thank the pain

on atonement, retreats, and yellow gatorade

The Oregon coast captured by Carlos Hernandez

retreat into hell

There are seven layers of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Seven places where you can feel the emptiness and pain of a place without God. As you close in towards the inner rings, the punishment of a life lived in opposition to God’s grace becomes graver, colder, more dire, until the center most circle of hell shows its victims frozen in a catatonic state.

Honestly, a catatonic state sounds pretty good right now.

This weekend I drove with a van full of ladies to our annual women’s diocesan retreat. It was a bit of a slog for us Spokanites as the retreat was on the west side of Washington, but an inlet of water touches the retreat center’s edge and fir trees wrap themselves in a loose hug around the grounds, so for me, the five and a half hour drive (and sore hip flexors) was well worth the time it took to get us there.

However, before leaving home, David started complaining of stomach pain and two other families we know were also dealing with the backlash of what had been a nasty, violent 24 hour stomach bug. I mostly shrugged it off. David felt good enough for me to leave and I hadn’t seen most of these families in over a week. I would be fine. It would be fine.

It was not fine.

The opening night was lovely with settling in, seeing old friends, ice breakers, wisdom from a thoughtful speaker, and prayer. The night ended with a gaggle of women of all ages, wrapped in robes, pajamas, and slippers, sitting in my room with plastic wine glasses as we toasted the beginning of what we knew would be a restful retreat. It was like being in college all over again, only better.

But after a long day, sleep didn’t come. I could feel my adrenaline pump and was uneasy, tossing and turning throughout the night. By 5:45 in the morning, I ran to the shared bathroom where I realized the stomach bug had found me.

I won’t go into the gory details of this bug. We’ve all had one in our lives, but suffice it to say the cramping in my abdomen alone was enough to bring tears to my eyes. My roommates nurtured me the best they knew how, but eventually they went to the meeting hall and started the lion share of what the retreat would actually be. I was so thankful for their kindness and so sad I couldn’t go with them.

Meanwhile I ran back and forth between a bathroom stall and a twin sized bed praying that no one saw me scamper in total depravity and patheticness (which, who knew, is not a word).

I was missing the retreat. The speaker, the prayer circles, the small groups, the shared meals, and (what I was most excited for) the opportunity for downtime. I had brought a book and my watercolors. I was ready to sit by the side of the bay and watch the proverbial tide roll away. I was going to make a rosary alongside my Anglican sisters. I was missing and if I couldn’t retreat with the rest of the women, I didn’t really want to retreat at all.

sucker punch to the gut

Fairness is not really a word that I often find in scripture. It’s there, but similar (and possibly stronger) words that recur more often are justice, goodness, and mercy. It’s not fair that I got sick five and half hours from home. It wasn’t fair that I couldn’t retreat the way I wanted to. No one else was sick (nor did I want them to be) but the loneliness of being the only one strapped to a foreign toilet was palpable and a pity party seemed like the right way to go about things.

The strange thing is, that while things didn’t feel “fair”, I never felt like throwing a pity party. I was sad, but I had a bed to sleep in and a quiet place to be sick. I wasn’t having to care for my child and the house where we were staying was quiet. The blinds kept the room dark and a cracked window let in the ocean breeze. I had friends bring me yellow Gatorade and Tylenol and instruct me on the proper way to rehydrate. It’s true, I didn’t get the prayer and craft circles, the long hike, and I didn’t have the strength to pick up my watercolors, but I got to retreat—just not the way I had hoped for one.

After one particular crusade in the bathroom (and the violent aftermath) I could feel the nausea abate just enough. I sat up in bed and felt the breeze and thought that maybe, just maybe, if I swaddled myself like a baby I could go sit on the front porch of the house and get some fresh air.

So here I sit. Yup, this is happening in real time. Cue the verb tense change.

The occasional retreating woman will drop by the house and will greet me (at a distance). The entire group prayed for me this morning. I wasn’t there, but I got my prayer group. I didn’t hear the words but I know that in the quietness of their hearts many women I knew and many I didn’t were asking for God’s grace and mercy over my body.

Friends of mine went to make rosaries with a woman who I have in part to thank for encouraging me to start writing. I was hoping to spend time with her and learn from her, but instead she sent someone to ask what color beads I would like. Later today I have no doubt a delicate rosary will be placed in my hand from a friend. I wasn’t there, but I got my craft time.

Women are now milling about, taking naps, going for walks, chatting with friends. One carried a camera with her, pointing it up in the trees. Another carried a book to find a quiet place to read. And I have been well enough to sit on the porch with my laptop balanced across shaky legs to do what I love to do most. I got my downtime.

My life, like so many of the other women here, is one of schedules and routines and usually, it is not my own. This is not the retreat I would have chosen, but in the sickness, and loneliness, and disruption, God gave me a retreat into His quietness. He reminded me that sickness doesn’t last forever. That I can feel lonely but am never alone. That not following an itinerary might have been what I needed most (and certainly not what I would have done for myself).

my retreat view in seabeck. super sexy.

thank the pain

Eight years ago shortly after my mother passed away from an ugly battle with cancer, I found myself crippled with mysterious chronic pain. For months I could barely walk and would often lie in bed for hours at a time in tears, wondering if this was my new normal.

Why am I in so much pain God? Where does it come from and how can I stop it?

Answers didn’t seem to come as easily. Most doctors were puzzled, until I met one who, at the end of my appointment, wrapped me up in her arms and told me that this too would pass.

I went home that day to a realization that maybe I was framing pain incorrectly. Perhaps, instead of trying to chase it off and smother the pain dead, I needed to approach it with curiosity.

It was then that God drew me close to Himself and whispered a truly bizarre sentence to me:

Thank the pain.

Thank it. Thank it for being temporary in an even more temporal existence. Thank it for teaching me to slow down. Thank it for causing me to cry out to a God I often can’t hear over the buzz of my privileged, busy life. Thank it for giving me the gift of deepening my empathy for those who hurt. Thank it for the hundreds of tiny lessons it was teaching me. Thank it for choosing me to be, even if for only a short window, a little more like Christ, the man of sorrows, acquainted with pain, and grief, but also acquainted with God’s justice.

I felt like Lucy and Susan who were being taught the deeper magic by Aslan after he had risen from the dead and broke the stone table in half.

Now don’t get me wrong—I still didn’t want the pain. Only masochists do. But by thanking it as a teacher, I was able to move through it.

A week later, my chronic pain went away.

the retreat i needed and the one i got

This time, the retreat I needed was also the one I got. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have been fully blessed by the one that had been planned for me, had I been healthy. I know I would have. But for me, it took getting violently ill away from home to find a way to lean on God’s strong chest and surrender to what was, rather than what could be.

I did find quiet. It came with a side of hugging a toilet bowl, but that’s ok.

Thank you God for drawing me close and allowing me to put my fingers in the holes in your hands. Thank you for reminding me to bring my bathrobe. Thank you for the time—in pain, in rest, in joy, and in quiet. Thank you for allowing me to wander the wilderness and find that you weren’t waiting for me, but that you were with me all along.

Thank you for this shitty, lonely, quiet, boring, sickening, vulnerable retreat. Amen.

Always,
Emily

P.S. Our speaker this weekend has been Kimberlee Ireton and while I have only been able to hear her speak once, I am thankful that I can read her thoughts here on Substack. You can check it out here.