We all have pain. It’s one of the strings that run between us. Tied in an infuriating knot around each of our hearts. So, when we encounter someone else pulling away from the sensory overload of life in pain, it should tug us toward them. But we run from our own pain. We pretend it doesn’t happen. So what then happens is that when we feel that tug, we ignore it, explain it away, or minimize it. Because we refuse to deal with our own hurts, our hands are empty of the gold we’ve mined digging through our own suffering. At best, we give stale platitudes. At worst, we shame the other for feeling what we have so politely hidden away: 

You should get over it. 

      You should be glad it’s not worse.  

                      If you’d just have more faith. 

I think part of us believes that acknowledging the pain of others somehow diminishes our own. Or it could be that your loss, your hurt, your depression, reminds me too much of what could be waiting around the corner for me. We’re afraid acknowledging another's pain might break the fragile peace we have with the universe, reminding it we’re past due for a beat down. Whatever it is, the others' pain makes us uncomfortable more than it draws us in. 

Can’t Hold Back 

An interesting thing about Jesus is that he didn’t seem to want to do a lot of miracles. I say that because when he did them, he regularly asked the receivers of raised daughters and eyes that could see to keep it between them. He probably knew that if he became known for miracles, people would start following him for the wrong reasons, and he wouldn’t be able to do what he needed to do. But I don’t think he could help himself. 

When he saw tears, nothing could keep him from wiping them away. He couldn’t help himself. He wouldn’t hold back. He was too much in love. 

Who Jesus is, is who we become. God said he’s conforming us into his image. We’re becoming like Jesus. That means we’ve gotta dive in when we see pain. Suffer with one another. Be covered in one another's tears. Dare to step into the shadow at the risk of exposing our own raw wound. We’ve got to be like our savior. I mean, that’s not our nature, so I don’t imagine it’s that easy to do of our own strength. But we’re a new creation, with a new nature. And we need each other. I don’t think we’ll be able to help ourselves.

-Chad West

Featured Pain & Suffering

12:33:00 PM

We Christians have an unhealthy relationship with suffering. If suffering itself weren't awful enough, because of our screwed up ideas about it, our pride is often stabbed in the process. We either can't imagine that any ill would come to we generally good and gentle folks, or that God would allow us, specifically, to suffer in a world obviously chock full of suffering. We, whether we would be able to admit or not, see suffering as the result of moral failure; as punishment.

And that's just not true. 

Christian Life Pain & Suffering

12:12:00 PM

They’ll tell you that you should forgive and move on.

They’ll say that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that you somehow caused it, or that you’re lying.

Don’t listen to them.

It’s okay if your pastor, your father, your uncle, or your gym teacher goes to jail for his crimes—and they are crimes. Against you, against God. You’re not being unforgiving, unchristian, unreasonable or not thinking about the problems it will cause. You are being wise. You are being strong. Taking a criminal off the streets to protect others from his touch.

Maybe that’s all you need, is for someone to tell you it’s okay. Sometimes we’ve heard the lie so much that it’s hard to hear the truth. But, it’s okay. And you will be too. 

Pain & Suffering

12:18:00 PM

I was talking with a friend today about the past. Not our past together, I mean the past. The dark places. The places with teeth. The dank, malodorous dungeons that we store our worst memories. The memories that are so bad we either pitch a tent there because we can’t look away, or turn from, close our eyes, put our fingers in our ears, and try to forget they happened altogether.

I’d had a really rough week, so this conversation hit close to home. Without going into a lot of detail (you’re so nosy), the experience I had is something that not only hurt a lot, but was one of those experiences that had happen so often you start losing the will to fight.

Thief

Like my experience, some bad things like to come back every so often to remind you that they’re still around. Others are so wicked and awful that they only have to happen once to make their sick point. Still others are attached to people we love or are supposed to love us, and every time we see them it’s like a poke in the eye.

All this stuff upends us. It changes us and confuses us—causes us to make poor decisions based on anger, fear or just plain ignorance. It causes us to doubt God’s love. It makes us bitter.

Hope

When my friend and I were talking, she brought up a really bad experience she’d just had, but said that—in general—she was moving in a positive direction. While she’d lost a lot, she had a lot to save and repair too. That God had provided her with so much.

Genuine trust and hope in the midst of pain. Why didn’t I think of that?

