Transcript
October 19, 2014, I walked rather casually with Luella toward Jefferson Hospital. I'd had some minor physical symptoms. I called my physician and he said, "You're close to one of the best hospitals in the city. Why don't you just go there and get checked out?"
Watching Eagles Football in the Waiting Room
We stopped at Starbucks along the way. We sat quite relaxed. I was quite unafraid in the emergency waiting room watching Philadelphia Eagles football. Even when I was taken back into the back to be examined, I was not nervous because I thought that everything would be okay. I thought I was healthy, only to discover that I was in acute renal failure and that would begin a very difficult physical travail, huge physical suffering, six surgeries, and a body left damaged in ways that I never thought I would experience in my life.
I am an exerciser. That week, I had gotten on my carbon fiber road bike and done a ten-mile sprint every morning, ten miles as fast I could ride. Thought of myself as being physically healthy. I thought maybe 45 minutes in the little examining room, they'd give me a medication and send me home.
I had no idea that there would be a hospital visit and was shocked when within fifteen, twenty minutes that there were doctors from five different departments in my examining room. I can remember laying there and hearing in the background doctors discussing whether they would put me on dialysis. I thought they had the wrong room.
And when I asked the doctor when I'd be leaving, he looked at me like I was crazy, man. I remember it very well and he said, "Mr. Tripp, there is nowhere, no time in the near future when you're going to be leaving this hospital." That was the first time I realized that whatever was going on in my body was way more serious than I had any concept of.
So I remember the moment when they said we're going to take you upstairs to your room. They had already inserted a catheter in me. I had already been through some tremendous pain. I was beginning to sort of lose a bit of a grip in the emotion of it all.
And I remember being wheeled up there and thinking, "Well, maybe they just need to watch me overnight." And it was ten days to try to get a hold of my kidneys so they would not continue to disintegrate. And then I thought I was done and I remember my first visit for follow up.
The Chart of an 85-Year-Old Man
The doctor said... he walked in and saw me and said, "When I read your chart, I thought I was looking the chart of an 85-year-old man." What's happened? It was then I realized that I would have to have follow-up surgery. Again, I thought that would be it. "Okay, if this will keep me out of the hospital, that's fine."
Little did I know that I would develop scar tissue. That would mean another surgery and that was six surgeries. And throughout that whole period of time, I always thought the next surgery would be the last surgery and then just beginning to grasp a hold of the reality that I wouldn't be in the hospital as much, but I would never not be sick the rest of my life, that this thing had come and it wasn't going away; and it would alter my life forever.
There's really no time limit on this thing. I'm not going to be out of it. I'm not going to be released from it and I may look like I'm okay because you can't see physical damage because it's interior damage, but it'll never be the same again.
I can't think of a better word to capture my experience than suffering, that is includes a variety of elements. It's physical pain. The first 36 hours in the hospital, I went through unspeakable pain, full body spasms that felt like somebody was sticking a knife in me for 36 hours. It was unrelenting. Every two minutes, I wanted to die. I wasn't afraid of the next hours. I was afraid of the next two minutes. I literally screamed for 36 hours. So there's the pain of that.
There's the weakness of suffering. Your body just doesn't do what it once did. The expected things that you ask of your body don't happen. There's a pain of suffering, of being just a loss of control, of not knowing where you're going to go. It's the pain of community, where there are people who just find it hard to deal with what you're going through and they stay distant. I get that. They don't know what to say. They're uncomfortable and embarrassed.
There's the pain of being aware that the people that are treating you aren't sure what to do and you've entrusted your care to their hands, and they're figuring out along the way. There's the pain of wondering what God is doing and why is He doing it, and where is He taking me? So I just think suffering is just this multi-layered experience of pain and it comes in a variety of forms.
Fear and Discouragement
I think if I would describe myself in this time was fear. I had no idea what was happening to me. Things were going on that I didn't understand and I knew they were serious. I think discouragement, there's this irrationality that how could it be that God would render me the weakest in my life at the point of my greatest influence?
I didn't know how to make sense out of that and just the confusion of not knowing what's going to happen next, not knowing where the story is going to go. I'm doing a ministry that's funded by doing weekend conferences. What's going to happen if I can't do weekend conferences anymore?
So you're crashing through those emotions. I think that's coupled with a firm belief that God knows and He is with me, and bouncing back and forth between the surety of what I know and the unsurety of everything I'm experiencing is an emotional experience.
Times you just want to turn off your brain and moments in those 36 hours where I just wanted it to end. I said to Luella once, "God has blessed me richly. I've had a rich life of ministry. It's okay if I die right now." She said, "Paul Tripp, don't you say that," but that's how I felt. And I don't feel that way now, but there are afternoons where normally before, I would still be working, where I can't work because I have limited energies, where it's very hard and some of those emotions well up again.
One of the debilitating lies of suffering -- I think it's a lie of the enemy -- is that my suffering is unique, that somehow, I've been singled out, that God has chosen for me what He wouldn't choose for the other of His children. That makes God look like He has prejudice, like He's unkind, like there's moments where He's uncaring and what's dangerous about that is the minute you begin to doubt God's goodness -- this is important -- you quit going to Him for help because you don't go for help to someone who you doubt, who you no longer believe is good, who you no longer believe that you can trust.
What the Bible presents is the universality of suffering. You find that in 1 Peter that is written to sufferers. You find that in Romans 8 that addresses suffering. There's an assumption that because between the "already" of my conversion and the "not yet" of my homegoing, God has chosen for me to live in a world that's dramatically broken.
Suffering for His Glory and My Good
Now, He does that not because He's uncaring, but He does that for His glory and for my good because God employs that suffering to do things in me that need to happen. But that means that if you're not suffering at this moment, you will someday. And if you're not suffering now, you're near someone who is.
And so, suffering is a universal human experience and although your particular narrative may have uniqueness to it, the condition of suffering, the circumstance of suffering is anything but unique. I don't want to do anything that would make me sound like a hero in my suffering. I don't want to say anything that would lessen the drama of suffering.
Suffering is spiritual warfare and that warfare is fought on the turf of your heart. It's fought for control of your soul. Suffering is war and so, when I think of how I've made it through suffering, I mean the answer is awesome, ever-present, powerful, rescuing, transforming grace.
It's grace that's gotten me through, but grace employs means and for me, I was aware of the raging battle in my heart. And I made a covenant with God that I would run to Him and not away from Him, that I would fight with all that was in me and when I couldn't fight, I would ask for help to fight, to run to God, to run to His promises, to run to the reality of His presence.
The things that God has done for me and in me are so beautiful, so foundationally important, I can honestly say, if this is what it takes for God to produce that in me, I'm ready. I'm in. This has been worth it. I would not want to go back to where I was before. There are things that God has done in me. There are truths that I now believe at a deeper level. I am more usable in His hands. I am thankful that even the darkness of suffering is a tool in the hands of a God of amazing grace.
