Carrying Pain Well
Instinctually our knee-jerk response to pain is destructive, either ‘fight or flight’ as they say, and sometimes both. Fear and anger can quickly turn into rage or into a slow uncontrollable tsunami that finally sweeps all life away, ranging far from its point of origin. Who is able to stand in its path? Who is capable of stopping it from building within? We seem powerless to deal with the strength of pain & suffering, yet there is hope, but only one. This one hope comes from Jesus of Nazareth, and then only after we’ve come to repentance.
We all habitually develop plans to manage pain. Some plans include a highly motivated attempt to avoid suffering altogether. We also try to make the least possible mistakes, to dodge the consequences. We search for that illusive magic-path that will eliminate the fallout of pain. Or, like children we impulsively appease any feeling of discomfort with a new novelty or experience. Sometimes, we even use the experience of suffering to meet our own needs: we develop a dramatic ranking system that places us in an impressive light over others, to fill our need for self-worth. We also nobly advocate for those we’ve come into contact with who are suffering, to impress on others we’re in-the-know. And of course there are those who feel the management of pain is a personality issue: where some can handle it, while others can’t. Or there are those who simply drug themselves into oblivion with busyness, recreation and/or drugs & alcohol. The history of man, family traditions and our own personal experience is filled with attempts like these, which utterly fail.
All too often our pain is like a loose cannon crashing about at random wreaking havoc, destroying relationships and adding to the pendulum of our continual ache. Our inability to handle pain increases the suffering of others and their mismanagement increases ours. This causes us all to cycle round and round in a swirling cauldron of injury, even generation after generation. On the positive side, when someone learns how to carry their pain well, they have the same lasting influence, to everyone’s benefit. God offers us the ability to carry our pain in a way that doesn’t destroy us or those around us. As we practice, our pain slowly becomes manageable because his character begins to dominate it. Suffering is as much a part of our lives as breathing. And just as important as breathing, is our ability to carry it well.
There are obviously different kinds of pain & suffering, running the gamut from a childish boredom to the loss of a child, or having a cold to the wasting away with a terminally-painful disease, or wondering if you’re going to lose your job to experiencing a holocaust. From the Christian point of view, from the view of the repentant, pain & suffering are divided into two areas. The one type that gets the least attention in the Scriptures is the pain & suffering we experience circumstantially, or externally. For the unrepentant, this is the most important kind of pain & suffering, our old nature wants it to be the primary focus, but the kingdom of God sets circumstance in the margin. Our old nature and the media tend to hype this external form of suffering. We hype it trying to validate it, they hype it to make money. Both are attempts to deal with it.
The other type of suffering, getting the most focus in the Scriptures, is the agony we encounter within. This suffering occurs as we resist and wage war against our old nature. This trumps the former in the economy of the Christian life. It’s the struggle that goes on through all circumstances and through all cultures, piercing our every moment, our every thought, turning life into a veritable battle ground where inches won and lost dictate one’s future. It doesn’t matter if you live in New York, Kathmandu or Sao Paulo, if you’ve come to repentance this is our common suffering in the family of God, though our circumstances differ. The stress and courage of fighting this fight far out-weighs the drama and sensationalism of circumstantial suffering. In any culture, in every repentant life, this internal war rages-on.
In this war we have at least three types of pain & suffering accompanied by the God-given ability to carry them. First, we have suffering generated from the past, secondly, suffering experienced in the present and thirdly, suffering threatened by the future. Each one is handled and carried individually. The pain of the past is commonly called ‘baggage’. It’s a consequential pain resulting from being victimized and exploited. Or, it may occur because of past decisions poorly chosen, debilitating us. Pain from the past can also come through circumstances that were beyond our control. All of these create a weight we have to carry the rest of our lives. It’s not unusual to think life is now ruined because of what’s happened. But that’s not true. This side of repentance, God has promised to use our pain as a context for our character development. It’s no longer harmful to us, but filtered by him, grist-for-the-mill of our lives. He will not allow the consequences of our past to run unchecked, but uses them in the process of making us like him-self.
