Isaiah 40:1-11; 27-31; 1 Peter 5:1-2a; 7, 10-11; October 8, 2023; Mental Health Awareness Sunday
I have something called “Chronic Prostatitis.” I do. And it’s been going on for over five years now. Sometimes it’s not so bad. Other times, it’s much worse, and an episode can last for months on end. Like right now, which has me back on four weeks of antibiotics, at minimum.
Basically, it’s a reoccurring infection of my prostate. It leads to lower back pain, testicular pain, but worst of all, at least for me, the constant sensation of having to go pee, even if I just went. Imagine having an empty bladder, but feeling like it’s always full, and that you always have to go. Yeah, it’s pretty terrible, and affects almost everything. Sleep. Sitting. Eating. It’s mentally and physically frustrating. And that’s putting it mildly.
I also have the beginning of arthritis in my knees from eight different patella dislocations and ligament tears which resulted in multiple reconstructive surgeries. I have herniated discs in my lower spine that I’ve been in and out of PT for. I have IBS, which can be severe (as many of you know already – no onions, please!); and I have also battled through reoccurring events with gastritis and GERD. An acronym that sounds just as ugly as its acidic symptoms.
I tell you all this not because I want your pity (even though George Costanza is right — that pity is underrated), but to illustrate that you never quite know what is going on with someone else. No matter how close you might be to them. No matter how young or youthful, happy and energetic they come across. For despite the smiles and the jokes, or in my case, the robe and stole, there can be a fragile body behind it all, that is also in bouts with their own physical and mental health, vitality, and stamina.
It’s why I think 1 Peter reminds us today “to tend the flock that is in your charge/company (verse 2).” Because all of us, yes, all of us could use some tender care, support and love from time to time. Because all of us walk through the valley of the shadow of inadequacy and loneliness, the valley of the shadow of disappointment and rejection, the valley of the shadow of anxiety and fear, the valley of the shadow of pain and, unavoidably, death.
Sometimes then when I’m popping another pill, or running to the nearest toilet, I remind myself that there’s someone in the next room likely going through their own valley under a different shadow. Perhaps the girl working at the concierge desk who hasn’t noticed me standing there just lost her mother, but was forced to come into work that day so to keep paying the rent. Perhaps the man at dinner at the table next to mine, who is laughing too loud at jokes that aren’t funny, is doing so because he was just privately told he was going to lose his job. And, perhaps the boy who can’t seem to act right in quiet or serious settings is doing so because at home his parents are at war with each other in front of him.
And so, I would do good to remember (as would we all), that the same pity and kindness that we would like to see given to us, should also be offered to others. For even though we suffer individually, we all suffer collectively. And, without fail, there is always someone going through something drastically worse than us.
For instance, while I’ve been moaning about my prostate, good reasons notwithstanding, my very own cousin and her family have been fighting just to see tomorrow. See, my cousin Christine has a daughter named Adeline who was born with a rare cancer in her brain. The poor girl, not even seven, has spent almost as much time living at CHOP as at her home. And then just this past week, her father, Ed, Christine’s husband, was discovered to have a giant tumor in his own brain, which required emergency surgery. My cousin’s husband, and her eldest daughter, at the very same time, hand-in-hand walking through the valley of the shadow. Per their request, please keep them and my family in your prayers.
And so, this past week, I honestly began to hate myself a bit for wallowing in my own suffering while my own cousin was going through ALL of that; not to mention everything happening in Israel. But after that dark hour of self-loathing, I then reminded myself of words that I have already given to some of you. That I/that you are allowed to feel what you feel, even if others are going through something worse.
For there will always be someone with a worse condition, a worse diagnosis, a worse outcome, but none of that should ever minimize your own trials. What you are going through is real and is not validated only when crossing a certain threshold of pain. No, all suffering sucks, physical and mental, and all of it can be all too real. And so even if your ailments pale in comparison to my cousin’s or those around the world, you too are worthy of support, care, and kindness. And especially from none other than you, yourself. You need to, and are allowed to, look after yourself! That’s not self-serving. No, that’s self-caring. Our society doesn’t really advocate for that… come into work and all, even though you feel like crap… but no, you really need to, and are allowed to care for yourself. To love yourself. Because in truth, that’s precisely what your creator, your God, is wanting you to do.
For God doesn’t want any of you to feel or remain down in the dumps. This notion that God “doesn’t give you any more than you can handle” is quite frankly absurd. Because God is never the one giving it to you in the first place. God wants you to be free from worry. Free from anxiety. Free from pain and suffering. Because frankly, sometimes all of it can be too much to handle. And that is why God anointed for this world, Jesus Christ. So that in and through him, God could know it all, carry it all, and bear it all for us.
So, while I believe that suffering can produce endurance, and endurance can produce character, and character can produce hope, as Paul so eloquently writes in Romans 5:3-5; it is yet never God’s will to see you suffer. No, instead of being the author of pain, God is the minster of presence about it. Whatever it is, wherever it finds you, God assures you, God assures all of us, that God is there with us. Suffering, crying, and weeping, right there alongside us.
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Let me leave you today with a story.
There was once a woman who lived a very long time ago. She had a troubled life. She was sold out of her country, and became a slave in the household of a noteworthy family. She ran around and did their chores: cleaning, cooking, and tending to the crops in the fields.
Well, one day when she was hard at work, the lady of the house came to her and confessed a secret. The lady was barren and could no more conceive a child than visit the sun. This broke the lady’s heart as it was her dream to be a mother. And so, unable to let go of that dream, and out of all other options, she asked this slave if she would be willing to share her bed with her husband so to give her the child the lady always wanted.
Out of options herself, for to say “no” was an impossibility, the slave agreed to the strange and difficult request and had relations with the lady’s husband. Nine months later a little baby boy was born, and to her lady’s delight, he was just as she had hoped.
But then the lady began to sense that her slave was pining to hold her own child. To nurse and play with and teach him like any mother would want to. And unable to deal with this, and treating it as insolence, the lady grew despondent with the slave and threw her and the child out of the house into the wild.
With nowhere to go, the slave and her son wandered into the desert. Alone, depressed, and afraid, the woman called out to God in a prayer asking why the world was so cruel and unfair. And after a terrible silence descended on her, a voice came from the sky, or rather, from a figure that looked like an angel. And it said to her, woman, God has heard your cry. Your son shall be called Ishmael, which means, God hears. And he will be blessed from this time forth, for God has heard your prayer, Hagar, and will care for you and yours always. – Genesis 16:1-16
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My friends, I tell you this story because it was written a long time ago that God hears. God hears and cares about what we are going through, no matter who we are, no matter our station in life, no matter how small or how large our affliction. God hears and God cares.
You might not always feel it; and you might receive silence as an answer to your prayers. But scripture assures us that we are heard all the same, from now until the end of time, and in the wilderness of life in between.
“Comfort, comfort my people!” the prophet cries.
And so let it be.
Amen.
