Listening to Pain...
One is only able to live, is she listens to her pain. I have to stop myself and think about that statement to understand fully what it means.
Have you heard about people who have some disorder with their nervous system and, as a result, can't feel pain? I forget what the disease/disorder is called. I watched a special about it on TV a few times. While at first, it sounds almost glorious, especially to a kid like me who was so terrified of needles she once peed on herself right before the doctor gave her a shot. (And I don't mean when I was like 4 years old. I mean when I was around 9 years old). It sounds nice that we could have a natural anesthetic to our body so that we didn't feel the scalpel. But what I learned from watching these TV specials and then inquiring about this disease from Mom, (the pediatric nurse), is that these people find themselves in RIDICULOUSLY life threatening situations CONSTANTLY because they don't feel the tiny bits of pain that steer them away from said situations.
People with this disorder can't sense ''heat'' being TOO hot when they are close to a candle, and so they don't notice they may be too near until their entire arm is in flames. These people won't realize they are walking on glass, and thus continue stepping with both feet and end up with countless shards pressed into their feet because they continue walking afterward, not noticing that they stepped into glass and are bleeding. They don't feel initial pain, and that is DANGEROUS for them because it can keep them from getting immediate treatment! In the medical world, we understand pain. Pain is designed as an INDICATOR that something is wrong that NEEDS to be made right. Literally, that is like the primary medical purpose of pain, to be used as an indicator. Praise God I feel pain, it directly saves my life.
Bearing that in mind, I pull back a bit, however, and I apply the principle to MORE than just the physical example of say.... getting bitten by a spider or a snake and thus knowing I need some type of antibiotic immediately in order to save my life and ward off infection. I pull back, and I apply broadly this idea of pain as an indicator and NEEDED for example to my mental health, spiritual health, emotional health. And then I realize just how dangerously I have lived my life when I have sought to quench, block, numb, or subdue such types of pain during different periods of my life instead of letting them key me into the fact THAT SOMETHING was wrong. Instead of running away from these types of pains, I could have listened to them, and perhaps had fixed or healed whatever was causing the pain. Typically however, the pain seemed too complicated, and spiritual, mental, and emotional ''healing'' was not looked upon as something needed as normally and as casually as physical healing was needed. So pride also played a role I'm sure... Who wants to appear as utterly broken as they may actually feel? Nonetheless, pain always points to something
Around 12 years ago, I went through a devastating loss in my life. It was a loss that included loss of dreams, hopes, wishes, and plans for myself as well as for someone who I cared about a tremendous amount. The loss was concrete. I couldn't ''undo'' it. There was no way around it, outside of a miracle of God. And actually, as UNLIKELY as it was that God would provide that type of miracle, THAT is precisely what I clung to at first. At first, I believed that miracle was GOING to happen. I saw evidence that it was going to happen on almost a daily basis. I had to, because I could not yet face the cold reality of what this loss meant to me and others. And I couldn't grapple with what not having what I wanted immediately when I wanted it. With the perspective of 12 more years under my belt, I understand now that although the loss was ridiculously grave, the amount of pain and disjointedness I experienced was not in direct correlation to that ONE specific loss, however. Rather, I was so completely displaced because I had, at that time, a 23 year history FILLED with losses that I had not been able to understand or to grieve. I had no frame or structure with which to really encounter loss, no theology to make sense of it. My early church had failed me in that regard, and although my relationship with God was growing at a tremendous rate, I simply had not yet had time and experience and teaching to construct a theology that I could live out in regard to handling such a loss and such an ushering into the reality of the fallen world.
So the loss I experienced at 23 did not just affect me because of everything that it implied in and of itself. The loss affected me because of all the PREVIOUS losses in my life that were garnered by being raised in an environment of physical, emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse. I had not yet been able to work through those losses to any fair degree; therefore, a new loss, of such gravity, had no where to go. In all honesty, it would have been good for me then to have sought some type of inpatient therapy and care at this time probably. I was pretty broken. I don't even say that in a self-deprecation type of way. I just say it realistically. I grew up in a lot of abuse. I hadn't worked through it, and a lot more crap just fell on me. I needed some default structure for how to encounter the world. I was flying blind. Stopping and getting some self-care would have been a good idea. But I didn't know to do that, or how.
