Learning to Suffer Well: Aimee Patterson

Suffering is something that no one wants to go through—but it’s also something that none of us can avoid. So, what can we do when we find ourselves in a period of great difficulty? And how can we help others who are suffering?

Dr. Aimee Patterson, a Christian ethics consultant at The Salvation Army’s Ethics Centre in Winnipeg, has thought very deeply about this topic—and not just academically. On a personal level, she has had an intense experience with suffering, having had brain cancer. And she’s recently released a book on the subject called Suffering Well and Suffering With: Reclaiming Marks of Christian Identity.

On this episode of the podcast, Aimee tells us about her journey with cancer, what she’s learned from the story of Job, and how the Army can better serve suffering humanity.

Learn more about Aimee's book.

Learn more about the Ethics Centre.

Transcript

Kristin Ostensen  

This is the Salvationist podcast. I’m Kristin Ostensen. Suffering is something that no one wants to go through—but it’s also something that none of us can avoid. So, what can we do when we find ourselves in a period of great difficulty? And how can we help others who are suffering? Dr. Aimee Patterson, a Christian ethics consultant at The Salvation Army’s Ethics Centre in Winnipeg, has thought very deeply about this topic—and not just academically. On a personal level, she has had an intense experience with suffering, having had brain cancer. And she’s recently released a book on the subject called Suffering Well and Suffering With: Reclaiming Marks of Christian Identity. On this episode of the podcast, Aimee tells us about her journey with cancer, what she’s learned from the story of Job, and how the Army can better serve suffering humanity.

Hi, Aimee. Welcome to the Salvationist podcast.

Aimee Patterson  

Hi, it's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Kristin Ostensen  

Of course. Now you've just had a book come out: Suffering Well and Suffering With. And this book begins with your own very intense experience of suffering. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Aimee Patterson  

Yeah. I was at a time in my life when everything had neatly come together. I was 31, I had a loving spouse, I had a two-year-old child and an eight-month-old child. And I had just started my job at the Ethics Centre. I was looking forward to using the knowledge and skill set that I gained through my PhD studies, and using that for service to God and to God's people. And as far as I knew I was healthy. One day at the office, only about three months after I started my job, I had what I learned later was a focal seizure. So it was a combination of blurred vision, facial numbness and nausea. My doctor asked me to get a CT scan. And the same day I got the scan, she called me into her office, and that's never good news. So it turned out I had a 6.5-centimetre mass in the left side of my brain—so about the size of a lemon. I was diagnosed with stage-three brain cancer—it's got a long name that I'm not going to bore you with. But treatment included surgery first, then there were about six weeks of daily radiation therapy. And that was followed by six, six-week cycles of three very taxing chemo drugs. And I took the last drug about 14 months after I had started treatment. And then there was a recovery period of a few more months. So all of this medical stuff put me in a position of waiting and suffering for a long time. And the time gave me the opportunity to explore the questions that were that were crowding my mind. I didn't know how long I had to live. I felt like everything had been taken away from me. I had been a newly minted Christian ethicist. I had been a wife and mother. And now they felt like somehow I had betrayed my husband and my children. I knew, logically, that wasn't the case. But that's how I felt. Most significantly, though, I couldn't find God anymore. It was like God was absent, that I was forsaken by God. And this was a time when I needed to hear from God more than ever. So it was very confusing.

Kristin Ostensen  

Oh, I'm sure. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to go through that. And I remember from the book, your description of your operation is particularly harrowing. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Aimee Patterson  

