This Undone Life Together with Michele Cushatt Michele Cushatt

Here we are friends, walking the final few steps of our Relentless journey together- looking for the presence of God in the midst of our suffering, and what a road it has been! But we have just one more thing to wrestle with…

How do we, as a chosen people, a holy priesthood, a royal nation, which has been called out of darkness and into marvelous light (1 Peter 2:4-5, 9), walk this out? How do we not keep such joy and healing and the experience of God’s presence amidst our pain to ourselves?

“When we establish our altar of God’s presence in our life, this memorial marking the reality of God’s presence with us, we then become living stones that testify to the God who has seen us through our Jordan rivers to this moment and will see us the rest of the way home.”

The answer? Compassion. Henri Nouwen says this:

“…The word compassion… means to suffer with. Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter in to places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those who are in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human. True compassion is full immersion- to recognize pain and to refuse to walk past it, to sit down, get uncomfortable with another’s writhing and do what we can to bear it with them. It sounds like covenant- like the pilar of cloud and fire, the incarnation, the cross. Doing this, doing what Jesus did by entering in will wreck us, and it will save us.”

But what does compassion look like? How do we show compassion to both ourselves and to others? There are three things I’ve found to be true…

3 Requirements of Compassion:

1. Push into our own pain. We cannot ignore or numb what has wounded us. We must take it to Jesus.
2. Trust and then experience God’s presence within our pain. If we refuse to deal with it, we forfeit experiencing the sweetness of his presence in it.
3. Enter into the pain of others. We cannot help anybody with their pain until we, with Jesus, have dealt with our own. We then have the capacity to minister to others.

This is how we, as followers of Jesus, want to be known by the world around us. Unfortunately, compassion is not often our first response. Philip Yancey & Dr. Paul Brand say this:

“Tragically, those who are struggling with divorce, alcoholism, gender or sexual identity, introversion, rebelliousness, unemployment, or marginalization often report that the church is the last group to show them compassion. Like a person who takes Aspirin at the first sign of a headache, we want to silence them without addressing the underlying causes. Someone once asked John Wesley’s mother, ‘Which of your eleven children do you love the most?’ She gave a wise answer to match the folly of the question. ‘I love the one who’s sick until she’s well, and the one who’s away until he comes home.’ That, I believe, is God’s attitude towards our suffering planet. Jesus always stood on the side of the suffering. He came for the sick and not the well. The sinners and not the righteous.”

It is when we, in humility, remind ourselves that we are among the sick whom Jesus came, was crucified, resurrected, and now intercedes for that we can meet the brokenness of others with compassion and love.

My friends I am honored to be counted among the sick and the sinners that Jesus has come for. I am not well or righteous, not even on my best days. I am merely a sick woman that Jesus chose to come alongside and to heal. That’s it; no more, no less, and it’s enough. 

THANK YOU for journeying with me these past fifteen episodes.

Have you ever had a friend message you exactly what you needed to hear at the perfect moment? A few years ago, I received word that a friend I’d journeyed through Cancer simultaneously with had just been admitted into hospice care. It took my breath away. I was mourning in the mountains, when a friend messaged me this:

“To inspire someone is way more than making them happy or amazed or even more than making them feel good. It is to lend them spirit when they are short, and of course because of the incorporeal nature of air and spirit, the act of inhaling becomes known as inspiration. In that sense, too, it is like mechanical ventilation for a soul that’s lost its resolve for a moment.”

There comes a time in all of our lives where we need the encouragement and inspiration of another. The flip side of that coin is that sometimes when people need us, our first response is hesitation; because if we’re being really honest, which we are, helping hurting people is really, really hard.

Many times, when the people around us need inspiration from us- they need mechanical ventilation from us, we don’t want to offer it because, let’s be honest, hurting people are difficult to be around.

My husband and I were in the throes of raising three adolescent children, which can be a difficult feat in and of itself, but add in their history of childhood trauma, and effectively find us at the end of our rope. It was during a video consult with a child trauma specialist that I heard the analogy that transformed my perspective entirely.

“Do you know the secret to getting out of a dog bite?”

“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Let’s say you see a dog & reach out your hand to pet it, but rather than welcome your affection, the dog sees you as a threat and attacks. Now your entire fist is trapped between the canine’s teeth.”

