“The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” John 6:63

Can I tell you just how often I become frustrated with platitudes, motivational tomes and the often trite “wisdom” of self-empowerment gurus? 

After 13 years of posting prayer requests to my network of women pray-ers, of responding daily during those years to the intentions of those who are struggling with some of the most painful circumstances imaginable, platitudes make me see red.

What pithy phrase can you offer the friend who, within the past 12 months has lost two sons – one to cancer and another to suicide? What do you say to the family of the young man, a football player with college scholarships lined up, who tried to cross the street only to be hit by a tractor trailer? When I received the prayer request, doctors had already amputated one leg and were trying to save the other. He was still in a coma. Or the young mother of three who was just diagnosed with a virulent form of cancer, who was not expected to live more than a few months, or the father who accidentally ran over his own child in their driveway.

We have prayed for spouses who have disappeared, new parents of infants who have died, families who have lost everything, including family members, in a fire, flood, tornado, hurricane; families who are dealing with addiction or abuse or have become homeless – the amount of prayers sent up to heaven in the almost 5,000 days since this group was founded is beyond counting.

Perhaps, instead of lifting those people up in prayer, we should have told them – “Choose success!” “Change your attitude, change your life!”  “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”  Maybe a few well chosen happy faces or a graphic illustration of the power of intention would have helped them move forward in their pain and grief.

I remember the first few moments after my father died. He was in the Hospice unit in the room next to my mother, who was terminally ill. I sat at the foot of his bed and sobbed, yelling at God, demanding that he explain why all this was happening.  Exactly what was it God expected me to learn from all that I had been through in the past few years, and now, losing my beloved father who hadn’t even been sick a week before.

I received my answer immediately – I have forged you in the fires of grief to form a jewel of compassion.

My response was immediate as well – I don’t want to be a jewel of anything. I want my father back. I want my mother to be healed. I want my children to grow up with their grandparents. I want my life to go back to the way it was!

But it was in those moments that I truly began to understand that life is suffering, as much as it is joy, perhaps more so.  And those who can move through the times of struggle, of grief and suffering, with integrity, without losing hope in the future, who get up every morning and carry on in spite of the emotional or physical pain and find ways to help others do the same – these are successful people, these are life’s heroes.

In that Hospice room, so many years ago, when I stopped trying to hold God’s feet to the fire, I looked around and saw all the other jewels of compassion milling about the room with me – people who would take their new found wisdom born of grief into the world and be of support to others. I thought of Enid Starkies’ profound words: “Unhurt people are not much good in the world.”

I also remembered, and have held on through the years to the words of Christ, “I am with you always.”

There is nothing trite about that.

Mary Morrell is managing editor of The Monitor.