Pain With Purpose

Growing up amongst evangelicals, lapsed Anglicans, agnostics and pentecostals, I received various impressions about the nature of personal suffering. A few called for quiet endurance of a largely pointless torment; others sought to avoid and strive against it at all costs; and - perhaps most dangerous of all - some saw it as an irredeemable evil from which God would spare us entirely if only were righteous and prayed hard enough.

Unfortunately, it was the latter opinion that tended to abound in the charismatic evangelical churches I frequented in the troubled years of my adolescence and early twenties. At the time, I had not been diagnosed as autistic; I had simply been a "very odd, anxious, and isolated child" who - like many females with undiagnosed autistic spectrum disorders - had developed severe clinical depression as I struggled in a world which overwhelmed me and to which I could not relate.

Thus, my early tentative attempts to form a deeper relationship with God and give my life to His service were thwarted by feeling that I was not accepted by Him and not praying hard enough to be healed of what was then labelled 'mental illness' by my psychiatrist and 'demonic attacks' by my church. I sat, numb with anguish, through various healing services in which lots of outlandishly happy people sang and danced to folk-pop worship music then tried to cast demons out of me. "Thy will be done" was passed over, and "God wants you to be well" became the mantra we heard over and over again.
Even at the time, this seemed an unsound doctrine. I would not have been able to express confidently how or why it was so, but echoes of Job, Colossians, the charge to take up one's cross, and the frequent calls to rejoice in suffering seemed to contradict much of what I heard preached. In later years, these same passages ensured that I recognised the truth of the traditional Catholic perspective when it was finally explained to me.

A correct diagnosis and the subsequent understanding of the workings of my brain have helped to alleviate much of the angst of previous years. However, when short episodes of depression recur or incidents of physical pain crop up I no longer languish in despair. Suffering is never pleasant, but now that I can offer it up to be united with Christ's Passion, it is sanctified; it has purpose, value and potential. Whether I suffer or whether I am healed, I will rejoice. There is only one thing I ask: Father, Thy will be done.