Now that sounded familiar. Living with someone recovering from trauma feels a lot like being caught in a dog’s bite- unpredictable & painful.

“How do you get your hand out with the least amount of damage? Human instinct will make you want to jerk back, yank your hand out of the dog’s mouth, but that’s when the damage happens. The secret? Push in.”

I’ll admit that enduring hostility, even from a preteen, is painful. Everything within me wants to pull away, to retreat, to put as much space between us as I can manage. Yet in that very moment, everything the specialist had just said, my children’s trauma-informed behaviors, it all clicked into place for me.

The secret to healing is to push in, to stay close. Then, what was once wounded in relationship can be healed in relationship.

In order to be prepared to press in when the going gets tough, however, we need to regularly attend to our spiritual oxygen levels. So, I have for you today- 3 strategies for getting more spiritual oxygen in your life:

1. Retreat. Shut down, slow down, and invest in solitude and silence. Push in with Jesus.

2. Rest. Body, mind, and spirit.

3. Relationship. Expiration and inspiration in tandem. Both inhalation of the Spirit of God and exhalation in the relationship with others. Reciprocity- the secret to our healing.

The best part? We have a heavenly Father who constantly and consistently models this response to our ill-informed reactions.

This brings us to Altar Stone #12: Look for God’s presence within you.

This week, I invite you to retreat from the crazy chaos of life, and in solitude and silence, push into Jesus. Leave the externals behind you for a moment, and turn inward. 

“Suffering is a great unifier, because all of us experience it and it puts all of us on the same ground. It’s also the great divider because it forces us to choose. We cannot stay neutral when dealing with suffering. We either have to believe in God even more or we have to reject him completely. There’s no middle ground.”

When asked why they don’t believe in God, a vast majority of people would reference the problem of pain. There is just too much suffering in the world for there to be a God, or at the very least for him to be good.

Our ability to endure suffering as long as it results in a beneficial outcome is evidenced in various areas of our lives. Runners subject their bodies to pain because they know the benefit of that pain is greater strength & endurance. Women endure months of pregnancy discomfort to meet a grand finale of intense physical pain for the benefit of having a child to hold and rock and raise. Students willingly endure prolonged stress and studying, beyond the years required, in order to reap the benefits provided by a degree in higher education.

These temporarily painful experiences that require additional time, sacrifice, finances, and resources are deemed worthwhile because they result in additional knowledge, perspective, and opportunities in the long run. But what do we do when the other side of our suffering isn’t quite so clear?

“Part of our challenge with pain, suffering, and death is because I don’t think we fully believe in the benefits of the other side… of this experience, but also the other side of this life.”

I’m certainly not saying that I’m going to start throwing a party every time I feel the chronic, residual pain from undergoing countless chemo and radiation treatments. Yet, there is a truth present within the Christian life that, although painful, hidden amidst the discomfort of our suffering is the surprising reality that our pain is also a gift.

Through my own experiences with suffering, I have begun to learn why pain is necessary for survival, what I can value from my experience with pain, & how I have even grown to be thankful for it. I have found remembering these 6 Gifts of Pain to be a helpful practice in perspective-building when it comes to suffering:

1. Awareness- Pain is a smoke detector alerting us to danger; it forces us to pay attention to what’s important both personally and communally. We develop empathy through taking care of ourselves & others.

2. Health- Because pain demands that we pay attention, it leads us into greater health- emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

3. Humility- Suffering heightens our awareness of our mortality, and forces us to face the finite nature of our lives. We must reconcile that as independent, self-confident, and determined as we may be, so much of life is still out of our control.

4. Wonder- Pain’s ability to stop us dead in our tracks often renders us speechless. Ultimately, it reminds us to appreciate the gift, fragility, and miracle of life.

5. Dependance- Discomfort forces us to face our obsession with self-sufficiency and prideful refusal to accept help. It brings to light the necessity of our interdependence on one another and complete dependence on God.

6. Gratitude- Pain makes us aware-of and grateful-for what we previously enjoyed, prior to the losses we endured at the hand of suffering. It provides a new light in which to see and appreciate all we still have presently, and may have even gained through our experience with suffering.

This leads us to Altar Stone #11: Look for evidence of God’s presence in your pain.

“I’m staaaaaarving.” Anyone else’s kiddos claim this on a regular basis?

