The Problem of Pain

C.S. Lewis once wrote a book called The Problem of Pain, if I remember correctly, and I know that Lewis was a man whose life was akin to the turmoil and grief that pervades the human experience. I know that all of us will inevitably experience pain, sorrow and brokenness, and to what end does it affect us? We can choose to ignore it (which I have become very adept in doing) and muffle it within our souls. . . .to which end it tends to eventually explode after enough time of ignoring it. We can become numb to it, and not let ourselves feel the pain of the human life or feel the joy of community or real love. Or, I guess we can also become obsessed with it, and it can consume us to the point where we can hardly function. So, where does that leave us? I don't think that we in America are very exposed to oppression, poverty and suffering. We are quite desensitized to what it means to feel. . . . .and if a person is quite given over to feeling and expression, he or she is often taken for a fool. How often do I actually allow myself to fully grieve, or even weep, over the death of a loved one? Why can't I allow myself to admit that I am broken and pained by loss and injustice?
When I was in Guatemala, I worked in a small mountain town called Santa Maria de Jesus, which was populated by an indigenous Mayan people. They lived in dire poverty, with conditions that one can only imagine. I worked in a school for handicapped children for two months while I was there, and each day as I came back again and again, I found my heart getting harder and colder to the poverty and pain that I saw around me. I felt helpless and foreign and confused- how could I help these people, what would be the point of helping them, and why are they so forgotten? We lived in homes in Antigua, a colonial town in the valley below Santa Maria, and most of the people that lived in wealth and comfort in that city had never even set foot in Santa Maria, which was only a few miles up the mountain. I could not let myself feel or love or actually try to understand this poverty that was all around me, because it was worse than anything that I had ever seen before. My heart began to break for my handicapped children throughout my time there. There was one girl in particular, Petronila, who was a radiantly beautiful 13-year-old that was confined to a wheelchair because she had been afflicted with spina bifida since birth. She had no use of her legs- they simply hung below her chair as she wheeled around. She was rather timid, but she would come up to me every day at recess and simply hold my hand, not wanting to play rough like the other children, but just wanting to be near someone. That was what drew me more and more to Petronila, and also made me want to stay away. I did not want to grow to love this girl, because it hurt too much to hear about her painful childhood from the other teachers, or about her scorn from her townspeople (who did not accept crippled people, they were believed to have a spiritual curse), or just to see the physical pain that she experienced every single day. One day, when all of the young children were running up onto the flat roof to play in the sunshine for recess, I was carrying up the little ones, one at a time, and playing with them up on the roof. When I came down to retrieve another first grader, Petronila inadvertently grabbed my hand and said to me with eyes hungry for love: "Seno Melodia, puedes llevarme arriba?" "Miss Melody, can you bring me upstairs?" My heart just broke for her, as I gathered her frail body into my arms and noticed the sores that were on her back from sitting all day, and we walked up into the sunshine. I will never in my life forget her face as she came out onto the roof of the school for the first time, and she could look with me down over the town and into the valley, and she reveled in the sunshine, saying over and over again: "How beautiful, how beautiful. . . ." in her quiet, timid voice. I will never forget that day, and the joy that this girl experienced. . . . . .she was truly "one of the least of these."
I cannot explain away the pain of Petronila. I cannot just say that one day God will magically take away her infirmity and her painful history and her cultural identity of outcast. But I do know that my heart does break over her, and I know that God's heart breaks over her even more. There is something so profound that I saw in this little Mayan girl, something that I don't even know if I will ever be able to put into words for as long as I live. I cannot explain away her pain. . . . . .but she gave me a different picture of what it means to truly love.