I Know
James and his wife Allison were the first from our circle of friends to have a baby. I remember so vividly visiting them in that Brooklyn hospital 14 years ago.
I found myself recalling this experience recently while praying with my current reality. Three specific memories resurfaced as I took a pleasant stroll down memory lane..
The first was the sight of this beautiful little baby girl that suddenly transformed my friends’ lives. I realized we were entering a new stage of life, transitioning from the carefree days of early marital bliss to the great responsibilities and joys of parenthood.
The second memory was that James was wearing a blue Mets jersey. I learned about the importance of '“skin-to-skin contact“ for newborns that evening as my friend opened a few of the jersey’s top buttons so his baby girl’s angelic face could rest on his tender, beating chest.
The third memory, which is most relevant and important these days, was what James said as he was holding his daughter, trying to bring her sudden tears to an end. “I know,” he gently whispered in her tiny ear. He repeated it several times, “I know, I know, I know.”
A few years later, as I tried to calm my own babies, I found myself saying those same words. “I know.”
I have been discerning why this memory came to mind in my prayer. I believe, as I delicately walk this healing journey from cancer, that God is holding me, in all my vulnerability, saying, “I know.” With my Christian foundation and way of life, my eyes have started to gaze at Jesus on the cross, finding solidarity and hope.
The crucifix has taken on a deeper meaning these past 10 months, especially this past Lenten season. I have been focusing on Jesus and His human experience. Jesus knows the pain of carrying the literal and figurative crosses of life. We know from scripture that Jesus felt the emotions of sorrow, frustration, and anger. Even the night before His death, He prayed for it to be different, to be spared from the inevitable brutal suffering that was to soon follow, if it was His Father’s will.
When we are hurting, part of us wants to be understood. We want to know that we are not alone, and that someone else understands this pain and fear. Jesus, suffering on the cross, is the ultimate act of understanding and love, as his stretched out arms hold us and all of our complexities and realities. Like a father that holds his new born baby, Jesus holds us in the peak of His own pain, telling us He knows the agony and fear that suffering carries.
Richard Rohr reminds us that "“Jesus is not observing human suffering from a distance but is somehow in human suffering with us and for us.”
We also want to know that our fears are not true, that this suffering will not lead to an emptiness and an absence of love. Jesus on the cross is not the end of the story, rather just the beginning of something even greater than we can imagine. To get to Easter Sunday, we must experience Good Friday. We hope that our own pain and suffering will not be the end, but an invitation to our own transformation.
As I prayerfully reflect on the crucifix with these new, yet tired eyes, I am pondering these pressing questions:
How does suffering invite us into deeper relationship with the God that dwells within and among us?
Through our own suffering, can we grow in solidarity with others who are suffering in all parts of the world?
What good will come from this experience, not just for my own health journey and life, but for all of God’s creation.
In my prayer, when my mind goes to that place of fear and sadness, as it sometimes does, I hear God gently whispering, “I know.” I can look to the cross and see in this ultimate act of love a God that understands and is with me on every step of this journey. Like a vulnerable newborn being held by their loving parent, I find rest in this truth and hope.