In July of 2011, we received a phone call that would change our lives forever. Three little kids, whose mama couldn’t care for them anymore, needed a home. Twenty-four hours later we picked them up and brought them home as our own. For their first meal in their new home I had brilliantly planned Kraft mac & cheese and watermelon, because this was not my first rodeo.

Listen, I had raised three boys before; I have wondered at the marvel of teenage boys descending on a kitchen like a cloud of moths, leaving no trace of a previously packed pantry. Even so, I had never seen anything like what I witnessed that day. In seconds, the three littles had inhaled all evidence of lunch; it was as if the food had instantly evaporated, the moment I placed it in front of them. I have felt hunger in the pit of my stomach before, the ache for sustenance, but my new children didn’t just eat with an insatiable hunger; they devoured their food out of desperation. It was something that even a full belly couldn’t fill.

I experienced a version of this when a Cancer removal surgery extracted two-thirds of my tongue. For two weeks I could take nothing by mouth- not even water, and for weeks after that eating was excruciating. My mouth and throat seared with pain and my stomach howled to be satiated. It was a physical hunger I could not satisfy, but one that led me to recognize, it’s not only stomachs that long to be fed, but souls.

“The irony is that our physical hunger is only the barest representation of our soul hunger. Ever since the Garden of Eden we have carried around this soul hunger that is starving for, is desperate for, intimacy. We are desperate to be connected and filled with a love that comes from relationship.”

You don’t have to look much farther than our addiction-enslaved culture for evidence of this soul hunger. As people we are always looking for ways to dull, numb, or obliterate the pain that dwells within what feels like a cavern loosely held in place by our ribcage. Anxiety, restlessness, depression, and loneliness threaten to swallow us whole from the inside out; so, we medicate with drugs, alcohol, sex, disordered eating, extreme exercise, workaholism, another Netflix binge…

We justify all of this manic behavior by tricking ourselves into believing that busyness will heal us from the ache within. Or that if we just lie still enough for long enough, perhaps this couch really will swallow us up and we won’t be able to feel anything anymore. While so often the room to breathe is found within the balance. In order to be awake, we must allow ourselves to feel, but it is far more rewarding than we picture the scene playing out in our heads. Soul hunger is fed through honest connection.

Our souls crave intimacy like our stomachs crave sandwiches, and the scary feelings look a lot less like monsters when held up to the candlelight at a meal between friends.

There are, at least, 3 means of significance of a shared meal:


It reminds us of our shared humanity & need for relationship. Our shared knowledge of mortality makes way for humility in connection.
It requires us to set aside our differing agendas, & come together for one shared purpose. A unifying experience in a world of differences.
It provides an opportunity for reciprocity. We are led to yield to one another as we take turns eating and conversing.

This week take some time to look for evidence of God’s presence amidst your hunger. Both our physical and spiritual hunger indicates needs we were created to have. Allow your hunger this week to point you in the direction of the only one who can truly fill the void.

Have you ever walked into a room and felt completely out of place? Like somehow there was something inherently flawed about you? That for some reason you just did not belong? Perhaps it’s happened to you from within a room you were even invited into. This room could’ve been real- a home, an office, a church, but it also could’ve been figurative- Facebook, Instagram, social media.

A few years ago, my family and I went ice skating, and I gotta tell ya', I was pretty excited to unveil my hidden talent to my family. As I glided around the rink, twirling and leaping, my kids grew more and more impressed with me, and my ego soared like the applause after Michelle Kwan’s triple axel. Cue the fall…

Except this time, it was an emotional wipe out. My talents had also caught the attention of a sweet, 5-year-old onlooker. She approached me earnestly, I assumed to marvel at my talent, but when she reached me her question knocked the elation right out of me.

“Why do you have a hole in your neck?”

She hadn’t noticed my spins; the little girl had noticed the 1 inch scar left behind from my tracheostomy. As I explained to her how I had earned this scar, she noticed something else that was different about me from other people she had come to know…

“Stick out your tongue.”

Well, she got me with that one. You see, I don’t have a tongue to stick out. After multiple surgeries, I have a reconstructed tongue that allows me to speak and eat and swallow, although not without difficulty. My tongue is tethered and is no longer something I could stick out even if I wanted to.

This is not new information to me. I have been learning to grow into and accept my differences for years now, but I have to say, “Even though I’ve grown accustomed to it, it’s not always easy for me when people point out how I’m different.”

