In Jerry Sittser’s painful memoir, A Grace Disguised, he recounts how suffering can grow your soul. And his words carry a certain heft because he writes from overwhelming firsthand experience. A drunk-driver killed his wife, his mother, and his four-year-old daughter in one tragic accident. The book is an expansive meditation on his own grief, and how he persevered in his own faith despite it all.
One of the predominant themes he returns to throughout the book is the idea of choice. We cannot choose to prevent unforeseen pain, but we can choose how we respond to it. One passage in particular I found to be both highly pertinent to this issue of suffering, but also widely applicable to many other facets of life:
It is natural, of course, for those who suffer catastrophic loss to feel destructive emotions like hatred, bitterness, despair, and cynicism. These emotions may threaten to dominate anyone who suffers tragedy and lives with regret. We may have to struggle against them for a long time, and that will not be easy. Few people who suffer loss are spared the temptation of taking revenge, wallowing in self-pity, or scoffing at life. But after a period of struggle, which sometimes leads to catharsis and release, it may become apparent to us that we are becoming prisoners to these emotions and captive to their power over our lives. At that point we must decide whether or not to allow these destructive emotions to conquer us. A bad choice will lead to the soul’s death—a worse death by far than the death of a loved one or the job or one’s health.
This struggle will show us that emotions like anger or self-pity, however natural and legitimate, do not define reality. Our feelings do not determine what is real, though the feelings themselves are real. We cannot ignore these feelings, but neither should we indulge them. Instead, we should acknowledge them without treating them as if they were ultimate truth. The feeling self is not the center of reality. God is the center of reality. To surrender to God, however contrary to our emotions, will lead to liberation from self and will open us to a world that is much bigger and grander than we are.
Consider how this may apply to…
- The young man who burns with lust
- The woman who feels a cold weight of despair
- The teenager who doesn’t feel at home in her body
- The senior saint who feels apathetic about life
- The husband who seems to never be the man he wants to be
- The parent who is constantly needled to frustration by children
- The woman who feels like all of her friends do not really like her
- The child who never measures up to his parent’s standards
Our emotions are real, but they do not determine reality. Just because you feel something—even strongly—does not mean that you are those feelings or that you are forced to act upon them. You and I have a choice to how we respond to those feelings. And we must bring them to the center of ultimate reality—God—and there, surrender our feelings to Him.
Marc Sims 