When Suffering Seems Relentless
When suffering strikes, it hurts. But when it strikes again and again, it leaves you gasping for air with no time to catch a breath before another strike takes your next breath away.
Friend, I do not feel qualified to write to you about relentless suffering because many have experienced far worse than me. However, from the little I have experienced, I would like to share with you because God uses others’ stories to strengthen and encourage his people. And if God can walk with me through my suffering and teach me more of him, I know he will walk with you through yours and use it for his glory and your growth.
How Long, O Lord?
In 2020 the world was thrown into disarray as it faced the beginning of Covid-19. The world stopped in its tracks as businesses closed, individuals stayed at home, and a pandemic of fear swept across the globe. I was pregnant with my second child while my first was running circles around me, and my husband worked from home.
Toward the end of the year, I safely delivered a baby girl. We started life as a family of four, but just two weeks after I had given birth, I felt a lump on my neck. This lump turned out to be cancer. I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma when I was nineteen, and now, ten years later, I faced a relapse. To pursue healing meant more chemotherapy, hair loss, nausea, fatigue, and muscle aches. I also had a stem cell transplant, which meant time in a hospital away from my family and months to recover, all while my little ones looked for me to love and care for them.
Before I began treatment, my dear Nan passed away. I was very close with my grandmother, but we lived far away from one another. Lockdowns, distance, and having a new baby meant that I was unable to be there at her funeral and could only support my mother, an only child, from afar. I could not hug her as she grieved, nor did I have space to grieve myself.
“With all these big changes coming thick and fast—a pandemic, a birth, a death, and facing another life-changing illness—there was deep grief within but also an abundance of mercies all around. ”
With all these big changes coming thick and fast—a pandemic, a birth, a death, and facing another life-changing illness—there was deep grief within but also an abundance of mercies all around. I was given a small notebook at Christmas with my name on it. This little book would become my “book of mercies” as I was determined to record all the blessings in the hard moments so I could reflect and give thanks to God through it. I used the back pages to write down the grief and sorrow that I would eventually acknowledge and lament before the Lord.
Trusting in His Steadfast Love
When I was fatigued and not well, reading the Bible was hard. Believers encouraged me with verses, cards, and gifts, and on those tough days, it lifted me. There were verses that I thought about often, such as “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (Ps. 56:3) and “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isa. 26:3–4). My family began to know what it looked like practically to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and not lean on our own understanding (Prov. 3:5). That meant trusting him with treatment options, transport to the hospital, childcare, practical support, our present, and our future. We had no idea how we would navigate this tidal wave of trauma—but the Lord did. It has been a season of growth when we felt like we were wilting, but our souls were watered with the truth from Scripture.
A Lesson from Job
Reading the book of Job is a “go-to” for a suffering saint. We know that Job went through much suffering, so there are lessons to be gleaned from his life. In the first chapter, the messengers delivered the news of tragedy after tragedy before Job had time to take it all in. His 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and 3,000 camels had been taken, his servants had been killed, his 7,000 sheep had been burned, and all of his children were killed. This is relentless suffering brought upon a man who was blameless and upright, who feared God and turned from evil (Job 1:1). Previously, I had not paid attention to how the messengers that came to Job interrupted each other as they each arrived to deliver more bad news. As one messenger after another came to tell Job, it says, “While he [the messenger] was yet speaking, there came another and said . . .” and this happened repeatedly (Job 1:14, 16, 17, 18). The suffering seemed unending, and we know it got worse for Job.
What must Job have been thinking? In response he “arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped” (Job 1:20). His heart must have been utterly torn. But even in this, Job did not sin or blame God (Job 1:22). We know that God and Satan had discussed Job in the heavenly realm. Our affliction, if God so allows, can be the result of evil powers and principalities working against us (Eph. 6:12). At times, suffering can also be a natural consequence of our own sin (1 Pet. 4:15); we should be prayerful in searching our hearts for any hidden or known sins that need repentance (Ps. 19:12–13). Suffering also arises simply from the fact that we live in a fallen world. We may be blameless like Job with no obvious reason for suffering.
Suffering is always under the sovereignty of God and can be used to make us more like Jesus. From experience, I know that I am being refined in my suffering. It does not always look pretty. Nonetheless, my response, even when I don’t understand, should be to trust and to worship the Lord who is working all things out for good for those who love him (Rom. 8:28).
A Lesson from Paul
Paul suffered greatly as he sought to spread the good news of Jesus. He was put in prison, flogged, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked three times, sleep deprived, hungry, thirsty, and in constant danger of death. But he was also able to say, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3–5).
When we look to Jesus, who is the source of our joy, and take the focus off ourselves and our suffering, it is possible to come to a place of praise and rejoicing. It does not mean we rejoice because of the affliction but because we know our hope is in Christ alone.
“Fear has been my constant enemy during my cancer relapse—fear of the cancer returning again and fear of death. ”
Fear has been my constant enemy during my cancer relapse—fear of the cancer returning again and fear of death. Paul longed to depart from this world saying, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). As a young wife and mother, this was not something I could say with confidence. I have never thought about my mortality as seriously as I have these last few months. But even facing my mortality was an opportunity for growth as the Lord continues to prepare me for eternity. Believers are pilgrims passing through this world and need to live with eternity in view. Death is the last enemy for us (1 Cor. 15:26), yet it had no hold on Jesus. Jesus is our hope in life and death.
A Lesson from Jesus
Jesus knows more about suffering than anyone else in this world. The sinless, holy One who was with the Father and Spirit from the beginning was rejected by the very people he came to save and his own Father as he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). He took the punishment for sin that mankind deserved. His love for the world held him to the cross, not nails. Jesus “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26).
As believers, nothing can separate us from the love of God. We may suffer in this life, but we will never experience his wrath toward sin because of what Jesus did on the cross. He “is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Rom. 8:34–35). Suffering on earth is light and momentary in comparison to the eternal glory that awaits those who trust in him and his sacrifice (2 Cor. 4:17).
Elisabeth Elliot said, “Suffering is never for nothing.” Whatever we are going through now, or whatever we may have to endure in the future, let us look to Jesus. He saves. He restores. He gives life everlasting. There is purpose in the pain. The pain will not be forever. When suffering seems relentless, there is hope in Christ.
An empty cross,
an empty tomb,
a risen Savior,
preparing a room.
For us.
Ruth Clemence is a follower of Jesus, a wife to Joel, mother to two young children, a writer and a blogger living in South West England. She loves to write about the hope of the gospel in the ups and downs of daily life. You can find more of her words at ruthclemence.com.