How do we carry the pain of our past? Forgiveness is an essential tool. Consider those who have harmed you: God leads us to the place where we can process forgiveness for them and develop freedom from the bitterness that can destroy us. As we trust him and forgive them, we are forgiven as well and begin to heal. Confession is also a tool for handling the past. Confession isn’t just saying ‘sorry’ when we got caught, but the itemizing of what we have done to him and others. It’s understanding exactly how we’ve offended him and then siding with him. And when it comes to circumstances we’ve had no control over, we have to trust that he will only allow what we can handle.
The pain of the present is something entirely different. For the repentant, God has said that he will put us into a training program and that program will produce pain & suffering. Though the old saying, “God accepts you where you are” is very true, we have to remember that he is going to take us from ‘where we are’ to make us like him-self. That process takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Discipline isn’t pleasant at the moment, but it will begin to pay huge dividends in time. Our training pain is an investment. Typically our old nature, like a child, wants only instant gratification and to feel good now, it wants nothing to do with future investment. So, this process of development has a great deal of resistance from within. To carry this training pain, we have to hold onto a view of our future which motivates us to endure and be patient. Knowing a harvest is on the way, we trust God that he will be faithful in his work. We trust him because we’ve experienced a track record with him, one that shows his faithfulness.
Endurance has to do with the circumstances we encounter in this training, circumstances that temper the metal of our lives making us able to take more and more strain. He allows these circumstances to develop slowly and steadily so that we are strengthened and not broken. He engineers situations that are a custom-fit for each of us, individually. We need to hang in there, not grow weary, but stick to our training no matter how we feel at the moment. On the other hand, patience has to do with relationships, where people fail us or continue to hurt us. This patience isn’t the gazing-down kind of superiority that waits for others to grow-up, but is a form of compassion wanting them to know him and come to healing as well. It’s a patience that gives them a chance to break their cycles. Trust, endurance and patience are the tools for carrying our training pain.
The pain that threatens our future is quite different from the others. Both the present and past have a sense of reality, the future is imaginary. That doesn’t mean that it’s made-up, only that it’s in our imagination. The imagined-possibility of future pain may be quite realistic, it just hasn’t happened yet. Worry is the normal response to this ‘imagining’. We are commanded not to worry. That’s pretty straight forward. Worry is very tenacious and must be replaced with trust. Like bitterness, worry will destroy one’s life. God has gone ahead of us and re-created our path so that when we get into the future, everything will be ready for our experience of training. But for the moment, as we look to the future and feel threatened, we must demand a practice of trust and interaction with him. We can find comfort and refuge in this interaction, sitting on his lap, rocked by him. To lean against his chest is re-creation for us. Trust and interaction are the answers to our pain in the future, not a feeling of trust and interaction, but actually trusting and interacting.
If you notice, trust is consistent through all three types of suffering for the repentant Christian. Trust, forgiveness, confession, endurance and patience all play a part in our ability to carry pain well. Sometimes you hear people trying to sell the Gospel under the guise that it will eliminate your pain. That isn’t true. Though it will eliminate un-fulfillment, our suffering in training is more poignant than anything we’ve ever experienced before. The up-side is that God has promised us the ability to carry this new suffering in a healthy way. As we learn to carry it, this new pain & suffering brings an eternal outcome of change and joy. Remember, it was the same with the Lord Jesus, “…for the joy set before him, he endured the cross”. If that is the pattern of his life, then it will be the standard for ours. May you be able to carry your pain well and slowly enter into the joy of your Master.
