The Creativity of Suffering

About five years ago, I was graciously invited to be part of a writing collaborative over at Dappled Things Magazine called Creativity and Motherhood. It is worth a look through their archives! Here is a link to my own essay (Creative Flow) if you would like to read it as well as the others.

I joined several different writer/artist/moms, who wrote beautifully about how they lived their own motherhoods in unique and creative ways. I loved being part of this collaborative, because I met some beautiful women who weren’t just ‘surviving’ motherhood, but thriving, and being fed creatively because of it and not in spite of it! I think every mom worth her salt, or striving to be worth her salt, could answer the question of creativity in myriad ways through her many, specific, day to day experiences. However, this lovely and long ago invitation to ponder creativity has been on my mind these days for different reasons.

I have been on an Odyssey of sorts since November, and have been longing, since day one, for this journey to end. Like impatient Prince Humperdinck, of Princess Bride fame, I wanted to imperiously declare, “Skip to the end!” as soon as it began. God, I imagine, just smiled and did no such thing. I had Cancer, and it was a dragon that must be fought from November to April. Daily. No skipping. It gave me definite pause. The silence was deafening between me and God that day of diagnosis. What could He possibly be thinking?

I am not in any way a ‘victim soul’ sort of person. I am fully confident I would never be outright able to bring myself to ask God “make of me a victim soul;” not because I don’t love Him, but because I know myself and it would be a rash and terrible promise, given the stuff of which I think I am personally made. I would far rather shut my mouth, squinch my eyelids tight and take whatever sufferings come my way in the daily nature of things. I do not ask for more suffering outright, alas.

It’s funny, though. This particular Cancer I have is rogue; meaning it has no source in my hereditary gene pool anywhere. It just showed up un-announced. My savvy Dr. R. told me that many, many cancers just show up randomly like this. I found it quite interesting. God, as it were, trying me out with this unique little gift. “Let’s just see what she does with this one, shall We.” And I began to think: just as there is a Creativity born of Motherhood that sheds light from its beauty into and through art of all kinds, can there not also be a Creativity of Suffering, in which we take it’s experiences and with our art, our imagination, and our particular gifts, turn it into something beautiful to behold. For suffering is beautiful in its maddeningly paradoxical way. It is the way Jesus has chosen to redeem the world, and when we let Him suffer through us, we feel His redemptive pleasure. The way we suffer should make others also feel this pleasure and be consoled or moved to accept it within their own souls. That is the work of the artist in us. We are there to make people less afraid of suffering by suffering well and showing how creatively it can be expressed and offered and carried. We will all do it differently. This little essay explains how I tried to do it. I only write this to show that suffering can be approached with a personal stamp of joy and creativity, even though I am well aware that mine be of such pitiful stuff.

In my prayer, I could almost feel God asking Himself in gleeful anticipation: “How will she put her particular stamp on this?” All the great saints have their stamp: St. Lawrence, with humor, asking to be turned over on the firey grid because he was ‘done’ on that side. Therese’s little way. Philip Neri’s quirky, lovely oddities and welcoming conversations and jokes. Elizabeth Leseur’s secret notebooks filled with a suffering love and a supernatural wonder that would one day convert her atheist husband. Teresa of Avila with her singular witticisms about the foibles of being women that we all love so much. What, then, after seeing all these, would I do with my suffering?

I am no great saint, believe you me. It is the one thing I have no uncertainty about. But God asked this thing of me. I had to pull myself up by my artistic bootstraps and show Him that I could be creative with this very thing He treasures so dearly and had asked me to carry for Him. That I could strive to make it beautiful for Him and for others; to honor Him with the gifts He gave to me at my creation. I entered with a will.

Chemotherapy is a sapping, insidious cross that starts out pretty well, but picks up speed by the end and leaves you longer and longer in its grip. Exhaustion, nerve pain, muscle spasms, feeling winded so many times, itching hands and feet through the night, nausea, overwhelmingly dead feelings and numbness of the brain that leave you sobbing sometimes through no fault of your own. You live in constant fear of the spector of neuropathy which might come or might not. You don’t know. It’s a terrible thing filled with so many questions. And yet chemo, in the end, is also a “severe mercy”. For it is killing the cancer cells in your body. Quite the conundrum.

I took it by the horns, so to speak, and instead of cursing its name, I began to think of it as a wonder drug. It became fascinating to me and I studied the science of it a bit. I asked my oncologist, Dr R., thousands of questions and he answered them all. He was quite delighted to do so. I wondered about cells and genes and mutations and how we are created with chromosomal anomalies that reveal to us we are mortal and not invincible. We are each programmed by our very cell structures to eventually die in the flesh. This sin of Adam permeates even down to our very genes. It affected me deeply to bow to that humble state of affairs. I was created to die so that I might live ‘further up and further in’ one day. And I became less afraid, somehow.

The weird and painful side effects of chemo were doing battle, however, so that I might be given the time to become more thankful for what I have: to kiss my granddaughter, to sit in warm sand and watch my grandsons run with abandon on a California beach; to one day dance at my daughter’s wedding, to hold my children tightly in a hug and to converse with them far into the night once again about politics, art, and culture. To love Tony into old age. Chemotherapy was God’s way of letting me stir up my life to see the wonder of it I might have forgotten. So, I tried to offer to God my gratitude and praise for making oncologists so smart and talented and kind and good. I marveled at their human beauty given through the art and science they loved - an art I would never have myself. They became my heroes, my friends, my mentors by granting me, through the suffering of chemo, a new sense of wonder at what I have always had; helping me to enter it again with new energy. I made a point to tell them so. Always tell them so. My suffering with cancer has led to the discovery of my doctor’s sacrificial love on my behalf in helping me to fight it. My spoken gratitude for this severe mercy of chemo gave him pleasure.

