When the dust settles and we are sitting there in the dirt of the pain and sufferings of this life, the question nearly all of us are inclined to ask is simple enough:
“Why?”
And although it is a simple—and even a reasonably healthy—question to ask, its response is rarely a simple answer.
In fact, I find that most of the time we don’t even get an answer to it. We cry out to friends, family, and God: “Why did this happen? Why did I get dealt this hand? Why me?” And more often than not we will get either no real response at all or perhaps the most frustrating answer possible: “I don’t know.”
But, it is super important to ask the “why” questions. At least for a short season. They reveal the humanity in us and show to us that we actually feel and care and hurt and love and hope and dream. Without the agonizing “why” season, we would be dispassionate, boring, and likely callous people.
If we don’t get angry and upset at the seemingly unfair pain and suffering that gets thrown our way throughout life then are we even living at all? Or are we just waves being tossed to and fro by the wind?
So I am a strong advocate for asking the “why” set of questions in the direct aftermath of our suffering.
However, what I want to focus on right now is a new perspective on the suffering. I want to set aside the “why” questions.
Because the “why” questions could go on forever and ever and get us nowhere. And with the “why” questions, even if we do get a real answer, it often leaves us even more frustrated than before and with more confusion that will then inevitably lead to a new round of “why?”
So, we love the “why” and understand the importance of sitting in that for a moment. But, there comes a point where we must move past “why” and into the next set of questions God calls us to consider.
We must ask the question of “what now?”
We have the pain and it sucks. Whatever it is that has happened in our life has happened and there’s not a thing we can do about it. No amount of “why” will take away the fact that it has indeed occurred.
But, what now?
What are we going to do with this painful experience now that it has taken place? How do we take this struggle and this hurt and allow God to create something beautiful out of it?
There’s a new superhero movie coming out later this year called Venom. And, in the trailer for the movie, the audience hears the main character speak: “Everyone’s got their thing. Maybe it’s a breakup. A death. An accident. Whatever it is, you used to be one thing and now you are something else.”
You see, the truth is that every single painful experience—every single ounce of suffering we endure—will alter us in some way. That’s the nature of disruption. We make grand plans for life and how we want everything to play out and then something happens that throws it all off.
Disruption enters the situation.
And I believe that it is in the wake of this painful disruption that God is able to display his unmatchable creativity in our lives. If we choose to let him.
In the disruption, after the “why” questions have been wrestled with, we must come to the realization that this too will shape me.
The pain and suffering will change us. And it will either make us bitter or better, more closed or more open, more ignorant or more aware, more like the world or more like Jesus.
And so we must ask “what now?” We weep and mourn and grieve and roll around in the dirt of our pain and hurt crying out to God to answer “why?” and then we stand up and we say “Alright, Lord. What now? What do you have to show me from this? What is it that you want to do with this situation and this suffering that will allow me to come out on the other side looking more like Jesus?”
But we must be willing to move out into the “what now” with confidence that the Spirit of the living God is dwelling within us and is molding us into something beautiful if we will just give him the space and freedom to do it. Beauty will come from the ashes.
Because we will find that in the painful crucible of the Spirit’s transforming power, our jagged edges melt down and are remolded into the beautifully glorious creation that God had planned before we were even spoken into existence.
There is no doubt that my favorite parable in all of the gospels is the prodigal son. The more I revisit Luke 15, the more I find that Jesus hid within this story a bottomless treasure chest of lessons of his love and mercy for us.
At the center of the story, we find the “what now” set of questions being asked by the younger son. After running away to the far off country, the younger son thinks he is living his best life. And then: enter disruption. His money disappears, his friends abandon him, he can’t even get a pig’s meal. I imagine that for a while he sat there in the muck of his situation wondering “why?” He probably turned over the events that led up to his unraveling again and again trying to figure out what must have happened to get him to this place he now finds himself in. He probably looked into a bleak future through the lens of his depression. He may have blamed himself or he may have thought it all was a little bit too unfair. At any rate, I have no doubt that he was stuck in the “why” for quite some time. After all, it hurt and it felt unbearable and overwhelming for this younger son.
But then, something changed. His perspective moved and he set aside the “why” and came to the “what now?” In his pain, he said “how can I use this situation and grow from it and move forward in a new way?” And he returned home. The father in the story goes on to say that the younger son moved from death to life in Luke 15:32.
Death to life; beauty from ashes.
The art of pain:
We are going to suffer.
And it’s going to shape us.
Somehow.
So, how can we allow God to take our pain and our hurt and our suffering and bring beauty and life out of it? How can we understand the reality of our heartbreak and our grief and our struggle and still look toward the future with a “what now?” in our hearts? What is it that God is calling us to learn from the darkness of this experience that will make us come out on the other side looking more like his perfect Son?
There is greatness in all of us. Courage. Desire. Integrity. Virtue. Compassion. Dignity. Loyalty. Love. It’s in there—somewhere. And sometimes it takes suffering to get at it. It’s in there.
In one of author Susan Howatch’s novels, one of her characters is speaking of sculpting, saying:
“So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears—everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.”
Is she talking about sculpting or life?
I think the answer is yes.
You see, I think that the art of pain is just this. Letting God take and use the unusable. Letting him create from the destruction. Letting him answer “what now?” with “watch closely, dear child.”
