For the first time, it sank deep in my soul that His deep wounds are there to catch my tears, and heal the pain(s). My tears don't fall useless in an unseen, unknown abyss, but right into His gaping pain. That means there is nothing He doesn't understand because He's felt it already.
Right in the middle of feeling misunderstood, and judged, I read Exodus and saw the passage in a new light. It talks about their groaning, and how God heard, and SAW! God saw! Our groanings do not go unnoticed, but are seen just like God saw the groaning of the Israelites when they were stumbling around in the wilderness. It's exciting that God sees it all! God gets it even if nobody else understands!
Pain. A lot of 2018 was spent processing hard, ugly, shattering pain from the distant past all through the latest millisecond. Drama doesn't stop for a second. Rare was the week when I didn't cry about something. And like I told a friend, it would be wrong if that weren't my 'I'm doing ok' reality. As in something would be very wrong granted the situations, if I didn't, because it is normal to grieve in these types of circumstances. 2018 included calling 4 different places home, time in a refugee camp, starting 2 new jobs, moving back from Asia, a life changing 2 weeks at Core 2, and then migrating to a new community in the USA. Not in that order.
If you're like I used to be, you gloss over pain, give it a hard kick behind a door that simultaneously got slammed and you stumped off in a different direction, and threw yourself headlong into the next "good project" with an unusual vengeance that really was an emotional release.
Ok, perhaps in the presence of the right people, a bitter sarcastic comment would emerge as a joke, or a slightly more dignified prayer request if that seemed better. Ya'll know what I mean, right?
If that is what you know, then there is a part of the gospel that you've been missing along with me.
The Bible talks about Jesus binding the brokenhearted, and not quenching a smoking flax. God is near to the brokenhearted. Ummm... yeah!! You gotta experience it for yourself to really get it though.
Sometimes God's so close, He literally pours life into your pores. I can testify to God waking me up on a night I fell asleep telling Him I had literally no idea how I'd make it for the 2 or 3 more weeks necessary to finish the assignment He had me on, and I still cry as I remember how close God was that night as He held His burnt out, awakened child, and gave me the necessary energy to go on.
You're going to have to let go, feel the pain, and sit with it enough to invite Him into it. And guess what? He comes every time! It's in the middle of the mess that we really find His grace, His kindness and His healing. It's there we realize the full gospel. Saving grace includes full healing. It's the presence of pain, not it's absence that helps us understand more about what a gift the gospel really is.
People will continue to throw expectations, judgement, and dash out all sorts of spicy, dramatic flavors, but it just matters less after you soak in healing grace. Hah! at them for trying to keep throwing it at you, and Hallelujah! that it doesn't matter as much anymore!
The most amazing people in my humble opinion are those who will enter the mess and sit. They don't judge, but pray for redemption.They can see parts of what you'll eventually realize too, but they let you get to the realization alone.
At some point, it is sharp pain, not pleasure, that stops us from reaching for our masks, go-to relationship styles, and behaviors that simply don't work for us. It breaks us right out of the mold, and brings us the freedom we craved. It brings us to our knees, and shows us the Healer who gives what our hearts longed for before we even realized what we were looking for in the masks.
While I've done my own processing, I've sat on the sidelines of multiple other people's stories as knives, affairs, restraining orders, suicidal thoughts, evictions, accidents, insane 3am phone calls, and other hard drama flashed in front of my eyes. I don't need movies for entertainment, just saying. Ok, maybe once in a while to give me hope for a 'happily ever after.' I'm saying all this to say that even as I opened my own heart to processing more pain, my opportunities to enter into messy situations exponentially grew. The more we become ok with our own junk, the more we can enter into other lives. Whether anything good comes from it or not, involvement in other lives is fulfilling and life changing for us.
So dare to be vulnerable.
Feel the pain.
Ask the Healer to sit with you.
Reach out to a friend for help. I've found they have more free time then I thought.
And go help somebody else.
Having both input and output is healthy.
Repeat in any order.
Life is hard, but the man who said the Joy and pain come on the same track was so right. It's real.
It's just like the night we were at the ER this summer. She was cutting, so the emotional weight was heavy. I parked, and went in with her to meet a off duty medical friend. I heard the helicopter land but didn't give it much thought. Later, they came to tell me that wind from the helicopter that landed on the wrong hospital had damaged my car, coming to the total of 2 grand. At least I could still drive it. After I left in the pouring rain, I noticed a rainbow that seemed to stay right in front of me. I've never seen it so close. It was then that a song from choir jumped into my head. "I've never seen a rainbow till after the rain, I never felt His healing power till I felt the pain..." In the middle of the hardest nights, we find precious moments with God that impact us more then any happy vibes would. The pain was hard, but I felt joy in knowing God was with us.
Laura Story put it down well in the words of the song Blessings. "What if the trials of this life, the rain, the storms, the hardest nights, are Your mercies in disguise?"
The challenge is for each of us to accept the hard things while others appear happy and successful without any obvious pain. It's holding it open handed, and saying, "Yes God, if I could see the whole picture, I'd choose the same story You did for me."
Some say you can always find someone who has it worse then you do. That offers perspective, but it doesn’t acknowledge the validity of your own harsh reality. Don’t discount what you have going on. But don’t make a mountain out of your mole hill, either.
This song by Greg Long was a favorite a super long time ago in a season of waiting, but anyway, new parts stick out as I reflect on the journey of the past few years like this following verse:
Pain.
The Gift nobody longs for,
still it comes.
Leaves us stronger when its gone away.
"Pain. The gift nobody longs for..." Just like the book, 'The Gift of Pain' and this song express, pain really is a gift. It breaks us away from self destruction. It takes us deeper into our walk with God-if we allow it to. It’s really what alerts us to the fact that something isn't right and needs to be fixed. It's in the pain that we find healing, ourselves, and what really matters in life. It's anti- intuitive, but it's truth worth grappling with.
No, I haven't become a glutton for pain, but if I were to write a book, it would have to include a chapter entitled 'Embrace the Pain.'
There's a good chance the road to the next mountain top is through a valley.
Till you see it clearly, just hang on to the verse that "With His stripes, we are healed." Through His pain, we find release, hope, grace, peace and healing beyond belief.
