“Deeply Gratitude”

    I called a friend this week. She recently received a devastating diagnosis. A very aggressive cancer. She is in a clinical trial that offers some hope. Some combination of harsh drugs that causes pain, excruciating pain, she tells me.

   I called her the second day after her second treatment, the morning after a very bad night. She told me the pain was so bad she wanted to die, asked for it; but that in the morning light of a new day she was feeling some better and was glad her wish had not been granted. And then, she said something that surprised me. "You know, I'm grateful for that pain. I've never hurt like that before but I think it's important to feel that depth of pain." I was so shocked I didn't even know how to respond. But then again, once I thought about it, expressing gratitude even in the worst circumstances is just who she is. She has always been like that. Deeply grateful. Always open to adventures, seeking lessons from new experiences, even now, it seems, pain.

   As a rule, I don't particularly want to learn from pain. I don't seek out pain. In fact, I would say I run from it. I don't want to stay in the hurt and wring some valuable lesson from it or draw near to the fire of what is uncomfortable or hard just to see what comes from it. It’s how I’ve lived most of my life. But, after talking to my friend I have to ask myself, what if I didn't turn and run so quickly? What if I didn't try to distract myself from it or numb myself to it or push the pain away? What if instead I pulled up my chair and sat with it? As hard as it might be, as much as it hurt. And if I did that, if I was really able to do that, would I come out on the other side, grateful?

   Author Miracle Starr wrote about finally finding what she had been searching for all her life in her choice of contemplative work and in her study of the early mystics. It came, this answer, this religious experience, in the midst of her grief in losing her child. She writes, "So this was the state of profound suchness I had been searching for during all those years of contemplative practice. This was the holy longing the saints had been talking about in poems that had broken my heart again and again. This was the sacred emptiness that put the small smile on the face of the great sages. And I hated it. I didn’t want vastness of being. I wanted my baby back.”

           She goes on. “But I discovered that there was nowhere to hide when radical sorrow unraveled the fabric of my life. I could rage against the terrible unknown, and I did for I am human and have this vulnerable body, passionate heart, and complicated mind or I could turn toward the cup, bow to the cupbearer and say, Yes.”

   Please don’t misread me. I don't think it's prudent to seek out pain. I don't think it's wise to keep pushing the envelope on how much sorrow or hurt one can take. I am not calling for self-torture or mental or physical or spiritual sabotage. However, I do think that sometimes we learn the greatest lessons of grace when we don't run away from the pain so quickly, when we are willing just to breathe our way through it, ask to learn from it, and then, as much as we are able, be grateful for it.

   My friend has not been promised that these treatments will heal her. The prognosis is not good for long-term survival. Still, they might give her a little more time to learn, to teach, to love, and to be thankful. And I can't think of any better life than that.

You are the light of the world. 

Yours,

Lynne