Grace at the Edges of Suffering

I’ve never been much of a steady blogger, but the past few months have been quieter than usual. Part of that is because my dad passed away, and I’ve been wading through the emotions and responsibilities that come with losing a parent and selling a house. Part of it is simply enjoying the summer and early-autumn sunshine here on our little Oregon farm. And part of it is because Lisa and I have been up to our elbows writing a new book for pastors, therapists, and spiritual directors—this one on grace.

Grace. It’s my granddaughter’s name, and it’s also been my theological obsession since my early thirties. Over the years my understanding has shifted and (I hope) deepened. Lately I find myself thinking about how grace and suffering fit together—like puzzle pieces in the liminal spaces of life. Maybe it’s because I’ve been at the bedside of someone dying, or maybe it’s the rhythm of my therapy work. Just last Tuesday I realized I’d sat with eight people, each carrying their own kind of suffering—the sort that can take your breath away. And I couldn’t fix it for any of them. All I could offer was my presence. Maybe that’s all any of us can offer in the midst of life’s deepest sorrows.

This book Lisa and I are writing uses an approach called “Lived Religion.” In other words, it’s not a theological treatise on grace but an exploration of how people actually experience it in daily, ordinary life. Don’t get me wrong—I love theology, and the theology of grace is particularly compelling—but it doesn’t always help when you’re sitting with someone whose sister died by suicide last week, or with a parent whose child was lost in a car accident.

Here are a few lines from the book Lisa and I are working on:

"If suffering is terrible, then suffering alone is nearly unbearable"

We draw on our professional experiences—hers as a spiritual director and sociologist, mine as a psychologist—but also on interview data from a large study of Christians across denominations. Again and again, people told us that grace showed up in the midst of suffering, and almost always it arrived through another person’s face.

It’s natural to want to turn away from suffering. It’s uncomfortable. It reminds us of our own losses and vulnerabilities. But grace points us in the opposite direction—toward presence, not avoidance. Grace is the pastor who shows up at the hospital, the counselor who listens without rushing to fix, the friend who leads with curiosity and compassion instead of advice. Kate Bowler once described her Mennonite family as “wonderful at suffering together” (p. 62). That’s what grace looks like—suffering together, not alone.

"Precisely here—in the heavy silence of loss, where answers remain elusive—grace often finds a way in."

We heard this in story after story. A man grieving the sudden death of his child. A father lost to cancer. A brother killed in a crash. A singer who loses her voice. A son who dies by suicide in prison. Nearly three-quarters of Americans are grieving a loss from the past three years. The weight of grief is everywhere, and most of us are carrying more than we let on.

Singer Amy Grant said in an interview, “Because we all hold so much grief. It’s wordless.” She also spoke of “moving through grief,” which is what almost everyone does. And that movement is almost always helped along by grace, usually embodied in the presence of another person.

"Presence is a quiet testimony to grace that shows up and stays put."

The word “presence” surfaced again and again in the stories we collected. It’s what people remembered. As much as we might like to carry around a toolkit to take away pain, it doesn’t work that way. What we can do is show up, hold the silence, listen beneath the words, and offer gentle curiosity. That, in itself, is grace.

Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to grace after all these years. Not because it explains suffering, but because it stays with us in it. Grace doesn’t remove the ache or erase the questions, but it leans in close and whispers: You’re not alone.

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Postscript: This reflection comes from one of four pathways to grace that Lisa and I are writing about in our new book. The other three will surface in upcoming posts—stay tuned.