It’s not every day that you read a book that makes you think, “I should read this every year.”
Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline comes to mind. Brennan Manning’s, The Ragamuffin Gospel. Frederick Buechner’s, The Magnificent Defeat. That really, really good, first chapter about heaven in C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory.
Well, Vaneetha Risner’s The Scars That Have Shaped Me: How God Meets Us in Suffering is one I’ve come back to twice over the last three years, and I imagine I’ll make a habit of it.
It’s a collection of essays, some of which she wrote for Desiring God, that details the lessons (many) that she has learned from her suffering (much).
Now Risner is back with another book, released this week, Walking Through Fire: A Memoir of Loss and Redemption.
We recently chatted about her new book, her old one, and that most fearsome concept of all — “suffering as mercy. ” Which doesn’t make sense, but kind of does, is kind of awful, but after the fact, kind of wonderful, and one day, it won’t even be on the agenda, thank God, because we’ll be resurrected in strength.
I love her honesty, and if you read her book, I promise you will love her writing.
Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
HEINZE: Why did you write this book?
RISNER: I wrote the book because I’ve dealt with a lot of suffering, and people need story to really understand what to do with their own suffering.
When I was in pain, reading theology was not very helpful for me. It was helpful to get a framework for when I wasn’t suffering.
But in the midst of suffering, we can only hear things in bite-sized pieces and having a story marches in a different part of our brain. We can enter in and be there with the person and experience it as they did.
And so we can take the things that they learned and incorporate them into our own lives.
I’ve been entrusted with a significant amount of suffering and feel like it’s something God has called me to steward.
When you steward something, you can entrust God to use it. You feel like you have a responsibility on your part to tell people about it.
HEINZE: That’s a good point about theology. When you’re suffering terribly and read a book on the theology of suffering and how it’s actually good for you, it can almost feel insulting.
RISNER: When I’m in the midst of suffering, it’s hard to read anything. I would read short, little devotionals, articles. I’d read the Bible, although it was hard to do that, at times. Stories stick in our brain in a different place.
HEINZE: So tell us your story.
RISNER: My story begins in India. I was born to Christian parents and when I was three months old, I contracted polio.
The doctors had never seen it, and assumed that I had typhoid [fever]. So the doctor gave me cortisone, which lowers the body’s immune system.
Over the next few days, I started to become paralyzed, and by the time they took me to the hospital, I was a quadriplegic. The doctors then realized I had polio, but at that point, there was nothing they could do.
My parents decided to leave India for western medicine, which was a lot more advanced, and India has very few services for the disabled. There’s this idea that disability is a curse on you.
So my parents left. My dad was a professor at a university in India, and he took a manual laborer’s job in London just to get good medical care.
I had my first surgery in England when I was two years old. Then we moved to Canada and by the time I was thirteen years old, I’d had 21 operations. I basically lived in the hospital for half of my life.
The hospital only allowed my parents to visit on weekends and, otherwise, I was there by myself. So when I was pretty young, I learned that life wasn’t fair and I was alone.
That was a very hard experience – not being able to see my family. But honestly, it was harder when I was home from the hospital because I experienced a lot of bullying.
So that marked my growing up years – feeling like I was either in the hospital, in pain, alone, or I was at home surrounded by my family, but also bullied.
I was pretty mad at God.
My parents are believers. They would talk about God, and I didn’t want anything to do with God. I felt that if there were a God, he wasn’t good because he wouldn’t have let all these things happen to me. That was my frame of reference.
Has he done anything good for me? And if he hasn’t, then he can’t be good.
When I was in high school, I got involved in Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and it wasn’t because I was an athlete or a Christian, it was because all the cute guys in my high school went there and I thought, “This is where I want to go.”
My best friend and I would sit in the back and talk about boys. We didn’t take the God stuff too seriously.
But she went away on a retreat, came back and said, “God is real.” And I still remember, thinking, “Oh no, she’s gonna talk about God. She’s not gonna want to talk about guys.”
But one day, I remember going home and asking God, “If you’re real, show me.”
The next morning I got up, pretty arrogantly opened the Bible and flipped to Leviticus. Nothing there. And then I flipped to John 9 where the disciples asked Jesus whether the man was blind because of either his or his parents’ sin. Jesus answered that it was neither the man’s sin nor his parents’, but “that the work of God would be displayed in his life.”
