Kiss of Jesus

Part 2 of my story, with thoughts on suffering with Jesus

Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash

Here is part 2 of my story (part 1 is here) with some thoughts on suffering with Jesus. If you have ever wanted to support me and my work, this would be a great time to do that. You will get full access to all of these writings, and I would be so grateful. 

“Your husband is here.”

Husband. Hero. Dan. He was here. In an instant, he was beside me. I saw his face, I felt his arms, I heard his voice. My husband. There, in the middle of New York City, in a fog of pain, home had come to me. Everything was going to be OK.

Everything wasn’t immediately OK, of course. Surgeries, infection, suffering, humiliation, and all manner of frustration and discouragement lay ahead, but it all looked different now, with Dan beside me.

One thing I learned in the days I spent in the hospital is just how personal and hidden suffering truly is. Even if we are very sensitive and compassionate, we can’t see another person’s pain. We can’t really know what it’s like to suffer as they do. Even in the context of an intimate, loving marriage, we cannot truly understand what our spouse is going through. Suffering can be a very lonely thing.

On days in the hospital where I had intense pain and exhaustion, there was little Dan could do but stand beside me and watch, which was his own kind of suffering. I could not watch TV, I could not read, I could not speak very much at all. I felt like a useless lump of pain. 

I could not pray.

That last one really bothered me at first. When I read about saints who offered up tremendous suffering to God and trusted in him through the worst of human experiences, I guess I always pictured them saying faithful, devout prayers through it all, telling God how much they love and trust him. 

In my worst moments in the hospital, though, I could not “pray” in any way that resembled that. The best I could do was to place myself in God’s presence, accept what was happening, and trust him with it. It’s not fancy, and no one is going to make a Hollywood movie about it, but simply bringing our suffering to God and saying “yes” to it even as our bodies scream “no!” is one of the most profound and meaningful experiences of prayer I have ever had.

In the days when I was suffering this way, my daughter-in-law sent me a quote from Mother Teresa: 

“Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, and suffering are but the kiss of Jesus–a sign that you have come so close to him that he can kiss you.”

I thought a lot about that. The kiss of Jesus. We might be tempted to say “No thank you” to that kind of a kiss, but these words stayed with me, and I found they were true. The kiss of Jesus implies a kind of intimacy with God, and that is what I experienced those days. In my worst moments, when no one else–not even Dan–could understand what I was feeling, Jesus leaned in close and drew me to himself. He saw it, he understood it, and he was using it for good.

We live in a world that values productivity and independence, but God doesn’t value these things. The world tells us to count on ourselves, but we can do nothing without God. We are nothing without God. It’s easy to say you trust in God when things are going well and you are under the illusion that you can accomplish great things in the world, but more often than not, during those times, we are trusting only in ourselves. 

Painful life interruptions and times of suffering are a great gift because they strip us of the illusion that we can do anything for ourselves. They allow us to see just how helpless we are. They leave us unable to do anything but sit in the presence of God and trust him. Be still and know that he is God. Be still and know Jesus. Be still and receive his kiss.

Jesus was also present to me in small kindnesses from other people. One day, I needed to get a CT scan to find out if I had an abscess. This was one necessary step in the long process toward getting well, but I dreaded it. It hurt to move. I was so nauseated that the slightest agitation sent my empty stomach into spasms of dry heaving. I felt completely depleted and exhausted.

The man who came to transport me to the CT scan entered my room and looked me over. “How are you doing? Are you OK?” he asked. His voice revealed a tenderness that surprised me, given his rough exterior. He was about 60 years old, with a scraggly gray beard, tan skin, multiple tattoos, and large silver rings on his fingers.

He fiddled with the phone charging cord near a chair in my room. “You have an outlet you can use for this right on your bed,” he told me. 

I looked. “It’s the wrong port,” I said, “Apple keeps changing the ports.”

He smiled and told me his name, but I didn’t quite catch it.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, “I’m Danielle.”

A look of confusion came over his face followed by a tiny smile, and I realized that he had not told me his name after all. “I’m Android,” is what he had said.

I smiled myself, too weak to laugh, and neither of us said anything more until he wheeled my bed into the hallway.

I felt a breeze on my face. There was air out there in the hallway. I saw people in every direction, talking, laughing, working, living normal lives, and it felt surreal. Was all of this really going on while time stood still in my hospital room?

We paused to wait for the elevator and I saw a man dressed in black in the distance. He was walking toward us. When he came closer, I saw his collar, and I reached toward him.

“Father!” I said. “Father, will you give me a blessing?”

Father paused beside my bed in the hallway. He was a short, black man with eyes that locked onto mine with intensity.

“Of course I will,” he said as a wide smile covered his face. What was that accent? Jamaican? Ugandan? I could not tell.

He unzipped the small black bag he carried and withdrew from it a glass bottle of holy water. He said the words of the blessing and shook the holy water over me.

In the name of the Father!

And of the Son!

And of the Holy Spirit!

My pillow was drenched. My sheets were soaked. Tears mixed with holy water flooded my face.

Another saint quote my daughter-in-law shared with me last week was from St. Teresa of Avila:

“One must not think that a person who is suffering is not praying. He is offering up his sufferings to God, and many a time he is praying much more truly than one who goes away by himself and meditates his head off.”

I am feeling so much better these days, especially now that I am at home, but these lessons of suffering have stayed with me. St. Faustina called suffering the “greatest treasure on earth” and it can be hard to see it that way, especially in the midst of the worst of it, but I know this is true. I try to remember this when I am tempted to “meditate my head off” in some kind of effort to accomplish my own holiness. That can’t be done. Only God does good work in us.

I can see now the intimacy God calls us to through suffering, how he draws us closer to himself. And I can see how present he is in every minute of it. Truly present. So close. Nothing is wasted. He comes to give us comfort and strength. 

I’ll probably still try to “meditate my head off” sometimes, but today I’m choosing something much smaller, more hidden, and a thousand times more meaningful than that.

Give me strength, Lord, to embrace every suffering you allow in my life. I accept it all. Use it to draw me ever closer to you. Amen.