"Yes, yes," he quietly concurred. "Of course that's good." He was looking at the road through the windshield, and I now joined him, staring straight ahead. Come on, hotel. "The question, of course," he continued, "is how will you suffer? Will you suffer with bitterness or will you suffer prophetically?" O Lord, I don't like how this sounds. "You see, your generation is experiencing the fallout of a culture profoundly confused about who God is and therefore about what it is to be human and what it is to love. Your relational disappointments and suffering are, sadly, emblematic of the age."
It suddenly seemed like he was speaking from a vantage point I didn't want to share. I didn't want to be the poster child for some cosmic cultural crisis. I wanted a manageable, fixable problem. "Well, I have tried to work on any issues I might have."
"Yes, yes," he gently agreed without dropping the matter, "though I imagine that has only made things worse. You've kept growing, and most of the men around you have not. So the gap and perhaps the sense of suffering from isolation get greater." Please God, get me to the hotel quickly.
Suddenly, it appeared—a seeming sanctuary—and we pulled into the driveway. Finally. He turned now to look at me. I tried to smile an oh yes—emblematic of the age—what a shame—oh well, whatever—I'm sure the right guy will come along for me shortly—thanks for dinner kind of smile. He looked at me pleasantly, as if patiently waiting for my internal monologue to cease. Then, with more compassion than I wanted for a level of suffering and vision that I decidedly did not want, he looked at me with the kind of warmth that burns away every fiber of defense standing between me and the pain of an unanswered why. "Connally, like the prophets of old, take the pain—which is also the pain of this culture—to the Lord. Seek his heart of love and direction for yourself and for others." He paused, and in spite of my tightest belly and my most clenched jaw, his words got in and tears quietly spilled out. "Perhaps I can pray for you now?" he suggested.
He prayed. I gave him a quick hug, thanked him for dinner, and tried to hop merrily out of the car. (Sometimes I'm ridiculous about not wanting to cry in public.) I smiled dimly at a few colleagues lingering in the hotel lobby and headed straight for my room. By the time I got to my floor, the tears were gushing. I think I spent the rest of that night in quasi-escape mode. I watched
In retrospect, it was strange what that conversation with Dr. Houston did to and for me. Somehow, in linking the word "suffer" to my unintentionally single state, he legitimized something at work in my guts, some pain that I wanted to avoid for very good reasons, like: nothing is more depressing than some old, whiny, lonely spinster; it could be worse (I could be married and wish I weren't); it's not as if there have been no men whatsoever—it has been my choice to say no to a few along the way; and lastly, what would be the point of going there? To sit around and bellyache? But in calling it "suffering," he was legitimizing a part of me that did ache at sleeping alone every night. And the simple acknowledgment—having the ache compassionately seen and known by another—did its own quiet, little miracle. Something in my guts unclenched.
More than that, however, Dr. Houston's words flipped my why question on its head and left me asking, What now? How then should I live? I wasn't sure what living prophetically meant (images of wild-haired, wide-eyed, angry men came to mind), but I knew at minimum it meant living in the truth. It meant admitting that the confusion plaguing me (and so many of the men and women around me) was real and not easily navigated. It meant owning my unmet desires and the related disappointment. And it also meant holding on to and holding up the goodness and the realness of God in the midst of it. Dr. Houston's words about suffering prophetically had felt like a gut-level punch. But in reality, they were more like the compassion-induced Heimlich maneuver, freeing me to live.
