When in the Valley

How does suffering present itself? Does it follow you like a hovering raincloud? Does it stand in the doorway to your workplace? Is it the shadow of a person, or the outline where a person should be? When you take a deep breath and sit still, does it settle in your bones?
         How do you glorify God in a suffering you wish would leave you? How on earth do we suffer well? This question has plagued me for months now.
Suffering, when referring to my life, has always felt like an overstatement to me—still does. When I examine my life compared to martyrs and joyful saints in third-world countries and all those truly suffering for the sake of the gospel, my life seems like a fairy tale. But still, it is riddled with depression, panic attacks, broken relationships, an undiagnosed illness, and an only months-old onslaught of a new physical pain. I am not nearly a martyr—just a sick and grieving girl. But it would be negligent to ignore all these things. They invade every day, from my waking to my sleeping, so in asking myself “How do I suffer well?” I am really asking, “How, here in the valley, do I live to the glory of God?” 

         At the bottom of the valley, we are humbled. This is where we are weakest. We are never more humbled than when we are suffering. We are never weaker than when we have lost something of great importance: our physical strength, mental ability, a person who was our safest space on earth. Suffering drives us to our knees.
God is even there, in the lowest of spaces. He is not distant, even when he feels so. When even rock bottom is pulled out from under you, you fall on him. What a comfort!
In our weaknesses, he is glorified, because he is our only strength. He may not be your only hope until he is your only hope. When all else falls away, his steadfast love never ceases, and he awaits with the open arms of a Father.
This truth about God, his presence in all places and his strength that does not fail, may not be fully known until it is known in this way.

         Now, look around. You are not the only one there at the bottom of the valley. You are in good company, with others crippled and struck down. The church is not made of perfect people, but of us. All of us here, humbled and hurting, all of us for whom Christ is our strength, we now are able to hold each other up. Voices are lifted up together and on each other’s behalf to cry out and to praise. We may be in a valley, but what a beautiful world of people all here to love and serve! I’m so glad I’m here to see it.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:3, 5 ESV).
As blessed as I feel or don’t feel, I surely am.

Now, all of us together lift each other’s heads to look up.
All of us here in the valley, and all of us who will be here soon, should strive to be “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” As wounded, but turning to Christ. As tossed about, but clinging to him anyway. As stricken and afflicted, but looking ever upward.

In book two of Pilgrim’s Progress, the character called “Interpreter” took Christian’s wife and children into a room with a hen and her chicks. John Bunyan writes, “[Interpreter] made them look long at them. One of the chicks went to the trough to drink, and each time she drank she would lift up her head and her eyes to the sky.”

God’s Word, his people, his world, all beautiful things, all the good and kind, and everything that gives us relief from this momentary affliction—it all is from God. Let us look up to him every time. And even when it is most painful, let us look up when we recall the good things and beautiful inheritance that is yet to come. Look up.

Upward and onward we see our destination: an inheritance.
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

We only will suffer a little while until we are finally home where no suffering can reach. We won’t need the reminder to look up, because we won’t be able to imagine looking elsewhere. That broken people will be there, with every ache that ever ached soothed and healed.

 So how do we glorify God here? How do we suffer well? By looking up and pointing others up. Suffering will not have the last word.