when we don't choose our suffering

When I was first assigned my calendar date for the Lenten Faculty Blog, I already had a built in connection, an immediate thesis: March 11th would be the same day as my first wedding anniversary. I planned to wax poetic on themes related to both one year of matrimony and Lent: growth, renewed commitment, sacrifice, required selflessness. I would draw comparisons between this still new stage in my personal life with this season of reflection, noting how I was encouraged going into my first Lent in marriage, how we draw strength from each other, how we have chosen to give up the same things (cute!).

Basically, I would relate it to me - how I had the ability choose what to forego, how I used my free will to be inherently connected with someone and therefore have my spiritual journey be forever dependent on someone else. After all, you can essentially tailor your Lenten experience to what you personally need.

But what happens when you have to experience suffering beyond your control? These plans for my post were quickly altered given the events of this past week - losing a student in the midst of this season of sacrifice. Essentially, the suffering and pain and sacrifice of this season was suddenly being imposed on me, which is a strikingly different Lenten way of life than one you try to control, one beyond any plans you tenuously tried to construct for yourself. The last two days have been enormously difficult; I don’t have to inform anyone who has been on campus about the grief, emotional exhaustion, and spiritual questioning of fate and mortality that has surely occurred. And in the context of Lent, my pursuit of “giving up” something for Lent suddenly seems trivial in the midst of such senselessly imposed anguish that we have had to endure. It has led to me to contemplate on the concept of enduring suffering we do not choose, but has been irrationally given to us. Sometimes, God allows unimaginable hardship into our lives without our say, and we are forced to reckon with these circumstances outside of our control - a far cry from a Lent or a Faculty Lenten blogpost where we can pick or choose how we would prefer to sacrifice or how we would prefer to present our sacrifice.

Today’s reading echoes this necessary humility regarding what God has in store for us in this Lenten season:

“For we are his handiwork, 

created in Christ Jesus for the good works
that God has prepared in advance,
that we should live in them.”

We are not calling the shots here - God has prepared this life, with its sufferings and joy, for us. Losing a student is outside of our control, but our experience of this world is God’s “handiwork,” things that have been “prepared in advance,” and sometimes, we must grow from the suffering imposed on us rather than the ones we try to endure in response to what we think we need.

It is difficult right now to see how I will grow from such senseless loss. I can only have faith that I, my wife, and our community can find some lesson or healing to cling to in these difficult days, days in which we always have to give up at least some sense of control.

Author: Chris Patterson, English Department