We have to relearn things all the time. We have to retake the same lessons over and over.

And God re-teaches. Not because it isn’t difficult. But because it is worth it.

“Relying on God,” C.S. Lewis said, “has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”

Dear Christian, perhaps you too feel like you are stuck in the same place over and over. Perhaps depression is pulling you into a pit you hoped never again to enter. Maybe old memories you thought healed are re-awakening. Perhaps relationships you thought reconciled are tearing apart, a painful anniversary is bringing back sorrow, a persistent sin you’ve battled again and again is haunting you with new strength.

Or maybe it just feels like every day is a slow repeat of the day before. The same dreading feeling when you open your eyes, the same tasks again and again, long work hours, taking care of children, exhaustion, boredom, drudgery, dishes, laundry, messy rooms. Go to sleep. Begin again.

It’s easy to think: I should be further along in this fight than I am right now. I should have overcome this. I should no longer be struggling in this way. 

But perhaps, the battle you are seeing as a sign of your lack of faith is the very thing God is using to prove your faith in him.

You cry out to God and say: Lord, a hundred times I have prayed for you to help me with this, and I feel like nothing is working. I feel like my faith is empty. You feel like your faith is empty. Yet you have just cried out to God a hundred times.

It’s easy to think: I should be used to this suffering by now. Why is this still so hard for me? Why am I struggling so much? 

Perhaps, you are not used to suffering because you were not created to be. We weren’t created to suffer, to be in pain, to die. We were created to live. To live forever.

True faith is not dampening our awareness of pain, but being so acutely aware of the wrongness of that pain that we must turn to God and fix our thoughts on glory. Heaven is meaningless to those who have not grieved. Pain awakens us so that even with eyes filled with tears, our voices cry to God and say: One day, this wrongness will end. But not yet. Not yet. 

Faith is not the muting of lament, but the carrying of that lament to the throne of God. Faith is not the suppression of sadness, but the lifting of our sadness on high for the Lord to see. Faith is not the denial of pain, but knowing this pain will one day be turned to glory. Faith is not the abjuration of sorrow, but knowing that we serve a Lord acquainted with sorrow. Faith is not claiming victory in our futile attempts at holiness, but knowing that in Christ, victory has already been claimed.

The goal of our trust in God is not to turn us into stoicists. It is not to numb our hearts to grief, loss, or sorrow. The Christian, above all, has most reason to be profoundly affected by suffering. We know the way it’s supposed to be. The road to salvation has always begun in crucifixion. Those who weep are perhaps those closest to the Savior, who wept also on his way to redeem every tear.

We rest in the promise that as we are brought to what may seem the same fight, the same battle, the same pain, and toil, and chaos again and again, that the suffering we feel acknowledges the truth of the brokenness in this world. A brokenness that will one day be redeemed.

Like Jesus, we weep over bodies soon to be resurrected. Like Jesus, we weep.

Soli Deo Gloria,