God, however, is the great master creator of miracles. He took me in as His patient. God knew the deep care I needed, and He had a plan for my life, albeit one that would take a while to unfold and would require many more disappointments and times of confusion and challenge. Still, the plans He'd lead me into would address these issues and eventually create in me a structure through which to walk through the world.
So while I was dis-proportionally being destroyed at 23 and acting out in various ways as a result of it, God did start working and directing, teaching and pulling out the faulty life views and replacing them. He bent and shaped me like clay. Tore out parts. Threw things in. Nonetheless, it ONLY happened because I listened to my pain. AND WHAT'S MORE, I wasn't even LISTENING TO IT IN IT'S ENTIRETY AT THE TIME. Like I said, if I had really listened to it in it's entirety, I would have needed some type of sedation and actual inpatient therapy to get back on my feet probably. Instead, I blocked out a large degree of my pain, compartmentalized it, said I'd deal with it later, albeit not always saying that on a conscious level.
The truth is, 12 years later, I am still working it all out because God, in His mercy, has allowed me to feel the pain, but slowly. He has taken me through it bit by bit by bit. I imagine I have years to go, if God has years more for me to live. But he has hemmed me in to where eventually I gave in, each time, and listened to each piece of pain.
There were times, however, that I used sin to completely numb out my pain, times when I was just tired of all the pain and didn't know how to go on with God anymore. And God allowed me. He allowed me time where I ran, went through the motions of life, but wasn't really meeting with Him or listening to my pain. I was concentrating on how to control my life to make it something that would make me ''happy.'' Such a game plan never really played out well though. None of my ways ever HEALED my pain, and in the end, I never found ''happiness'' for longer than a few moments. And even then, it was hard to enjoy the happiness because I was having to work so hard to make sure it lasted. So sin numbed pain, kept it at bay, and then also created more pain, but it certainly wasn't medicine. The needed medicine for the pain was letting God heal it, and that would require listening to the pain fully and feeling it fully, paying very close attention to it. But like I said, that has taken quite some time.
But the honest truth is, until I listened to all the pain, it didn't matter what happened in life, I was never going to be content, at peace, or by any standard ''happy.'' I was always going to be kept down and somehow living a lie because I would be deceitfully keeping at bay some pain while propping up my charade of life...
God has hemmed me in. God has forced my hand, so to speak, so that I would, in His RIGHT and perfect timing, feel the pain. He didn't have me feel it when I was not in a place where I could get the right help. He didn't just fling me out. He has nurtured me. He allowed me to go on living in sin for a long time, numbing my pain. He continued allowing me to live for awhile just oblivious, but slowly, through the past 10 years, he has brought out all the pain. Most recently, it has culminated. In the past year, I have finally started to open my eyes to the reality of just what was going on in my life, the lies I'd been telling myself, the deceptive ways I'd been living my life to avoid the pain of the past. God has really opened my eyes to this dramatically. It has been harrowing, obviously, but it has also been healing.
Interestingly enough, the loss I endured 12 years ago, the one that was so grave, God recently recently brought to mind again. It is a bit strange, to be recalling it now and understanding everything that happened with the wisdom of hindsight, but at the same time, it is right, and it is good. This loss was a part of my life as much as my current circumstances: my job, my husband, my child, are a part of my life. This loss was engineered for me. It wasn't haphazard. The people involved in this loss, the specifics of it, were all uniquely part of my story, and I was a part of theirs. I didn't just stumble into it all. So although I have avoided it for a long time, I am actually strangely glad to be remembering it all now. There is something authentic and real about it. And there is something that even makes my current circumstances in life feel as if they come to a more complete circle as I go back in time and embrace this loss.
