An Experience In Flight With Cats and Pain

What a lesson I learned from being seated next to a lady a few weeks ago, on a flight into Ashville, who had two cats in her “under the seat, please” carrier.  She wanted to hold them on her lap during takeoff and the attendant wasn’t to have anything to do with the plea.  I was so thankful.  The new aircraft was so cramped the way it was and the carrier just seemed to add to my claustrophobic tendency.   Once we took off and were notified we could relax, etc., etc., etc. the dear lady asked her cats if they would be all right under the seat in front of her.  I didn’t hear their answer but her assuring response of: “I think so, too,” gave me great solace of getting a bit of shut eye. As I laid my head back, she asked me if I had any pets.  I responded that I had numerous over the years and once Bettyann and I were settled year round in a location, I may get another.

Sweetheart, if you ever read this, I must confess, I would like a cop of chickens, rabbits, a couple of goats, a miniature donkey, barn cat and faithful Schnauzer.    

The remainder of the trip was the story of her journey of being shuffled back and forth between multiple states, that sat like metaphors, between her divorced parents—a summer, a spring break, and always Christmas without one of them. A vivid description of what seemed to be a multitude of painful events and issues where she was always leaving palpable, but always had to leave.

I found myself empathizing with her somewhere because I recognized a long time ago that it’s strange the things we interpret as children with the limited perceptions we have. She shared that she was very little when she silently vowed she would not allow anyone to keep her on the wrong side of anyone or anything in pain. As a result, she has spent a lifetime collecting stray cats.  She indicated she is very wealthy, never married and no relatives. There was no way I was going any deeper but I wonder to this day if she hasn’t been searching, most of her adult life, for the oppressed, feeling the pain of others, and desperately attempting to bind broken hearts, usually without much success. I asked her to tell me about her faith.  She said that every church she had ever been involved with has been one somehow marked by suffering.  She said she at times had been somewhat frantic about expanding her circle of care. “The world of souls is a sad and broken place,” she said. I asked how she recognized that.  “I’m certain of it, because I’m one of them and I vowed that every little kitten that comes to my door will not be alone.”  The story ended as abruptly as it had begun with the announcement: please return to your sets, etc., etc., etc. Would I be on target if she really said in conclusion: I’m certain of it, because I’m one of them and at times, more accurately, that I would not be alone.

Well, I’ve been ruminating greatly on my own past and present pain these past few weeks since this precious lady poured out her story. Down through the years, there has been on occasion, unhealthy patterns to my ever-expanding circles of care. I recognize the many oppressed people and groups I had come along side with the best of intentions. I gave everything I could and some things I could not.  There were times when I collapsed physically, mentally and spiritually, no longer able to give anything at all. I always thought I was retreating out of necessity because taking in pain, I now understand, was and still is understandably exhausting. I figured that the metaphorical house I tried to keep filled, at times, simply needed to be emptied from over-crowding. I was opening up my house until people were hanging from the rafters and lamps started getting broken, and I was falling apart. Little did I realize; the house was falling apart before any of them entered in the first place. I was inviting them into the wrong house.

I’ve recently learned something old and something new from the writing of Timothy Keller in Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. Sometimes God in his mercy must tear down even walls built with good intention. “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain… In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves” Psalms 127. Such was the case with me. In my house, the broken and the oppressed found care with limits, hospitality with conditions. But we are like olive trees who “flourish in the house of God,” says the psalmist. For in this house, we can “trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever” Psalm 52:8.

Describing the disparity between the mind of humanity and the mind of God, Abraham Heschel writes, “The [human] conscience builds its confines, is subject to fatigue, longs for comfort, lulling, soothing. Yet those who are hurt, and He Who inhabits eternity, neither slumber nor sleep.” Powerful! I’ll make it mine by saying: God never sleeps or slumbers because when I'm hurting I don't sleep or slumber. Try as I may as a caretaker I cannot be as God to the hurting. I can stay awake with them in their pain and suffering. I can care for them as neighbors. But the house in which the suffering find unfailing love is the Lord’s. Like the friends of the paralytic who carried him all the way to Christ, this is the house to which I must bring them. His is the house in which I must live.

I don’t seem to move quickly toward broken people or communities as often, any more, but those I do I find myself still struggling with the weight of some of the things I see, I realize I struggle equally with the apathy that makes me want to flee from it all and clear away the crowd. But I am convinced that the right side of pain can only be accessed through the house of God, a house built not by human hands, but held up by the beams of the Cross. Here my soul finds a house with rooms prepared for me and a table set with room for my enemies.

Father, God thank You for inviting me into the kingdom; the doors of which are opened wide. And it is a house where hospitality is not a conditional sharing of my personal pains, or a self-centered preoccupation with suffering, but an extension of Christ’s real invitation: Come to me, all who are weary and I will give you rest. Amen