We jokingly look at the animals sometimes when they are denied a choice bit of turkey and tell them to “offer it up.” We don’t tell humans to do that anymore. Why not? Because it is rude that’s why. Telling someone to offer up their suffering and sorrow has become a neat and tidy approach to not entering into another person’s pain. If we tell them to “offer it up,” we are off the hook then to be compassionate and tender. After all, no pain, no gain. And we are encouraged to suffer, or are we? And I could fumble this, but life has plenty of opportunities for suffering, we don’t have to look for it, life in its essence is sorrowful. We are fragile human beings, we feel pain, we get sick, we hurt others, and we are all guaranteed death, no way out of that one. Suffering is also a guarantee. So is loss, we will all lose people we love, people who were our security, our anchors.
Allow me to share with you a snapshot of my brain patter when told to offer something up, I get an immediate visual of a greedy God so eager for pain that he must be fed more suffering and pain in order to be appeased. I internalize the vision of a God who caused this suffering just so that I could be put to the test, will I offer it up or will I struggle and fail. When I am told to offer it up, I am introduced to a God that is cold and impersonal, who cares not for my pain, but just wants blind obedience. When I am told to offer it up my pain and suffering is invalidated and I have no where to go with my very real and physical heartache, and feel guilt for feeling how I feel. And then I walk away from the people, the church, and the God who have belittled me to search for a safe place to take my pain.
As I have thought about suffering and God, I have come to see that we cannot tell each other to offer it up, it is akin to telling someone to go have sex without having a secure relationship first. I cannot separate my body from my heart and soul. That will happen at death and not before. And that separation of body and soul is unnatural – it was not meant to be – I am both body and soul. It is why a ghost or a dead body is so frightening to us, it is unnatural. To open up and extend to God my suffering and pain can only happen when I feel loved and secure, when I can trust that He will not scoff at me and tell me to suck it up. To offer up my pain to the unseen God, that is done in intimacy, a naked, vulnerable moment. When Christ was stripped naked and paraded for all to see, who among us would have told him to offer it up? Why then do we say that to each other so callously? Why can we not see the naked Christ in all who suffer? And in humility and compassion, tread so lightly before their wounded souls and offer the cover of our love over their vulnerability instead of falling back on learned responses that foster no grace.
Perhaps we have misconstrued when we have read of saints offering up all their suffering to God and thinking that yes, what an excellent proposition that we all should follow. But as I read more and more about these very human people, they struggled, the offering did not come easily. The offering came after a relationship was established, and relationships take time and energy, their seemingly “one-liners” came from hours of meditation, common work, ordinary days of ordinary life. So we cannot simply take “offer it up” and apply it as a curative, that is not compassion, nor is it discipleship, and it certainly is not effective mentoring.
Suffering has taught me that a person’s story is paramount, to listen is to share in their story. Suffering has taught me that I cannot tell anyone what to do with their pain, I can only offer my story in their safekeeping. Suffering has taught me to trust that there will be growth from the pain, that if embraced it will sculpt my being. In that same trust, I see how suffering has sculpted those I love. I see the lines, the shadows, the eyes that no longer judge by merit or worth, they look with love. Suffering has freed me from fear of entering into another soul’s pain, there is nothing to fear in my pain or their pain.
It is said that suffering makes us better people, if that were true then the entire world would be saintly. Suffering can make us bitter and angry, most especially in the absence of loving relationships. Suffering can indeed transform us into beings of peace, suffering can grow our hearts beyond what we every thought possible, but not unless we are loved first. Only in that place of trust, can an offering take place.
Treat each heart tenderly.
Beautiful.