This post was going to be on suicide. But further reflection led me to the broader topic of suffering. Suicide, in my mind, is what happens when someone has suffered enough that they’ve lost the desire to continue living. They’ve lost all hope for things to improve. A poem of Emily Dickinson’s comes to mind: “There is a Langour of the Life, more imminent that Pain— ‘Tis Pain’s Successor, when the Soul— Has suffered all it can”.

Those words echoed in my heart the first time I read them.

There was a time when the depth of my suffering caused me to lose sight of life’s meaning. After the dark season of isolation and fear we all walked through in recent years, I’m certain there are many, many people who’ve felt the same. Pain is a universal experience. It’s been around a long time, and it will continue to plague every living thing until the end of this age.

Scripture holds comfort for sufferers of all kinds. It’s full of reminders that we aren’t alone in our trials. Psalms declaring, “my tears have been my food day and night” and “why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” echo our secret questionings (Psalm 42 &22). Read of the despair experienced by Job. He didn’t abandon his beliefs nor lose his hope of salvation. Instead, Job fully acknowledged his deep suffering and, at the same, maintained absolute faith in the righteousness of God. Yet he could write this — “I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery… When I say ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ then you scare me with dreams, and terrify me with visions, so that I would choose strangling and death over my bones” (Job 7:3, 13-15).

Like Job, we need more than empathy, more than the emptiness of words washing over our bedrock of hurt, as though that can make it disappear. There are three aspects of healing: two come from our community, the Spirit provides the third. First, we need to know we are not alone. The validation of an empathetic listener gives our pain space to exist. Second, we need to know what is truer than our pain. The combination of these two is a powerful protective force for sufferers who’ve lost the will to live.

But only the healing of the Spirit allows a person to accept suffering as a productive part of their mortality, assimilating their experience of grief or chronic pain into their daily life.

I could go much further into what riches of hope Scripture offers every hurting person, and that may be a future post, but it’s time to turn to how this topic comes alive in story form. A really wonderful example of this is “The Lumatere Chronicles” by Melina Marchetta. This fantasy series depicts characters wrestling with long-standing trauma, as well as characters who harmed others writhing in the grip of guilt and self-loathing. I appreciated the realistic depictions of the human psyche. Over the course of three books, the characters continue to mature without ever leaving their pain completely behind them. This is an important element to preserve—the fact that suffering is never erased, no matter how much happiness follows it, and that people’s trauma will continue to affect every part of their lives and relationships.

A negative example, frequently found in anime, is the character who believes themselves to be “too far gone” for whatever reason and puts themselves on a suicidal path, usually on behalf of those they love. In the end, they save their loved one from danger by sacrificing their own future out of feelings of remorse, despair, and a desire to find vindication. I think the message this sends is that pain will sour relationships to the extent that it’d be better for that relationship not to exist. Not only does this cheapen the endurance of those who suffer long and find meaning outside their own comfort, it stinks of materialism. If the only life worth living is the one that has value to the community, then why would the community ever gather around a hurting person and offer comfort and support? This reduces the community to a machine which takes in persons, uses their potential, and discards those who have little to offer.

The bottom line, in literature and in life, is that there are suffering human beings all around us. Our stories should offer comfort and hope, and our lives should be lived toward the same goal. We are never alone. What someone needs in their darkest hour might just be a glimpse of your freshly healed scars.