At the same time, I have this new loss of my second child, and I can't help but think that God has been prepping me and teaching me how to handle loss, endure loss, and communicate with loss, for a while now. This loss, as well, was not haphazard. It was purposeful. My child's life has a purpose, and it is fulfilling that purpose as I speak...
I had to wake up. I had to be undeceived. God's aim at making me into Himself required that I stop lying to myself and living a life that was in any part a facade. My life had to be completely real. And to be real, I had to deal with every single illness and disjointed part of my entire emotional and mental and spiritual make-up. And to do that, I had to first feel pain, pain that indicated to me what was not right and what needed to be made right.
The pain has pointed me to where the injuries were, and no longer am I dulling myself to the sensation of the pain. Rather, I am paying close attention to it, and learning how to do wound care. Things are being made right. What was out of place, is being redeemed. I do not mean ''fixed'' as to erase all record of the out-of-place period. No. There are some serious scars being formed, but my God, oh my dear God, they are beautiful and honest and RICH scars. Thank You God. The world does not think scars are beautiful, but scars are incredible.
I have a feeling that I will come back to this topic of pain a bit more, but for now, I need to close. I challenge my future self, however, when I come back and reread this blog in years to come, "LISTEN TO YOUR PAIN MEGIN!" It is an indicator. And God is the great physician. People say that line all the time in talking about God healing people from diseases and stuff. But I don't mean it in a cheesy way!!! I mean God is our Creator, our Constructor. He intricately created us, and only He can put that which is out of joint back into place... In my pain, IN YOUR PAIN ... FUTURE MEGINLEA ... God is speaking. Will you listen?
Short List of when Jesus listened to His pain, heart, or emotions:
1. When Lazarus died.
2. When He was praying in Gethsemane.
3. When He would leave the disciples and go off to pray alone with the Father.
4. When He stayed behind to preach in the temple when He was a young boy.
5. When He spoke from the cross.
6. When He told Peter about how he would deny Him.
7. When He predicted Judas' betrayal.
8. When He expressed His anger in the temple.
9. When He cried and prayed over Jerusalem.
One of my FAVORITE Shane and Shane songs that just HAPPENS to talk about pain... with some Piper thrown in there for the heart wrenching emotional pull!
Also, last note. Random: There is a line in this song that says "Though tonight I'm crying out," BUT for the longest time, I always thought they were singing "For the mother crying out..." So yeah, once I realized they weren't singing that, I corrected myself. HOWEVER, in my current circumstance, I can't help but think it is almost like there is a version of the song in my head that is written specifically for me.... and anyone else who knows this type of pain...
Have you heard about people who have some disorder with their nervous system and, as a result, can't feel pain? I forget what the disease/disorder is called. I watched a special about it on TV a few times. While at first, it sounds almost glorious, especially to a kid like me who was so terrified of needles she once peed on herself right before the doctor gave her a shot. (And I don't mean when I was like 4 years old. I mean when I was around 9 years old). It sounds nice that we could have a natural anesthetic to our body so that we didn't feel the scalpel. But what I learned from watching these TV specials and then inquiring about this disease from Mom, (the pediatric nurse), is that these people find themselves in RIDICULOUSLY life threatening situations CONSTANTLY because they don't feel the tiny bits of pain that steer them away from said situations.
People with this disorder can't sense ''heat'' being TOO hot when they are close to a candle, and so they don't notice they may be too near until their entire arm is in flames. These people won't realize they are walking on glass, and thus continue stepping with both feet and end up with countless shards pressed into their feet because they continue walking afterward, not noticing that they stepped into glass and are bleeding. They don't feel initial pain, and that is DANGEROUS for them because it can keep them from getting immediate treatment! In the medical world, we understand pain. Pain is designed as an INDICATOR that something is wrong that NEEDS to be made right. Literally, that is like the primary medical purpose of pain, to be used as an indicator. Praise God I feel pain, it directly saves my life.
