Steve Leder - More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

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ALSO BY STEVE LEDER

More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul

The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things

Copyright 2017 by Steve Leder

Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast Books: www.raincoast.com Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Cover design: Karla Baker Interior design: Nick C. Welch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Jane Kenyon, Otherwise from Collected Poems. Copyright 2005 by The Estate of Jane Kenyon. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-5312-6

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1st edition, November 2017

Printed in the United States of America

To Betsy, Aaron, and Hannah, who are my life.

CONTENTS

There is a crack in everything.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt, the hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of a reluctant, thunking shovelful of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved. The hell of divorce, of a kid in trouble, of Alzheimers, of addiction, of stress, of aging; of knowing that this year, like any year, may be our last. We all walk through hell. The point is to not come out empty-handed. The point is to make your life worthy of your suffering.

To be human is to suffer, and there is profound power in the suffering we endure if we transform it into a more authentic, meaningful life. Pain is a great teacher, but the lessons do not come easily. I have had people whose spouses had affairs tell me that working through the infidelity brought them a renewed love and a renewed marriage, better and more real than before. I have also had people tell me just the opposite. Do we love each other? one woman asked me rhetorically. Yes. Am I glad we stayed married? Sure. But it will never be the same, and it would have been much better if it had never happened. Whenever Im tempted to dismiss pain as merely a step toward enlightenment, I think about a friend of mine who had cancer three times and said to me from his hospital bed before he died, This much character I dont need!

I do not intend to glorify suffering or suggest that the lessons we learn from pain are somehow worth the cost. But the truth is that most often for most people, real change is the result of real pain. This is a book about real pain in its many forms and the lessons it comes to teach.

As the senior rabbi of one of the worlds largest synagogues, I have witnessed a lot of pain. Its my phone that rings when peoples bodies or lives fall apart. The couch in my office is often drenched with tears, and there are days when an entire box of tissues is gone by late afternoon. I have tried to help thousands of people face their emotional and physical pain, and after 27 years of listening, comforting, showing up, and holding them, I thought I knew a great deal about suffering. The truth is, it wasnt until my own pain brought me to my knees that I could really understand the suffering of those who came to me wounded and afraid.

A few months after a frightening car accident from which I thought I had emerged physically unharmed, I was pulling into the garage at home when a herniated disc touched and burned a nerve in my spine. The pain was paralyzing. I could not step out of the car. The doctor said to call the paramedics. Instead of dialing 911, I used my upper body to drag my lower body inch by inch, writhing and screaming, across the oil-stained garage into the house, where I curled up and wept on the floor, fetal and begging for morphine. Through the seductive opioids, the surgery, more and more and more drugs, the exhaustion, the withdrawal, the depression, the fear, the bitterness of why me? why now? and the healing that followed, I learned a good deal more about pain, both physical and emotional, than a lifetime of witnessing others pain had taught me.

At first, I did not take my pain seriously. I took painkillers, tried to hide the fact that I wasnt sleeping much, kept up my brutal pace at work, and grimaced whenever I stood up. After the surgery a woman who was a Temple trustee at the time called me and said, You broke your back for the synagogue. Her words shot through me. She was wrong from a medical standpoint, but she was right spiritually. I was ground down by years of carrying the suffering of others and the begging, pleasing, encouraging, and cheerleading that fundraising required when others refused to believe. So what did I do just 10 days after spinal surgery? I allowed a doctor to shoot me up so that I could walk back out onto the stage and play my part.