Some Scriptures to consider:
Genesis 3 Ruth 1 The book of Job Romans 5:1-11 1 Peter 4:12-19
Romans 8:18-39 2 Corinthians 4: 7-18 Hebrews 10:32-39
Instinctually our knee-jerk response to pain is destructive, either ‘fight or flight’ as they say, and sometimes both. Fear and anger can quickly turn into rage or into a slow uncontrollable tsunami that finally sweeps all life away, ranging far from its point of origin. Who is able to stand in its path? Who is capable of stopping it from building within? We seem powerless to deal with the strength of pain & suffering, yet there is hope, but only one. This one hope comes from Jesus of Nazareth, and then only after we’ve come to repentance.
We all habitually develop plans to manage pain. Some plans include a highly motivated attempt to avoid suffering altogether. We also try to make the least possible mistakes, to dodge the consequences. We search for that illusive magic-path that will eliminate the fallout of pain. Or, like children we impulsively appease any feeling of discomfort with a new novelty or experience. Sometimes, we even use the experience of suffering to meet our own needs: we develop a dramatic ranking system that places us in an impressive light over others, to fill our need for self-worth. We also nobly advocate for those we’ve come into contact with who are suffering, to impress on others we’re in-the-know. And of course there are those who feel the management of pain is a personality issue: where some can handle it, while others can’t. Or there are those who simply drug themselves into oblivion with busyness, recreation and/or drugs & alcohol. The history of man, family traditions and our own personal experience is filled with attempts like these, which utterly fail.
All too often our pain is like a loose cannon crashing about at random wreaking havoc, destroying relationships and adding to the pendulum of our continual ache. Our inability to handle pain increases the suffering of others and their mismanagement increases ours. This causes us all to cycle round and round in a swirling cauldron of injury, even generation after generation. On the positive side, when someone learns how to carry their pain well, they have the same lasting influence, to everyone’s benefit. God offers us the ability to carry our pain in a way that doesn’t destroy us or those around us. As we practice, our pain slowly becomes manageable because his character begins to dominate it. Suffering is as much a part of our lives as breathing. And just as important as breathing, is our ability to carry it well.
There are obviously different kinds of pain & suffering, running the gamut from a childish boredom to the loss of a child, or having a cold to the wasting away with a terminally-painful disease, or wondering if you’re going to lose your job to experiencing a holocaust. From the Christian point of view, from the view of the repentant, pain & suffering are divided into two areas. The one type that gets the least attention in the Scriptures is the pain & suffering we experience circumstantially, or externally. For the unrepentant, this is the most important kind of pain & suffering, our old nature wants it to be the primary focus, but the kingdom of God sets circumstance in the margin. Our old nature and the media tend to hype this external form of suffering. We hype it trying to validate it, they hype it to make money. Both are attempts to deal with it.
The other type of suffering, getting the most focus in the Scriptures, is the agony we encounter within. This suffering occurs as we resist and wage war against our old nature. This trumps the former in the economy of the Christian life. It’s the struggle that goes on through all circumstances and through all cultures, piercing our every moment, our every thought, turning life into a veritable battle ground where inches won and lost dictate one’s future. It doesn’t matter if you live in New York, Kathmandu or Sao Paulo, if you’ve come to repentance this is our common suffering in the family of God, though our circumstances differ. The stress and courage of fighting this fight far out-weighs the drama and sensationalism of circumstantial suffering. In any culture, in every repentant life, this internal war rages-on.
In this war we have at least three types of pain & suffering accompanied by the God-given ability to carry them. First, we have suffering generated from the past, secondly, suffering experienced in the present and thirdly, suffering threatened by the future. Each one is handled and carried individually. The pain of the past is commonly called ‘baggage’. It’s a consequential pain resulting from being victimized and exploited. Or, it may occur because of past decisions poorly chosen, debilitating us. Pain from the past can also come through circumstances that were beyond our control. All of these create a weight we have to carry the rest of our lives. It’s not unusual to think life is now ruined because of what’s happened. But that’s not true. This side of repentance, God has promised to use our pain as a context for our character development. It’s no longer harmful to us, but filtered by him, grist-for-the-mill of our lives. He will not allow the consequences of our past to run unchecked, but uses them in the process of making us like him-self.
