Not Benched: How Affliction Keeps Us in the Race

Why do you let me stay here

All by myself?

Why don't you come and play here?

I'm just sitting on the shelf

-She & Him, Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. 

-1 Peter 5:10-11

Benched. Shelved. Back seat. Hung up to dry. 

That’s how I feel a great deal of the time, what with one thing and another in life. Sometimes the chronic pain means I get to be fashionably late to my own day. Sometimes I make my coffee and toast and stumble back to bed, where I make a to-do list of what I’m going to do precisely when I can get up and get moving.

Being physically in pain every day makes me feel shelved in many ways. Paying attention to my body and attempting to pace myself means I have to be STUPID CAREFUL with my time and energy, which means saying no to lots of things, including good things. That’s just plain annoying. Needing to ask for help in household chores and shopping makes me feel pretty incapable sometimes, and I don’t like that at all. 

However, I think the biggest way that I feel BENCHED IN LIFE is the very dangerous and very real game of comparison. And man, is it KILLER. Some days, on the ones where I feel physically low already, it starts to feel like EVERYONE ELSE is out doing SOMETHING IMPORTANT. Something MEANINGFUL. Everyone else is OUT THERE. They are in it, they are running their races, they are getting AFTER IT. And here I am, waiting to get out of bed so I can shower when most people are probably on their lunch breaks. 

The truth of it is, of course, the Everyone Else I refer to in my head probably doesn’t feel like he or she is out there killing it. Everyone Else is struggling with something. I don’t know one single person in my life right now who ISN’T going through some kind of major difficulty, trying to sort out life’s cruel curveballs, trying to just do the best they can with what they have. Married, single, employed, unemployed, homeowner, renter, 20s, 30s, 40s, 80s. We all have something, don’t we? Something that makes us feel like we’re just watching life go by. The really good, juicy, happy parts of life. We all feel limited and stuck and weak sometimes, or maybe most of the time. And it makes sense that Everyone Else’s life starts to look a little better, a little easier, a little happier. 

Even with all this, affliction is not a word our culture uses very often, is it? We use words and phrases like stress, unfulfillment, need-more-self-care, going-through-a-hard-time-right-now, case-of-the-Mondays. I think we all tend to downplay our real sorrows, our real hardships, whether they’re physical, emotional, mental, or related to whatever life stages we find ourselves in. We are all very polite about our sorrows, because burdening each other or appearing weak or not in charge of our destinies is admitting that WE DON’T HAVE IT ALL TOGETHER. And that seems to be one of the worst indecencies we can commit in the Western 21st century. 

The Bible, however, was written in a time where people were brutally honest about their sorrows, like almost TOO honest for our Western ears. They called them what they were. Suffering. Affliction. Deep sorrows. Great troubles. I feel like honesty is a bit of a buzzword in our society these days, as though it’s some kind of magic incantation: if we can somehow be HONEST, our troubles will shrink and everyone will understand us if we can just be TRANSPARENT IN COMMUNITY. But what the honesty of the writers of the First and New Testaments does is lay a foundation for their relationship with God first of all. The Psalmists pour out their hearts and sorrows and sufferings before God Himself—they tell the truth about their sorrows. Beginning with their suffering allows them to move on to asking for help, to remembering God’s power and presence and love, to truly being dependent on their Creator and Redeemer. And this is a lesson I so desperately need to learn as a post-modern-living follower of Jesus. 

Of course, Jesus Himself tells us not to be surprised by our afflictions; as a matter of fact, he PROMISED SUFFERING. He promised the world would hate those who follow Him. But He promised then, as God promised all throughout the First Testament, that He would be with us, that He would be our Helper. He would be with His people, and His presence is truly enough. His nearness is what sustains us, from the beginning of the creation all the way to the 21st century.

When I read the Bible or talk with other Christians who have troubles, I slowly start to realize that having afflictions, having limitations, having weaknesses, having hang-ups, is not an automatic benching. Our troubles don’t strike our names from running the race. I’m still in it, with my chronic pain. You’re still in it, no matter what you’re facing. God still has things for us to do and to be—they probably just look really different from what we had in mind. They will be different because we will need His help and presence to do them. In our many weaknesses, we must abide in Him, if we want to do any thing at all (John 15). We are, as the Apostle Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthian church, afflicted but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not destroyed; always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies (2 Corinthians 4: 8-10). This is a great mystery, and one that I don’t fully understand, but as His followers, we somehow get to participate in the great life of Jesus Himself through our sufferings. He uses us in our limitations and it’s a beautiful and glorious thing to see His love and power at work in ways we couldn’t have imagined. 

Leaves and walking shoes: glorious. 

Nature: good for what ails. 

Beauty.