Joshua and I courted our wedding day like a beloved date. We bought flowers, chose a venue, confirmed decor and finalised details with the gentle happiness of young lovers.
But the months leading to our wedding were also heavy. Like an umbrella caught in a storm; my health was the storm that turned our lives upside down. I was desperately unwell, both physically and mentally. The chronic pain in my abdomen and chest worsened, and I was in the hospital almost twice a month. Most nights I would come home from work weeping. I was struggling to walk and suffered from bouts of brain fog and memory loss. I was afraid. My body was delicate; and my mind, fragile.
Esteemed writer Arundhati Roy describes fear like "a cold moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts." In The God of Small Things, Roy writes: "The moth lands lightly on her protagonist's heart. Where its icy legs touched her, she got goosebumps. Six goosebumps on her careless heart."
Like a moth, fear was a cursed creature that landed on my heart.
I'm unsure when the fear arrived, only that its wings became thicker and more noticeable in the weeks leading up to our wedding. For a long time I believed that knowing the answer to when fear arrived would reveal the reason why fear arrived. I have since learned that the time when something occurs does not always reveal the reason why it occured. Time, I realise now, relies too heavily on memory, and memories have the potential to be unreliable.
I turned myself into a cocoon in the months before our wedding, and once cocooned, I found it difficult to open emotionally. I was afraid to go outside or to be alone, and I relied heavily on my fiancé. At night I would lie in bed and pretend to be far away – sleeping in another body, dreaming with a settled mind. In the morning I would wake disappointed. Once more in pain.
I wept at odd moments. My eyes pooled tears without warning. I was lonely in my cocoon. Going about the day was like trying to break out of a tightly woven sheathe. Whenever I felt well I anxiously waited for the moment when I feel unwell; and when I unwell I anxiously waited for the pain to leave. I did not believe my fiancé when he told me that my cocoon could be broken-open because I believed that I was broken. I surrounded myself with brokenness, too afraid to challenge fear, too busy to grieve. But grief followed me, as it follows anyone who has ever truly loved anything.
Meanwhile, Joshua and I were in the middle of planning a wedding, wondering how to secure a flat, meeting with doctors, working, learning how to live alongside one another in our newly shared city. We made friends, moved churches, and worked at our respective jobs. Work developed into a source of anxiety for me. I struggled to cope with the demands of my role when the chronic pain led to multiple hospitalisations. Because the pain that I experienced was invisible – and at that time undiagnosed – I suffered to articulate the kind of support I needed, when and why.
A couple months into 2024 I was given medicines; 10 times a day. I felt misunderstood, which into feelings of loneliness. I felt alone in my suffering, miserable and afraid. My dreams were fraught with nightmares. I woke almost every couple of hours, weeping into the phone, begging Joshua to pray so that I might hear his voice, and voiceless as I was, be carried to God.
I am blessed that the man who loves me was – and is still – willing to wake at all hours to be near me digitally, and in-person. But we grew tired, and then we grew tired of feeling tired. We bickered our way through miscommunications. We reconciled, and our commitment to one another deepened.
We were about to make one of the most important decisions for our individual and collective future. We were surrounded by conversations that referenced our future – how it would begin, what it might look like, where it would take us.
Fear made the future feel cold and ugly. It frightened me to think about a future dominated by chronic pain. I struggled to celebrate the arrival of spring. I was sad when the trees grew back, with their stark hues of renewed green and blue. I watched the trees bear fruit and felt leafless. Unable to shake myself free of winter. I was plagued by the sickening notion that I had swallowed fear and trapped him inside.
Fear goes chillingly bone deep. It has the power to convince us that we are incapable of enjoying what is beautiful and good. When I was unwell, as I am now, I was convinced that my body could not to be trusted – and if my body was untrustworthy, so too felt my character. Who was I becoming? What was sorrow turning me into? I did not recognise the woman in my mirror. She was not the woman I wished I was, nor the woman I had been.
Russian novelist Dostoevsky believed that to love someone means that you see them as God intended them to be. Theologian Timothy Keller describes the Christian vision of love like this:
"[Love] is to look at another person and get a glimpse of what God is creating, and to say, "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!”
In a season wrought my wonder and fear, my fiancé's quiet faithfulness has been the most powerful reflection of love. My fiancé is faithful to me because he has faith in God. He walks with me through grief by anointing me in prayer. He believes suffering is "the light that shines us towards God's radical and sacrificial love, as demonstrated by his death on the cross." When I am afraid my fiancé says, "My love, return with me to the cross. There we will find God's perfect love; and perfect love casts our fear" (1 John 4:18).
We will never know the gravity of pain that Christ experienced on the cross. But there is a reason why John writes: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sister, when you face suffering of all kinds." Whether it be physical or mental.
Suffering matures our understanding of God and his love. It gives us a taste of what God suffered for us on the cross. In suffering we learn how to embrace the glory He accomplished through His suffering. Suffering reminds us that "The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). Simply put, suffering – in any form – leads to a greater intimacy with God.
The vulnerability produced by suffering has the power to build our intimacy with others us. We find this intimacy reflected in human relationships. We are made more resilience in relationship. When we face life with others, we become acutely aware of the disparity between weakness and strength, good and bad. We cannot fool ourselves into blindness when what we see is affirmed by another. We learn to acknowledge the world – and one another – as it is now and as it was created to be. We see one another as they are now and as they were born to be.
We are given a glimpse of God's great love when we suffer because suffering reminds us of His faithfulness on the cross. His faithfulness sparks our desire to live faithfully. gives us the grace to break free from fear and the courage to walk (even in suffering) with confidence that we will healed, whether in heaven or on earth.
Suffering imbues us with empathetic faithfulness. We know that God, who suffered, stands with us; and so we, suffering, stand with others. We look at them and say: "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that."
Godly marriages reflect God's intimate and faithful love. I am blessed that Joshua reflected God's faithfulness throughout the whole of our relationship. No matter how difficult things became, Joshua was with me. His faithfulness fills me with confidence to know our love will grow in all seasons. Whether in sickness and health, poverty and wealth, sorrow and joy.
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