The Healing Journey

June 23, 2023

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.”
– Charles Dickens

Many religions and philosophies say that we learn from suffering, although most of us would respond to that idea by saying the only thing we learn is we don’t want to suffer. And yet suffering defines our life on earth from the time we are born to the time we die. And the most profound suffering is the loss of someone we love.

There’s a lot of suffering in Charles Dickens’ novels and yet, moralist that he was, the good people in them persevere despite the tragedies. Dickens was one of England’s greatest novelists during the Victorian era. He personally experienced human suffering.

The author of “A Christmas Carol,” “Great Expectations” and “Oliver Twist” understood hardship and death. Two of his siblings died at a young age, and his father was sent to debtors’ prison, forcing 12-year-old Charles and his sister to quit school and go to work in a shoe polish factory 10 hours a day.

Even when he achieved success, Dickens was no stranger to suffering. His youngest daughter Dora Annie was frail, and Dickens would carry her about the garden. She died at eight months old, and her death profoundly affected him. Years later, his oldest daughter, Mary, wrote, “I remember what a change seemed to have come over my dear father’s face when we saw him again … how pale and sad it looked.”

While we are our grieving, the first thing on our minds is usually not “What have I learned today?” The first thing is usually, “Lord, make the pain stop.” But grief is not like any other pain, unlike a sickness that can be allayed or an injustice that can be rectified. We can rail against death, and in our darkest hour it might give us a few moments of satisfaction, but it won’t change the harsh reality of our situation.

No one likes to be told they will learn from suffering, and yet months and years later, most of us will have a lesson to share with others who are enduring what we endured. We may share some meager hope with them to help lessen their pain. And in that moment, we will realize our suffering has made us more compassionate, more caring, more of a lot of things.

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In this life, everyone will suffer. As fellow travelers on the road of life, let us share our suffering and our compassion.