Unspeakable Hope: Kelly & Tabitha Kapic

Six years in, I got into a really bad place where my name for God became the God who could but does not.

I just laid my head on the pillow at night when I normally would just naturally start praying and I didn't. Welcome to Family Life Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are David and Wilson.

You can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So, you know, there's a pretty important and famous phrase in the marriage vows that as a pastor, I've done hundreds of weddings. And every time I have a couple repeat these vows, I think to myself, married 43 years, they have no idea what they're saying. But, you know, for better or for worse, at every couple, not every couple, but most couples think, oh, this is going to be better.

There's going to be very little worse. And the other one, in sickness and in health. Right. And they think it's going to be mostly health. Until we get old.

Maybe, you know, when we get really old, we might have a few health issues. But the reality is... Sufferings come into every marriage in one way or another. And we started a conversation yesterday with a couple that's been through suffering and still walking through suffering. Welcome back, Kelly and Tabitha Capic to Family Life. It's good to be with you guys.

Thanks so much. And again, we're going to give our audience your whole story again. But as a professor of theological studies, right? I teach at Covenant College. Yeah. So this is, I mean, we're diving in a little bit of the theology of suffering. Your book Embodied Hope is a theological meditation on pain and suffering. But again, as we said yesterday, this isn't just a theological mind thing for you.

This is real. Well, I was just going to say for listeners like, oh, they're going to go on the theology of suffering, I'm checking out. No, what we talked about yesterday is very personal. And we all will face it at one point in our lives. And you probably already have faced it. But the church doesn't always talk a lot about suffering and even how to lament and what that looks like.

And I think it's doubly hard. You tell me because you've walked through it. When you think you've gone through a valley and it's over. Like you went through cancer and you won.

Like, okay, we're good now. And then you get, I can't even say the word. Undifferentiated connective tissue disease is what that's called. Some people, that takes the form of MS, lupus.

Yeah. You don't really cure those diseases. You learn to manage and live with them. Let me ask you, you had a cancer diagnosis and then they said you're cancer free.

Which is harder to walk through? A diagnosis that's cancer that could be possibly healed or something that will linger with you possibly for the rest of your life? I think it unfolds over time. The cancer diagnosis just took a couple months to get. And then they said, we're going into surgery right now.

So it was very quick. Chronic pain, as many people listening will know, it takes many years often to diagnose properly. A lot of stories of just fighting for your worth when you're seeing different doctors and specialists and poking and prodding. I mean, you really, it is a hard road.

Did you feel like I must be a crazy person because they're not finding anything? Oh, I got told that. I was told the only thing we can do with you is refer you to a psychologist. And I was like, okay, I hear what you're saying, but I have a good support system, you know, I have a good marriage. But yeah, there's a lot of things that war against you. It's not just a physical pain. Kelly, is this what made you write on this topic, all of what you've suffered?

Because you suffer as a couple. Yeah, for sure. God really provided out of nowhere, writing on suffering was nowhere on my agenda. I had all these other projects. And then literally one Monday morning, I got an email from a friend who teaches at Biola and they had a center of Christian thought. And a woman from Princeton wasn't, she was supposed to go spend six months there researching and she couldn't. And he said, before we make it public, we think you're a great fit.

Could you and your family come? And they said, the topic is psychology and spiritual formation, do you have a topic? And I talked to Tabitha and I couldn't believe she was like, let's do it. And I said, well, I could write on suffering. And Tabitha really was encouraging because I don't really know what I think until I have to wrestle through it and write about it.

This was 2013, 14. And she said, I think it's time for you to, it'll help you and it'll help others. And so it really was, it's me working through my stuff and working through it with you, working through listening to you a lot and listening to others in pain. Yeah, it prompted you because you wanted to really understand what this looks like from God's perspective.

Yeah. And to be honest, a lot of what I was reading was not helpful. So a lot of Christian authors, when they deal with suffering, it becomes very philosophical and abstract.

And it's always these kinds of questions. If God is really in control and if God is good, how can he let bad things happen, that kind of thing. And there's some legitimate conversations in that philosophically. But it was amazing to me on all these books from Christians writing about suffering, how little actually talked about Jesus. And I mean not in a trite way, I mean like deeply and profoundly. And all of a sudden I realized the fact that the eternal Son of God takes on real human flesh and blood and not just his death on the cross, but his whole life is entering into this, he's sinless, but it is a sinful, broken world.

And he's experiencing pain and suffering, culminating in his death. And so letting the literal life of Jesus reshape our understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to suffer was really helpful and surprising to me. The simple way of saying it is, you know, we all affirm, yes, God is creator and then there's sin and then he redeems.

But we don't tend to link God as redeemer and creator. And what I would say is Genesis 1, God says it's good, it's good, it's good. But when Jesus come, God says, oh, the material world still is good, but sin has screwed it up.

