The Surgery
Learning to be present to all the feelings (with no anesthesia)
Ash is on the phone with the doctor. Like she has been the past three days.
Today is the day of our son's kidney surgery. At least, that's what we've been telling him all week.
But now his temperature is 101 - because of the very kidney issue we're trying to address - and the fever might cancel everything.
I've been dreading the surgery for two months, since we scheduled it.
Actually, more like four years. He's only three and half, but we've known about the kidney since his 20 week sonogram. We'd hoped the issue would resolve on its own, but it's gone the path that's lead us to surgery. Or at least, it's lead us to this phone call to find out if he can have surgery today.
Now the thing I've feared for months - years - I suddenly want. I want them to say yes, come to the hospital. That we can just do it already. That we can get it over with. That this tension can have an end, a resolution.
Because I'm not really dreading the surgery. It's really the waiting. The helpless feeling. The lack of control.
I'm not afraid of what's coming as much as I'm afraid of being here. And feeling it all.
There are two operations unfolding today: one on my son's body, and one on my soul. It seems I'm being asked to remove my illusion that I can avoid suffering.
The worst part - I have to stay conscious for that procedure.
It's uncomfortable to admit how often I try to avoid discomfort.
I’ve gotten pretty good at convincing myself that if I just fix the thing, I won’t have to feel the ache.
Like, I’ll finally breathe once the surgery is over. Once his kidney is fixed. Once we’re back home, safe in his rocking chair, reading a bedtime story.
But I know myself.
Even when we’re back home, there will be another thing to dread. Another moment to chase relief from - when he finally sleeps through the night again, or when he finally stops asking for that same damn bedtime book I can’t stand.
There will always be a new discomfort. And a new fantasy that the next thing will save me from it.
That’s the loop.
My belief that peace lives in the next moment, instead of this one.
The contemplative path has a radically different approach to suffering. Instead of avoidance or fixing it, we learn to be present to suffering.
The pain isn't a problem to the contemplative mind. The problem is my refusal to be with it.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has found that suffering increases when we resist or avoid pain.
Polyvagal Theory says that safety isn’t in the absence of pain, but the presence of attuned connection. When we stay present to our suffering, we heal.
That's all great. I'm glad modern science is confirming what the contemplatives have always said.
But you know what I say: suffering sucks.
It hurts and I don't like it.
Because suffering means something is wrong, right?
Because suffering feels like being out of control.
Because suffering puts my nervous system on the fritz.
Because if there's a way out of suffering, I'm gonna take it! (And all the advertisements are telling me there is a way out. For just 3 low payments.)
Yet that is the thing that slowly destroys me. Not the suffering, but the resisting. The denying. The avoiding. The anxiety.
Resistance creates this second layer of suffering. Fear about fear. Judgment about the pain. Tension about feeling tension.
It doesn't avoid the suffering, it has a way of amplifying it.
I spend so much energy avoiding the feelings I don't want to feel, that I never allow myself to metabolize them. Then the pain becomes chronic, stuck and festering in my body. (Maybe this is why I've been so short with my kids these weeks leading up to surgery.)
They say that presence gives pain a place to move. Suffering that is witnessed to can flow. It's the denial or avoidance that causes things to get stuck.
Our bodies are designed to process discomfort, not avoid it. Grief, fear, sadness - all have biological arcs. Presence activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Resistance keeps us in fight or flight.
Still, when I feel the slightest hint of suffering, I flinch. I turn away. I don't want it.
How do I turn towards it in presence, when all I want is relief?
Ash made this bedtime book for our son about the different things he will see and do on surgery day. It has pictures of him from the times he went to Dell Children's to do testing. He loves it. He's the main character in a book!
The person scheduled for surgery is enjoying reading and hearing about what the process will be like on surgery day.
Meanwhile, my dread often feels sharp as a scalpel.
So I often distract, ignore, numb.
The last three years have been a series of ultrasounds and catheters and urine samples and unpredictable sickness spells… And I've gotten pretty good at telling myself that my numbness is simply me being stoic: controlling what is in my control and surrendering the rest.
Really, it's just emotional evasiveness dressed up as maturity.
"Be strong for Ash."
Please.
She'd rather have a partner that is feeling this with her.
And now she's on the phone, describing his symptoms so the Urologist can decide whether they can cut him open.
I'm numb. No anesthesia needed.
Often, religion is used as a path of escape from Reality.
Dreams of an afterlife. Or spiritual bypassing with answers for suffering or claims that “Everything happens for a reason." We turn faith into a ladder out of the pain when the whole point of the Christian narrative was that God came into it.
In Christian language, God is not the one who removes pain, but the one who fills it with presence.
"God did not come to do away with suffering; he did not even come to explain it. He came to fill it with his presence." - Paul Claudel
The cross was not meant to be the end of suffering, but the pattern of it - death, descent, presence, resurrection.
The contemplatives teach us that suffering might not end, but our experience of it can change. This is the mystery of the contemplative path. Presence makes us bigger than the pain. And in that space, there can be peace.
I don’t think we’re meant to be present to suffering all the time. Sometimes we need to numb a little, to check out, to seek comfort. That’s not failure - it’s regulating our bodies. Avoidance was often how we survived before we had the capacity to stay. And even now, sometimes eating ice cream until you can't feel the dread anymore is still grace.
Contemplation isn’t about forcing presence. It’s about growing our ability to stay with what’s real - gently, over time. We don’t stay present because we’re spiritual heroes. We stay when we can, and we rest when we can’t. We eat something warm. We laugh at a show. We forget for a while. That, too, can be sacred.
The invitation isn’t to feel everything always. It’s to stop running away from from my feelings out of fear. To practice being human enough to hold them gently. To let presence find me when it can.
They can't do the surgery today. Fever is too high. We'll have to reschedule in a couple of months.
There's a flood of emotions. Relief. Grief. Dread, again.
My parents show up shortly after. They were going to watch out daughter while we spent the night at the hospital. Now, they are a welcome distraction from all the feelings.
Then, bedtime comes and with it a mix of emotions. Angry and sad we're not on the other side of surgery. Grateful to put my son down in his own bed.
We get into our rocking chair to read a book. This time, we're not reading the book about his surgery day. We're not preparing for the future. Instead we're reading that other book he choses every damn night. And I'm doing my best just to be present with it, with him, with myself.
I choke up when it comes time to sing our night time song. I'm letting myself feel a bit of the emotions I haven't been feeling. Letting my numbness thaw. He would usually ask why I'm crying. But tonight he doesn't. He doesn't need understanding. Or maybe he already understands more than I realize.
Today was my surgery day. I'll need many more.
I hope I can bring a bit of this presence to the hospital when his surgery day comes.
He goes to bed. I get out the ice cream and watch Severence with Ash. Because five minutes of presence was enough practice for tonight.
Now I need sugar and a show about completely disassociating from life.