Worthy of Suffering
I was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 11. Before this time, I had spent approximately one day of my life every week in a doctors office. I grew up in the system, surrounded by doctors, nurses, shot, and dismal hospitals. Even at a young age I remember many things- doctors threatening to take my parents from me, that lack of normalcy that comes with a healthy life, and the feeling of isolation when there is no hope for your condition.
From the moment I was diagnosed, I began believing I would die young. I wrote my first will at age 12. My closest friends and family to this day will still receive Beanie Babies and Lakers gear as apart of my last will and testament. Growing up conservative, I was also told I had sinned. That God was punishing me for my sin with diabetes. My penitence was prayer after prayer for healing. That healing never came.
There is a deep sadness which comes into your life when you are told so young that your sin gave you a disease. Then as you age, you are told no one wants to marry you. That you do not get to choose a career you love, because you need to be pragmatic, and think about insurance plans and deductibles. This you cannot avoid. This is how you stay alive. With sixteen years of being diabetic my penitence has been over 40,000 shots.
When I was diagnosed, my mother told me she had been visited in a vision from God. She commonly reminded me my life had been saved for a special purpose that would touch many lives. They even joked with the doctors marveling at their newest success story that perhaps I would cure diabetes. This angered me so much. They spoke over me and laughed as I was in pain. I remember throwing my hot plate across the room while the 10 doctors stared in horror and left the room suddenly. I was life flighted in a helicopter from rural Missouri, where there are no hospitals, doctors, or medicines. They said I was a miracle.
Reminding a child they should be dead, is not necessarily hopeful.
I never spoke about diabetes outside of my doctors office. I say doctors because there are many, I have seen since I was 11. Each one has a different understanding of how to control patients. Doctors love the word even, control. I became what they call a "non- compliant patient". Again, no one asked me any questions. No one asked me what it was like to be diabetic. They didn't see me as a person, just a disease. I lived in hidden emotion. And that emotion is suffering.
One day I remember a doctor telling me I needed a pancreas transplant. I was poor in a very real sense- and it lived on my brow. I could not afford medicine. I could not afford treatment. I asked for my medical records and waited another 5 months for more doctors who had less training than I did about diabetes, but could write a prescription. I wondered how many others lived in this torture- wondering if they would have to choose between food and medicine- and if they made the wrong choice, if it again, was their fault. I continued to live without self-worth.
I met a man one day in Bangalore who changed my life. I was asked to speak at his clinic about what life was like as a diabetic. I was asked about what it is like to be diabetic in the US, and India. How it affects my family, my perspective, and what role faith plays in your treatment. I didn't make it through many of the questions. I wept.
I wept in front of these 100 people, many I had never seen before. Then all of them, all 100, came and prayed for me. All these years, all these 40,000 shots, and the most simple question- how does it feel to be diabetic- had never been asked. And because of that, I had begun not caring for myself. I was unworthy of my suffering, and had no hope.
Viktor Frankl once said, “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.” After years of stigma and burden of disease on my shoulders I felt free. Free to move ahead, free to help others, free to remember I am just as any other man in this world. That we must prove to no one but ourselves that we are worthy- worthy of our sufferings.
Out of pity or compromise we forget that these markings of affliction are our greatest strengths in disguise. This humbly reminds us we are human, and without these markings, we forget our greatest commandment is not just to love ourselves but those around us. This is my vision, that we learn not just to treat patients, but to teach how to be worthy of suffering. To be worthy of suffering is to expose the strength and depths of the human spirit more than any medicine could imagine.