And that was the moment when God jumped off the pages of Scripture and was speaking to me. Me, Vaneetha.
It’s a wild experience to feel like God is answering the question you’re asking.
I realized that this God was personal, that this God was listening to me, that this God can speak through words that I thought meant nothing.
So I knelt down by the side of my bed and committed my life to Christ. Christ was someone I had heard of but didn’t really know. So it was going to be this adventure for me.
It was really great for the next few years.
I got involved in a Bible study, went away to college and was involved again in a Bible study, and my faith was growing.
But at that point, I had this theology that everyone has one big problem [in life] and I’d had mine and if I was faithful to God, I wouldn’t have any more.
And I thought, “Great! I have my suffering out of the way.”
For a long time, it was great. I got everything I wanted. I went to grad school, met my husband, we got married, and we moved to North Carolina.
Then the trials started, and I wasn’t prepared for them.
I had a miscarriage, which was very painful, and that was my first sense that maybe life wasn’t going to be absolutely perfect.
Other things started happening. My husband had an affair. We ended up putting our marriage back together. It was a lot stronger through that, but it was a really emotionally hard thing for me and really forced me to press into God in ways that I hadn’t done in years.
God had been sort of this “great to talk to, great to learn stuff from, great to do a Bible study with” [God], but I don’t know if I’d personally engaged with him.
Even a few years before this, I remember thinking, “Is this all there is to the Christian life? Is it just running down your prayer list, reading your Bible, and underlining a few things?”
And I think God answered me with, “There’s a lot more to the Christian life. There’s a lot more to knowing me.”
My faith started to grow again, we had a daughter, two more miscarriages, and then we went to the doctor and found out that our unborn son had a hypoplastic heart.
He had only half of his heart, and if we didn’t have surgery at birth, he would die within two weeks.
We had surgery, and it was incredibly successful. We came home, everybody was happy, he was gaining weight after a month, we all felt he was going to be fine.
Then we took him to the doctor. The normal doctor was out of town, and there was a substitute and the substitute said, “He’s doing so well we can take him off all his medicine.”
He impulsively did that. That night, I remember talking to my friend who was a pediatric cardiologist and they said, “He should never have done that. Your son needs that medicine.”
There was a growing pit in my stomach. I didn’t even know what medicine he needed to be on, and it was after-hours, and my friend said he’d probably be okay until Monday, but that I should leave a message.
Two days later, on Sunday night, Paul woke up in the middle of the night to nurse, and he screamed and went blank, and we called 9-1-1. I hung up the phone and got on my knees and begged God to save his life. I begged like I’ve never begged for anything.
Then I got up and went to the hospital — some friends had come to watch [my daughter] Katie – and we found out that Paul had died.
I just didn’t think God would do that.
I felt like God had brought us all this way with the successful surgery, and to let him die because of a doctor’s mistake? It felt incredibly cruel.
So I pulled away from God. At Paul’s funeral, I talked about God and how he was sufficient, but soon after that, I pulled away from him, because I didn’t know what else to do. I was numb.
Finally, one day in the car, I cried out to God, and God met me in this incredible way. He filled my car, and the presence of God showed me that he is so much bigger than our suffering and when we actually get to experience that which we will in heaven in a way that’s unending, it does make everything pale in comparison.
Six years later, though, I was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome.
It’s a disease where all your muscles start getting weaker.
When you first get polio, your body’s motor neurons die and you’re paralyzed in whatever place the polio has affected you. But then later, your body sprouts [what they sometimes call] “secondary motor neurons.” They found out that these things have a limited life.
You basically get a certain amount of energy from them, and when the energy’s gone, it’s gone and you go back to where you were when you contracted polio.
When I was diagnosed, they told me that I had to stop doing everything because my energy was like money in a bank. The more I did, the weaker I got.
That was very hard for me – to make decisions on what to do, where to go, how I should spend my energy because I only had so much.
That was a pretty serious trial and pressed me into God more than I imagined. I had to trust him with the unknown.
