Unspoken Suffering

I’ve been taking this class on human suffering the last couple of weeks. Today, each of us in the class had a couple of minutes to share our personal stories of suffering/pain. As I listened, I noticed gaps, silent spots, and grimaces with no explanation. I heard people minimize their pain. I heard people spiritualize, triumphalize, justify, redemptify and straight up deny their pain. I heard a lot of words like, “not that bad” and “could have been worse” and “I’ve been blessed.” These are all good things to say, but the fact of the matter is that pain is pain. It does not help us to disguise our pain with silence or to keep it locked up in the unreality of Christian cliché. Pain hurts, and it hurts deep. As I listened, I started to think about all the unspoken suffering. I started to think about all the stories upon stories, details upon details that weren’t being shared. I started to think about all the internal turmoil and battles that have been fought in each person as they wrestled with the implications of inflicted harm and harm inflicted. It is the inner world, the world of the unseen thoughts, emotions, and perspectives that we will never see, even when we "share our stories." No matter how vivid I paint the picture, no one will ever fully know the struggle and the continued heart ache those pains have casued.

After we were done sharing, a couple people realized that they had experienced similar things that others had shared. They had unspoken suffering. And in my heart too, I knew that there were things that I had not shared, there were gaps, stories left untold, experiences unspoken. There were things that were too painful, there were parts of my story that i had forgotten, repressed, denied. I just wonder how often we allow the gaps to exist. How often is what people share just the manufactured conclusion of a messy, unprocessed hurt? How often is pain disguised, minimized, and denied? When is it appropriate to step into the gaps? When is it appropriate to put volume to the silent spots? When is it appropriate to step into the unspoken suffering? I don't know, but as I listened to myself and others, the silence spoke louder than our speech.