Bearing that in mind, I pull back a bit, however, and I apply the principle to MORE than just the physical example of say.... getting bitten by a spider or a snake and thus knowing I need some type of antibiotic immediately in order to save my life and ward off infection. I pull back, and I apply broadly this idea of pain as an indicator and NEEDED for example to my mental health, spiritual health, emotional health. And then I realize just how dangerously I have lived my life when I have sought to quench, block, numb, or subdue such types of pain during different periods of my life instead of letting them key me into the fact THAT SOMETHING was wrong. Instead of running away from these types of pains, I could have listened to them, and perhaps had fixed or healed whatever was causing the pain. Typically however, the pain seemed too complicated, and spiritual, mental, and emotional ''healing'' was not looked upon as something needed as normally and as casually as physical healing was needed. So pride also played a role I'm sure... Who wants to appear as utterly broken as they may actually feel? Nonetheless, pain always points to something
 |
| Me, 12 year ago. I was in a LOT of pain, but I could not quite face it all. That's okay. God had a plan in store.... |
So the loss I experienced at 23 did not just affect me because of everything that it implied in and of itself. The loss affected me because of all the PREVIOUS losses in my life that were garnered by being raised in an environment of physical, emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse. I had not yet been able to work through those losses to any fair degree; therefore, a new loss, of such gravity, had no where to go. In all honesty, it would have been good for me then to have sought some type of inpatient therapy and care at this time probably. I was pretty broken. I don't even say that in a self-deprecation type of way. I just say it realistically. I grew up in a lot of abuse. I hadn't worked through it, and a lot more crap just fell on me. I needed some default structure for how to encounter the world. I was flying blind. Stopping and getting some self-care would have been a good idea. But I didn't know to do that, or how.
God, however, is the great master creator of miracles. He took me in as His patient. God knew the deep care I needed, and He had a plan for my life, albeit one that would take a while to unfold and would require many more disappointments and times of confusion and challenge. Still, the plans He'd lead me into would address these issues and eventually create in me a structure through which to walk through the world.
So while I was dis-proportionally being destroyed at 23 and acting out in various ways as a result of it, God did start working and directing, teaching and pulling out the faulty life views and replacing them. He bent and shaped me like clay. Tore out parts. Threw things in. Nonetheless, it ONLY happened because I listened to my pain. AND WHAT'S MORE, I wasn't even LISTENING TO IT IN IT'S ENTIRETY AT THE TIME. Like I said, if I had really listened to it in it's entirety, I would have needed some type of sedation and actual inpatient therapy to get back on my feet probably. Instead, I blocked out a large degree of my pain, compartmentalized it, said I'd deal with it later, albeit not always saying that on a conscious level.
The truth is, 12 years later, I am still working it all out because God, in His mercy, has allowed me to feel the pain, but slowly. He has taken me through it bit by bit by bit. I imagine I have years to go, if God has years more for me to live. But he has hemmed me in to where eventually I gave in, each time, and listened to each piece of pain.
There were times, however, that I used sin to completely numb out my pain, times when I was just tired of all the pain and didn't know how to go on with God anymore. And God allowed me. He allowed me time where I ran, went through the motions of life, but wasn't really meeting with Him or listening to my pain. I was concentrating on how to control my life to make it something that would make me ''happy.'' Such a game plan never really played out well though. None of my ways ever HEALED my pain, and in the end, I never found ''happiness'' for longer than a few moments. And even then, it was hard to enjoy the happiness because I was having to work so hard to make sure it lasted. So sin numbed pain, kept it at bay, and then also created more pain, but it certainly wasn't medicine. The needed medicine for the pain was letting God heal it, and that would require listening to the pain fully and feeling it fully, paying very close attention to it. But like I said, that has taken quite some time.
But the honest truth is, until I listened to all the pain, it didn't matter what happened in life, I was never going to be content, at peace, or by any standard ''happy.'' I was always going to be kept down and somehow living a lie because I would be deceitfully keeping at bay some pain while propping up my charade of life...
