Sanitizing Suffering

I’ll never forget the panicky feeling in the pit of my stomach as I barreled out of my office and down the hallway en route to the ladies bathroom. Morning sickness was kicking my butt, and life wasn’t taking it any easier on me. That was mostly my fault, of course, but pain is pain, and I was in it. My singular goal in this isolated moment was pretty simple: reach the toilet in time.

So I was less than thrilled when Debby intercepted me on the way. “How are you, sister?” she asked. I tried not to be rude as I offered up a quick smile and said, “Doing alright,” my feet still moving toward my destination.

“Alright??” she retorted. “Only alright?” (She didn’t know that I was pregnant and single and wrestling addiction or that my entire life was falling apart. She only knew that I was the gal who supervised the membership staff at the Y and that if membership staff do anything, it’s smile and make people happy.) “Nah,” she continued, “The answer you’re looking for is ‘blessed and highly favored.'”

I bit my tongue and closed my mouth, a wise choice in retrospect, as I likely would have upchucked right there had I tried to respond. Instead, I made a mental note admonishing myself to never be like this woman, and I proceeded on my way to the bathroom stall. I made it in time, in case you’re wondering.

That was more than a decade ago, but the memory always stuck with me. It hit on a deeper nerve with which I had long struggled- the pressure to appear perfect regardless of how broken I really was. It seemed to be a particularly pervasive pressure in faith circles where so many seemed to believe that only way to represent God correctly was to have all your sh*t together and make it look like your life was all roses and lollipops as He blessed your holiness efforts.

A short time later, I ran into a college friend who was on course to become a pastor. He had recently been diagnosed with cancer, and his life had been thrown into a tailspin. When I asked him how he was feeling, I was genuinely interested in hearing his heart.

“You know, Kaeley. I’m just really excited,” he said in an obviously rehearsed cheerful tone that could rival even the schmooziest car salesman.

“Excited?” I remember repeating, bewildered.

“Yeah!” he retorted. “I can’t wait to see how God is going to use this. It’s such a great opportunity!”

I realize it probably makes me a pretty heinous wench to be judging someone’s response to their own cancer diagnosis. We all process differently, and this was probably just his way of coping. But judge me if you will, I’m just being honest: His words registered as false. It felt an awful lot like he was reading a script of pre-approved holiness lines, like in his head the Christian way to respond to cancer is to pretend like our faith is so rock solid that it exempts us from human emotions like doubt or fear or anger.

I don’t know where this kind of thinking originates, but I do know where it eventually leads. My high school Bible teacher named his VW bug “the pharisee;” on the outside it looked great, but on the inside, it was full of “dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” If we aren’t careful, so are we. There’s a widespread misconception that we somehow make God look good by being perfect ourselves. It’s a super dangerous premise. Deception is the devil’s tool, not God’s.

We ought to care infinitely more about how we really ARE than we do about how we LOOK to others. There are no holiness points in sanitizing our suffering. Jacob wrestled with God. David flooded his bed with tears. Jesus wept blood in Gethsemane.

Fake piety doesn’t help anyone. We bring God honor by engaging life’s struggles with honesty, clinging to Him even when we don’t understand. That’s what makes faith sincere. It’s what makes it righteous. The world needs more of that example.