After my recent blog about finding God’s presence inside our pain, several people wrote to express how they have navigated this in their own lives. One was a friend, Jack Salter, from South Carolina, who shared a piece with me from his journal, written shortly after he suffered a major stroke that compromised his eyesight. I share it here with his permission.
This struck me as similar to what David often does in the Psalms, sorting through his questions of God until trust emerges greater than his distress:
I’m not really sure where to begin here, where pain and prayers meet. The place where my dreams for a good thing, an outcome of my choosing for what I think is right, and the tear-soaked place where my pain and my prayers last met.
Not able to make sense out of anything becomes my reality… where my seemingly silly prayers for selfish things and my recognition of such, face off like old dusty cowboys in a western movie.
Looking over my shoulder and wishing for some good thing to happen, and still, my pain becomes more real than it is supposed to be. My hope is tied to an outcome for my good, and the enchantment of such makes me lean into a form of “lucky sayings”, practice, old wives’ tales, and the like. All of which sounds like religious quackery.
Does my pain become me? Does it articulate my mouth and influence each word and motive I have? Does it become me?
Pain becomes the way I see things, you, and everything beyond the captive man in the tower I am standing in.
My prayers seem to rise from a place beyond any known depth. Words that sound more like moanings and mumblings. Pleadings roll off my tongue, and often I stop to see if there is an answer, a reply, but there is only silence. Is this the place where pain and prayer meet?
Then, ever so subtly, there is a nudge. A small current of persuasion that dances like leaves in a gentle breeze somewhere next to the place where my moanings emanate.
I have seen small streams that flow out of the side of a mountain; if not but a small trickle, water amazingly gushes out from a source that is profoundly unseen. It’s as if there was an unseen force that said to the side of the mountain, “Let the water flow out.” This is the place where earth and water meet, and it defies my simple mind in how this happens.
And so is the nudging that comes from some hidden force beyond my knowing.
Wondering if my pain and prayer are bound together by some invisible force. What holds these two together and why? Am I the only one who has ever fumbled their way into this chasm? What little hope I muster seems like dipping my finger in a bowl of boiling water—mostly unsure.
How long have I been here, with the clatter of teeth for sound and fumbling fingers that seem to touch nothing? Listening, “Try listening,” I say to myself. Try to just plain stop and persuade yourself to listen. Stop. Listen.
The small nudge was the stream flowing out of the mountain. The mountain of my pain, perhaps the mountain of my doing, that has left me undone. Groping fingers that muddle in the little flow of water find nothing to hold but register something different, something unique, and something real. It is Fresh and Alive!
My station will stay here, by the small stream, where if only small comfort comes,… I at last can rest in hope. I will stay by the small strea, and the small stream will stay with me.
And we will rest together.
I have found a similar progression in my own times of extremity. After I’ve exhausted myself trying to get God to fix it the way I want, I can finally stop. Settle. No longer fighting the pain or even trying to deny it, I can now sit in it and invite him to come. “Meet me here in the midst of my disappointments, grief, pain, or sorrow.” No longer struggling for what I want, I find myself surrendering to his love. Embracing him in my tears, I sense the trickle of Presence, inviting me to see with different eyes. The trickle grows; my capacity to trust grows with it. That’s when I discover plans that are bigger than my plans, what God dreams instead of my dreams.
Don’t think this happens in a five-minute prayer. Finding our way home to Presence may take weeks, sometimes even months. Don’t be discouraged by that; all the while, God is untangling stuff in your heart that gets in the way of you seeing him. And over time, you’ll become more comfortable in your pain, and it won’t take so long.
Now I move ahead, not only more aware of his work, but also somehow more transformed by his goodness. Is this not his abundance?
Sara and I read this in my own devotional this morning…
He is there in our simplest joys and in our most crushing circumstances, always inviting us closer, always transforming us so that we can live more freely in him. If this isn’t at least a piece of that abundant life, it is more like it than anything I’ve known to date. from Live Loved Free Full