Yeah, so I remember as I was going into the surgical ward, feeling very alone. I knew my family members were waiting for me in the hospital, praying for a successful operation. I was put on a gurney and told that I’d be sedated. But before that, I would need to receive local anesthetics because I would need to be wakened during the surgery so that the surgeons could engage with me, make sure that they weren't going to close to the parts of the brain that control speech or motion. So I was told these would happen before sedation and that they would feel these injections would feel like wasp stings, and it felt far more painful than a wasp sting. The surgeon poked my head with an instrument and asked if I could feel it. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say, Just wait, give me time, like, let it sink in, let it settle. But I couldn't find the words. I just groaned. And the surgeon continued to reject me in various places without saying anything. And, eventually, I just lost the capacity to groan. And there were two things I think I found were significant about this experience. First, in the moment, I felt like everything had been lost, everything about me had been lost. I felt like I was no longer a person. I wasn't even a body receiving pain—I was nothing but suffering. I've never felt that since, I had never felt that beforehand. And it was profound. But the other thing, the second thing that I'm reminded of, but only really, I only really realized it after the surgery had taken place, sometime later—suffering had taken over, but somehow there was a groaning present. And I didn't hear it with my ears, it wasn't sensory. But I was not the only being who was nothing but suffering—that's what came out of that. It was horrific. But it was also a strange kind of welcome into a communion of suffering. And it was a welcome that would later encourage me to move beyond my own suffering and towards others who are suffering, too.

Kristin Ostensen  

And, of course, that was back in 2012, and your book has just come out. Can you tell us a little bit about what led you to write the book, and why it was important for you to include and, in fact, ground the book in your own personal experience, which is woven throughout?

Aimee Patterson  

I mean, the simplest answer would be that I come from an academic background, and I tend to write in highfalutin terms and that kind of thing, right? But I wanted a book that that anyone could relate to. And so how better to do that, I guess, than telling the story and trying to feel, in a way, that I was reaching out to people, reaching out for a relationship. But the months of isolating treatment also led me to think about the suffering of the church itself. And in fact, I think in some ways, I was seeing reflections of my experience mirrored by the church. The church has held power for so long, and we got used to holding power, right? We call it Christendom. And because of the power we’ve held so long, and because we were used to holding it, we've forgotten, I think, how to suffer well as church. And so I kept wondering, how do we respond to this? I see people strategizing our way out of this, and that is helpful to a degree. But I think we need to ask the question: is holding power or reclaiming power, is that really the calling of the church? And I think that the reality is, right now we wait for the fullness of the kingdom of God and we're promised the fullness of the kingdom of God. But in the meantime, we're still exposed to the evil of suffering. And we respond best when we reclaim what I think is fundamental to Christian identity, and that is that we're a people who are called to suffer well and live compassionate lives.

Kristin Ostensen  

Absolutely. And of course, the first half of your book looks at suffering well, and you've got an extended discussion of the story of Job. What does that story teach us? What do you think are the key takeaways?

Aimee Patterson  

Yeah, well, Job was probably the first story I reflected on while I was going through treatment. My husband and I would sit down in the mornings and read through Scripture, trying to figure out what all of this meant. I could relate to Job in the sense that, at the beginning of the story, his life was all together, right? He had a spouse, he had children. He was devoted to his community and he was devoted to God. And then in a flash, he loses all of that. And Job has no idea why. He's got some friends who come to visit him—they travel from a distance, that's nice. They show compassion by sitting with him on his ash heap, which is a place of isolation and suffering. So, these are all good things. But then one of them opens his mouth and a litany of advice follows. And essentially, these friends blame Job for what has happened to him, and they name the suffering as God's response. Now, Job holds his own, right? He tells his friends that he has done nothing to deserve this, and rightly so. He knows God will intervene—that’s what he communicates to his friends. But then he turns to God. And when he turns to God, he finds God absent, much like I found God absent. Even so, Job keeps talking to God, keeps asking God: Where are you? Where are you? You know I don't deserve this. Why aren't you coming to my rescue here? So finally, God does show up. And if he doesn't provide Job with a comforting message, or answers to his questions, good or bad. He shows up as a whirlwind, right—just more chaos introduced to the problem. And God's message is: Who do you think you are? I'm the one who calls the shots around here. So I think, in a way, that was my first message from God, too. Who do you think you are? But I think a more important message, one that pairs up with this one, comes later, towards the end of Job’s story. Job hears God speaking, and God is speaking to Job's friends and tells them that Job is the only person who has remained faithful to God. He tells Job's friends how unjust, how uncaring they've been. Only Job, God says, is worthy of being called his servant. And why? Because—and God says this twice—the friends only speak about God, but Job spoke to God. So in reading this, I came to learn that God would rather receive angry accusations from a faithful follower who's praying in earnest than empty applause. God wants to hear from us. And God wants us to be frank with him. And I was also convinced then that even if I felt God was absent, like Job felt God was absent, my prayers, my elements wouldn't be offered in vain.

