The cross does not dismiss suffering, nor does it merely repurpose it for self-improvement. Instead, it transforms suffering by situating it within a redemptive story that neither denies pain nor lets it be the central character. The cross is not the measuring stick by which all suffering must be compared, but the place where all suffering is gathered, borne, and ultimately redeemed.

I remember the dissonance I felt when I was invited to join a prayer meeting organized by Wheaton’s Politics and International Relations Department soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Masked and socially distanced, we gathered in a calm setting to pray for the people of Ukraine—huddled in basements and subways as Russia stunned the world with its brutal offensive. The peaceful normalcy of that prayer meeting, even with heartfelt concern for the Ukrainian people, collided with the new realities of my homeland. The contrast was unsettling: the measures we could take to ensure our own safety felt almost extravagant compared to the chaos and panic unfolding in Ukraine.

The expatriate guilt—a pervasive awareness of my security against the collective suffering of the Ukrainian people—has been disorienting. It has left me questioning my place and role in a world so starkly divided by contrasts. This tension resurfaces repeatedly, stemming from a vacillation between two kinds of safety: the psychological safety emphasized in higher education and the rudimentary physical safety that many around the world, most personally in Ukraine, are still fighting to secure. How do I remain faithfully present to the immediate realities of my context (Romans 12:15) while holding space for the suffering that feels, in my heart, more urgent and pressing?

Suffering itself imposes a sorting, a separation, which reminds me of something my mom once shared when she was confronted with a serious illness. She said she suddenly felt as if the world became divided—one for the healthy and one for the sick, a place the healthy could not truly enter, even if they were full of compassion. Suffering, she helped me realize, simultaneously connects and alienates. It binds us to others through shared humanity and limited empathy, yet it also isolates us when our pain feels incomprehensible to those around us. C.S. Lewis, reflecting on the loss of his mother as a nine-year-old boy, described the experience as “alien and menacing,” capturing the profound disconnection suffering can create.1

Earlier in the war, my friend, who lives in the beautiful port city of Odessa—continuously targeted by Russian shelling and airstrikes—sent me a picture of her two daughters, then ages 5 and 3, nestled for bedtime in the trunk of her car. Every night, she took her girls to the underground parking garage. In the picture, the older daughter, tucked in a blanket with a classic Mickey Mouse pattern, smiles trustingly, her gaze fixed on her mother, who took the photo—and, in that way, looking straight at me. Later that week, a student emailed me requesting an absence from a class focused on mental health issues among college students, explaining that the topic felt too heavy for her. I excused her absence and offered to meet in my office, but that little girl’s smile, that gaze, that Mickey Mouse blanket stayed with me—as it still does, almost three years later—like a veil, making it hard to fully engage in frequent conversations about safety for our students and colleagues.

These conversations are often filled with language that evokes suffering—trauma, trigger, harm, violence, abuse, grief, and others—which leaves me wondering: what words remain to capture the raw impact of war, of death itself? As I wrestle with whether this seeming inflation of language risks trivializing the very suffering it seeks to address—and occasionally voice my struggle—I risk coming across as unsympathetic and even dismissive.

The complexity of this internal conflict finds a counterpoint in the clarity of my experience as a mother. In motherhood, presence takes precedence over perspective.

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