According to Wikipedia:

Suffering, or pain in this sense, is a basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm in an individual.

• Suffering may be called physical or mental, depending on whether it is linked primarily to a body process or a mind process. Examples of physical suffering are pain (as a sensation), nausea, breathlessness, and itching.  Examples of mental suffering are anxiety, grief, hatred, and boredom.
• The intensity of suffering comes in all degrees, from the triflingly mild to the unspeakably insufferable. Factors of duration and frequency of occurrence are often considered along with that of intensity.
• People’s attitudes toward a suffering may vary hugely according to how much they deem it as light or severe, avoidable or unavoidable, useful or useless, of little or of great consequence, deserved or undeserved, chosen or unwanted, acceptable or unacceptable.
• The words pain and suffering can be confusing and may require careful handling. (1) Sometimes they are synonyms and interchangeable. (2) Sometimes they are used in contradistinction to one another: e.g. “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”, or “pain is physical, suffering is mental”. (3) Sometimes one word refers to a variety of that to which the other refers: e.g. “pain is physical suffering”, or “suffering is severe physical or mental pain”. (4) Sometimes yet, people use them in another fashion.

All sentient beings suffer during their lives, in diverse manners, and often dramatically. No field of human activity deals with the whole subject of suffering, but many are concerned with its nature and processes, its origin and causes, its meaning and significance, its related personal, social, and cultural behaviors, its remedies, management, and uses.

Snubbing the nausea, Irene and her sisters Carmen and Jane were out early and met with Jocelyn, seizing the morning for a shopping spree until mid afternoon!!  The cool fog rolled in this afternoon but it didn’t thwart the enthusiasm and energy accompanying the time that Irene experienced with Jocelyn and her sisters.

Shirley Churchill spent 2 hours with Irene working on physiology issues related to the hope of waking the kidneys up!  I was able to spend quality time with Shirley’s husband, Ken, at Starbucks down the hill from our home.

We remain hopeful that Irene’s kidney function will return and are very grateful for the Churchill’s investment in our lives.  It is humbling to see the Body of Christ manifesting His Presence through so many around us.

Reed Jolley also came by the house and visited before returning to Santa Barbara.  Reed spent the entire weekend at Mount Hermon speaking on the momentous and relevant issue of “suffering”.  It’s a difficult topic that most of us want to avoid.  I hope to obtain the deeply meaningful and multiple messages in a digital format and host them on Irene’s website.

Irene is “suffering” in “real time”, although she’s determined to overcome the challenge and experience the fullness of God’s Presence in the midst of her JOURNEY OF FAITH.  She’s experiencing somewhat of a reprieve from the recent intense season and to that we’re grateful …. hopefully she will never again return to those daring days.

Caminando con Fé
Dave