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, absolutely. And, of course, at the end of the story, he gets all his things sort of restored to him and extra in abundance. And what do you think of that ending? What do you make of it?

Aimee Patterson  

You know, both the beginning and the ending of Job seem ludicrous, and some scholars say that they're tacked on. For me, I read it as a complete story. And what makes it more interesting is that you as the reader know this deal that God makes it the beginning with the accuser, and God says, Oh, sure, you know, make Job suffer in whatever way, except don't kill him, and he'll remain faithful. And God is proved correct, but it's not like he ever lets Job know about this. So even though we know this, Job does not, so Job has all these questions that you naturally would have. And I'm not sure how Job would react if he knew what God had done. At the end, of course, yeah, as you say, Job gets blessed by God. He hasn't lost his wife. But he has lost his children so he gets new children. And you know, in the Bible, they're called more beautiful than the original children were, so it's almost like this, you know, double blessing or something like that. And again, it just feels ludicrous. It doesn't relate to people's stories of suffering, that we're sort of doubly blessed when suffering ends. In a way, though, I think it might be a distant reflection of what it means to come into the fullness of God's presence, of what it means to come into the fullness of God's kingdom, where we are so closely related to God, that everything around us and everything within us is right.

Kristin Ostensen  

And, of course, we know, Jesus himself suffered. And we intellectually understand that, but I wonder if it doesn't always feel like Jesus suffered the same way. Like he had some kind of divine “cheat code.” I wonder if you have any thoughts on why it might be so hard for us to truly believe, or really fathom on a gut level, that Jesus really suffered the same way we do?

Aimee Patterson  

Before all of this, I think I used to think it didn't really matter whether Jesus suffered or not. You know, he could have died a painless death and atonement would still have been accomplished. But as I suffered, knowing that Jesus suffered became critical for me. And I needed to know, not only that God wasn't absent, but that he knew firsthand what profound suffering felt like. So, to find this out, I needed to remember the doctrine, Doctrine 5: Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human. And that fully human part means a lot. I really like the way St. Leo puts it: He says that Jesus is complete in what is his, and complete in what is ours, complete in what is ours. So this means that Jesus wasn't immune to suffering. I began to look for examples in Scripture of Jesus suffering, and they were present throughout his life. One of the more obvious ones is when he cries because Lazarus has died. But there are others. And then of course, there are the signs of suffering as he's dying and preparing to die. You know, in the garden, he sweats out the anxiety of what's to come. He prays that God will somehow change things and he won't have to go through this. He suffers in the anticipation of suffering, and that's really interesting. I wondered how Jesus felt when he was subject to a farcical trial, how it felt to be mocked and spat on and stripped of his clothing and whipped, how it felt to bear the burden of the wood on his back, how it felt to be hung from a cross with nails. And, most of all, how Jesus felt when he felt forsaken by God, when he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So, at that point, when I looked at Jesus suffering, I couldn't imagine that Jesus was faking it, couldn't imagine that there was a “cheat code.” I was convinced that Jesus suffered in the way I had suffered, and more. And I really like Dietrich Bonhoeffer for a number of reasons, but one of the things that he says, that became so true for me, is that only the suffering God can help.

Kristin Ostensen  

And of course, on the cross when he says, you know, God, why have you forsaken me? That really speaks to an intense loneliness in his suffering. And, of course, you mentioned that you also felt really isolated at different points in your journey with cancer. What do you think it is about suffering that makes it so lonely at times?

Aimee Patterson  

Yeah. I think even when you're surrounded by people, it can be lonely. It's a strange thing. What I discovered was something about, I think, what it means to be a human individual. We know God has created us to live in community, right? Adam needed Eve, and both of them needed God. But pain really closes off the world, and no matter how much we want to, we can never really feel what someone else feels in the way they feel it. We can never get fully inside their suffering. Now, I knew that my family was suffering because I was suffering. I knew that they wished so much that they could take my suffering away, even if it meant that they would take it on themselves. But that's not the same thing as suffering in the exact same way that I am suffering. And so it's supremely isolating, to know that you're ultimately alone in your suffering. And that's why I needed to know that God was suffering, not only with me, but suffering as me, as someone who knows what it is to be human and to suffer.

