Twenty years ago this week, I moved to Colorado Springs. It
was the day before my 23rd birthday, and I didn’t know a soul in
town. The people I would meet over the course of the next month, and then the
years that followed, would literally change the direction of my life. They were
like people I’d never known before, people with a long obedience in the same
direction, to quote Eugene Peterson. One of them would become for me the
greatest example of longsuffering I’ve ever known.
This dear friend—and I can hardly imagine that he was ever a
stranger—became my professional mentor, teaching me nearly everything I know
about putting words and paragraphs and books together. More significantly, he
became my mentor in patiently enduring the very worst storms of life, and his
came fast and furious. He has suffered chronic, teeth-gritting pain since long
before I met him. The hospital is his second home, physical therapists are his
constant companions, and rehab is a way of life.
But there’s been a lot more to his journey than physical
pain. Though he’s one of the most talented people I know, professional upheaval
and the constant threat of layoffs or termination have hung over his head for
decades. And just when he made it through another day, he returned home to a
family with needs so big that you wonder how any mere mortal could begin to
bear them. Yet bear them he has, a clear picture of God’s strength showing up
in human weakness.
My friend now faces his biggest storm to date. When I asked
him last week if he’s ever been through anything so bad, he quickly answered,
“Oh, no. Nothing like this.” And that’s when I lost it. The tears and the
questions exploded out of me with equal force. “WHY? Why can’t you just stop
already, Lord? How can such a humble and gentle man receive such fierce treatment?
It’s too much. Stop. RELENT!”
Over and over, all I could do was beg God to relent. I
wonder if this is how the Old Testament prophets felt? I even wondered if I
could take the blows for my friend. It’s so unfair. Why is my life so easy, so
beautiful, when his is so . . . this?
Except that I bet if I asked, he’d say his life is beautiful. Maybe not easy,
but beautiful still.
When I quieted my heart long enough to stop shaking my fist
and stomping my feet at the Lord of the universe, I felt Him gently asking me
this: “Are you willing to surrender your
‘right’ to know why I do what I do? Are you willing to trust My promise that
I’m working for the good of all who love Me? (And yes, I know this man loves Me
very much.) Are you willing to believe that I’ve got this, that I will not give
him more than in My strength he can bear?”
Just when I think I’ve surrendered everything I’m holding
onto, I see my hands throttled around something else. In this case, it’s my need
to know why. I think it would be easier surrendered if it were my own life on
the line. It’s much harder when it’s someone who has suffered so much. What
would I have done if I’d been Job’s friend? Could I have surrendered my right
to know why his suffering was so great, or would I have been like his wife, who
urged him to curse God and die? What if I had been standing at the foot of the
cross while Jesus suffered and died? Even if by chance I had known the Plan,
that it included saving all humanity, could I have watched without screaming,
“Relent, God! Surely there’s a better way!”?
Everything in me hates suffering. I want a different plan—for
my friend, for Job, for the salvation of the world. But by an act of my will, a
very hard act, I choose to surrender what I want and what I think I need to
know. I choose to trust God.
