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SUFFERING

     Thousands of miles and a whole continent in between are two women.  They don't know each other, nor will they while on this earth.  Yvonne and I know them both.  Both of them are suffering.

     Several weeks ago Yvonne was coming home after visiting a friend when she came upon Bernadette.  Wrapped in little more than rags, Bernadette was laying outside the doors of local clothing and jewelry stores, barely conscious.

     Though we did not know her name at that time, we've seen Bernadette before along with countless other beggars that roam our neighborhood.  We had never seen her in this condition.  

     Her lips were white, her eyes yellow and her hair speckled with grit from the street.  She sat in a puddle of air conditioning condensation and her own urine.  Without help she couldn't sit up, let alone stand up.  

     Someone nearby had given her a cup of water and a morsel of food, but she was too weak to lift her hand to put them to her mouth.  Two young women had stopped to comfort her, but really did not know what to do.  Mostly, people either just walked by or stood and stared.

     With the help of our translator, Gerand, we were able to extract enough information to know that if we didn't help her she was going to die.  The three of us were eventually able to lift Bernadette into a tuc tuc and transport her to the local hospital.

     Within a day she had regained much of her strength.  Within two days she was able to walk to a bathroom (without her cane) and bathe.  A week later she was able to leave the hospital.

     The curious thing about Bernadette is that she has family not far away.  They have enough to provide their sister food and shelter, but Bernadette prefers wandering the streets and begging.  We have seen her several times in the last week, right where she has been before.

     While it is apparent that Bernadette, who is 60 years old, suffers from some form of dimensia, it is also apparent that she has enough awareness to know she has a place where she could live in a semblance of dignity.  She prefers indignity.  Her family is well aware of her condition, but is unwilling to fight through Bernadette's obstinance to help.

     Back in the states, there is another who is suffering.  She did not grow up in squalor, but in middle class America.  As a young girl she contracted polio.  Now as a 74-year-old woman she is battling cancer.

     What we know about Jeannine is that she is a fighter.  She fought through polio and raised a family without the help of an absentee husband.  She persevered through adversity and was able to provide.  The ultimate fruits of her labor are two children of immense character.  

     Her son and daughter are the picture of what any parent's heart would desire; both accomplished and both with healthy families of their own.  Most importantly, they love their mother deeply.

     When we heard of Jeannine's challenge Yvonne and I really didn't know how to respond.  You see, Jeannine is a friend of ours.  We have shared Christmas and Thanksgiving together, but we did not know how to share in her suffering.  So, we prayed.

     Just recently we exchanged e-mails, and Jeannine said this: "I believe the only way I'll succeed in winning this challenge is with God's help."

     What I see from a distance is the success of Jeannine's suffering.  She has already won.  The rewards are her children and grandchildren, who are now at her side with love and compassion.  In return, Jeannine has persevered with courage and grace.

     No matter how pragmatic or accurate a doctor's prognosis, where there is God there is always hope.  And where there is hope there is love.  The Bible says, "...God is love...Now there abides these three; faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love."

     You see, the difference between Bernadette and Jeannine is love.  Bernadette's family is ambivalent when it comes to her suffering.  There is defeat and separation.  There is no desire to ensure the one who is suffering any sort of comfort and in exchange they receive no comfort.

     On the other hand, Jeannine's family is tied together in love.  They are bound by compassion and mercy.  I suspect that though they might not even recognize it, that their hearts are set on the prospects of justice prevailing - that ultimately their hearts are united in eternity.

    So, one family is divided, the other united.  One is forlorn, the other hopeful. One woman suffers in bitterness, the other in love.

    We are reminded of a Savior, who's birth we are about to celebrate.  He lived, He suffered and He died...for us.  Then He was resurrected...for us.  

     Yvonne and I pray that you would know this love this Christmas.  That it would resurrect purpose in your life.  And once you know it, share it with someone who is suffering.  It is the greatest gift we could possibly give.

PAIN

Mike Broadhurst

    "On a level of 1-to-10, how is your pain?"

