Pain and Suffering are everywhere around us. No one is immune to the reach of pain and suffering. We experience pain in our personal lives, family units, extended families, friendships, churches, villages, communities, provinces, states, and countries. We turn on the TVs and watch more pain and suffering. Someone once told me the world news is “what’s wrong in the world” and the local news is “what’s wrong near you!”
Pain and suffering are HUGE philosophical topics. The reality of pain and suffering make many even question the very existence of God. Then people move to determine IF God exists, He is not a kind and loving God, or there would not be pain and suffering.
I’ve had life VERY easy compared to many in the world. When I went to Liberia for the first time in 2008, I saw suffering unlike anything I had ever seen before in the poverty stricken, post-civil war-torn, country. It rocked my world and beliefs. (See a brief snippet of some of my thoughts in my blog post from Friday, May 2, 2008 titled Reality.)
I remember going to the Chaplaincy-Counseling office on the ship full of questions related to the inner turmoil my heart and soul were experiencing related to all the agony, sorrow, grief, hurting that was tangible in the air around me. The stories of the utter torture my patients had been through, the fact that many of them were literally suffocating behind tumors the size of basketballs. Or mamas telling how they bravely choose the life of their child born with a cleft lip and lost their village, food, marriage, and a hut home because of the belief that cleft lip babies were demon babies and should be left to die.
A World Health Organization report in 2008 noted Liberia had a population of 3.5 million and “only 3 Liberian surgeons and no Liberian anesthesia providers” (Google and WHO report from 30 September-3 October, 2008- all my professors forgive me for not including a proper citation, I can’t even remember how to right now, nor do I want to be bothered, but know that is not my personal knowledge). Then the fact that I toured the JFK Memorial Hospital in 2008 and it was an empty shell of a building. I met 1-2 nurses that were loyally going to work every day, but had not been paid in years. There were no supplies in the hospital. These nurses went in hopes that one day they would be paid to work again and have supplies to provide care. There was no running water and no electricity. The nurses showed up to give what they had to anyone who might show up in need. So if people had the chance to accesses a surgeon, there might not be anesthesia, or supplies, and most do not have the money to afford care. (See my blog titled The Neurosurgeon and One Single Light bulb from July 3, 2012 to understand the desperate situation a little more). Let’s not even approach the topic of 26 year old me learning what child soldiers are and the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Project, a commission that was formed to investigate more than 20 years of civil conflict in Liberia and the human rights violations and war crimes. A former child soldier even spoke at one of our community meetings.
Mind blowing, earth shaking, matters of the heart and I thought it was a big deal to share an air-conditioned cabin in tight quarters with 5 other girls. To be restricted to 2 minute showers, with not only running water, but clean water, and not cold water, but hot water if I desired. The chaplaincy-counseling office on the ship gave me a number of resources and welcomed my questions. I was connected with a copy of The Problem of Pain written by C.S. Lewis and published in 1940. I also borrowed a book called The Gift of Pain by Philip Yancey and coauthored by Dr. Paul Brand, a famous British surgeon published in 1997. I took the books to a quiet corner on the ship and started to thumb through the book by C.S. Lewis. I quickly realized I was in over my head and with my poor attention span, I set that book aside. Then I picked up the book by Philip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand. I read the back cover:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
“A World Without Pain?
Can such as place exist? It not only can-it does. But it’s no utopia. It’s a colony for leprosy patients: a world where people literally feel no pain and reap horrifying consequences.
His work with leprosy patients in India and the United States convinced Dr. Paul Brand that pain truly is one of God’s great gifts to us. In this inspiring story of his fifty-year career as a healer, Dr. Brand probes the mystery of pain and reveals its importance. As an indicator that lets us know something is wrong, pain has value that becomes clearest in its absence.
The Gift of Pain looks at what pain is and why we need it. Together, the renowned surgeon and award-wining writer Philip Yancey shed fresh light on a gift that none of us want and none of us can do without.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Being a nurse, this resonated with me. I dug into the pathophysiology of leprosy and all of sudden, the intellectual waves that were battering against my worldview and causing soul upheaval calmed. Pain was not the enemy. In this soul searching someone gave me one of the most influential quotes of my life. I cannot even remember who, or if I read it in one of the above mentioned books, but it has stuck with me for 17 years…
“You ask, God why is there ALL this suffering in the world and WHY have YOU NOT done ANYTHING about it! Well, what if God asked YOU the same question? WHY have YOU not done ANYTHING about ALL the pain and suffering in the world.”
As I finish writing this post at 2:52am because I just came off night shifts and apparently my body wants to be awake, the words to a song by Jason Grey titled With Every Act of Love run through my mind. “God put a million, million doors in the world for His love to walk through. One of those doors is you. I said, God put a million, million doors in the world for His love to walk through. One of those doors is you…”
The choice is yours. Point a finger at God and blame him for all the problems. Or be a door for his love to walk through.
No comments:
Post a Comment