Talk About Suffering Here Below

        Darin Aldridge called me yesterday. One of his band members had some sickness in the family, and he wanted to know if I could fill in. He asked if I would troop over after the office to play a church revival service.  I checked my watch and the rest of the afternoon schedule and had enough time to make it with thirty minutes to spare. It took two seconds to decide.

        “Yes.”

        If you know me at all you know this. If I’m not on call, and you want me to play music, it’s “have mandolin will travel.”  This is extra true with Darin and Brooke Aldridge. One trip through “White Robe” with those children is a revival for old Doc all by itself.

        Ricky Skaggs does an old spiritual number called “Talk About Suffering.” I see a lot of suffering in my work, and like to believe my music helps dull the pain for a while. I don’t know if it does for other folks but it sure does help me.

        Last night the preacher talked about suffering. No human has ever suffered more than Christ. When we go through hard times some good can come out of it if we wind up more empathetic to our fellow human beings. If we can somehow deal with our troubles more like Christ would it puts us a step closer to perfection even though we can never get there on our own. We aren’t gonna be perfect, and just have to accept the Grace that forgives us for that.

        I believe some people wind up as excellent counselors, ministers, nurses, or doctors because they were able to take their own suffering, come to terms with it, and then use the insight as a tool to develop empathy. But here’s the human coming out in me. It seems like some of my people have suffered enough. They are already as Christ-like as any humans I know, and more keeps coming at ‘em. Sometimes I want to ask God how come he doesn’t put some of that on the bad guys who seem to be more in need of the lessons. I guess it’s because I’m only human and it isn’t for me to understand. I ain’t the Judge.

        Maybe it’s because we are supposed to pray for the bad guys too. I often fall short on that, so I’ll work on it. But I’m still gonna pray my friends are relieved of suffering too. Pain and suffering are against my office policy, and I need all the help I can get.

Dr. B

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