I recently read Purpose in Your Pain by V. Gilbert Beers. He tells the story of how his family lost a 26 y. o. son in a car accident and vividly recounts the aftermath faith-wise, emotionally, physically and so on. Superb writing and an excellent read on the subject.Of course, nothing can prepare one for events like these. Presently, in our state of Victoria, we are experiencing a terrific bushfire outbreak that has taken some 180 lives and still counting plus 4 hundreds hospitalised, the worst disaster of this type to afflict our country.
Beers' book stuck me on two counts: first, his explanation of why a son or daughter's loss hurts so much is described in terms of it being an attack on the structure of the family's and each member's identity. We grieve not only the loss of that person but because that person was part of how we were defined or constituted in this temporal life, we have to grieve and repair the loss of a part of our corporate being, which we can never find again in this existence. We lose the person but we also lose our selves because the relationship with that person was part of our selves.
However, we must also remember that our identities are supratemporal not just temporal. We are souls not just temporal bodies with the full meaning of the body being concentrated in the soul and the temporal meaning of the soul being expressed in the body. Nevertheless, the nondual relation between the soul and body means that when the body suffers, so too does the supratemporal soul.
Moreover, Beers spoke later of the wounded healer, a concept well-known through Henri Nouwen's writings. We are able to comfort others perhaps only to the degree that we also know suffering and minister to others out of 'the school of suffering' we have gone through. Beers argued that suffering can become redemptive in the lives of others. A wise woman has said that 'the value of suffering does not lie in the pain of it . . . . but what the sufferer makes of it' (Mary Craig) or we could add, what we are made in rightly using our suffering.
Don't know whether this suggestion means that I can find a purpose in my suffering. In any case, the 'purpose' only becomes apparent when I look back at a later time and see how that experience of suffering becomes to be used for the good of others. That good may be seemingly simple: having suffering I can go and sit with someone who is suffering and not be conflicted by thoughts of not knowing what to say. Often the suffering person needs someone who can sit with her in her pain and not try to problem-solve for some loss than is not amenable to problem-solving.
