Suffering with and the theatrics of healing
I was recently listening to Kate Bowler talk about the faith community she comes from. It’s one I share, with my father being born in the Manitoba plains with a strong mennonite upbringing. And there’s this moment she speaks of, while conjuring fond memories of butter sandwiches and jello salads (foods only mennonites will bring to funerals), where a common saying in that community is that you may have to suffer, but you don’t have to suffer alone.
What does it mean to suffer with?
When we say mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice, do we really know what that means?
It’s Monday night, or maybe it was Sunday. The days had begun to roll into one another at this point, as there was no reprieve from the pain and every hour was marked by the drawing of the curtains and closing the shades. I lay on the bed in the fetal position, the air was thick, multiple orange bottles of pills knocked sideways on my bedside table. The question had shifted from “what can we do to get this pain managed?” to “is there anything else we can give her and not overdose?”
When I say we’d tried it all, we’d tried it all. I hadn’t eaten in days, hadn’t showered in longer, was fluctuating violently between one extreme and the next, and no one made any attempt to touch me because every smallest interaction between my skin and anything else caused excruciating pain.
And in this moment, my screams echoing off the walls, when everything narrowed into a single moment and it literally became get through the next 5 minutes, I descended into myself and pulled up another dose of courage I wasn’t sure I had.
“Call them,” I said, not even lifting my head from the pillow or daring to open my eyes even a sliver.
What began as a joke of asking the pastor if he knew anybody with a gift of divine healing turned into, moments later, members of a church that had witnessed the messiest of my faith deconstruction, standing at the edge of my bed, in the dark, surrounded by pill bottles and puke bowls.
Sophie Strand says something in one of her essays about the theatrics of medicine, that it is perhaps on an immunological level the most important part, and often the most forsaken. Its the act of it, the production, the physical actions, the laying of hands, the eye contact, it all holds just as much weight. It is the humanization of what on such a basic level is a dehumanizing experience. When it says in the Bible the word became flesh, I think of this kind of embodiment. Our bodies are incredible organisms created to heal, and to do so we often need to tap into this sort of ritualistic medicine, the embodied community care. When you think of biblical healings, of Jesus spitting in mud and rubbing it on someone’s eye, that part of the story could feel very meaningless and like an extra step when in reality I think its exactly that kind of theatrics that lend itself to the fertile ground of healing.
Studies have shown that just being witnessed can decrease pain levels in the body, improve immune function response, that we can adapt to the energy of the people around us. Analysis has similarly showed that taking part in ritual, this communal aspect while also having a repetitive action with intention, improves pain thresholds.
I didn’t move a muscle, didn’t open my eyes, as the blankets were ever so gently removed from my feet, hands placed on my skin, prayers prayed into what felt like the darkest night even though realistically it was probably only around 6pm.
While I would have fully welcomed being physically healed of my symptoms at that moment, that wasn’t what happened. The agony endured, at some point I was taken to the emergency room where they did scans, ran tests, where my blood soaked the bed sheets and lab numbers climbed to alarming levels.
I like to be that person who has it all together. And I thought I knew what vulnerability meant. Ask me my story and I’ll rattle off a list of terrible things that have happened to me, I have no problem talking about my rap sheet of unfortunate life events. But I realized somewhere between the dark cocoon of my bedroom and the bright lights of the ER I had this idea of how I was supposed to show up. As a chronically ill person, as a support group leader, as a person of faith. Which is to say I upheld the idea of a shiny, happy success story, and unless I could put on a smile, however fake, and pretend I wasn’t struggling, I didn’t show up.
I was so busy upholding this story of how I thought my life should be that I forgot to just be held.
Despite my self proclaimed being amazing at vulnerability, I gained new insight into what it actually meant in that moment to have someone enter into my suffering with me. And not just my closest, most intimate family members and friends. Because I realized what I wanted in that time, besides from relief from the insane amount of pain that had seized my body, wasn’t a prayer that would change everything or a God who would magically change my situation. I don’t think either of those things would happen. I wanted the embodiment of community. I wanted to be touched, and reminded that I’m a person.
What would happen if I just let myself be a person? And I’m framing this question in the context of what gift am I robbing others of when I shut the door, put on a smile, only show up when I feel confident of my ability to mask my current reality.
Sometimes my current reality is questioning, debilitating pain, anger at God and the church institution, and what would it look like to create space for that in the broader context of community?
