How do we move from suffering to hope?

There are more steps between the two than I want, that's for sure.

A note for those not-so-biblically or Jesus-y inclined: I’d encourage you to read this one anyway. Because you know suffering, too. And the world, outside of any faith, give plenty of false reassurances of hope you know are bogus, too. Try and think of those. Replace “God” with “Universe” or “Spirit.” One of the things I’m passionate about post-deconstruction is writing in such a way that anyone can find themselves in my words, and find encouragement, too.
I hope that’s true for you today.

I’m crying more easily these days, at least behind closed doors, with my therapist, staring me down over a Zoom call with her quintessential “tell-me-what-hurts-today” look in her eyes.

Or, as one of my favorite writers put it, I’m “living a perpetual Lent,” where the thought of further burdening my already-overwhelmed system quite physically hurts.

Thankfully, my church is giving a weekly reminder that if that’s you—me—God doesn’t want to add more burdens to you in this season. Instead, God wants to walk with you, to show you that it’s okay to ask for help, to cry, to not understand why, to let others carry the burden of prayer for you, maybe even to carry you.

That simple permission has opened up something in me. Where others may read bible texts during Lent and see their sin and the ways they need forgiveness, I’m seeing my suffering and the ways I need God to meet me in it.

I used to draw a line between those two phrases. I grew up in a tradition that said—speaking for God—“you are suffering because of your sin” and “if you pray the right prayer enough times, you will be made well.”

But when your suffering is chronic, perpetual, when prayers fall short and answers are few and far between—and never what you really want—that tradition crumbles. That system fails.

That kind of religion may save, but it doesn’t comfort.

And if we believe in “the God of all comfort,” why would we believe in a God whose voice dismisses comfort?

I can’t. Can you?

(And if you can, I’d challenge you to put yourself in my suffering shoes—sandals, because a pain condition keeps me from wearing real shoes on my left foot—and try answering that question again.)

This would normally be a post for paid subscribers only, but the subject felt too important to put behind a paywall. Suffering doesn’t only afflict those who can afford it, so my words on this topic can’t be limited either. I hope it meets you wherever you are at.

If you are looking for more words of hope and have a little room in the budget, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Or, it’s not the right time, support me by liking this post (hit the❤️), commenting, or even buying me a cup of coffee.

I didn’t expect to learn so much about suffering during Lent.

Maybe I should have expected it, but the way I’m learning is different—especially from the lines drawn about suffering above. It feels less like intellectual lessons, more like rays of light piercing into the darkness I’m living in. It’s a kind of comfort that helps me understand what’s happening—not why.

I haven’t been abandoned. Or left behind. I’m not walking alone in the wilderness. Nor is God a hard-nosed father, peering over his glasses, asking, “Have you learned your lesson(s) yet?”

God’s much gentler than that. Even if there are lessons in this liminal space, they comfort instead of freeze. They offer solidarity and hope, not isolation or manipulation.

The psalms I read remind me I’m not the first to feel the way I feel, to suffer the way I suffer. Even in the most grandiose of stanzas, the writers still wonder: Where is God? Why am I still waiting?

And today’s words in Romans 5—finally exiting the “romans road” reminders and entering other territory—sparked a thought in me that caught me completely off guard:

“There are a lot of steps before hope gets cultivated in you as you suffer.”

—these are immensely hopeful and helpful words because I grew up believing basically the opposite.

I grew up forcing myself to hope, like tugging a too-small sweater over my head in the heat of summer.

I grew up racing to hope, like it was the replacement for suffering instead of its reward, as is being outlined here.

I grew up thinking that if I wasn’t hopeful, I wasn’t holy. I wasn’t doing something right in my suffering.

If I wasn’t feeling hopeful, all the time—especially in suffering—my faith wasn’t genuine.

No, Paul lists a very different chain of events out for us: “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”¹

suffering > perseverance > character > hope

A lot of steps between suffering & hope, right? A lot of movement, a lot of not things to do, but things that are happening, forces at work beyond just the suffering. Here are some word pictures that the Greek paints for us:²

• Suffering: Pressure—literally “crowding” or a narrowing.

  • Our world closing in on us.

• Perseverance: Patience, endurance—literally “remaining under.”

  • Staying put as our world closes in. Not what we’d choose, but perhaps what we need.

• Character: Growth—tested-ness, trustiness, proof, mettle.

  • Growth happens when we stop trying to make it happen. Metals don’t melt because they know how but because of the elements at work around them.

• Hope: Expectation, confidence—open arms to what one is certain of.

  • First, we learn what hope really is: what is it we want and need in order to live authentically.

  • Then, we find ourselves hopeful: that what we want and need will find us.

How to move from suffering to hope, then?

I don’t think we can rush this process. Like the stages of grief, we might flow in and out of the different pieces, the different moving parts between the start of suffering to moments of hope:

Our world closes in, and we can’t help but buckle beneath the pressure.

When we buckle beneath, we’re trapped beneath the rubble—and God doesn’t ask us to dig ourselves out. That would be the opposite of endurance, the antitheses to patience.

As we stay put, we grow. It may not look like growth; it may not even look like us. But that’s the tested-ness, ultimately—what comes to the surface? What doesn’t? Who am I? Who am I not? What (or who) stays with us? What (or who) doesn’t?

Then, comes hope. Not because everything feels hopeful, not because everything is put back together, but because we’re still here, and we know who we are and what/who is still with us in it.

I think it’s important to note that this isn’t a formula; it’s a river’s current we’re caught in. We must flow with it, trusting its movement. Trusting that, like the psalmists and writers throughout history, hope does eventually come back around—just as suffering does, just as doubts do, just as growth happens again and again and again.

We’ve seen the photos, moments of hope crystallized just as plainly as grief. Here are two such moments of me. The first is in India, where my world shattered and my teammate took a photo of the very day it happened—and then on the other side 1.5 years later, a selfie on a train in the UK, of a girl who knew who who she was and was hopeful for the future, even without a single clue of what that future held:

L: Katie in India, very sad, her world shattered, her identity insecure, her hope gone; R: Katie on a train in the UK, her self pieced back together, her hope returned, even with a still-unsure future ahead of her.

If you’re suffering right now, instead of rushing to hope, here’s an invitation:

Let your soul develop like a roll of film.

Sit in the darkroom of suffering, grief, pain.

Until the full picture of who we are is ready to be seen.

First by ourselves, then by others.

Then, and only then, crack open the door and let the light in.

May it be so.

1. Romans 5.3-4 (NIV).

2. Yes, don’t worry, I am still a certified Greek nerd. I cannot seem to deconstruct that part of me!