Pain

 

“Oh, God!....” The words burst from the depths of me as the tears burst from my eyes.  The wife of my youth - the one who had loved me for better and worse, given me three beautiful children, taught me the abc’s of intimacy and love, and shared my greatest hopes and dreams, had breathed her last.  As I looked at her lifeless form, my soul recoiled from the reality – I was alone.  I sobbed and wailed, I felt anger and confusion, but below it all I felt peace and pain.  Peace because for 45 years God has never failed me; pain because Shallena was gone.

So what are we supposed to do with pain?  I grew up thinking that pain was a scourge that would never come near my door.  My life was not perfect, nor perfectly happy, but pain was a stranger that I didn’t want to spend any time in my house.  It was bad, and something to be avoided at any cost. When it ventured near me I had to call it something different, because I didn’t want to be associated with “pain”.

Then I met Shallena – she was so sweet and beautiful that I couldn’t keep her at a safe stolid arm’s length.  She cozied up to me, and came right on inside.  How blessed was I to spend 20 years married to this beautiful person.  But I paid for that intimacy.  The risk of love is pain, and the pain in my life from losing her cannot be denied.  Now I have a new companion - pain.  What is a Christian response to pain?

I don’t know.  I don’t want to pretend to know, but as I have pondered this for awhile, there are a few things I have realized that I thought I would share about the pain of grief.

1    Why do I always want to look good?  I don’t know exactly why I feel instinctively a desire to cover up the pain in my life, but I do.  It’s probably pride in some form or another, but I am far more comfortable with a fake “fine”, than an honest “hurting”.  In reality I am hurting, but I don’t really want to look like I’m hurting.  I suppose if I were to think deeply about it, the instinctive cover-up probably comes from a version of religious culture that would say something like, “Good Christians are always happy because God is good.”  I could probably still agree to most of that, except for one thing – that is not how God relates to sin in this world.

2.      Pain is GODly.  I don’t want to get too far off on this, but when I read the Bible story , I see a hurting God.  Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb, was a Man of sorrows, cried over Jerusalem, bled and died.  The pain in His life is far more apparent in the gospel narratives than even the joy.  Job worshiped in the middle of his pain, Jeremiah said, “Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.” Jeremiah 9:1. Paul and Moses both wished that they could be cut off from God and give up their own eternal life if that could save those they loved (Exodus 32:32, Romans 9:1-3). God Himself, and the godly people in the Bible felt pain.  Pain is a godly response to what sin has done.  This is what the righteous feel when sin is wreaking havoc in the world. There is joy, there is peace, and faith and hope and love, but there is also pain – a lot of it.  Let’s be honest about that.  An enemy has done this.  Every single person reading this knows pain, and that is a godly response to what sin has done.  Its okay to be hurting. As Shallena taught me, “I am thankful for the tears to help let the pain out.”

3.      Pain should be embraced not treated.  Grief hurts.  Like a headache, a fever, a broken arm it hurts, and so we just want it to go away.  But the hurt springs from the depth of our love.  Many feel that to show pain is weakness – I have thought this.  In reality, when we grieve from love, our pain shows strength and power.  To numb the pain would be to numb the love – a path that slowly extinguishes who we are, and leaves only a smoldering shell of our God-given selves behind. 

As Shallena’s health deteriorated over the last year I noticed a very strange desire in myself.  I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t want to drink alcohol.  But three months before she died, I had an almost overwhelming urge to drink.  I couldn’t explain it in any other way than to say that I wanted to numb the pain.  I could see where this story was headed, and I didn’t want to go there.  But to numb the pain at that time would have removed me as a [somewhat] coherent and useful husband and father at a time when my wife and kids needed me the most. It was primetime in my life, and I was looking for a back alley escape. To deny or numb pain will only extend its power over our lives. To embrace it softens us and gives us more love, which is exactly what we need.

So what do we do then with this unwanted feeling?  That’s what I’m sitting here trying to figure out.  I can only point to those who have gone before as an example.  Crying in ashes Job worshiped God with tears.  Though heartbroken, Jeremiah faithfully delivered God’s messages to a stubborn and rebellious people.  Paul – despite rejection after rejection from the people he loved - longed to take the gospel to the Jews, and eventually paid for his love with his life.  Jesus – our example -- as a “man of sorrows”, kept giving every day, healing, teaching, loving, forgiving. He gave everything.  “So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.” 1 Peter 4:19. 

If you are a faithful one who is suffering, I have encouragement for you this Easter weekend. This is a once in an eternal lifetime opportunity to worship God in our pain.  It is easy to praise our Creator when everything is lining up just the way we want it, and it will be impossible to resist praising God when the curse is finally gone.  However, it is a unique experience that we can only have at this point in eternity's clock to worship our Lord with tears and anguish.  Oh how those tears will bind our hearts to Him in a deeper bond than even the angels can know.  This pain that we don’t want is an invitation to a deeper love with our Creator.  Let’s cry and love deeper.  We are His for better or for worse, and He is worthy of our worship in joy and pain.

“So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.” 1 Peter 4:19.