Then six years later, my husband came home and told me he was leaving for someone else. That really shattered me. I couldn’t believe all this was happening.
I asked my pastor, “Why does God hate me?” My pastor assured me God didn’t hate me, although it didn’t feel like that. Life was pretty hard for a long time.
My two daughters were 9 and 13. They fell apart and our family fell apart. Everything about the life we had built fell apart.
And yet God did meet me. I would say that was the most continuous time of fellowship with God that I’ve ever had. I would get up in the morning and open the Bible and say something like in Psalm 119: “My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word.”
God showed me that he can be there, guide us, give us more in suffering than we could ever imagine.
My husband and I ended up getting divorced and six years later, I married an amazing man named Joel, which is neat because Joel 2:25 says, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
It’s been neat to see how God has used our relationship to show me his love and the [false] things I believed about myself – that I wasn’t enough.
I knew God had said I was enough, but having someone else say that to me was pretty amazing.
HEINZE: When it comes to suffering, how do we have the perspective we have after the trial, during the trial?
RISNER: That’s a great question. I think there’s two pieces to what God does in our suffering.
There’s purpose in our suffering. That’s what we only see in hindsight. We don’t see what the purpose is during it, but knowing that God is using it is something that’s not as helpful in the midst of it.
I think what’s helpful in the midst of it is [knowing] that God is with us. I think that’s what we need then.
Pain can be so all-encompassing. Just knowing, “God is with me right now, he’s never going to leave me.” We can trust that he’s writing a good story for our lives even though we don’t know what it is.
Knowing that suffering has been a mercy is what we see in the rear-view mirror.
If something tragic were to happen tomorrow, I guarantee you I wouldn’t be saying Romans 8:28.
I would be saying, “God help me.” I would be saying, “God, I need you with me” because pain is so encompassing that you can’t really see anything except getting through minute-to-minute.
The song “Held” by Natalie Grant was written about my son Paul, and that was one huge gift that God gave that, at the time, I don’t think would have been that meaningful – that Paul died so lots of people would hear this song. I would say, “Give me Paul.”
But God walked with me through that. It was years later that the song was played, and I could appreciate that God had used it.
HEINZE: Of suffering, you write, “At first I was angry. Then I grew depressed. I didn’t know if I could accept this new life. I pulled away from God. I questioned his goodness and his love for me, and figured he wasn’t going to answer my prayers anyway. But eventually, I realized I couldn’t face this trial without God.”
You’ve gone through so many separate events of suffering. Over time, do you feel better equipped to meet each new bout of suffering?
RISNER: I think, over time, it has gotten better, and I remember God’s faithfulness more quickly. I remember what I need to do.
But in the moment, honestly, my first response is, “What am I gonna do?” How am I gonna make it?”
It’s not this response of faith that, “Oh, anything can happen.”
I read people who hear stuff and say, “Okay, I submit this to God.”
I wish I were there, but I’m not. My first response is often, “Why, how could you? Please change this.”
But my second response is “remember.” That’s the biggest word, “remember.” Remember the Scriptures, remember what God’s done, remember God’s faithfulness.
The more I suffer, the more instances there are to remember. And that’s what makes it easier.
HEINZE: At least 5% of Americans have been diagnosed with health anxiety, and experts think the real number is higher, and it’s certainly growing.
There are a lot of Christians struggling with health anxiety, as well. And there’s extra stigma for us because we feel we shouldn’t care about our body and suffering. We live with the hope of the resurrection.
Paul says, “The outward body is dying but the inward man is being renewed.” So there’s theological pressure to shrug off suffering.
You write that losing your independence was an excruciating thing.
So many of us with health anxiety have this deep, deep fear of losing our independence.
What has been your experience with that?
RISNER: Losing independence was terrifying.
I don’t think very many of us want to depend on God every day.
I think we want to say that we do. But we don’t really want to. Look at Sam’s Club and Costco. People want to depend on the things in their pantry. We want security. We want God as a good back-up plan.
When I was first diagnosed with post-polio, some friends of mine were praying for me and they said that my strength would be like the widow of Zarephath.
She had a certain amount of oil and flour. She didn’t know how much, but Elijah said she would never run out. My friends thought that was super comforting for me – that my strength and energy would never run out.