Secondly, I made a promise to wake up every morning and make my bed (wouldn’t Jordan Peterson be so proud? One day I’ll tell him) - even if it took me an hour with many stops to rest in between. I promised to put on my best jewelry, my funkiest and most colorful shirts. I became a beanie Maven. Every single day I did this even if I never went anywhere but in the house. It gave worth and glory and joy to my sufferings. It put my stamp of creativity on them for I DO love and treasure my jewelry and hippy tops, not to mention my crazy love of whimsical shoes. I woke each morning and gave God a fashion show. I was deathly pale, I was bald, I was nauseous. But, by gum it, I looked cool doing it! I fancy God liked it. I did feel His pleasure. That pleasure spilled over at the oncologist’s office. At every appointment, Dr R. and his delightful nurse K looked forward to seeing what I had on that day. The shoes, the head wrap, the shirt, the socks, the earrings. All coordinated. They were delighted by it and Dr R. always said so. It lifted his days; days he no doubt carried with a heavy heart as he saw patient after patient. I loved making him happy in this regard. I felt his pleasure. God did as well. I made him and nurse K Easter baskets this past week. They peered inside of them like two little kids and said to each other, “OHHHH, it’s the good stuff!” Their pleasure doubled my own.

During the hardest days of pain, I found a great use for Christian Worship music, of all things. I think this is a kind of singing that I do not prefer at liturgies, mind you, but wow does it come in handy the rest of the day. I would listen to it full blast on my headphones, or sometimes even vying in a battle of the bands with my affable landlord’s ACDC downstairs. He never complained. At the hardest times, I would sing loudly as long as the pain or depression lasted, and sometimes I’d go full on orantes for His pleasure. The singing was cathartic and filled me with the gift of released tears. Anxiety and fear evaporated and were offered up like incense in the thurible of song.

Some days were failures. Some days I could not get off the sofa. Too exhausted. I was humiliated by my weakness. This is the most horrible of revelations. That you in no way can overcome what chemo sends sometimes. You must merely “stand and wait”, for you cannot will it away by force. This, too, gives pleasure to God, for He knows you as a worthy and trusted vessel.

One day I discovered that humor gives God pleasure. I had to go up my front stairs on my behind for a few steps because after a short walk, a walk I was too stupidly determined to make, my legs just gave way in weakness at the first step. So, I used my hands and hauled myself up on my behind a few steps and then tried again. I was laughing as I did so, agreeing with dear Soren Kierkegaard, that “the more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic”. I bowed to my weakness but not until after a good guffaw.

When I saw myself, shorn of all my hair, in the bathroom mirror with Tony holding the electric razor behind me, I wanted to cry in total shock. But he just said, “This is going to be a trend. You are going to be a trend setter. Big earrings. It’s a THING. Maybe we can put a tattoo of a brain on your head.” (grinning). If you know what crying and laughing sounds like all in one witty wail, you would have heard it in that bathroom. You are never prepared for the bald head scenario. But you make it happen. Your head becomes a palette for creativity.

Beanies, scarves, hats in various styles. The sky is the limit, as they say. If I had a memoir, this chapter would be called My foray into Hipsterism. God had quite the show and I think it made him very happy. But I never get used to seeing my bald head in the mirror and offering up the gnawing fear that it might not grow back is sometimes hard not to keep as my own nursed and fretting “precious”.

Sleepless nights, worrying about whether the cancer will spread, or come back. Dr R. says that is the most sinister thing about Cancer. It lurks. If not in your body, then in your mind. You are never quite free of fear. I offered God many fears at 3:00 am in the morning. I tried to make the offerings complete. He understood my frailty, I think, and he sent his mother to help me sleep. She always did. The rosary became my dearest medicine. I felt her pleasure.

I was faithful to the Divine Office. Lauds became my food, truly my lodestone to the Divine. I learned to love the office as a saving grace to hold onto “when all other lights went out” within me.

In short, I gave God what I had, perhaps pitiful, ordinary stuff that it was. My prayers, my hippy shirts, my earrings, my beanies, my books read, my writing, my bed made, my outfits, my interest in science, my gratitude to all my doctors and nurses and the shared joy we had together through my creative way of expressing the suffering I was given to bear. I hope I gave God true pleasure and that others saw joy in my suffering. I did not want to disappoint Him. I failed often. I cried in a heap sometimes in Tony’s arms. I was so afraid of the mental darkness and dread that only one on chemo can understand. Like sinking into a suffocating quicksand. Tony always pulled me out. I was grateful beyond belief. He is the best of men.

I had my last chemo today and I have been declared Cancer free on this Easter Monday, 2025. We laughed, we cried, I rang the bell and fell into the arms of my husband and hugged the nurses all around. Doctor R grinned ear to ear and hugged me like a bear; then asked me where on earth DID I get such cool earrings.

What an odyssey! And I did learn the fine art of creativity in suffering, as small as it was. I am, you see, the violet that St Therese says delights God’s eye whenever he looks down, small and pitiful as she may be. My art is my art, no more no less. I used it to give God pleasure. And I fell sometimes and He forgave me. And all was well and all manner of things will BE well.

Your journey will be different than mine. If you have any deep suffering, any suffering great or small at all, you will learn how to make it beautiful with the simple gifts God has given to you. They will be completely different than mine or hers or that other person’s over there. But they will shine and give us hope - and the deepest pleasure that here we have no lasting city and we are each beacons of that truth to others. Our creative suffering shows others the way home to God’s true pleasure. Make it shine.

Deo Gratias.

I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull