I spoke earlier about some painful periods in my life and when I first began to recognize that pain might have some purpose behind it. Along with my faith in God comes a belief that there is intelligent design throughout the world, especially within the human body. That would suggest that God's design for humans to have a system intended to warn a person of pain was intentional and meant to assist with the goal of that human body- living as long as possible.
This sounds pretty obvious, but if you really try to get your head around this concept, the concept that pain is something to be thankful for, that pain is a tool that is just as vital to our survival as oxygen, it can be a wild trip.
Some of my favorite verses in the Bible are from James 1:2-4 and it says, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." This is a similar thought as considering physical and emotional pain to be a useful and vital part of our existence which should make us glad. Those trials are making you strong. That pain is teaching you. Teaching you which way to go, what to do, what is worth your effort.
When we first start to experience pain in our young lives, we experience it in a very concrete way. Your finger gets stuck in a door, you avoid the door. The cat hisses at you when you grab her tail so you run in the opposite direction. As our interaction with the world around us progresses and thus our processing of incoming information develops past the concrete level, it is important that our response to painful or unpleasant experiences evolve as well. Often it doesn't seem to work that way. We continue to run from pain or avoid unpleasant things despite understanding that things probably are a bit more complicated than we first understood. For example, when the cat hisses for grabbing her tail, we understand we can try again another day and avoid tugging. We may continue to maneuver around doors carefully, but we can reason within our minds why we got our finger stuck and avoid that behavior. We can evolve and develop a learned response based on these natural painful lessons.
I think some of the best lessons are found when we face the challenge of leaning in to the pain when we get negative feedback in our lives. It takes a great amount of bravery to do this, so I'm not suggesting one takes on this challenge lightly. The stakes are larger if we lean in to the pain, right? If we have been betrayed by a lover in the past, trusting a new person means we may be betrayed again. Trying to get a promotion may mean we don't get it and face failure and humiliation when our peers find out. There are very large consequences that can truly negatively impact our lives if we face our fears. There is no point in denying or minimizing that reality.
Still, despite that risk, avoiding the pain instead of leaning in to it can cost us so much more. A hardness can creep around the heart, bitterness can fill the soul and flavor all of our interactions. The air on a spring day no longer smells as sweet. The future seems dark and scary due to all of the unknowns that lie before us. Life becomes weighty and cumbersome to maneuver. It is human nature to begin creating accommodations to avoid possible painful or uncomfortable situations and we see this in the mental health field almost constantly. This avoidance and compensation can develop in to panic disorder, agoraphobia, severe depression, hoarding behavior, substance abuse and so many other harmful and even life-threatening issues.
When I am working with someone who has a series of well-developed behavioral preoccupations that have been created to avoid the possibility of pain, I often ask them one challenging question: If they took all of the energy they are using to avoid life and directed it towards facing the thing they are fearful of, can they imagine what amazing things they might be able to accomplish?
You see, the days are going to pass regardless of how we spend them. If we lean in to the pain and face those fears, we may fall. We can get up again and move forward. We may fall again. Still, each time we rise again and press forward, we become stronger, we last longer between failures, we persevere and we become prepared for the greatest experience of life for which our bodies are designed.
I've heard it said that when we die, we are meant to have exhausted our capacity. Our bodies should be worn and used, like the tools they are, to experience this life that has been set out before us. I think that includes our emotions as well. What might your pain be trying to teach you? What beauty might lie just past that pain you have been avoiding? I think you are worth finding out. I think we all are.
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