Sometimes I think it takes us longer to embrace who we are, because it’s so painful to let go of who we used to be. Often, these changes come to us as the result of some uncontrollable circumstance. I’m grateful to still be alive, but what is also true is Cancer stole my once smooth speech and neck. Admittedly, it took me four years to change the message on my voicemailbox, because I had recorded it before surgeries slurred my speech. “Honestly, I didn’t want to let the girl go. The girl with the perfect speech. The me that I used to be. I didn’t want to say goodbye to her.”

The innocent girl’s inquiries that day made me realize something.

“We’ve come to believe that our value comes with our ability to blend in.”

We work so hard to mask our own differences, and we are awkward about others’.

But really, “Behind our discomfort with difference is a deep need for significance.”

In relationship, differences often feel like conflict, and the difficulty with conflict is that we become convinced we have to pick a side. Does this person’s difference deserve grace or truth?

In chapter 9 of Relentless, I retell the transfiguration story where Peter, James, and John went up the mountain and witnessed Jesus’ appearance transfigured into God before their very eyes. It wasn’t that he changed people completely; essentially, the veil was lifted momentarily to reveal who he had been all along- God.

This brings us to Altar Stone #9: Look for God’s presence in the place of your transformation.

We are all in process. This week, I want you to revisit the middle of your hard story and look for evidence of God’s presence in the disfigured parts.

I love math. Always have. Just today, I felt a small thrill when my kids returned from school (AKA their computers in the kitchen, thankyouCovid) with a math problem they needed my assistance with. The reason? An equation is straightforward, solvable, with a clear conclusion.

I wish faith were more like algebra.

Instead, faith sometimes reminds me of the tedious, makemewannapullmyhairout, task of untangling my headphones. It is the actual worst. I would honest-to-goodness rather buy a new pair than have to tackle this nearly impossible task. Just me, here?

Okay, admittedly this is a very minuscule example of a much larger issue.

For instance, John the Baptist was a person of exceptional faith on all accounts. He was set apart from birth to be the forerunner to the Messiah. He was an obedient, faithful, honorable, humble, and hardworking man who spent his life in service to Yahweh. Yet, he met an ending more terrible than most. Eventually, John the Baptist was beheaded- his head delivered to King Herod’s wife on a silver platter.

What?

In chapter 8 of Relentless, I mention reading a book some time ago. Miracles, by Eric Metaxas is a fantastic book filled with accounts of exceptional miracles believers have experienced. I devoured it. Hidden beneath my fevered page-turning was a buried belief that if I filled an internal storehouse of miraculous stories, I could avoid any discomfort of confusion in my faith.

“If I could collect all these stories of big, firework kind of miracles of God doing extraordinary things, then I could believe & not doubt; then I could have the kind of faith that was super strong.”

With my super strong faith, I could successfully avoid the unwanted measure of guilt and shame that accumulated alongside any creeping doubts.

Why do some people get the big, life-changing, or even life-saving miracles, while others collide with tragedy, loss, or even death?

As it turns out, my trying to get God to prove himself through my mathematic equation didn’t render the results I had hoped for. Moreover, I realized that, “Miracles don’t always make faith.”

“In fact, in many cases it’s the lack of a miracle that forces a person to really wrestle with what they believe.”

In our suffering, we become increasingly desperate for answers, believing they will finally rescue us from our pain. The truth is, answers may bring relief in the short term, but even the clearest of reasoning can’t make sufficient sense of some heartbreaks.

The real art is learning to trust amidst the unknown, to rest amidst turmoil, and to trust the trail our questions lead us further along. Doubt feels scary and destructive and unfaithful.

“However, over the last couple of years of wrestling through my own faith journey, I have actually come to see doubt as a gift.”

So, how do we deal with the reality of doubt?


 Acknowledge it. Doubt is a normal part of an active, stretching, growing faith.
 Keep asking questions. To not ask questions is to not think.
 Keep moving. Don’t get too comfortable in your doubt; it should be productive. There’s nothing noble about staying lost in the forest.
 Accept that not all questions will be answered. If we could solve the equation of God, he would be far too small.
 Choose trust. We are either going to trust in our own capacity and ability or God’s magnificence and mystery.

“Doubt is not the enemy of your faith, it’s the means to deepening it; So, take it to him.”