ABSTRACT
Sitting with suffering may be a challenging concept to grasp. No one wants suffering as a companion. Inevitably though, anyone who has needed to create a community of one has either already experienced suffering and has worked through it or, more likely, finds it is still hanging around. Trying to avoid suffering is denying oneself a solidly built community of one. Why is this? Because suffering has much to teach us that we can learn in no other way. Often, a short stint with suffering can lead to greater maturity and growth in character than years spent plodding along in relative peace and quiet. Henri Nouwen (2001) says, “Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering end up disconnecting our suffering from God’s suffering for us. The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through” (p. 7). What about going around, over, or under suffering? To go any other direction but through does not erase the existing suffering.