Kristin Ostensen  

And, of course, the second half of your book does look at what it means to suffer with. So, can you talk a little bit about how people were present for you, personally, when you were in the midst of your cancer journey? What did it look like for people to sit with you on the ash heap?

Aimee Patterson  

Yeah, I have to say, I am one of the most privileged sufferers I've ever known. There are too many ways here to name. But certainly, my family, first of all, was always present for me. My immediate family, but my parents also flew across the continent to be with me on several occasions. My husband's family cared with us in too many ways to list here. My husband's a minister in the United Church, so that congregation and Heritage Park Community Church, which is the corps he grew up in, worked together to ensure my family had meals Monday to Friday, every week I was in treatment—amazing. I received free childcare from a neighbour. I received two sets of friends from other provinces who came to visit at different times, just because they wanted to be with me. And then there were simpler things like giving the rides to appointments, or popping by with a smoothie, or giving me a call. And all of these things just, you know, provided me with so much time for rest, time for healing. I didn't have to worry, you know, who would take care of my children, or how my husband would make it through the day. It was also important to me that people had me on their minds. And a number of people would write to me, and said, I'd really like to receive an update on your health. And so I started to send out emails, and I had a list of people I would send them out to and that list grew over time throughout the treatment. And I guess by the end of treatment, there were there were hundreds of people in that group, some of whom I knew, some I had never met. Some are Christian, some are people of other faiths. Some didn't have a faith identity. But for me, it was the love and compassion that I received from people like these that helped me believe, convinced me that God must be loving and compassionate. And that's a really important thing for suffering people—to have that evidence of love and compassion around them.

Kristin Ostensen  

Those are some really beautiful examples of “suffering with,” and as The Salvation Army you could almost say that “suffering with” is part of our DNA. General John Gowans rather famously once stated that the Army's mission was to save souls, grow saints and serve suffering humanity. So how do we build compassionate communities that are capable of supporting people, whether they're currently experiencing suffering or facing the long-term effects of trauma?

Aimee Patterson  

Yeah. Back to that quote, one of the things that Gowans says there is serve suffering humanity. And sometimes we omit that word suffering, right? Save souls, grow saints and serve humanity. And even in our minds, we forget that all of humanity is suffering right now, and the church is no exception to that. I think when we come across someone who, an individual who is suffering, we don't always know how to respond, let alone how to respond well. I think it makes us uncomfortable. I also think we want to intervene, especially when those awkward questions that are asked about God's presence, God's involvement perhaps in the causes of suffering, when those questions come into play, I think we want to sort of, “No, no, no, that's not the case. God's not to blame here.” We’re not comfortable sitting in that confusion with someone. And sometimes that means instead, you know, we'll quote the old faithful verses like, “All things work together for good.” And there's a truth to that, but it's not always a truth that's immediate, right? It doesn't mean that God is going to work out your suffering for good today or next year. And maybe verses like this are comforting for some people. That verse did not work for me. In fact, it made me feel more isolated; it made me feel like I was being held at arm's length because the person who said this verse couldn't accept that I was suffering in a way that couldn't be comforted by the idea that God is working your suffering out for good. I wasn't ready for that. And I think what I needed, and at some points I received, was a community of people who could say to me, I know that the walk through the valley of the shadow of death is a long walk. But I'd like to walk it with you. So I want to talk a little bit about lament, too. In those early days of suffering, my husband and I would look at Lamentations and the psalms of lament, trying to make sense of suffering. And these are Psalms and prayers that tell God in no uncertain terms that we're suffering and we need God to address that suffering. One of the things that's in my book, a quote that I really appreciate, is from novelist Charles Frazier, who describes biblical lament. He says: On the one hand, it's forceful, but on the other hand, it's simple. On the one hand, it's a weapon. On the other hand, it's a healing balm. And it's a kind of reimbursement when everything else has been taken away. I really find that quote true to my experience. Lament is both an accusation to God even, saying, Where are you? Why aren't you healing me? But also, there's a healing in even being able to find those words. And we see this sort of healing taking place throughout Scripture, but particularly in the Psalms—40 percent of the Psalms are limits. And when I learned that, I started to wonder: Why don't we look at these Psalms very often in our worshipping communities? They show how suffering people have talked to God before. And if we spend more time reading them, looking at them, I think we can better learn how we can talk to God when we're suffering. We can learn the words to say when we sit with a person who is so deep in suffering that they have no words. And I would really like to see lament being embraced by our worshipping communities today. I think it's a practice that's important.

