Trusting God in the Midst of Suffering: The Good Old Days

 

Bring us back to yourself, O LORD, so that we may return to you; renew our life as in days before. Lamentations 5:21

 Do you ever think back to the “Good Old Days?” Times when things were easier, happier? When your children lived at home, or when they were little? Before some major health or job crisis? Do you ever long for that joy to be restored? Jeremiah did. This book I’ve read through over the last week, Lamentations, catalogs the hurt and degradation of his people. This was all well-deserved, as he often mentions, because of how the people had turned away from God, but that doesn’t make it good. Jeremiah knew what life could be like, and he wanted it back.

 The title of this book, Lamentations, means, “Expression of sorrow; cries of grief; the act of bewailing.”* This is not sadness. It is not a mild depression or feeling down. This is a desperate, gut-wrenching expression of distress. Jeremiah’s whole world had been turned upside-down, as indeed it had for his whole people. No one was spared, not the rich, not the upright, not the popular. Tragedy and loss had befallen them all. And, as is so common in such scenarios, Jeremiah wanted things to go back to the way they were, he wanted restoration.

 In most translations of the Bible, the first word or concept in this verse is “Restore.” There are a LOT of definitions for this word in Webster’s 1828 dictionary, but the one that seems most appropriate for this scenario is, “4. To bring back or recover from lapse, degeneracy, declension or ruin to its former state.”* Jeremiah wanted Jerusalem and all of Israel to go back to their former state. Realistically, he wanted it to be even better with the people following and honoring God while living joyful, fulfilled lives free of fear, hunger and loss.

 This stands out to me this morning, because it is my hope after radiation. I begin radiation therapy for my brain tumor next month and all signs point to it being a terribly difficult road. My primary symptoms caused by the tumor pressing on different areas of my brain are vertigo and nausea, with migraines being possibly caused by the tumor or one of a dozen other issues I face. These symptoms are expected to be exacerbated by the therapy, getting more intense as inflammation and scar tissue expand the area affected by the tumor, instead of shrinking it as happens with other tumor types. My doctor’s hope is that we are freezing the tumor’s size and the level at which I experience my symptoms along with it. So, the nausea and vertigo in particular that I deal with today will be my new baseline, the “Good Old Days” to which I will look to being restored once the inflammation and exhaustion of the therapy wear off. My hair will fall out in the areas the radiation enters my head, and they *might* grow back, but if they do, it will likely be “patchy and sparse.” Six weeks of travelling two hours each way for a ten-minute treatment in stop-and-go traffic. Six weeks of Nemesis bags (what we’ve come to call emesis bags). Six weeks, but that’s not the end. They say that my symptoms will actually get worse after treatment, peaking about 2-4 weeks after I finish. I have a feeling that somewhere along the way I will begin to identify deeply with Jeremiah. My daily life is a struggle today. I wake up in pain, and it takes what feels like an act of God to get me out of bed. More often than not, a wave of nausea overtakes me when I do, and often the pounding of a migraine. My joints are unstable and inflamed, failing me far more than they should when the vertigo kicks in and I lose my balance. But all this will look like the “Good Old Days” before too long. I will wish I could be back at this point. That will be my prayer.

Here’s the Thing: All this probably sounds like quite the downer. It’s bad, but it’s going to get worse and you’ll miss the bad. I feel bad for my doctor that she had to deliver that news. That’s a tough job! I think the meme above that I found recently summarizes well how I’m feeling about all this. It sounds dark, but really, it’s a type of light, a type of hope.

* Websters Dictionary 1828 - Webster’s Dictionary 1828 - Lamentation. (n.d.). Websters Dictionary 1828. https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/Lamentation