Source: Cathleen Falsani, Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008) 175. Quotations are in italics.
After discussing her mother's successful battle with cancer, Cathleen Falsani states the following:
So why with all the good news about Mom did I feel so thoroughly lousy? Don't get me wrong. I was grateful, so grateful, to Mom's doctors, who quite literally saved her life; to friends and strangers, who wrote to us reminding us that their thoughts and prayers were with us and, more important, that God was walking by our side--carrying us when necessary--through dark times. It's just that I seemed to have come out of this ordeal with a pronounced limp, spiritually speaking. Having witnessed firsthand the power of faith and prayer to work miracles, I was limping along like a bear with a thorn in my paw.
A lot of people rejoice after God brings them through an ordeal. Cathleen Falsani, however, still felt the wounds.
I've had experiences like that. No, my mom doesn't have cancer, but I've had times when God finally gets me through a situation, but only after I've been raked over the coals for a period of time. Things turn out all right in the end, at least for a little while. But the time leading up to that "end" leaves its scars and gives me a spiritual and emotional limp.
It's hard to have faith during the ordeal, since there's a lot of insecurity. I almost feel as if I shouldn't cheerfully accept the axiom that "things will turn out all right in the end," since that can easily become an excuse for apathy, inactivity, laziness, or just plain inertia. Plus, how do I know that things will turn out all right in the end? It doesn't for everybody, does it? So not only do I have to deal with the ordeal, but also with the insecurity that is attached to it.
Cathleen concludes that we are broken for the benefit of others, meaning our lives are a sort of Eucharist. She may be saying that suffering enables us to sympathize and empathize with other people. I have difficulty with such a concept, for I do not see how my suffering places me in a situation in which I can help people. I'm shy, so helping others is hard for me! But maybe suffering shapes my thoughts so that I can do the right thing when opportunities arise. The focus here is on being and thinking, not necessarily doing, since right being and thinking can lead to right doing.
And maybe suffering can help us to root for other people. One of my favorite scenes in Desperate Housewives is from the last episode of the first season. In the series, Mary Alice Young shoots herself out of guilt, and her spirit is able to observe her friends and neighbors. She sees that they have a lot of struggles and problems that they conceal from others, as she hid her pain from them. But she says at the end that she roots for them, though she realizes that some of them won't make it.
I hope to get to the point where I can root for people to survive and succeed rather than fail. I want to root even for those I do not like, as I see their humanity underneath what I dislike about them.
At the same time, I don't want them to succeed while I do not. Then I'd be envious!