Finding meaning in our own suffering

A modern take on Joseph's story.

For those of us who’ve experienced trauma, one of our biggest healing challenges is to find meaning in our own suffering.

How could the brutal rapes I endured when I was just a little girl have any meaning at all? How could your trauma experience be anything more than a source of deep pain for you?

It’s important to note that the work of finding meaning in our suffering can’t be rushed, or demanded. It may never come, in some cases. Telling someone, “It’s all part of God’s plan,” or “But look how well you’ve done” or “That’s why you’re so wise” can cause real damage. These responses deny trauma’s inherent unfairness and the suffering it brings.

Photo by Ante Gudelj on Unsplash

But when we’re ready, can we still find meaning in it?

With this question in mind, I turn to the Genesis story of Joseph.

Joseph’s own brothers fake his death and sell him into slavery, and their motivation for these evil deeds is mere jealousy. Joseph had received the favor of not one but actually two fathers:

1. Their own, as Joseph was the firstborn of their father’s favorite wife.

2. God the Father, who gives Joseph a prophetic vision, as he describes, “There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Then, behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf” (Genesis 37:7 NKJV).

We might see Joseph’s vision as evidence of how God favored him, or maybe it was another example of something in Joseph that even as a child put him a cut above.

In the wake of his brothers’ egregious betrayal, Jacob nonetheless maintains his faith in God by acting with integrity in everything he does while enslaved in Egypt. Joseph never loses faith, not in God, and not in himself, either. He continues to live according to the model set by his faith, even as an enslaved Hebrew in Egypt. Because of his integrity and good work, he rises in his master’s house to a position of responsibility.

However, though “the Lord was with Joseph,” he experiences further setbacks despite the fact that he consistently walks with God. Joseph spurns the sexual advances of his Egyptian master’s wife, and she retaliates by claiming he tried to rape her. But because Joseph always acted with integrity, and his master knew the Lord was with Joseph, his life is spared. He’s not put to death but rather sent to prison, and possibly an elite one at that, “a place where the king’s prisoners were confined” (39:2-20).

Joseph continues to live with integrity in prison, and just as had happened in his master’s house, authorities trust him and allow him to rise in position. He’s soon keeper of the prison.

Prophetic dreams come into play a second time when he tells two imprisoned officers of Pharoah the meaning of theirs. The one who survives the ordeal and is restored to Pharoah’s good graces? Joseph kindly asks him to remember Joseph to Pharoah. The man does not, of course, until it benefits him to do so—much later.

Finally given the opportunity, Joseph is called before Pharaoh. He interprets Pharaoh’s dream to foretell a period of seven years of bounty followed by seven years of famine. He recommends Pharaoh “select a discerning and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt” to manage the years of plenty in preparation for the years of scarcity. Notably, Joseph doesn’t put himself forward as that man, but Pharaoh sees him as the only choice: “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?” (41:33-36).

Pharaoh gives Joseph power in Egypt second only to his. This lowly man, a Hebrew slave, has been elevated far beyond his station. Yet he uses this power only for the good it was intended: He guides Egypt through the years of feast and famine with wisdom and care.

You might ask why God didn’t just skip Joseph over the suffering times. An all-powerful God could surely have plucked a strong, faithful, good man like Joseph up out of his misery and set him down in Egypt, where he could quickly get to the business of saving everyone from famine.

The answer to that is also the answer to where we might find meaning in our own suffering: When his brothers sold him into slavery, he was starved of his family’s love, his own birthright, the safety of his tribe—everything.

Joseph had to starve in order to learn what to do when faced with starvation.

Now the story comes full circle when famine descends, and Joseph’s very own brothers travel to Egypt for relief.

This is where the tale might challenge your assumptions about Christian forgiveness.

When his family enters and requests some of the stored grain, Joseph does not immediately embrace them, letting bygones be bygones.

He’s carried the truth of his own suffering all this while. When he’d begun to rise for a second time in Egypt and asked the man in prison to remember him to Pharaoh, he’d also spoken directly of his own suffering, naming the injustices against him. He told the man, “For indeed I was stolen away from the land of the Hebrews; and also I have done nothing here that they should put me into the dungeon” (40:14-16).

So Joseph had spoken the truth of both his innocence and his deprivation. He’d always known he’d been wronged, doubly wronged, and pleading for help from the man whose dream he’d just interpreted had been an attempt to have his grievances properly redressed.

When his brothers appear before him to request grain, they do not recognize him, which is telling: They never believed the prophecy of his dream, so they cannot see him for its embodiment.

Joseph then tests them.

The first test is for his brothers to bring him his youngest brother, Benjamin, his beloved from the same mother.

The second is to return the money they were supposed to have paid for the grain, which Joseph ordered hidden in the sacks they take home.

Joseph’s family passes both tests by returning to him with Benjamin and with the recovered money.

We might understand these “tests” in modern times as Joseph testing the boundaries with his family. Have they treated Benjamin as badly as they treated him? Will they resort to lies and deceit, as they did when they faked Joseph’s death and sold him into slavery?

Still, he holds off even after they pass these tests, offering one more: Will they allow his brother Benjamin to be taken as a slave? The answer is no, as Judah puts his foot down. Returning without Benjamin will surely kill their father, he says, as he has already lost his beloved Joseph, his first-born.

It’s only then, overcome with emotion, that Joseph reveals himself to his brothers.

They’re ashamed by their past betrayals and fear his righteous reprisal. But this is his moment of forgiveness, a grace granted from a position of power. In it he takes away the sting of that past hurt by reframing it, giving his own suffering great meaning:

I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout the land of Egypt. (45:4-8)

Joseph tells Pharaoh of his family reunion, and Pharaoh grants permission for him to bring his whole family to Egypt, permanently. Joseph tells his brothers to “tell my father of all my glory in Egypt” when they go to bring him back.

Photo by Paz Arando on Unsplash

So what does this mean for us and our own suffering? I have not guided any civilizations through famine, and my family does not come to me, seeking grain. When I asked my father to admit his past crimes, he refused, failing the test.

For merely speaking the truth and seeking justice, my mother and two of my siblings rejected me, ousting me from the tribe.

But I can look at my life, what I went through, and see that through my suffering as a child, I developed both great empathy and resilience. Empathy has allowed me to understand, and that enables me to help others heal—with my speech and my actions, driven by a heart of grace. And strength has ensured I could remain steadfast through all the other suffering life has brought my way since childhood’s end.

I’ve been rewarded for these efforts, with a loving family of my own to replace my broken birth family, a long, satisfying career, and finally, full health in body and soul.

What I never imagined is that I would also gain a powerful walk with God.

Maybe you will similarly find meaning in what you’ve survived. I hope so.

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Speaking of dream interpretation, you might like my Dreamslippers stories about a family of detectives who solve crime using their ability to slip into other people’s dreams…

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