How do we carry the pain of our past? Forgiveness is an essential tool. Consider those who have harmed you: God leads us to the place where we can process forgiveness for them and develop freedom from the bitterness that can destroy us. As we trust him and forgive them, we are forgiven as well and begin to heal. Confession is also a tool for handling the past. Confession isn’t just saying ‘sorry’ when we got caught, but the itemizing of what we have done to him and others. It’s understanding exactly how we’ve offended him and then siding with him. And when it comes to circumstances we’ve had no control over, we have to trust that he will only allow what we can handle.
The pain of the present is something entirely different. For the repentant, God has said that he will put us into a training program and that program will produce pain & suffering. Though the old saying, “God accepts you where you are” is very true, we have to remember that he is going to take us from ‘where we are’ to make us like him-self. That process takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Discipline isn’t pleasant at the moment, but it will begin to pay huge dividends in time. Our training pain is an investment. Typically our old nature, like a child, wants only instant gratification and to feel good now, it wants nothing to do with future investment. So, this process of development has a great deal of resistance from within. To carry this training pain, we have to hold onto a view of our future which motivates us to endure and be patient. Knowing a harvest is on the way, we trust God that he will be faithful in his work. We trust him because we’ve experienced a track record with him, one that shows his faithfulness.
Endurance has to do with the circumstances we encounter in this training, circumstances that temper the metal of our lives making us able to take more and more strain. He allows these circumstances to develop slowly and steadily so that we are strengthened and not broken. He engineers situations that are a custom-fit for each of us, individually. We need to hang in there, not grow weary, but stick to our training no matter how we feel at the moment. On the other hand, patience has to do with relationships, where people fail us or continue to hurt us. This patience isn’t the gazing-down kind of superiority that waits for others to grow-up, but is a form of compassion wanting them to know him and come to healing as well. It’s a patience that gives them a chance to break their cycles. Trust, endurance and patience are the tools for carrying our training pain.
The pain that threatens our future is quite different from the others. Both the present and past have a sense of reality, the future is imaginary. That doesn’t mean that it’s made-up, only that it’s in our imagination. The imagined-possibility of future pain may be quite realistic, it just hasn’t happened yet. Worry is the normal response to this ‘imagining’. We are commanded not to worry. That’s pretty straight forward. Worry is very tenacious and must be replaced with trust. Like bitterness, worry will destroy one’s life. God has gone ahead of us and re-created our path so that when we get into the future, everything will be ready for our experience of training. But for the moment, as we look to the future and feel threatened, we must demand a practice of trust and interaction with him. We can find comfort and refuge in this interaction, sitting on his lap, rocked by him. To lean against his chest is re-creation for us. Trust and interaction are the answers to our pain in the future, not a feeling of trust and interaction, but actually trusting and interacting.
If you notice, trust is consistent through all three types of suffering for the repentant Christian. Trust, forgiveness, confession, endurance and patience all play a part in our ability to carry pain well. Sometimes you hear people trying to sell the Gospel under the guise that it will eliminate your pain. That isn’t true. Though it will eliminate un-fulfillment, our suffering in training is more poignant than anything we’ve ever experienced before. The up-side is that God has promised us the ability to carry this new suffering in a healthy way. As we learn to carry it, this new pain & suffering brings an eternal outcome of change and joy. Remember, it was the same with the Lord Jesus, “…for the joy set before him, he endured the cross”. If that is the pattern of his life, then it will be the standard for ours. May you be able to carry your pain well and slowly enter into the joy of your Master.
Some Scriptures to consider:
Genesis 3 Ruth 1 The book of Job Romans 5:1-11 1 Peter 4:12-19
Romans 8:18-39 2 Corinthians 4: 7-18 Hebrews 10:32-39