There have been 2 topics on my mind for the past year or so: suffering and prayer. Both of these topics I knew superficially, intellectually, theologically, before my experiences last year. To people who would ask “What’s the point of praying if God is sovereign and knows everything?” or “Why does a perfect and good God allow suffering?” I would give the theologically sound answer but without a second thought to understanding the motive behind these questions. These once-thought “elementary” questions became my own for many months last year till even quite recently. I think part of the answer to these questions is that we will never fully know, but for me, that’s growth because it means I’ve come to realize the grandiosity of these concepts that I once so neatly fit into a box and, more importantly, the grandiosity of our infinite God who indeed is Lord both of prayer and suffering. In this reflection, I’d like to attempt to put into words what I’ve learned and what I am learning about the God of prayer and suffering. I don’t know who still reads my blog, but even if it is just to document God’s grace and patience on me and praise him for it, it’ll be worth it. May the glory of our perfect and awesome God be glorified. Amen.

I don’t want to remember how horrifying last year was but it must be addressed. To recap, in and around March last year, I started experiencing severe insomnia. I have never had trouble sleeping – in fact, my family members used to tease me for being able to sleep anywhere and at anytime. Sleep was my quick escape, my safe place, my haven, to most of my problems. After becoming a mom of 2, I had really poor sleep, usually getting up to 6 oy 7 times a night to attend to a (or 2) crying babies. I don’t exactly know what caused the insomnia but I suppose it was the consistent breaking of my circadian rhythm which essentially, or so it felt, I was locked out of sleep. I would be dead tired but my body and mind would not go into sleep mode. This affected my practical functioning during the day, mental fog, low energy, no appetite, but eventually this affected my mental, emotional, and spiritual health. It’s hard to describe what not sleeping for days feels like but I think only when you experience that do you realize how crucial sleep is to life. You take it for granted as you do everything in life before it’s taken away. I’m thankful that God has given me experiences in the past to appreciate some of the basics of life: eating, during my severe morning sicknesses; walking, after tearing my ACL; peeing, after being unable to pee post-partum with Dani. But in comparison to those, I’d have to say not being able to sleep is the worst, maybe because of what sleep meant to me before. I started to feel out of touch with reality with all my senses hyperactive. I felt constantly anxious, my muscles tight from tension, my head pounding every waking moment. Every day, every night was a nightmare. So I did what I had always done, the only thing I knew to do in times of trouble. I prayed, and I never prayed so hard. I prayed shouted, crying, lying down – any spare moment alone, I prayed. I expected to be healed as soon as I cried out, but days turned into weeks and into months. In those months, I felt I was slowly dying. Definitely physically (I had lost about 5 kg), but also mentally and spiritually. I started to have strange and abstract thoughts, questions about what it means to exist, what it means to be “me”. I eventually lost the courage and hope to ask anything of God to hope in him, to believe the bible literally. A part of my spirit felt like it had died because the God I had so loved and trusted my whole life seemed to be absent and far at the time I needed him most. That crushed me. I couldn’t pray for months after that.

Among the many questions that caused me to doubt God during this time was indeed why God allows suffering and, relatedly, why God makes us pray if praying doesn’t actually change his will. These questions came from a bitter place, yes, but from a place of real and experienced suffering – the kind that leaves you in total hopelessness. Hopelessness is a really scary thing. Someone once said that what makes hell is not necessarily the suffering, but the hopelessness. That there is and never will be an end to that suffering. For the time being, if we are to accept that suffering exists because of sin, because we live in a fallen world, but still God is perfect and holy and good, then the problem is not that suffering exists but in our understanding of God. A perfect God in our mind would not allow suffering because we think someone who loves would not permit suffering on his loved one. But that’s not true of the perfect God who exists outside of our minds. He allows suffering with a purpose. Suffering produces something that nothing else can in a sinner’s heart and life. In a heart that rejects the notion that God is perfect just because he allows suffering, hopelessness is born. Because that person’s hope is a life free of suffering. But in a heart that accepts that God is perfect despite of my suffering, or even through my suffering, hope is born. That kind of hope is transcendental. It is a hope that realizes that all hopes in this world, even the hope to live a suffering-free and comfortable life, is dead ultimately because of death. But because of Jesus and his resurrection, there is a hope that death cannot kill and that is life with Jesus himself, forever. That reality – of being with Jesus – is heaven itself, and through suffering, we taste a little piece of that heaven on earth in a deeper way than a comfortable life could ever give.