Your body actually matters to me. And this pain you're feeling, it's legitimate for you to cry out because I didn't make you to experience this. Death is not a friend. You shouldn't, as a Christian, just go, well, death is no big deal. We just get to go to heaven. Yeah, I think there's some misunderstandings of what it means when it's like Christians don't mourn like others. So we need to rethink some of those things. So anyways, just concentrating on the solidarity of Jesus with us that culminates on the cross, but his whole life, his weakness was really helpful. Was that helpful for you, Tabitha, to look at the life of Jesus? Yeah, I think that brings up a couple thoughts. I remember being pregnant with my son, our first of two children, and I am very not good with needles.

That's like my thing since I was a kid. So I was like, whatever we have to do, just don't put the IV on me because I just shut down. So we did natural childbirth, and not everyone gets the opportunity to be a mother through childbirth. But it felt very Christ-like, this idea of facing a thing that you knew was going to hurt and be messy and bloody, but that there was life coming after it. And I felt like that even taught me to relate to Jesus in a unique way that maybe people who haven't experienced having children maybe don't have that. So that sort of pain and mess. And then cancer was another thing of experiencing that kind of physical weakness. Relying on the church, I'd say the big thing that spiritually I learned with cancer was not that I was the fighter, but that the people around me were, and that the church and others prayed for us when we couldn't, and they read the word for us when we couldn't.

Chronic pain was a totally different thing. Six years in, I got into a really bad place where my name for God became the God who could but does not. And I couldn't get away from that title. And I stopped praying. I just laid my head on the pillow at night when I normally would just naturally start praying, and I didn't. It was dark, and I felt bad. I was married to a theologian.

I'm like, yeah, this whole faith thing. I knew how serious it was, and this was our whole life. I don't know where you were at that time, Kelly, but how does a spouse navigate that with their spouse? It was dark. And I had my own dark times.

They didn't always correspond, thankfully. But I do think the reality is in that time, there was a sense in which my role and the role of the church was to believe for Tabitha. And what that looks like practically is we pray when she couldn't pray. And it's kind of a faith, hope, and love. And when she couldn't receive hope from God directly, I do think there were little things we could do, all in the context of love.

And people did that for me, too. But my understanding of faith became much more communal. I have a good friend who was a theologian who's retired, and he'd say, I wake up in the morning and I'm an atheist.

He's struggled with depression his whole life. And by 9 a.m., I'm a monotheist. And on a good day, by noon, I'm a Christian. Which is hilarious, but there's something actually to that. And if you think that you're generating this faith, and if you don't feel it at the given time, all of a sudden you lose your salvation, we're in a world of hurt.

What happens if you hit your head? Anyway, so I, in a way I never did before, started to see our faith much more communally. Did you see that, too, Tabitha? I mean, when you were walking through that... Not at that time. No.

You didn't feel shame, though. There wasn't, hey, get your faith, God is good. Was there any of that?

Oh, I see what you're saying. Like he's trying to convince you? No. No. I think he was letting me lament. Yeah.

Way to go. Because I think sometimes the spouses, we try to fix them and help them and read Scripture. Whatever. I'm not saying Scripture's bad. Well, out of their fear and worry, they push Jesus on us when you're just saying, I just needed to lament and be sad. And I didn't even know that that's what I was doing.

I just, it's not that I didn't believe in God. He just had this name that I gave him. And two things I'd mentioned about that time, it was his parents' 50th wedding anniversary, and they wanted all their kids and grandkids to go to Alaska together. And I remember we got to do this whale watching thing, which I love. And it was humpback whales bubble netting. They do a spiral of bubbles to get the fish all to go together. And then at once, like eight of them come up from the bottom and surface.

The water boils and they surface and scoop up all the fish. It's incredible. That natural world again was a comfort to me because I thought, I might not be doing what I was created to do, but these whales are. And there was something about that that was deeply comforting to me in physical pain. That the whole world isn't broken.

You know, there's still things doing what they're supposed to do. But the real turning point was in December of that dark year, and our pastor Brian Salter, who's still our pastor, he challenged the church to read through the whole Bible together that year, the next year coming up. And I was sort of like, well, it's worth a shot.

So I did that. And I have read through the Bible probably twice a year ever since. And what that does is the God who could but does not became the God who sees, the God who hears, the God who knows, the God who rescues.

And I need that constantly in my head. So I listen to you version, I listen to audio, Bible. And it's just like an IV drip to me of the God who sees, the God who hears, the God who knows, the God who rescues. So that's, thank God, that's how for me, I keep being able to hold on to Christ as my identity.

