“Loss is as much a part of normal life as birth, for as surely as we are born into this world we suffer loss before we leave it.  It is not therefore the experience of loss that becomes the defining moment of our lives, for that is as inevitable as death, which is the last loss awaiting us all. It is how we respond to loss that matters. That response will largely determine the quality, the direction and the impact of our lives.” Jerry Sittser

I recently re-watched The Matrix with some of our kids (and it holds up! still. so. good.) But in the movie, after learning about what’s true for the first time, Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) is faced with a choice – swallow the blue pill and continue to live in the synthesized, fictional, computer-generated world that he knows, OR swallow the red pill and escape from the Matrix by plunging himself into reality, uncomfortably awake to all of its pain (as well as its beauty). It’s an apt illustration for the choice before us when suffering comes our way.

We can pretend that it’s not there (by diminishing the pain or distracting ourselves from it) or we can attend to the broken reality that is.

In John 5, as He’s walking by the Pool at Bethsaida, Jesus comes across someone who’s been an invalid for 38 years. Talk about misery. Approaching him, Jesus asks a question that for a long time I found puzzling… “Do you want to be well?” (John 5:6)

Excuse me? Jesus might as well have asked, “Do you want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise?” Or “Do you want to win the lottery?” I mean why in the world would anyone NOT want to be well? Especially someone experiencing such difficult and tragic circumstances.

But in my experience both as a pastor and as a broken, flawed person, I’ve come to realize that the answer to the question, “do you want to be well?” is not as obvious as it seems. Sure, if we interpret the question to only apply to the physical relief of discomfort, it seems simple. But as we know from Scripture, the primary healing that Jesus was interested in providing was the spiritual sort (“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Luke 5:31). Jesus healed physical ailments, but His approach was always holistic, addressing the whole person – body, mind, and soul.

Not everyone desires the healing that Jesus offers. Plenty of people in the 1^st century were not interested in letting Jesus have His way with their hearts and lives, and plenty of people in the 21^st century are not interested either. Even people of faith.

I’m convinced that even after experiencing forgiveness through faith in Christ, Jesus still asks me the question, “Do you want to be well?” Why? Because there are deep motivations and patterns in my heart that are still sick. Though completely secure, salvation in many ways is a lifelong process. Jesus wants to lovingly confront and heal what’s broken, and continually, I resist. Much of the time, I do not want the interior darkness of my heart brought into the light to be confronted by Jesus and healed. See, many of us persist in our lameness all the time, because we like it (or think we do), or because we feel in control and we’re afraid of what might happen if we allow Christ access into our inner world.

When it comes to pain and the invitation of God to face it and feel it, many of us would rather stay in self-pity than feel our feelings and tell the truth. We would rather focus our emotional energy on blaming someone or even God, because the anger makes us feel powerful rather than the powerlessness of accepting that I can be hurt by things outside of my control. Or we would rather stick to our script of being the victim or even the wrongdoer rather than trusting a God that we can’t control or manipulate.

But when we say no to life’s invitation to face and feel our pain, we get stuck. It’s where Mrs. Job, in the Old Testament book of Job, stayed from what we can tell. We either shut off part of our hearts or compartmentalize our faith to the parts of life we can control or understand. Either way, we limit our experience of God’s transformative presence as well as the process of what He wants to do in and through us.

If we are to struggle well, we must like Job be willing to sit on the ash heap. To face and to feel our pain. When we do, our suffering becomes not a cul de sac (which is our greatest fear) but a highway to something new! We begin to get glimpses into why Jesus said, ‘those who mourn are the blessed ones.’ It just might be in ways we didn’t expect.