Pain

What is the point of pain? Pain is communication. Whenever you start to feel pain (physical or emotional), your body, your emotions are trying to tell you something. I guess it's our job after the message has been sent to translate what exactly the course calls for. 

When there's heartache, it's just a tender issue. My heart has been in pretty serious pain for about a year now. It was aching before but after a series of event after event after event, the heartache grew bigger and bigger and bigger.

Up to this point, I haven't been real sure what to do with heartache. My mode of operation is typically to hide or avoid or cover it up. You know, stay busy, do something fun, think about something else. All the healthy ways. And I did this because I really didn't know what else to do. I thought maybe if I looked it square in the eyes, I might just fall to pieces and never get back up and that's really not an option whenever someone else depends on you.

With my new understanding that pain is communication, I'm trying a new approach. I'm listening to the pain then asking what it wants me to do about it. What's the next step for making this pain something beautiful and real rather than something stuffed down and shameful? And sometimes the answer is to sit with it for a while. The answer doesn't always come because you ask. That's the sad truth about life. Answers do come but it's not like a fast-food joint for answers. Time is tender and true and trustworthy, so sometimes that's the answer: wait. 

I guess today I'm offering a new way to look at pain and receive from pain, to create a dance with pain. Trusting that it isn't mean or scary but it has something for you. The difficultly comes by choosing not to reach out to receive it. Pain doesn't offer an easy way; it offers a redeemed, renewed, refreshed way, but it's something you have to do together. 

What has amazed me is that when I sit with it, when I let myself feel it, I can feel there's answer down in there; and if I'm just still long enough, I know it will come. 

"Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act." Psalm 37:7

x Keely