What does it mean to be long suffering? We have long been suffering the effects of the pandemic, for one thing. I first encountered the term in books, I think: so and so’s long-suffering aunt. That phrase always had a tinge of judgment to it—either someone had been doing the aunt dirty longer than they ought’ve, or she was the kind of person who maybe sort of enjoyed suffering. At any rate, not good, the long suffering.

And yet, here we are. Sometimes things don’t go well for way too much time. The suffering goes through ebb and flow, but it is stubbornly there. I feel it as a ragged, burned out feeling, like I’m the hot glass around a candle lit to offer up prayers in church.

As far as our book, Descent, goes, long suffering is addressed in this way:

You will be kept in the Underworld for—

well,

that’s the hard part.

You’ll stay there for as long as it takes.

So it’s like this. A terrible thing happens. You are plunged into the Underworld. You are down there for some time. Eventually, hope against hope, you re-emerge to the Aboveworld. You are changed by the experience—how could you not be?

But, to be clear, sometimes whatever it is that pushed you down in the first place is still happening up there. Even, sometimes, to the you up there, and sometimes to some part of the collective.

Other times, “it’s” still happening, but YOU, having completed your Underworld journey, are no longer held down in the dungeon because of it.

Sometimes “it” has technically ended, whatever it was that pulled you under, yet there in the Underworld you still are.

So, I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. Or most of them. All I know is that’s here one thing that works for me when I start to notice I am long suffering.

I say to myself, Look, you have every right to suffer. BUT if you find yourself glimpsing the possibility of turning away from the suffering, even if it’s just for a minute, feel free to do so.

In Descent, that’s this moment:

At some point,

a small light you

hadn’t seen before

catches your eye.

That’s all. That’s all I know. I don’t know if it’s will or grace (haha not the show) that allows or makes that happen, the light and the seeing of the light. But if you have been longsuffering, my hope is that something, somewhere, catches your eye.