Hiccups, or, On Suffering
My daughter is banging her head against my pelvis. From the inside. Soon she’ll be kicking my ribs too. I can’t blame her, though; it’s got to be uncomfortable to have hiccups in low gravity, your entire body jerking to an involuntary rhythm. I might kick a little too if the hiccups sent me slamming into the nearest wall.
My son is not a big fan of the hiccups either. He’s big enough to be grounded by gravity (and has been born), so they’re not so violent for him, but he gets notably crankier the longer they last. At first they were amusing: “Have the hiccups, Mama!” Now, he soldiers through like a preschool Stoic: “Had *hic* trains at school *hic* today. Jolhan made *hic* me a picture. [panting breaths.] I have the hiccups.” He stops trying, tired of fighting an inexplicable foe.
I know how he feels.
We’ve had two miscarriages in two years. One on Christmas day, one that would have been my daughter’s twin. And my husband lost his job – a month short of having enough hours to be licensed for self-employment.
An earlier version of myself would have been able to cope through blame. I could have gained (at least) catharsis by blaming evil in the cosmos, by casting myself the victim of diabolic dabbling. It’s not an entirely immature thing to do, because it’s not actually easy. Believing I merit demonic attention and that my personal suffering pays a worthwhile dividend in the spiritual realm takes a large draught of faith. (Mostly in the nature and power of evil.) The problem I’ve found more nagging in the “I’m being persecuted” perspective is that it’s one-dimensional. Screwtape is certainly crafty enough to conceive a Christmas day miscarriage, but if he’s powerful enough to off one baby, why not both of them? Why is my daughter’s skull still bumping away in there?
The ironies of the suffering make them cruel. Now, every birthday my daughter celebrates will also be haunted; every carol celebrating birth and joy will also be a reminder of loss and sorrow. But the ironies also make the suffering complex—too complex for the amount of faith I have in the creative power of evil. I have no problem believing that evil has real power. But, where I see love get the edge is in agenda. Even down here, the ones who win are the ones with perspective. Rich or poor, weak or strong, the ability to invest energy in the big picture does the overcomer make. It seems to me that this attention to the wider scope is what we most often call wisdom. A trait we could agree that Good possesses and Evil cannot.
So my faith now lies in Love’s ability to fit things into a whole. The kind of thing the Bible calls “God working, in all things, together with those who love him to bring about what is good.” The tense is important to me now: working, to bring. Something active is happening right now, through these sufferings. My question in the presence of suffering is then, What good can come from this? What could come out of this that would be unified with Love’s ultimate purpose?
Well, I don’t know.
But, that “together with those who love him” part gives a little substance to dig my fingernails into. Of the things I can imagine God and I being able to work on in tandem, character seems high on a short list. This is disappointing because I’d much rather be working with God on my happiness. Or the maturing of others. Or establishing predictability in the world. But— I suppose I have to admit— belaying to more happiness and less conflict wouldn’t do too much to elevate my character. Straining up those cliffs wouldn’t build too many Jesus-muscles.
Yesterday, a babycenter e-update landed in my inbox. It reassured me that my daughter’s lungs are now capable of breathing if she’s born early. And it noted the hiccups are likely to be common now, so she may be slamming her head into my pelvis several times a day. It turns out those hiccups are actually practice. They’re like running on a treadmill— aimless when isolated, but perfectly useful as exercise. Their timing is mysterious and impetus unknown. They hurt my bones, they make her kick. But, even in their inexplicability, this suffering is assuring something important. It’s assuring she’ll be whole, that she’ll be full-grown— mature—when the time comes for her to enter the next place.