³ Not only so, but we^[a] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)

All of this I knew, but it’s much harder to confess after having gone through something really really damn hard. I had thoughts of ending my life because it was all too hard for me. I felt I could not exist in a world that my relationship with God no longer made sense. I felt I could not live feeling crazy every waking moment, with all the pain in my body and mind. And the scarier part is I knew no one could help me. My parents, my husband, my friends – no one could climb into my mind and body and make me sleep. No medications or therapy sessions worked. I felt I was a lost cause and I would die from insanity and exhaustion. I think the turning point was realizing that I was putting all my hope in sleep. Everyone knows you can’t sleep by trying to fall asleep; it has to be something effortless, something you never think about, and then it comes. How ruthless, I thought. How cruel and evil, God, to make me go through this. “Well, I’ve already thought of sleeping and trying to sleep, so I guess I won’t be sleeping tonight.” The more I put my hope in sleep, resolving my problem of lack of sleep, the more hopeless the situation became. I had to let it go. I had to let go of the hope. At first, it was out of fatalism like – fine, I’ll just die like this. If this is the way you want me to live, miserable and in pain, fine. But slowly, oh so slowly, I believe the Lord began to work in my heart. I had given up trying to pray, trying to meditate on the word, trying at all. Truly I had, and I think it was the first time I had given up so deliberately and defiantly like that. And as cliché as it sounds, I really see now the Lord never left me. He was working to break and humble my heart, crush all the hopes in this world, even the most basic hope of sleeping well, so that I would really really be left with nothing. I thought he let my hope in Him die too. But I realize he only let my hope in my idea of God die.

For months, I just survived, existed. But actually, I realize that I was waiting, and with all waiting, there is a hope. I wasn’t waiting to sleep well again. I let go of that. Frankly, I still don’t sleep well and I still live everyday with a pounding migraine. But in the midst of this waiting, I arrived at something else. Because I realize that true Hope is not in a certain outcome or situation. It is a person, it is Jesus. And becomes so much more visible in my suffering because only then do I realize I can’t rely on myself or anyone else or any THING. I need his word, and just trust that against all hope, it is true. Experiencing that Jesus in my suffering, that itself is heaven, heaven on earth. So short answer to the suffering question is that suffering exists because of our sin but God is so great that he will use that suffering to get us to Hope. The very thing the devil uses to bring us to death and hopelessness, God uses to bring us to Hope and Life. That is how perfect and good he is.

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3: 10)

Today, I read a story of a 17-year-old girl who was diagnosed with a rare and super painful type of brain cancer. Everyday, she was dying. Everyday was a question whether it was worth living. But everyday, she chose again to confess, “If Jesus wants this, then I want it too.” Even though she couldn’t make sense of it, simply knowing that she was in the will of her perfect and loving Savior, that was enough to give her peace and joy amidst it all. That joy glorified God. Even though death took her, she won because she didn’t give into hopelessness and bitterness. Because she had faith beyond her understanding, she gained eternal and living hope that defeated the curse of death. This is what it means to know Christ, to fellowship in his suffering and death, to indeed attain the power of the resurrection from the dead.

The prayer question is related. We pray for what we hope for. We hope for changed situation, then we pray for changed situations. That’s not bad. I think God uses our hope for changed situations to realize things about ourselves. Sometimes God indeed changes the situations according to what we asked but it doesn’t mean that our prayer “changed the will of God”. God’s will will happen whether people pray or not. But God’s will is not just manifested in situations. God’s ultimate will is that hearts are transformed and brought to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. That very coming to God in prayer – with bitterness or fear or tears or whatever it is – is the beginning of this will of God unfolding in that person’s heart. With every prayer, God works deeper and deeper into that ultimate will, regardless of the external situation. So “why God makes us pray if he is sovereign” assumes the purpose of prayer is to change situations. I believe that is not the primary purpose. God’s primary purpose in prayer is to touch and change our hearts to ultimately trust and praise him regardless of the situation. That gives God infinitely more glory to God than external miracles (which actually do happen every day, every moment).

I was bitter at God for a  long time why he didn’t or hasn’t answered my prayer for improved sleep. But what I am slowly learning is that he is giving me something much deeper and better than improved sleep – that is Christ and the hope of resurrection. In my case, the cost, the suffering, is poor sleep. That’s enough to get me to desperately depend on him everyday, and so, experience his Immanuel presence. For each person and each season, the suffering will be different, but he’ll permit it because he loves us. I pray that he would give us the faith to trust in the midst of our suffering that we too may gain the hope of Christ, heaven on earth, eternal life. Like that 17 year-old girl, may we confess always, “If Jesus wants it, I want it too.”