I'm relating to that. And I think even just for an application, God's word, I read it every day. I go through the Bible every year. I've done it for 16, 17 years now. I do it because I'm desperate. And that reminder of this is who he is, this is who he is. He sees me. Those reminders are, it is, I like that.

It's an IV drip. What a great way to say that. It's just that constant reminder of fueling me of the truth when we can get so lost in the lies that we believe. And the Bible is full of mystery and things that happen that are horrible.

They're horrible and they're unresolved. But that's what happens in life. You know, one of the things that changed for me through this is the book of Job with suffering. Guys, I don't like the book of Job. Yeah, exactly.

So honestly, here was an aha moment for me that was super helpful and revolutionary. The beginning and the end of Job is what we focus on. But actually, there's like 30 something chapters where everyone's wrestling with each other and God. I just read it.

It's a long book. And we ignore that. But actually that, first of all, tells you God gives a lot of space for the wrestling. But then the other thing is God never gives Job an answer.

He's just present. And we won't get into it now. He does ask him questions. But it's interesting.

One of the debates in the scholarly literature is like, what tone is it? Is God belittling Job? Or is it like, not being mean, but like, don't forget, you're a creature. You have limits. You weren't there when I did all of this.

So your knowledge is kind of limited. But anyways, God doesn't actually answer Job's questions, but he is present and absorbs them. But the aha moment was to realize, oh, God doesn't answer Job for hundreds of years. God's answer to Job is that God in the Son becomes Job. Jesus is Job. Jesus is the one who takes on all of the lament, all of the suffering, all unto death.

God's answer to Job isn't a sentence. It's a person who actually dies. That's that profound solidarity. And then he rises. So he does really relate to us in our pain and suffering all the way into the grave.

And then he rises. And so there's hope. But it doesn't belittle our pain and suffering. It shows honor and solidarity with it and then hope. But there's something to that that I think is very helpful. God's answer isn't a sentence.

It's a person. One of our good friends, Jamie Winchip, says that a lot of people in pain and suffering and hard times ask the why question. Like, why? Why, God? And he said, I'm not sure God really ever answers the why question, but he will answer the question of, God, what do you want me to know about this, this suffering? Do you feel like God has given you a glimpse of that if you asked him that, Tabitha?

God, what do you want me to know? I don't look at my like, yeah, but if I hadn't had the pain, I would. I'd take my pain away right now.

I would be perfectly happy. Everybody would say that. But in terms of what I've learned, I think we had hit, when cancer came, we were in one of the hardest parts of our marriage. And I had a very international life and was burning the candle at all ends. And I felt like that was kind of a rescue because I was never going to stop. I was never going to say, I should be here with my family of four versus 300,000 people just died in Haiti.

I wasn't going to make that choice. And he really just had to push me down and make it for me, I think. But yeah, in terms of what I know, I feel like I know God more. And that is precious because I didn't sound like this 20 years ago. I've changed and my family has changed.

I remember we were in Legoland when the kids were little. I couldn't hold their hands. They grabbed my hand and I had to let it go because that hand was so hard. I switched them.

Sometimes I would hold a pinky with them. Just awful letting go of all those layers of what I thought our family would be. And I love our family, but man, our whole family was called to it. The whole community gets called to these types of things. Yeah, and you wish they wouldn't be. I mean, I know one of the things you've often wrestled with is like, okay, God, if you're doing this to me, fine.

I'll leave my family out of it. Well, I don't know about you, Tabitha, but I hate feeling needy. And you can be needy for a time, but then you're like, am I that? This is the life. You know, you mentioned even yesterday a couple of things.

I want to just try and draw out again because we didn't complete it. Your identity, not being in your pain and in your suffering, but being in Christ. What does that mean? How do you live that out? I think you're going to have some great things to say about this, but what I'll say about it is feeling good physically is not an idol.

That's a good thing to want. That's how we were made. Being able to do good work, not an idol. God's a worker.

He made us to work. Having whole families, not an idol. Now we take everything and we twist good things just a bit. So I'm not saying that having an identity of a physically whole, not in pain person is wrong to want that.

That is fine to want, but I can't have that right now. It really does force you to say, okay, elementally, at the very base, I am beloved. And I struggle to believe that. I know it's true, but to believe it in the midst of our lives is really tough. I belong to God.

That one right there. I think all the time I act like I don't. So for me, that's what I mean when I say identity in Christ, that I actually, I'm his kid. I'm beloved. I belong to him.

He's for me. Even when he doesn't take the pain away. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I think we're constantly tempted to lie as Christians. And the two main things I think we're tempted to lie about is either to lie about how hard things are. And so we sugarcoat it.

