Pain

Pain. Who likes pain? There are those who profess to like pain. They endure pain like a badge of honor and talk of pain as though it is nothing more than a minor annoyance. But if you were to strip away all the facade what would you really find? Well, without their willingness to work through the pain one can never be sure what is truly behind it all, but I have an idea it began a long time ago.

In my life pain has been a staple. It was my childhood companion, it followed me into my tween and teen years. It accompanied me into my first marriage and all though the childhoods of my children. It was a weed rooted deep into my soul, blooming and throwing its many seeds into the lives of the others that surround me. I cannot really remember the beginnings of it, what the circumstances that surrounded it's inception, but most likely I was in the line of fire of another person's seed pod of pain.

What I have learned about pain is that no matter how much of it I endure, there is always more to come. When I think that life is going well and there are just rainbows and unicorns playing in my field of dreams, you can bet pain is there lurking around with his buddy despair just waiting to prick my balloon and rain all over my parade. Now if you were thinking... whew... that sure is a lot of idiomatic expressions all in one sentence... (I simply cannot help it... I love them to be sure!) and you are now so depressed that you cannot imagine how you will manage your life today... you now understand what it is like to feel pain. There is some silver left yet in the cloud! ( You guessed it...another idiom). With pain comes understanding. With understanding comes action.

What can you do about pain? Is there anything at all? First, you need to understand what happened to bring you such pain. This is the hard part. Most people do not really want to revisit the events that brought the pain in the first place. They start down the path, then they get a glimpse of what it was and then they run like crazy away from it again leaving the path  to sit there waiting for another brave moment in time. It is the first step to getting through to face your pain in the fullness of it. Once you have an understanding of pain and what happened to bring you so much of it, then it's time for action. You now know what caused the pain so the obvious action is.... stop doing what causes pain. Easier said then done. I know. Another simple yet crazy hard action... let the pain go. Quit playing with pain. Quit dating pain. Quit living with pain.

When I am in pain, and I am a normal human and actually this blog today is for me, I try to do all that I mentioned above. I examine my pain, I understand what brought me to the pain and then I do all that I can to get rid of it and stop whatever I am involved in that brings me pain. But before any of this can happen, I get on my knees and I offer up the yucky mess that pain has brought into my life to my Abba Daddy, my Father God. I tell him how much I hate what is happening. I ask for help from Him, and if I am at all intelligent, I wait for Him to ease my pain. I am not always successful in this and sometimes I sneak right back up when I think He might not be looking and I pull that pain right out of His hands. He is a gentle Father and so He lets me have it back if I am truly not ready to give it up to Him. But if I want real relief I let it go and let Him fling it "as far as the east is from the west". So, what about you? Do you want relief from your pain? Or do you wish to keep playing in the mud of life?

Shannon Faulkner