Books for Suffering

Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived three years in the Nazi death camps, observed how some of his fellow prisoners were able to endure the horror and pass through it while others could not. The difference came down to what Frankl called meaning. The problem is that contemporary people think life is all about finding happiness. We decide what conditions will make us happy and then we work to bring those conditions about. To live for happiness means that you were trying to get something out of life. But when suffering comes along, it takes the conditions for happiness away, and so suffering destroys all your reason to keep living. But to "live for meaning" means not that you try to get something out of life but rather that life expects something from us. In other words, you have meaning only when there is something in life more important than your own personal freedom and happiness, something for which you are glad to sacrifice your happiness.

Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, p. 70-71

There are seasons in our reading lives when we begin to notice themes emerge. I'm not talking, of course, about how we have a preference for reading military biographies or historical fiction or young adult novels. I'm talking about how we find ourselves reading books that centralize around something that is resonating within us. Sometimes we do this on purpose. We seek out books that we feel we are needing for the stage of life that we are in. But sometimes we are five or six books in before we realize that the books we are reading all have the same underlying theme (or the same sort of character or the same setting).

This has been my experience the last two months. I was halfway through January before I realized that almost every book I was reading (with the exception of the kids' read alouds and a few fluff novels) centered around the idea of suffering. Let me clarify before I go any farther. While many would say that living in a hurricane disaster zone in an RV with five kids while homeschooling could qualify as suffering, I wouldn't use that word for where we are right now. As I told the Man, our RV is bigger than many of the homes where I grew up (and is certainly nicer, though the kids are doing their best to trash it every time my back is turned). Also, we are together right now--and that is huge. But there are so many around me who truly are suffering still. And I've also been in my own suffering seasons before and probably will be again.

But for some reason, these last two months have been ones where I've read books full of deep truths about what it means to trust God when everything around you is falling apart. And some of these books have used stories to teach those truths, which always resonates with me more fully. It will come as no surprise that the other day I heard Littles yelling to his siblings, "Mom's crying while reading again!" In my defense, I was reading about the Holocaust. And I'm a weeper, which is entirely his fault for permanently screwing up my hormones by making me a mother.

At any rate, if you want to understand suffering better or have more compassion for those who are suffering or just need a good cry, a couple of these books might just fit the bill:

The Hawk and the Dove series by Penelope Wilcock :: I know. These have been on the blog before--sue me! It's been a few years and they are worth the reread. Every time I read them, I find something new. Every time I read them, I'm texting quotes to my husband (and then trying to convince him to read them...with his vast amounts of spare time). This series was one of only a handful of books that I kept out of storage, and it is worth the bookshelf space.

Zion Covenant and Zion Chronicles by Bodie Thoene :: I read these books as a teenager, and a few years ago started wondering if they were really as good as I remembered. I've been checking every library since then and finally found them. The timing was right. It's hard to feel sorry for yourself when you're reading about Dachau and Kristallnacht. Zion Covenant is set at the beginning of WW2, following multiple characters (the majority of whom are Jewish) as Germany takes over first Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland. Zion Chronicles follows some of the same characters later as the Jewish state is established. There is enough humor to offset the tough subject matter, but the big draw for me was the honest discussion of what it looks like to trust God when the evidence seems to say he has abandoned you. How do we really say with faith (and honesty!) when we have lost everything in this world that we hold dear, "What God has done is rightly done"?

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card :: What does a YA SciFi book have to do with suffering? Read this book, and tell me what you think. We humans make a mess of things, over and over again. We reach for power. We play God. We think that our way of looking at things is the only way. We see one small sliver of the universe and think that we're seeing it all. This was a reread for me (again, revisited after having read it as a young teen), but it's still giving me food for thought.

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris :: I got to read part of this book while we were in California, but sadly had to return it to the library before we left. Nonfiction takes me so much longer than fiction does. I am so glad that I found another copy though. Norris walks us through her own struggling Protestant faith as she allows herself to be ministered to by a community of Benedictines. One of my favorite chapters is where she talks about the Benedictine practice of daily reading the Psalms and how that shapes their understanding of honest grief. She also challenges me to seek out healthy community in order to combat more fully the daily suffering (small and large) that can threaten to overwhelm.

Walking with God through Pain and Suffering by Tim Keller :: One chapter into this book, I texted the Man and told him to find a copy. It's an engaging read with plenty of real life illustrations to flesh out the philosophy Keller is dealing with, and it has been timely for me. I am currently a third of the way through and looking forward to everything else I get to learn. I read the above quotation out loud to the Bigs this morning while they were doing math. They gave me blank stares so I texted it to the Man who was stuck in a meeting and didn't respond...so now I'm putting it on the blog because somebody else should be mulling over these ideas with me!

If you are looking for something a bit more light hearted to read these days, I have those too, but for now: this is where I am in my reading life. And for right now, my overlapping books are enriching the way I see my every day life, and for that I am grateful.