On Suffering, Presence, and Grace

Understanding your own suffering

There's a way in which we forget that something about our prayer was about openness to pain and suffering. We were open to it because, somehow, we wanted to be more open to it in our own lives. It's never just outwardly directed. Fundamentally it's about understanding your own pain and suffering — and the better you can understand that, the more effective you will be in helping other people.

But the other reality is that when you encounter someone who carries their pain and suffering with courage, you are actually fed and nourished by them. It's really a gift from them to you. Even though you're passing yourself off as the caregiver, the truth is that the people we serve heal us.

What a boy taught me

One of my earliest formative experiences came when I was a young Jesuit in training, teaching at a boarding school. There was a boy who was always getting into trouble — testing every limit. His parents, a wealthy family just a few miles away, had told me, “Make sure he doesn't come home unless we tell you he's coming home.” The real message was: we don't want him home. That's why he's here.

Eventually he started stealing cars, got caught, and ended up crying in my room. I said, “I don't think you're going to survive this one.” And through his tears he said, “All I ever really wanted was someone to really love me.”

Now, I'm a psychologist, so I know not everything in a person's life comes from a deficiency of being loved. But a lot does. How well we develop and flourish is often tied to how much love and support we received; the difficulties we carry are often tied to how frustrated love has been in our lives.

So I've come to believe this is the most important thing. The core of human development — what determines your future as a full human being — is whether you can ask the question, “Do you love me?” If you shut down that capacity, you shut down everything that is vulnerable in you. To ask it is to open yourself to love as something real and accessible. It is a radical act of faith. I always like to say: God is here, God is with you, God is for you — and the most tangible way you will ever know that is through the people who have been put in your life.

The core of human development is whether you can ask the question: “Do you love me?”

When someone asks, “Why is there suffering?”

When people come to me frustrated and ask, “Why is there suffering? Is there anything to be done about it?” — the first thing I want to know is what makes them ask the question.

I used to think of caregiving as dragon-slaying. When people asked for help, I'd think, “Why don't I come in and slay the dragon for you?” But people don't want you to slay their dragon. They want to do it themselves. There's a second stage where you show up, but you want to be appreciated — “Do you care that I'm here?” — and it's still about you. And then, if you work through that, you reach a third stage where you realize: this is that person's dragon. I need to wait to be told what they want me to do, with them. I need to be the follower here, not the leader. That is a hard lesson if you're there for the wrong reasons.

And here is the other thing I have come to believe, and I mean it: God does not do outcomes.

God does not do outcomes.

A God who is simply with you

There is no God up there choosing who will suffer unbearably, or handing out a little illness now and a car accident later. If you really give up the idea that God is behind outcomes — especially deaths — then the thing that has always made me crazy falls away: “This person was called to a better place,” or “God needed them in heaven.” Really? Tragedy is tragedy. Horrible things are horrible, and God did not do that.

And God does not do deals, either — not test grades, not law-school admissions, none of the bargains we fall to our knees over. If you expunge the God who is a dealmaker and a rewarder, what is left? A God who is simply with you in the human condition, revealing itself to you daily, and asking: Do you see me here? Can you touch me here? Can we be together, right now?

What is hard to believe is that when you are in a terrible situation with someone — because they are dying, because it is tragic — you are driven to your knees right beside them. And all you have to offer is your love and your presence. But that could be everything.

Being with, not doing

So much of our culture cultivates everyone into doing. But being with people in pain is about being with. It is about offering a personal presence that says, “I am here. I'm with you. I am for you.” That is very hard to just sit and give. When we visit people who are sick or dying, we walk in and say, “Can I get you anything? Is there something I can do?” — and we feel better when there is something to do. But that might not be for them. Often what people who are sick and dying really want is for you to sit down for a while, be quiet, and just be there. Almost wordlessly.

You have to learn to generate your own human presence — through expression, through holding, through listening. And you have to have the courage to be honest about what you are feeling, even if it is, “I'm listening, and I'm scared. I'm here, but I don't know what to do.” That can be deeply consoling, because it might be exactly how the other person feels.

I always tell my students: when someone is in real despair, our instinct is to rush them toward the light — “it's a great day; look at all the good you're doing.” That doesn't help. What they need to hear is, “Tell me about what hurts so much. I want to go where you are, in all that pain.” Only after you have gone there, and stayed a while, can you gently turn toward hope.

