The Fellowship of Suffering

"That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death." Philippians 3:10 How is it that our best times, are during our worst times? Through 2 years of medical school, I've seen times where I realized I am nothing and times where I felt like I had this thing figured out. And I can say I would rather be in those days where I was exhausted and didn't know how I could continue studying another day, where all I could see was my inadequacy, where God felt so close I heard Him whisper. It is in these moments that I have felt most alive. That I may know Him. This week I took my step 1 national medical board exam, thus, completing my 2nd year. The months leading up to it where some of the hardest I can remember. But God reminded me during this time that He is my treasure, and my goal is that I may know Him.
 

God brought me through boards, and now I look to a year of rotations where my inadequacy and my failures and short comings will be constantly pointed out in order that I may learn. As I look to this next chapter in my life I am confronted by the fears of facing a real human being, a fellow sojourner in life who is hurting in some way and asking me for help. Thankfully I will have much help, yet it still causes me to ponder what kind of student physician will I be? How will I react to the suffering that stares me in the face, how will I come alongside and bear the burdens of those coming to me with them? Somehow can I, even as a green 3rd year medical student, impact the lives of my patients? So many questions, and yet I don't even know what they are yet.

 

So here I am, a few days after my board exam, sitting in front of the endless ocean that reminds more of God's awesomeness than any other scene. For whatever reason it is here that my mind is clearest and I can think more deeply. My companion here a book by Dr. Margret E. Mohhrman entitled "Medicine as Ministry." Again I find myself a student, not of the sciences this time but rather of how as a Christian physician I should approach the person behind the disease.

 

She starts by pointing out our society has turned life and health into a major idol. We go to extreme lengths to preserve life as if the death rate were not 100%. But it is this certainty of death that gives life so much meaning. Life itself is only a secondary good, because God is our Ultimate good. So then I ask what my role is. I mean 100% of people die, so any person I help will inevitably fall to some disease or accident eventually. So what is my role, but prolonging the inevitable? Can my time in between really be that meaningful? As I continue reading she then points out that how we can impact each life is by knowing their stories not just the diseases, case studies or interesting biological processes. In their story, their disease is not just the name medicine gives it (like sickle cell, leukemia ect) but rather is known more intimately to them as tragedy, pain, or 'that monster inside me.'  In order for me or anyone really to fully help the whole person, we must know and understand as much of the story as we can. We need to know who they are in order to know how to best love them in treating their illness. We need to come alongside and share in their sorrow and not just with pity but rather "deep, aching, compelling sorrow that breaks our hearts even while it motivates and empowers our resolve to understand and to love."

 

Sorrow, yes, but what a Christian can bring is the only opposite great enough to conquer sorrow. As Dr. Mohrmann puts it, "the theological witness needed to reestablish and reaffirm the patient’s relationship to God is the witness of the cross and its double message that evil is real and God is good. It is a message that both validates the reality of the suffering and denies that the pain is absolute." Because we have a good God whose love for us cannot be overcome by anything, there is good in suffering. We can see beyond the disease to the purpose it holds.

 

And then begs the question that every Christian and even non-Christian medical student asks, if we are to share in this suffering, how can we not be crushed but the weight of it all? How can we be vulnerable enough to weep with those who weep, when there are so many of them, how can we bare this weight without it cutting into our very souls and making our hearts callous to it all? The answer Dr. Mohrmann gives is in the very patients who bring us this suffering. Yes, they come to us for healing, but yet they bring a healing to us of their own. Our stories intertwine when we share in their pain. We not only become part of theirs, but they a part of ours. She goes on to mention the community of health care workers and Believers around us. We all together share these burdens and thus the weight is lifted. But I wonder then, what about the physician serving in Belgium, or Nigeria, or Turkey who is apart from such a community?

 

This I pondered for a while, there must be an answer in Christ, for He is enough for all things! . . . “that I may know Him.” . . . “And the power of His resurrection.” . . . “and the fellowship of His suffering.” There in this verse that God has brought me to countless times over the past few weeks was the answer. Who am I to think that we alone suffer from our trials, and not also the one who created us? Yes His suffering was on the cross where He paid in full for all of sin, the same sin that brought death and disease into this world. Yes, suffering with Him does mean in persecution, but why do we think it is limited to only that? Wouldn’t the God who made us for Himself and who loves us more deeply than we could comprehend, would it not also come as a sting of pain to Him when we go through tragedy? If He loves us so, would He not also hurt with us in all things? Granted, He does allow suffering, and this is a topic to discuss at another time. He allows suffering, knowing how it will hurt both us and Him, but also knowing that the good that will come of it is worth that suffering. And there is our hope! “we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character hope”  (Rm 5:3,4.) God lovingly allows us to go through disease and grief that we may have hope because through it we know Him more, as we join in the fellowship of His suffering. So in essence, as a physician who is exposed and vulnerable to all the sorrow, and who is joining in so much suffering, could we not know God more and more through it? Is it not then a blessing to bare the weight of it all? Yes, it is a weight that can easy break, easily crush any who try to bare it alone, without Christ. He is the hinge on which it all swings. Suffering with Him, means fellowship with God and hope and peace and joy, but suffering without crushes, destroys and leaves scares and death in its wake.

