Our Partners in Policymaking session last weekend was led by Bruce Anderson of Community Activators. Bruce is an insightful trainer, who leads all types of social entities (agencies, non-profits, corporations, organizations) through exploring how to strengthen their organization and the individual members of their organization by recognizing their own gifts and finding gifts in others. The overall goal is to change/recharge communities.

One of the main vehicles for strengthening communities that Bruce promotes is storytelling. He taught us a lot about the importance of telling our story. And, specifically (since it was a room full of adults with disabilities or parents of children with disabilities) how to tell our own stories of suffering.

“Think of a time when you felt alone and rejected by the group,” was how he started. And who can’t think of such a time in their lives. It is through those experiences and remembering those feelings that we can begin to relate to people with disabilities who feel rejected, marginalized, excluded. It is a powerful thought-process to ponder.

Out of this discussion came the idea that suffering produces blessings. Bruce observed, and rightly so, that today’s society links pain and suffering. We hear the two words used together all the time. While pain is something we want to stop immediately, and work hard to get stopped when a person says they’re in pain, suffering is different. Pain is to be stopped, but suffering is to be gone through, endured.

I couldn’t help but tap my own faith beliefs to interpret these concepts, where even one of the fruits of the spirit is patience (some versions actually call it long-suffering). Bruce’s point was that trying to end suffering, while it seems like the right thing on the surface, is to lessen the blessings that would be there if you had gone through the suffering.

Ding, ding…lots of bells went off in my head, and I could tell classmates felt the same. Our “quick fix” society isn’t big on suffering. Yet, if you’re the parent of a child with a disability, suffering is something you wake up to every morning. (Not that we hold the patent on suffering…just that it seems inevitable in our lives.)

I was fascinated by the “ah ha” moment that some had when Bruce equated sufferings with blessings. Again, my faith belief had already made that link. It warmed my heart when one woman asked “Does this mean that the more suffering you endure the more blessings you have?” Yes. How awesome it was to see her be able to transform her suffering (which she viewed as purposeless) into the hope for blessings to come!

And that’s really the point of suffering, is it not? The point is to endure in order to be richer on the other side. But you can’t do that if you are spending all your time and energy trying to lessen and get out of or away from the suffering.

It’s definitely a learned behavior to actually welcome the suffering and embrace what it is going to teach you. But, as many parents know whose children have suffered greatly (and who have suffered right along side them) going through it is the only way. And that there is a rainbow on the other side.