Like, you can't be that hard. We're going through cancer, but here are all these good things that happened. Like, it's not wrong as a Christian to tell the truth about how broken the world is. It's not wrong to say, this is terrible. And sometimes I'm a reformed theologian, if it means anything to some people in your audience, and we're talking about the sovereignty of God. But yeah, you read in the Bible that God is over all things. But that same Bible also has God saying, Oh, this is bad.

Oh, I wish that didn't happen. Right? It's kind of you have to hold these things together. So on the one hand, you have to be able to say to God, this is really bad. This hurts. This is terrible.

Why? So don't lie about how hard the world is. But the other side is then don't lie about how good God is because God is actually good. And his goodness is not dependent on what we're feeling at the particular moment. And that's where if you don't think about to kind of circle the back to where we started, if you don't think about Jesus in this conversation, then you do think this form of abuse happened to me, or this kind of cancer happened to me. What does God think about it?

Well, he's just a mad scientist in the sky. But if you want to know what God thinks about it, you look to Jesus on the cross, weeping and bleeding. That's what God thinks about your pain and suffering. That's what he thinks about the abuse you went through.

He is not a mad scientist going, let's just see what's going to happen now. He is the God who goes into the fire with you. This still is a broken world.

It's not glory yet. And so we live in light of both cross and resurrection. But pain and suffering is real and we have to be honest about it and honest about how good God is. And the only way we can make sense of how good God is in light of the brokenness is looking at Christ.

I mean, that is such a rich viewpoint on that. Because I think in some ways, even as a pastor for 30 plus years, our tendency is to preach the resurrection. We have a theology of victory. We forget the cross, not that we forget it, because it's so critical to any preacher. But it's like we don't stay at the suffering at all. We try to move past it quickly to tell you you have victory in Christ, which is all true. But one of the most beautiful things about Christ is the cross, the suffering, the pain that he experienced.

He didn't just get victory. It was the J curve. You know, as Paul Miller says, you go down before up. And so when you walk through what you're walking through, Tabitha, you've got a Savior who did. Right? Yeah. And so it's both and.

We were talking about this in class the other day, and I was talking about the shame of the cross, biblically, the language. And it was interesting. The next time we got together, I often do like, hey, what did we talk about last time?

And it's interesting to see. And there was a girl in the back. She just said, I never thought about the shame of the cross and his nakedness. You want to talk about vulnerability. But this is it resonated with this person who's been through a lot of pain and suffering. You're like, wait, that's the son of God who's taken on shame for me. Didn't you have for me and and identified with me and for me in order to overcome it. But this is a God who's not embarrassed of us, but has entered in beautiful, beautiful ways, way better than we know. Hey, Tabitha, you mentioned yesterday that you wrote a poem.

Was it? Well, you have to read it to us, because I wondered if it was what we were just talking about. Is it not lying to God? Like, I'm not going to lie. Okay.

Just to be real, I haven't read this in many years, so we don't know what we're going to get right now. And you wrote it when you're in the midst of? Cancer.

When I was going through the treatments. And where we live between Tennessee and Georgia, we're near one of the largest Civil War battlefields, Chickamauga Battlefield. We've been there.

We have. Okay, so you can picture the rolling green fields and all the monuments. So that's what this poem refers to. It could be pasture land, but it is not. Nothing moves, nothing grazes, out of respect perhaps.

There is only breeze and grass and hush. It is a battlefield. Years have seen tall grasses cover blood and mud and metal and wood. A subtle and complex cloak laid over violence and pain. It is a location, a plane on which things happened, unspeakable things, things that should not be. It was not always what it became.

It had been a forest or meadow, a simple stream or hilltop with some other name, some other purpose. But then forces met for hard, impenetrable reasons. It made no choice. It was only there. Yet its involvement was nonetheless intimate.

How did it hold both enemy and friend? Afterwards, quiet. Years heal and cover with verdant grasses, places that embraced desperate human struggle and death. It has the look of peace, but it can never be what it was before. What do you think when you read it now? Well, I think I'm talking about myself when it says it was not always what it became. And I am very changed by all the years of pain.

And so are many people. I'm just going to say, as I look at you, there's a depth of love, of knowing. You know now the good, the hard, the beautiful, the ugly, and you're beautiful in every way. And there's also such a beautiful realness that's like the cloak's been taken off. And what I see is the beauty in the midst of the pain. So thanks for sharing that with us. I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Kelly and Tabitha Kappik on Family Life Today. You know, Kelly Kappik has written a book called Embodied Hope, a theological meditation on pain and suffering.

Get a copy of that at familylifetoday.com and click on the show notes there to get a copy. You know, I've got two kids in both middle and elementary school and apparently Dave and Ann Wilson feel for me. I don't know about you, but I am glad I'm not parenting kids today. I mean, we have kids, but they're not younger.

I mean, I've said that many times. It's scary. We thought it was scary 40 years ago.

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