Self Pity

Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again?
Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?"
Psalm 77: 7-9

Yvonne has been fighting cancer for 7 years, and until this year I really hadn’t struggled with the question of Why. I’ve observed enough misery in my life to have become resigned to the fact that we live in a broken world where life is not fair, life is a risk and bad things happen, sometimes through nobody’s fault and with no discernable purpose or reason. I have always been heartbroken watching my wife fight for her life, but I haven’t had any inclination to blame God or demand Why; that’s just the way the world is. But then it got personal.

Until last spring there wasn’t any visible evidence of the disease except for the wig she wore. She was strong and full of energy. Then in April Yvonne underwent radiation for the cancer in her brain and in the space of a few weeks in May and June her health crashed. It wasn’t a decline, it was a free-fall. We were in the Philippines for Megan’s graduation when she reached the point that it was obvious her condition was very serious. Seeing her slumped over in a wheelchair in the Manila airport, more than half certain she wouldn’t survive the flight back to Portland, was the worst day of my life. That’s when I got angry.

Her suffering in the months following seemed completely arbitrary and meaningless. The unfairness of it all was an offense of such enormity that there was no reconciling it with what I believed I knew about God. Everything I thought I understood about God and about prayer seemed to be thrown on its face. The sudden silence from God was completely inexplicable, as if my own father suddenly stopped answering my phone calls when I needed him most.

It helped to know I’m not the only person to experience this – C.S. Lewis describes it agonizingly well in A Grief Observed – but it’s a perplexity of cosmic proportion that this gracious and compassionate God who abounds in loving-kindness, whose power created the world and everything in it, would seemingly step back and silently refuse to help when we are desperately helpless. My anger settled into sullenness – or, more precisely – self pity.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess, to discover that the antidote to feeling sorry for myself was to take inventory of all the good things in our lives. Not to trivialize Yvonne’s condition, but things could be much worse. We could be living in the middle of a war zone losing our homes and watching family members die, as in Gaza and Israel. We could be living in abject poverty in the slums of Manila or Calcutta, or somewhere where the only medical help is the local witch doctor.

I still don’t understand God’s silent distance, but that appears to be where things are right now; I can’t change that. So, in the meantime, like the Psalmist, I will remember the good that God has done in the past and continue to trust. And I will be grateful that I still have my wife - even in her diminished health - and so thankful for all the pleasure and joy that our family brings us.

Then I thought, "To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High."
I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.
Psalm 77:10-12

Quarantined

This long blog absence constitutes one of the manifestations of a self-imposed quarantine. The sickness I haven’t wanted to spread is my own fear, doubt and discouragement; writing about it would have the effect of exposing others to my contagion. When someone you love is struggling to stay positive and hopeful, they don’t need the added burden of reading that their loved ones are struggling because of them. At least that’s how the thought process goes. It turns out, however, that my blog hiatus is rather pointless; the people I want to protect are the same ones I live with and am constantly around. Even without words, not much escapes the careful observation of those I’m closest to on a daily basis.

This is both good and bad. There’s no getting around the fact that people who are in need are – well, in need, and that means that others have to step up and sacrifice time, effort, and money in order to meet those needs. Most people I know have a very difficult time asking for help. We all hate to be a burden on someone, but even more, having to ask for help is a forced acknowledgment of our own helplessness and inadequacy. The loss of self-sufficiency and control is a heavy blow.

As it happens, though, this can also be the good part. The most wonderful thing about love is that it cares, and it is fulfilled in serving and helping those we love who are hurting. It turns out that we are designed for serving. We are designed for giving. We are designed for sharing and supporting, even in the hard things. What a marvel, that we are built in such a way that we feel the most human when we are giving ourselves to someone in need.

I once had to have a stern talk with Yvonne to make her understand that she was not helping me by shielding me from bad news about her condition; she was in fact depriving me of the fulfillment I receive from sharing in her pain and serving her.

Fortunately I have wonderful friends who care enough to say the same to me, now, so I’ll be leaving my self-imposed quarantine.