A girl named Cora
I first met Cora Peters and her mother, Karen, at a clinic for pediatric cancer patients in central Illinois. Her smile was magnanimous and oddly an invitation of sorts to the younger kids in the room; they gravitated toward her. She would crouch down on the floor and play with them or, bedazzled iPhone in hand, she would show pictures of all her friends (and there were many). The children were mesmerized and sometimes a little disappointed when she was called back for an infusion of her chemo. When all her hair had finally succumbed to the treatment she was enduring, she donned her signature accent piece: a huge, color-coordinated bow, tied carefully and beautifully just off-center of her forehead. Usually, these were bright and noticeable from a distance but always competed with her bright, welcoming smile.
One particular day, sharing no distinguishing characteristics from another, I plopped down in a chair next to her mom. We both stared straight ahead for a few moments in Cora's direction. Realizing finally that another soul was in the same zip code, I uttered something hoping to be polite, “How are things?” She cocked her head toward me and proceeded to share how this journey had chewed up finances, strained the very foundation of marriage, drained attention and affection from their other children, challenged even her faith in God, and been met with so many ups and downs she didn’t know how to respond anymore to a basic greeting such as mine.
Questions about why
This encounter has impacted me for years and has lit a proverbial fire in my bones. As a result, I have a passion for communicating the life-altering reality of presence, particularly the presence of another with us in our pain where answers or comfort have fled like birds migrating south for the winter. A prevailing concern developed, which goes something like this, “Why is it when suffering is greatest and others need people near them are those same people often mishandled, or worse, not loved?” My soul had not yet been enlarged through the practice of lament so that I was a safe container for what Karen spilled out that day. However, I look back on that encounter, that time really, as a gift of sorts. From it, and by the refining ministry of the Holy Spirit, I have begun to grasp the content of this two-part series: How do we lovingly come alongside those in suffering or trial when there is no expiration date or plausible on-ramp?
And now, Jesus
I love Jesus! It's his presence that enables the following story. In John 9 (read the whole chapter) we see Jesus encounter a man who has experienced a great deal of suffering and has fallen prey to the prevailing notion of the day, sickness or infirmity is the result of someone’s sin - known or unknown. Jesus engages the limited understanding of the crowd around him with grace when he says, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Jesus goes on to hack a loogie in the dirt and create a healing mud mask for the guy’s eyes (imagine). What follows is telling, if not sad. The man endures skepticism that perhaps he was never blind in the first place. After a series of interrogations, the man is ostracized from the community. Jesus, however, finds the man and lovingly invites him into the kingdom by explaining his identity as the Son of Man!
This story is instructive because it speaks to two different kinds of needs presented in prolonged and unanswerable suffering: immediate and ultimate. First, this man had an immediate need for sight, or more accurately, to be seen by God himself. Healing is in the very nature of Jesus and with a touch it is done. Second, this man had an ultimate need for union with Christ, as we all do. Jesus finds him in his isolation and invites him into the family of God by grace and through faith (see Eph. 2:8-10). Simply put, our presence with another in their dark night addresses both the immediate and ultimate needs of humanity.
Cora’s dark night
In 2013, after having known Cora for two years, I received a call from Karen that she had only days or hours to live. Cora was requesting to see our family because we had shared so much life. We entered her room on the sixth floor as a family, met by her luminous smile and stunning bow, bright as always. Cora pulled us close, blessed our children, hugged and cried with Jada (our daughter and she had become close through treatment), and allowed us to pray over her. I wasn’t prepared for what came next as Cora dismissed everyone but me. Turning to meet her tear-filled eyes and trembling body, she says, “Doug, I am terrified of what comes next. Tell me it will be ok. Hold my hand and tell me Jesus has me!” The sacredness of that moment still provokes tears even now. I took her hand and JOYFULLY told her of The Presence who would walk with her through the eerie and into the eternal.
