Sometimes it’s better to shut up

Tuesday, June 21st, 2016

It was a honking big needle the nurse held up as my very sick friend pulled up his sleeve. I really, really don’t like needles, but I stayed by his chair as the nurse pushed the needle into the underside of his upper arm, because that was a spot that wasn’t all bruised from IV needles.

He thanked me as I wheeled him out of the doctor’s office. “I notice you stayed,” he said, and grinned a little. Sick as he was, my discomfort amused him.

Mine was a tiny act of friendship. Not a big deal, even for someone with needle-phobia. It still meant something to a sick man to have his friend stay with him as he got his shot.

Woody Allen said that “Eighty percent of success is just showing up,” and in being with my friend (I wrote about him here and here). I’ve been seeing how much of the Christian life is just being there, which is not an easy lesson for some of us to learn.

Christianity answers our questions, sure, but it doesn’t always answer them as completely as we want. Sometimes the truth that you believe with all your heart doesn’t help you deal with pain.

The truth can comfort you but it doesn’t comfort you in the same way that a friend sitting at your side comforts you.

Don’t Lean on Answers

I’m not saying that the answers aren’t important and that the suffering should throw out their copies of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

We need to know the big story to make sense of our own small stories. The Church tells us that our suffering matters and that the world still makes sense, that it’s still a good place, that everything works out for our good in the end. It tells us we can live in hope. Continue reading

David Mills, former executive editor of First Things, is a senior editor of The Stream, editorial director for Ethika Politika, and columnist for several Catholic publications.