The Pain That Our Comforters Bring

Often, when a person is suffering, they must endure pain not only from their bereavement, illness, or betrayal, etc but also pain from how others respond to their plight. Those around suffering people tend to ignore, meddle or misunderstand their pain.

The Theology

Job suffered the pain of losing his children, his assets, and experiencing unremitting bodily pain. The second part of his pain was the negative attitudes of his friends and wife – they worsened his anguish. He became completely isolated as his wife and friends ill-treated and misjudged him. When days were dark, Job was all by himself. Jesus suffered the same fate; His enemies mocked and tortured Him and those He thought were His friends betrayed Him. Jesus`s closest friends (the disciples), fought about who was superior among them, then they fell asleep instead of praying with Him, and during the time that led to His crucifixion, the disciples disintegrated into denial, escape, panic, and confusion. For Jesus as well, when days were dark He stood alone.

In Mark 5: 25-26 Jesus met

“a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.”

This woman`s story is also an example of double suffering. Not only was the excessive blood loss putting her health in jeopardy but her failed efforts to find the necessary help were also increasing her misery, not forgetting to mention that according to Jewish law she was considered unclean. The woman was suffering from the pain of her sickness and other individuals made that suffering worse.

The Pain

Doubled suffering is common in the lives of many people. A young mother is bereaved of her husband, whom she greatly loves. At first, her friends and family give her utmost support, but they end up getting tired of her heartache long before her heartache is over. While a person goes through a painful situation, friends and family tend to keep their distance from that person, or they will begin to feel uncomfortable and not know what to do or say. They will offer unsuitable advice or help; the person will be seen to be a burden, or they will offer many irrelevant solutions that prove that they do not understand the reality that the person is faced with.

The other issue is when the people around a bereaved person focus only on the cause of pain. People who want to help us during difficult times usually focus solely on the cause of the pain and the adversities we are facing. They pray to God to heal us and offer us words of comfort. Even though their kind gestures and advice might come from a good place, they usually have hostile results. Our family and friends often forget about us and about our feelings.

Many adversities do not have remedies until the tears dry up: the disease is not curable – you will not receive the justice you deserve for the injustices you suffered – the one you love has passed away – the marriage ended in divorce – or the assets are gone. Most hardships have temporary solutions; however, the spiritual challenges that one faces while going through the pain need to be overcome. One needs to be able to answer the following questions:

How are you doing?

What kind of lessons are you learning?

In which area of life are you failing?

Where do you need encouragement?

Will you learn to live modestly with the loss, weakness, limitations, and pain?

Will the pain you suffered define you?

Will you make room for the growth of love and faith or will you become weak?

The answers to these questions could be an issue of life or death and are more important than the pain. A person has to listen to himself or herself and make deep self-introspection for them to come up with solid answers.

Personal Stories

In 2019, a priest friend of mine lost both his parents in a space of three months. The first to pass away was his mother. Her death was devastating because she fainted on her way to work in the early hours of the morning – her lifeless body was discovered later on in the morning because the road she had used to get to work was not that busy. Nobody could make sense of what had happened because the day before her passing she was alive and well with no signs of ill health.

I did not want to pretend that I knew how he was feeling because I know that each people do not feel pain in the same way and I refrained from asking, “What happened?” because asking such a question would not have helped in any way; rather it would have made the pain worse for him. I remember sending him a message on WhatsApp that read as follows, “I know that right now life is not making much sense and no kind of prayer can undo the deeds of death – all I can say is that one day you will be healed. You might not be healed after three months or after a year but the day will dawn when you no longer feel the pain you are feeling right now. Your mom might be gone but her love for you will never die.”

I did not want to talk about being strong, because I know that being strong in the time of bereavement is not always possible. I did not want to talk about God, faith, the angels. Heaven, etc., because I would not have known what to say if he had asked, “Why would God hurt me in this way after I dedicated my life to being of service to him?”

I tried my utmost best not to focus on the cause of his pain and I tried to be as realistic as possible about the reality he was facing – I wanted to focus on him and how he was feeling. I do not know how much that helped, but today he is standing strong again despite having lost his father soon after losing his mother,

In another case of a friend losing a loved one – last month another friend of mine who is also a priest lost his sister to COVID-19. Unfortunately, right now we are in an era of life where we cannot be there for each other just to give each other those warm hugs and dry each other`s tears.

He and I live in different countries, so I decided to check on him after a while over the phone. He told me that it was still hard for him and the family to accept the reality of their sister`s death but they were getting there. He also said that he always preaches to bereaved individuals that they must accept the will of God, so he too must practice what he preaches. I remember saying to him that it is easier said than done – I told him that he is only human, if his congregants see that he is not coping with the death of his sister, they just have to accept that he has finally realized that he is human. Ignoring the pain will not making it go away, it will only make the misery worse.

An Example From Jesus

In John 11: 35 the Bible tells us that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus where the sisters of Lazarus together with the Jews were also weeping. Jesus showed compassion, sorrow, and sympathy – He did not focus on anything else except the feelings of the ones who were grieving for Lazarus.