 

This is what a green 3^rd year medical student can bring to the hurting. In all that I will do wrong, and in all my failures, I have this hope. Honestly, I don’t really know how that will work out practically yet, because I have like 0 experience. But my prayer is that in the years to come God would mold me into that kind of physician. Oh God, would you make me into a physician that can stand in the midst of life-shattering diagnosis with those to whom it wrecks their lives and face it with them. Let me be able to stand and bare the weight of their sorrow that they may have a companion in that moment who is not afraid to look it straight on. May I not run away from their tears, but stay in the silence, the uncomfortable, the sobbing, and may I point to a hope that brings meaning to it all. Lord, may I stand firm on you so I can stand firm for them. May I be a way that they can know you, as YOU join in their suffering. Lord, use me to so shine on their hurt that you can bring ultimate healing! And at the end of the day, oh Lord, remind me to leave it all at your feet, remind me that you are the hope, you are the healer, you are the treasure, that it may not crush me! Oh that I may know You!

Precious Stone

I must confess these last few months I have been extremely selfish. I have been extremely blessed in that God allowed me to grow up in a church that taught me from a young age that life is about God and His glory, and that there is so much more to life than getting caught up in the everyday routine, the dreams of retirement and so forth. I have had this hunger and thirst to know more of God and to be consumed by Him. And it is by His pursuit of me that He brought me to Virginia. One of my greatest struggles while here has been the lack of true Christian companionship. Yes, He did give me Christian friends and wonderful believing roommates, yet there has been a void. I knew God should be enough, yet my unsuccessful efforts to make myself be satisfied, were too weak to do anything. With so many of my friends and even my little sister getting married, I longed to have a ‘soul mate;’ someone to walk this journey with, someone who made me love God more, and someone who I could share life’s struggles with. I longed to be wanted, to be pursued. I felt like I was ready (ha!) but obviously with nothing happening, I tried to move on and forget. And of course the moment I feel as though I am making headway and leaving all the childish feelings behind, a name and a face are drawn out of the crowd. Still I fought it. I did not want to again fall into the mess that liking a man puts me in. I could not afford the distraction nor did I want to face the hurt. Yet as my mind drifted uncontrolled I found myself in such a place yet again. Spun hopelessly by the game men play in oblivion. Why couldn’t I just be satisfied with God? Why weren’t the 30 minutes every morning with Him rejuvenating me and sustaining me in such a way that I didn’t need or want anything else? What was I missing? So I just become frustrated, as always. Mad it came up, mad I fell for it, mad that he is oblivious, and mad that I obviously wasn’t trusting God and no matter how hard I wished that I could leave it on the alter and walk away, I always left tears of frustration running down my face as I yet again failed to unclench my hand.

I knew I had drifted. That joy, that peace beyond understanding, that strength and feeling of unending power, all had been left behind some time ago. I knew in my heart the truth, I knew and I still loved God and I wanted to please Him, yet I felt as though I were drowning amongst knowledge and emotions. How had I strayed so far from the place where God called me to this task? The place where I was so confident in His plan and His way that I went to medical school out of obedience trusting He would provide everything, knowing that is was more about finding Him and growing in my knowledge of Him and my love of Him more than it was about becoming a physician or anything else really. How have I missed Him in the process? How in the world did I get to the place where I went to a church because I had friends there, and because it was technically solid in teaching yet I ignored the call to something more?

This morning, still in my sin of complacency and still throwing my temper tantrum of not getting my way, I drove to a different church, finally in search of God Himself and nothing else. This morning, He met me there. He surrounded me with people who spill over with their love of Him. The God of infinite power, of infinite beauty, of infinite worth and glory and majesty, whispered my name. This God, my God, reminded me that He is pursuing me, that He wants me and is jealous for all of me. This God consumed me today, and it was worth it all. All I wanted to do was dance and sing before Him! I could have sat there all day and worshiped with this small congregation! And yet, in the midst of this overflowing joy and peace and awe, I was made painfully aware of my idolatry and unbelief and the horrid sin that it is! Which then makes it all the more beautiful that He would in His infinite grace and mercy forgive and even go so far as to restore me! How can I not, now then, run with open hands casting aside every weight which so easily entangles and run hard and fast after Him? He is my joy, He is my companion! He is my satisfaction! Oh the hope we have in Him, how could we want anything else?