I’m listening, and I’m scared. I’m here, but I don’t know what to do.

We are all, at some level, wounded

Nearly all of therapeutic psychology is about naming feelings — making the encounter explicit, which is what people generally don't do. So even when you are being quiet with someone, you can say, “I'm being quiet right now because…,” or, “This is what I'm feeling in the quiet.”

It is only when you have real ego strength that you can acknowledge how dysfunctional you are. We are all dysfunctional at some level. There is usually a moment when you realize something about your own family is deeply flawed — and that for years you pretended not to see it. It was only when I was studying to be a psychologist, in my mid-twenties, that I realized my mother — whom I loved — had periods of major depression. She would stay in bed, and I'd come home and ask, “How was your day?” completely clueless. No wonder I get depressed; I just wasn't connecting the dots.

Here is something I always say about families: the trait in a parent or sibling that you most abhor, that you most hope you don't have — I have bad news. You have it. All of it is contagion; you get the good and you get the bad. Unless you become critically aware of what you have taken in, who knows who rules the day? So ask yourself: how much of your own voice is really your own? The more you realize how complicated you are, the more you will appreciate how complicated the world is. And God is not moving you toward simplicity — your emotional, spiritual, even biological life is oriented toward complexity.

Not joy, but awe

People ask whether I find joy in this work. I wouldn't quite call it joy. If you love someone, in the end, is it really about joy? It is a commitment to be with an unfolding life — and moments of awe that the life is unfolding in this beautiful way. Awe captures it better for me than joy, especially in the face of mortality.

Awe captures it better for me than joy — especially in the face of mortality.

Tears are such an important part of life, and they are not always joyful — but they carry gratitude. I think gratitude is this mysterious sense that the heart is being expanded. Even when you are being exposed to a reality you would rather not see, in the end you feel privileged to witness it.

Even when it is a reality you would rather not see, in the end you feel privileged to witness it.

Sinners called by God

I've referred to myself as a depressive more than once. I think it is important to be able to say, “This is my wound. I have learned a great deal from it, and I don't need to hide it. If other people can't deal with that, that's their problem.” In my experience, the more openly I can speak about my own affliction, the more freely my students can speak about theirs.

There is a phrase I always remind Jesuits of: “sinners called by God.” People tend to emphasize one half or the other — all the zeal of being called, or just “we're sinners,” which can quietly become “so we don't need to get better.” The real story holds both. Whatever wounds we carry, we are also called into grace, and healed. Whatever maladies I have are also where the story of grace is being revealed in my life.

Sources of solace

Someone asked me how, day to day, you keep hearing these stories without it rupturing your spirit. And remember what we are always trying to understand: that God is here, God is with us, God is for us. The reality is that God is revealing more and more of God’s world to you — and what you slowly grow able to do is to love the world as it is, to be there in it without making it into something it is not.

God is revealing more and more of God’s world to you.

Here is the thing, too: if you are granted your prayer — to be with suffering and not count the cost — you will decompensate at some point, psychologically and physically. So you have to renew and rebuild yourself.

To do that, you need to know your own sources of solace, and feel free to go to them — prayer, exercise, and, above all, being able to name your own suffering to the people closest to you. To say, “This is what I'm experiencing. Do you love me, even here?” Once people truly know you, they can often tell before you can. A dear friend once called me out of the blue and said, “You're not feeling great today. What's up?” That is so satisfying — but he could only do it because we had a long history of my letting him in.

Stay close to your friendships. Many of my closest friends are nothing like me — zealous, hard-driving, even joyful souls. It takes all of us. Pray, exercise, and really get to know, understand, and process the experience.

Amplify the present

If you give up the idea of outcomes, you can't really fix anything — but what is truly holy, truly graced, is the present moment. So find ways, especially when it is time to part, to say: “I know we won't be together the way we have been. But I will always remember you. Let me tell you some of the ways your life has enriched mine.” Amplify the present.

You will take home how others have imprinted your life, and they will take home how you have imprinted theirs. When you think of the graced, abiding memories of your life, many of those people are not with you anymore — but the strength of that encounter is still with you, still forming you. So put yourself out there. Say, “I have a deep connection with you. I have appreciated every day we've had. And I will always remember.” That matters to people, if you do it.