In the life of any Christian praise is at the heart of worship. However to be fully lived, worship must extend beyond the boundaries of formal liturgy or celebration and enter into the wholeness of our being. Perhaps praise is more often thought of as rejoicing in the happy moments of our life yet praise is far more profound when you are suffering.

The praise of suffering is crucial, for it is in suffering that we most need to feel and know the truth of the Glory of God, so that we do not get lost from His love. Praise is the root and the pinnacle of the spiritual life; it is in praise that we are lifted up to see the fullness of life and the radiance of truth. It is in praise that all truth can be found; that at the centre, the height, the depth and the width, there is Jesus Christ, God with us.

It is praise that sustains me.

I have spent over a decade and a half, caring full time day and night, for my chronically ill and severely disabled wife. The level of sickness my wife experiences as a severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) sufferer, has been compared to that of a terminally ill cancer patient or someone dying from AIDS. All day long I hold and I comfort her, trying to block out, with my body, the pain, the numbness, the paralysis, the screaming, throbbing, itching skin that she suffers without relent. It has been like this, every day and night, for the last seventeen years.

In so many ways the disease is tightening its grip upon her deadening her thoughts, drowning her normal sensations, so she is less and less aware of her body, less and less able to think, less and less able to bear touch, sound, eat, swallow, without catastrophic consequences. It is the most arid desert here, compounded by a church that traditionally is woefully inadequate at pastoral care for the sick.

I recorded this on World Day of the Sick 2010: “I have discovered an anger, a hurt, that lies in silence. Yesterday I went to Church, to fetch the Eucharist for my wife. Yesterday the whole Church prayed for the sick. But no mention of my wife. We prayed for our Bishop. And no one really knows me...”Much later, Linda begged “God please take away the pain, for I cannot bear it”. Me holding her, as best I can. Her and me and God.

This is the Church

Yet our experience, here in the desert of chronic illness, has led my wife and I to a total and utter experience of God that has little to do with organized religion. How strange that many years ago I trained for the priesthood. I never knew how powerfully I was to find God later in life. How infinitely more real it would be here.

Love, manifesting as mercy, stated Pope John Paul II (Dives in misericordia DM), makes itself particularly noticed in contact with suffering, injustice and poverty. How true that is.

Career, status, money, social life, all have been stripped away from me, that is my experience, yet still there is hope as I fight to gain medical recognition of my wife’s needs, and reach out to others through my website and blog www.stonebird.co.uk and http://carersfight.blogspot.com/. This is where I find the balance between the spiritual and the physical, as I wrote :

“Went to an important meeting the other day :
my shoes barely holding together.
Celebrated my birthday this week;
the agony and pain in her eyes.
Her level of disability increases daily.
Her suffering, so awful, is relentless.
We survive through love....
and the faith that only grows in the poverty beyond the narrow reach of religion.
.......It just gets harder and harder.”

Often I have no idea how I am going to get through the next minute, such is the depth of my wife’s suffering and so hopeless, on the surface, sometimes, is our situation, with not a chance yet of cure or treatment My wife wrote, two years ago:

SEEING WITHIN FOR THAT WHICH IS GREATER
The throbbing pain continues
ad infinitum
so too my limitation continues
ad infinitum
Today I cannot bear it
This moment
This time,
It is too much to bear
too much to endure
too much to believe
that it has been here
continuously day in, day out
for 15 yearsHow can a body burn in pain so continuously
without anyone official doing anything about it ?
without anyone looking to find out what is wrong ?
without anyone offering hope that it will change ?

Where is God’s mercy here? For those who have eyes to see : God’s mercy is all around us. Those who cry out in total agony, they know most intimately how the infinite mercy of God pours in, breaks through and changes lives. For that we are grateful, as my wife explains:

“Gratitude is possible in suffering, moment to moment because the suffering is unfathomable and there is no escape, you need to seek within you and without you for that which is greater than you”.To endure suffering you can seek and find God is present and unutterably close. It is through this gift of mercy, of love, of radiance, of compassion, that I can feel held, loved, prayerful, hopeful: and all these are His gifts.

I see Him, I feel Him, I know Him, in the tenderness of love I receive daily, hourly, moment by moment from my husband, who reaches out to me and seeks to pour love into the gap between moments, that I may be sustained and strengthened and not give up hope. It is this presence of God within and without us and around us that holds us and helps us steer a clear path through suffering and for that gift there are no words to express the gratitude I feel in my heart. For His love gives meaning. His love uplifts. His love comforts and consoles and is all things to me.”

gratitude is about the love of God

Gratitude is not about the current situation; gratitude is about the love of God. It helps us to look for gratitude in difficult situations, it helps us to remember that there is a bigger picture. Gratitude, though, is only a small part of praise. It is the seeking of a spark of gratitude, it is the whispered “thank you”, in the direst situation, which can ignite the flame of the Holy Spirit and transfigure our lives, lifting us into the power of radiance, and then into the fullness of praise, through which we are transformed and helped.

In seeking we find God with us. We feel changed, altered, held, comforted, inspired, blessed, united with the power of love. This is the meaning of praise : to feel God’s presence, to know God with us, to be aware of the Kingdom of God, not just as an idea but as a reality. For in praise, the Kingdom of God is very near and we are filled with the truth of this knowledge. That is praise indeed.

Greg Crowhurst, who is a carer for his wife Linda, is the author of Beyond Normal Prayer, the Transformative Power of Suffering. He is currently writing a book on Mercy.