The Beauty of Suffering

Well, it has been quite awhile since I've posted on here. The biggest reason for my hiatus from the blogging world is our little bundle of joy, George Peter. Below is a reflection I wrote on my time of pregnancy and the newfound appreciation of suffering God granted me. **Also, sorry for the white highlighting on the text... it's a glitch I cannot seem to fix!

Two months after my husband, Aaron, and I were married, we received some thrilling news from two little pink lines: I was pregnant! As the excitement grew with each passing day, so did my morning sickness. For nearly three months straight, I awoke every morning feeling like my body was hit by a train. It was a struggle to get out of bed before 10 am for many of those days, and I lost nearly 10 pounds during that time. Unfortunately, when this suffering came, I did not suffer with it well. I spent most of my time complaining about it to myself, to God, and to Aaron. Though I knew that this suffering was temporary and meant that the baby growing inside of me was healthy, I was sick of it, literally. Until one day, I came across this passage in the Diary of St. Faustina: “Suffering is a great grace; through suffering the soul becomes like the Saviour; in suffering love becomes crystallised; the greater the suffering, the purer the love. (57)” I realized that God was giving me an incredible opportunity to offer up my morning sickness to Him; that through this persistent bit of suffering I experienced every day, He was allowing me to share in the sufferings of Christ on the cross, and so grow in love for Him and for my baby. After realizing what Jesus was inviting me into through my daily sufferings, I decided to pick different intentions to offer them up for each day. This not only gave me a better outlook on the mystery of suffering, but it allowed me to unite my heart more closely to Jesus’ sacred heart and His bride, the Church.

After making it through almost half of the pregnancy, Aaron and I decided that it was time to educate ourselves on the art of childbirth. We signed up for a class that taught a method of natural childbirth, something that we had originally chosen largely due to my fear of needing an unnecessary caesarean surgery (c-section).  However, what we discovered in regards to the beauty of natural childbirth further edified my newfound appreciation for suffering. When Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden, God increased the pangs of women’s childbirth, “in pain shall you bring forth children.” (Genesis 3:16) While this was not originally part of God’s plan for women, it is a direct result of the Fall, and therefore is a pain that women’s bodies are supposed to experience. In fact, all suffering in the world directly traces back to that pivotal day when Adam and Eve chose to sin against God. The method of natural childbirth we chose to learn, called the Bradley method, did not teach any fancy techniques for dealing with the pain of contractions (think Lamaze breathing that you see in the movies), but instead, it taught me to embrace the pain by relaxing every muscle in my body and letting the contraction run its course. In fact, research has found that when the body fights against labor contractions, it wears itself out much more quickly and the contractions are more painful. The experience of suffering becomes much more tolerable and meaningful when you embrace the pain, rather than fight it or try to escape from it.

When we experience any type of suffering, our base instinct is to enable our “fight or flight” reaction by choosing one of these coping mechanisms: fight it by complaining about it, denying it, or becoming discouraged by it…. or flee from it by turning to alcohol, illicit drugs, or unhealthy relationships/habits. However, if we instead embrace the suffering, like I learned in my childbirth class, we are uniting ourselves to Jesus’ own sufferings on the Cross, as well as to the sufferings of all mankind. This is the essence of a concept called redemptive suffering. Jesus’ suffering and death redeemed our own lives by allowing him to pay the price for our sins. In the same way, our sufferings, when embraced and offered up to God, have the power to redeem ourselves and others as God so chooses. This is what St. Paul refers to in his letter to the Colossians, when he says: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church” (1:24).

Jesus gave me the opportunity to test my newfound appreciation for suffering very early in the morning on August 6^th when our son decided to make his entrance into the outside world. In preparation for the big event, my husband and I compiled a list of intentions that I hoped to offer up my labor pains for, particularly in the height of labor. For over an hour, just before a new contraction welled up, my husband picked an intention for me to give the pain to, and interestingly enough, the severity of the contraction pains actually correlated accordingly to the severity of the intention. Labor was by far the most difficult amount of suffering I have ever experienced, but even when I was at my breaking point and wanting to give up (we’ve all been there!), the Lord delivered me from the pain, giving me one of the best gifts I’ve ever received: the gift of a new life. Which leads me to my final revelation on the mysteries of suffering: suffering always has the potential to bring forth new life.

You don’t have to be a woman in labor to embrace this gift of suffering; this Lent, as you reflect on the sufferings of Christ, consider the beautiful opportunity God gives you through your own sufferings to further unite yourself to Him and His mystical body, the Church, and offer it up for the life He desires to bring into the world. Let’s change the culture by bearing our crosses joyfully rather than fighting or hiding from them! “If God sends you many sufferings, it is a sign that He has great plans for you and certainly wants to make you a saint.” --St. Ignatius of Loyola