And honestly, I was so mad when they prayed that. I thought, “That is a life of complete dependence. And I don’t want that.”
Not knowing what tomorrow will bring, not knowing if I’ll have the strength to wash the dishes or feed myself or do anything. It’s scary.
When you’re dependent on people, that’s really hard. People might be busy, people might not be able to help you.
Depending on God feels a little too theoretical sometimes. God’s not going to make my breakfast. God’s not going to bring me soup when I’m sick. God’s not going to pay my bills. God has to use some intermediary. He could do that himself, but he chooses to use people on earth. So it feels very unstable.
And yet, to me, that has been the making of my faith because I’ve had to trust things I can’t see, that I wouldn’t want to trust on my own.
That’s why I think suffering can be a gift because it strips us of everything except God, and we don’t want to be stripped of everything but God. Nobody does.
But it shows us God is enough, and we wouldn’t see that if we had all this stuff.
HEINZE: In your book, you ask, “At what point do you pray for deliverance versus relinquish begging for deliverance?”
In other words, when do you just accept the awful path as the path, and stop asking for a new route?
RISNER: I think [you do] both. I still do. If there’s something hard, I’m not going to just say, “Okay, God, your will be done. Just pray about it in the morning, and that’s it.”
I think it’s Biblical to do both. We see that with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He says, “If it be your will, let this cup pass.” So he asks for what he wants, but then says, “Not my will but yours.”
So we can say, “God please do this, please heal me, please help my depression, I want joy.”
And yet we can finish with, “But give me what I need, what will draw me closer to you.”
HEINZE: In your book, you write about how God waits to deliver us.
“Waiting on the Lord” has become a thing we hear a lot in Christianity. But when people are suffering and they’re waiting a long time, maybe forever, skeptics might say, “You’re just making an excuse for God.”
If he heals you, praise God. If he doesn’t, praise God because he’s making you wait. God comes out looking good in both scenarios.
RISNER: Waiting is one of the most difficult things. But it’s something God makes us do because it makes us trust him.
You say people see it as making an excuse for God.
HEINZE: Skeptics, yeah. They say that if God can build more trust in us by making us wait longer, why not make us wait for 3 years instead of 2. For 30 years instead of 3 years. Because theoretically, if waiting builds trust, that would build more trust.
RISNER: Realizing God is doing something in our wait is the biggest piece of it.
It’s not this empty space between our prayer and the answer.
God is breathing life into us in the waiting, and there’s something happening in us in the waiting. And that’s why I think waiting is important.
If we view waiting as waiting in traffic, and we want to get from Point A to Point B, and waiting is just a means to an end, then the longer the wait, the worse it is.
But in waiting, God is doing something, and it’s just as important as the destination.
We can’t see what God is doing.
I look back at the three years from when my ex-husband left and we got divorced. That was the most excruciating wait of my life, [wondering] if we were going to get back together and my family was going to be whole again.
Having to rely on God every day was so good for me. So waiting often involves time and uncertainty, and both of those are things that make us press into God.
HEINZE: Finally, how are you doing now?
RISNER: I’m doing well. My health is still going downhill, but it’s a lot slower than I actually thought it was going to be, and I really sense the Lord is doing something.
I’m honestly doing well, and am grateful to God. It’s been a hard season for all of us. I miss my friends; I miss being able to be with people. It’s probably not been as hard for me, because of my health issues. I wasn’t with people as much as some who are out and active.
Writing this memoir has been great for me. Remembering what God has done. How he’s been there. What he’s done with my suffering.
I’ve learned a lot about myself and God in writing it. There’s an album that my friend Christa Wells put together – she’s the one who wrote the song “Held” – there’s 5 songs on it around themes in the memoir and the first two have been released. One was by Ellie Holcomb called ,“The Bravest Thing” about lament.
That’s been wonderful.
The more I know God, the more excited I am about him.
Vaneetha and her husband Joel live in Raleigh, NC, where she writes regularly for Desiring God and her website vaneetha.com.
New Book: Walking Through Fire: A Memoir of Loss and Redemption
Website: www.vaneetha.com
Facebook: VaneethaRisner
Instagram: @vaneetharisner
Twitter: @vaneetharisner