Kristin Ostensen  

And sometimes I think it's a little bit difficult for the church to make space for that perhaps. I think of the popular song, There Is Joy in The Salvation Army. So, without losing our joyful spirit, how can we make space for uncomfortable emotions like lament, or even anger towards God, within the church setting?

Aimee Patterson  

Yeah, I think there's room for both joy and suffering, both joyful expressions and lament. And I think it's that way because we're created for joy. And if we're created for joy, that means suffering is something we don't want to go through, but we still have to face. I'm not the first person to say that joy is different from happiness. But I also want to add that being joyful, or feeling joyful, doesn't or shouldn't ultimately depend on what we do as people or as communities to cause it. It only depends ultimately on having hope that God will do what God has promised to do, and that is to transform all suffering into joy. And we see this hope of transformed suffering into joy throughout Scriptures. All kinds of followers of God indicate this in their words and in their actions. I could name many, but the one that sticks out for me is in Revelation 21, which claims that when God is finally at home with us, mourning and crying and pain will be no more. And that is joy in its fullness. And while we wait in hope for it, we have to be capable of rejoicing well and suffering well.

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, that's really beautiful. I love that passage myself as well. And more on a sort of societal level of “suffering with,” of course, social justice is very central to our ministry in The Salvation Army. Can you talk about how we can show solidarity with folks who are subject to unjust suffering in a broader kind of societal way?

Aimee Patterson  

Yes, there's no shortage of people in Canada and Bermuda and beyond who are subject to unjust suffering. The first that comes to mind are Indigenous Peoples, people that we’re responsible for causing suffering to. I think of immigrants and refugees. I think about people who are underhoused, underemployed, undereducated, and, of course, the list goes on. And we're helping each of these demographics, you might say. Now, I think The Salvation Army is in a unique position because, from our beginning, we have witnessed that salvation is not only about a person's spirit or soul; we consider salvation to be for the whole person. And this is what Jesus demonstrates throughout his life. He not only feeds the hungry and heals the sick; he tells his followers, I am hungry, I am sick, I'm a stranger, I'm naked, I'm in prison. And if we can find God in the faces of people who are forced to suffer unjustly, we can't help but stand up for them. And standing up for them is not limited to meeting their needs in the moment. It extends to doing whatever we can to ensure their voices are heard by the people in the world who have the power to change the unjust structures that cause suffering. That's what I think we have as a witness to both the church and the world.

Kristin Ostensen  

Absolutely. Now, as you note in the book, you have been made well for now, but not cured. What gives you strength as you face this uncertainty going forward?

Aimee Patterson  

So, I'm still on anti-seizure meds, and I still receive regular MRIs. And this is because while the bulk of the tumour was removed, there are still small areas of tumour cells that had to be left because they were too close to the parts of the brain that govern motion and speech. So, the answer to your question, I suppose, is that I live in hope. And I think this is the way the church lives and should live. We've been saved. But Jesus promises his followers that being saved does not prevent suffering. In fact, he promises that they will suffer. And until the fullness of God's kingdom comes, we continue to live and die in the hope of a promise that has yet to be fulfilled. And in that living, and in that dying, I want us to be recognized as a people who know how to suffer well and who live out compassion. I want us to be recognized for those things.

Kristin Ostensen  

Well, that is a beautiful and hopeful place to end. Thank you so much, Aimee, for joining us on the Salvationist podcast and sharing your story with us.

Aimee Patterson  

Thanks so much, Kristin. It's been a pleasure.

Kristin Ostensen  

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Salvationist podcast. If you’re interested in learning more about Aimee’s book and getting your own copy, follow the link in the show notes. To listen to more episodes of the podcast, visit Salvationist.ca/podcast.