We cross the state border, drive hours away, and are hit by beauty.
Golden yellows, deep reds, bright orange, pops of still fresh green. The hills rolled with color. It took my breathe away, filled my heart, and yet made me simultaneously sad. A sadness that rose from the lack of autumn scenery in our own area. A sadness of discontent, with the fall around my home that was brown and blah.
Why weren’t our trees dying as well as theirs?
Such an odd question to ponder, and yet it triggered something deeper in me, something more raw, something hitting the nerve of the comparison of suffering.
If there’s one thing I learned about comparing suffering it’s this: suffering cannot be compared. I went through two miscarriages, and in many ways you could see similarities, and in many other ways you could easily say the second was worse than the first. Yet I can tell you this: they were completely incomparable. Such is the nature of pain. To give a quick summary of aspects of this, let’s go back to those trees:
- There are different types of trees. Even though trees are trees, just like humans are humans, there are still different types of trees, and well, different “types” of humans. I feel like the “me” that went through my first miscarriage was significantly different from the “me” that went through my second one. Now, I don’t mean to imply that my identity was changed. But my experience was. And though my second miscarriage was much more complicated and layered in losses compared to my first one, God had also used that first one to ground me with a deeper theology of suffering and prepare me. And in contrast, if I went through yet another round of suffering it may have the opposite impact. I may be so wounded, so still-limping that I stumble my way through it. Ourselves, our character, our stability, our holistic health, all fluctuate. And what we “bring” to the suffering-table changes in our own lives and is certainly different from others. Just like different types of trees produce different levels of color in the fall, so do we as humans look different from others and even ourselves through trials.
2. There are different types of seasons. Even though our bland-state and the pretty-fall-state are both in autumn, that doesn’t mean our environment has been the same. Weather changes have a great impact on the color of autumn trees, and as some states are hotter, dryer, wetter, or cooler in the summer, we see that impact on our fall foliage. Sure, maybe other states can boast prettier fall colors now than mine can- but maybe those states didn’t get the rain beating mine did or the sweltering heat. This is true of our suffering too- maybe someone seems to handle suffering “better” than someone else, but we don’t know what past or current experiences are coming into play in their trial. We can see this in our own suffering seasons as well. Though I experienced two early miscarriages, my first miscarriage was experienced through a “dryer” season as compared to the second one. During my second, and what could easily be labeled my “worse”, miscarriage, I had a much larger and stronger community than I did during my first one. This proved to be a tremendous source of holding and healing, and in many ways made the second miscarriage “easier” than the first. On the flip side, my second miscarriage included a whole plethora of extended suffering and multiplied loss, which in that sense made it “harder”. Again, these miscarriages were both deeply painful in very different ways, easier in others, and truly utterly incomparable.
3. There are different types of roots. During my second miscarriage, and the entire storm that ensued, I found myself feeling much more rooted. I had my root of community, root of miscarriage experience and resources, and root of faith, that had been tried and tested during my first miscarriage. In that period of suffering, I had been swarmed with theological questions and felt extremely distant from God. That is one of the things that makes my experiences so impossible to label as “worse” and “better”. Spiritually, my first loss was much harder than the second. I was much more rooted in my faith the second time around. But mentally, the second loss shattered me. I developed Complex Trauma Disorder and quite truly lost my mind. Do you see God’s kindness there? My mind stayed healthy the first time around which was such grace as I had to mentally wrestle with God and chase down all my questions. The second time, when my mind broke, my faith held strong and I can honestly say that God was nearer to me than I had ever known Him to be before. I was at my physical worst, mental worst, and utterly heartbroken- and yet it was the best spiritual experience of my life. Do you see how incomparable pain is?
Do you see how incomparable pain is?
Recently, my entire family was hit at the same time with covid. It was pretty awful- but you know what one of the hardest parts was? That whisper voice in me that kept hissing, “You’re not doing covid right.” I’d chastise myself for not resting enough, even though with three little kids that was pretty impossible. Then I’d get to rest and chastise myself for not spending enough quality time with those kids. Was I making quarantine a meaningful experience for them? Was I taking the right vitamins? Eating healthy enough (word to the wise: cram in the health food while you can’t taste)? I found myself insecurely trying to slip into conversations to people the precautions we had taken before getting sick. And then finding out whatever else we should have done and beating myself up for that too. All while fighting anxiety over my family’s health and feeling like a truck kept running me over again and again and… and yet I kept hearing it, “You’re not doing covid right.”
It can be easy to ask ourselves, Why am I not suffering as well as others?
But how do we compare fall trees? And how do we compare sufferers? How do we compare our own pain? We cannot. I need to refrain from comparing myself to the “trees” around me or the “leaves” in my own life. There is no way to look within or look around and decide who’s “suffering well”. We need to instead focus on receiving our suffering and depending on God through it all. Suffering is not a performance, and we only add to it when we view it as such. Suffering is a process, and a variety of experiences (think different seasons) that can grow our character (think types of trees), and lead to deeper roots.
So the next time you feel that whisper in your heart trying to compare your pain to someone else’s or even your own past trials, remind yourself of the absolute incomparability of suffering. And seek to receive it instead, all while throwing yourself down at the Master’s feet.