God has hemmed me in. God has forced my hand, so to speak, so that I would, in His RIGHT and perfect timing, feel the pain. He didn't have me feel it when I was not in a place where I could get the right help. He didn't just fling me out. He has nurtured me. He allowed me to go on living in sin for a long time, numbing my pain. He continued allowing me to live for awhile just oblivious, but slowly, through the past 10 years, he has brought out all the pain. Most recently, it has culminated. In the past year, I have finally started to open my eyes to the reality of just what was going on in my life, the lies I'd been telling myself, the deceptive ways I'd been living my life to avoid the pain of the past. God has really opened my eyes to this dramatically. It has been harrowing, obviously, but it has also been healing.
Interestingly enough, the loss I endured 12 years ago, the one that was so grave, God recently recently brought to mind again. It is a bit strange, to be recalling it now and understanding everything that happened with the wisdom of hindsight, but at the same time, it is right, and it is good. This loss was a part of my life as much as my current circumstances: my job, my husband, my child, are a part of my life. This loss was engineered for me. It wasn't haphazard. The people involved in this loss, the specifics of it, were all uniquely part of my story, and I was a part of theirs. I didn't just stumble into it all. So although I have avoided it for a long time, I am actually strangely glad to be remembering it all now. There is something authentic and real about it. And there is something that even makes my current circumstances in life feel as if they come to a more complete circle as I go back in time and embrace this loss.
At the same time, I have this new loss of my second child, and I can't help but think that God has been prepping me and teaching me how to handle loss, endure loss, and communicate with loss, for a while now. This loss, as well, was not haphazard. It was purposeful. My child's life has a purpose, and it is fulfilling that purpose as I speak...
I had to wake up. I had to be undeceived. God's aim at making me into Himself required that I stop lying to myself and living a life that was in any part a facade. My life had to be completely real. And to be real, I had to deal with every single illness and disjointed part of my entire emotional and mental and spiritual make-up. And to do that, I had to first feel pain, pain that indicated to me what was not right and what needed to be made right.
The pain has pointed me to where the injuries were, and no longer am I dulling myself to the sensation of the pain. Rather, I am paying close attention to it, and learning how to do wound care. Things are being made right. What was out of place, is being redeemed. I do not mean ''fixed'' as to erase all record of the out-of-place period. No. There are some serious scars being formed, but my God, oh my dear God, they are beautiful and honest and RICH scars. Thank You God. The world does not think scars are beautiful, but scars are incredible.
I have a feeling that I will come back to this topic of pain a bit more, but for now, I need to close. I challenge my future self, however, when I come back and reread this blog in years to come, "LISTEN TO YOUR PAIN MEGIN!" It is an indicator. And God is the great physician. People say that line all the time in talking about God healing people from diseases and stuff. But I don't mean it in a cheesy way!!! I mean God is our Creator, our Constructor. He intricately created us, and only He can put that which is out of joint back into place... In my pain, IN YOUR PAIN ... FUTURE MEGINLEA ... God is speaking. Will you listen?
Short List of when Jesus listened to His pain, heart, or emotions:
1. When Lazarus died.
2. When He was praying in Gethsemane.
3. When He would leave the disciples and go off to pray alone with the Father.
4. When He stayed behind to preach in the temple when He was a young boy.
5. When He spoke from the cross.
6. When He told Peter about how he would deny Him.
7. When He predicted Judas' betrayal.
8. When He expressed His anger in the temple.
9. When He cried and prayed over Jerusalem.
One of my FAVORITE Shane and Shane songs that just HAPPENS to talk about pain... with some Piper thrown in there for the heart wrenching emotional pull!
Also, last note. Random: There is a line in this song that says "Though tonight I'm crying out," BUT for the longest time, I always thought they were singing "For the mother crying out..." So yeah, once I realized they weren't singing that, I corrected myself. HOWEVER, in my current circumstance, I can't help but think it is almost like there is a version of the song in my head that is written specifically for me.... and anyone else who knows this type of pain...
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