     If you have ever spent any prolonged time in a hospital, this is a question with which I'm sure you are quite familiar.  It was asked of me so frequently during my 24-days at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland that, to be honest, I really didn't know how to answer.

     Being hospitalized is somewhat of a paradox.  Logic suggests that the best remedy for multiple surgeries, replete (in my case) with six tubes and IV's protruding from your body, would be rest.  However, as they say, when you are in a hospital there is no rest for the weary.

     Every two to four hours there is either a technician, a nurse, a doctor or a room attendant at your door looking to either put something in your body or extract something from it.  With nearly every visit, the inquiry is the same, "On a level of 1-to-10, how is your pain?"

     To answer that question forthrightly required a lot of soul searching, because to be honest I did not know how much pain I could endure before it became a "10."

     For example, how does the discomfort of a tube the width of a pencil and 14 inches long extended to the lower portion of your lung compare to having your arm shot off in the middle of war? Or, how does a stint 1-inch in diameter and 7-inches long that holds open your esophagus compare to a tumor on your neck, so large it threatens to choke life from your body?

     What about the friend who has battled cancer for the last year-and-a-half compare?  Or the impoverished child half a world away with tummies distended from malnutrition and starvation? Or even more sublimely, the loss of a child?

     As I reflected on these things, I developed my favorite answer.  Three.  Why?

     First of all, let me admit, I do not have a high threshold for pain.  I've never been particularly adept at enduring it, and have put forth concerted efforts to avoid anything that might pose a prospect for pain.  So, yeah, I'm a sissy.

     However, I knew for sure my pain was not a 10, so with lots of time on my hand I started a process of rating pain?  If 10 is the most severe, then was I an 8, 7 or 6?  

     To me, on the painometer, the answer had to be no.  They hadn't put a catheter in (even the thought hurts), nor had they inserted a ventilator, which one RN assured me rather menacingly "You don't want," in an attempt to get me to breath after the first surgery.  So, if catheters and ventilators are not so uncommon and people come through those implements fairly regularly, anything above 5 was out of the question.

     Was I at a five?  Possibly, but five is half way to 10 and I wasn't sure I could even quantify the pain as that severe.  So, I chose three because to me it represented more than just discomfort.  It required the infusion of pain killers to keep it from growing worse and left enough room to go up on the scale without tempting the most severe pain, a 10.

     What I realized during all of this was that the more I thought about pain, the less I could concentrate on what I really needed. Pain was a distraction trying to keep me from my heart's desire and that was healing.  So, in a spiritual sense there was a battle going on every time someone asked me, "On a scale of 1-to-10, how is your pain?"

     During this process I came to see that pain is one of the adversary's great weapons used in an attempt to lead us away from God's grace and place attention on ourselves.  Pain is an enemy to faith.  It tempts us to accuse God, leading to the inevitable question, "God, why me?"

     Except that Yvonne and I have seen how faith has changed the lives of so many people, I suppose making such a charge would be a logical conclusion.  Fortunately for us, we've been exposed to far too much of God's power to buy into such a deception.  Whether it was the prisons of South Carolina, the addicted and forgotten on the streets of Savannah, Georgia, or the hopeless and impovershed of Madagascar, we have a personally witnessed hundreds who have been delivered from pain and brought into the joy of the Lord.

     Knowing His nature and desire for us changes the dynamics of the query.  Rather than, "God, why me?" a different perspective was possible when I asked, "God, why not me?"

     What I choose to take from the last 30 days was not an opportunity to accuse God of His lack of love or mercy for me, but to look at the ways God expressed His love toward me and Yvonne and how we might minister to others simultaneously.

     My wife, my family, my friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world reached out to me and to the Lord on my behalf with a power and authority not known in the natural realm and that is what I take away from this trial.  That is, that love was made manifest and faith grew for all of us.  And God was glorified in the process.

     I have not arrived at a point where I'm willing to say thank you to Him for the 1-in-100 chance of complications and the "threes" that followed, but in the midst of battle I can tell you there is a God who loves us all and wants to use each and everyone of us to touch a world fraught with pain and suffering.  That is what Jesus Christ did for us and through Him what you, my loved ones, have done for me.

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