This opened something up in me. Like finally getting a stubborn spy glass to turn, and seeing the horizon come into focus. Perhaps it was… hope.

I had been so focused on all the bad, when there’s so much good in my life too. Often, God is standing right next to us and we just don’t look that way.

I’m bad about that: being so angry at the past for stealing so much that I waste the present.

My Story

In C.S. Lewis’, The Last Battle, Aslan the lion and the children find a group of dwarfs in a tight circle, facing one another, claiming to be in the dark, in a “pitch black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable.” But it isn’t dark, and Lucy encourages them to “look up, look round, can’t you see the sky and flowers—can’t you see me?” She then picks some wild violets and puts them under one of the dwarf’s noses. He flinches, berating her for sticking filthy dung under his nose.

I don’t want that to be me. But, sometimes, well, that’s me. Perhaps I fear that any good I accept as reality would take away from my desire to feel bad for myself. So, I don’t see the good on purpose, like those stupid dwarves.  

“They will not let us help them.” Says Aslan. “Their prison is only in their minds.”

Yeah, the past can be painful. And that pain is very real, and we shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t exist any more than we should forget the goodness in our lives. But we can’t let it own us. We can’t let it define our reality. We have to, as Steve Brown says, kiss our demons on the mouth. And, if we allow him, God will define our reality with love—for Him, for others, and for ourselves—not regret.


-Chad West


photo by Justin Locke, Nat Geo Creative

Christian Life Pain & Suffering

10:36:00 PM

I’ve been running away from pain for a long time. 

When you live life like that, it--ironically--causes a lot of unintentional heartache. I've done some really stupid things to try and control pain—and none of them worked. Like I said, they only made things worse. I probably caused myself more pain by running from it than I would have experienced otherwise. Running away from pain affects everything.

Pain & Suffering

3:06:00 PM

About ten years ago, I was a part of a group of people who were licking their wounds after being severely tossed about and out by the church. We were an angry, hurt lot that did a lot of encouraging and a little bickering as we worked through our issues. As that group dissolved, my dissolution with the church froze into a bitterness I would carry around for a long time.

As my bitterness was slowly dissolved by the love of God I found myself starting life over again. A new state, new friends and, oddly enough, another group of people who are where I was ten years ago. Hurt, confused, and tender-hearted towards others who are hurt and confused. All of us bound together and reliant on the unremitting, undeserved kindness of God.

The Dizziness of Freedom

I’ve found that going through this time in my life was much like my late teenage years. There were times when you realized you could think for yourself, do things that were considered taboo and find that the world didn’t end, and basically breath without the help of the organization that you had considered indispensible for so many years.

Also like one’s teenage years, there is a lot of emotion in psychological healing. It seems that almost every act of freedom comes with an equal and opposite dose of anger at recalling the chains you were bound to for so many years. Every time someone in a place of spiritual leadership says something even close to that awful message of bondage, you find yourself shrinking back, welling up with anger and frustration.

Healing and the Occasional Snake Oil Salesman

It can be a lonely place. It can also be a confusing one as those who haven’t gone through what you have, yet believe the message of God’s love, find it difficult to understand your anger. Some people who have never gone through a bad church experience find it almost impossible to relate. Sometimes, these kind but clueless family members make you doubt your sanity. Maybe you’re just overreacting. Maybe you’re universalizing one bad experience.

But it does get better. Like all wounds, it heals. And like all illnesses, everyone thinks they have a quick cure. Kindly nod at their impatience and keep trusting God’s Spirit. Know that there will be kicking and screaming, angry takedowns of angry people, honesty that’s so raw it hurts to hear, simply because the voice that was muted finally realizes it can speak without the former consequences. Expecting perfection in yourself or others that are healing is a pointless endeavor. But we’ll still expect it because of our deep seated neurotic need to be and see perfection in all Christians.

Allow yourself to be human. Allow others to hurt and feel and cry and scream. Allow them their anger and don’t to lecture them out of their bitterness. It’s a wretched place that mistrusts everyone, including God, but you can’t fix it by yelling for us to stop. Love, that’s what we need. The patience and understanding of love is the only thing that will quiet our hearts and eventually see us to the shore from the raging waters of bitterness. Be patient, with yourself and with others. Trust the Spirit to work forgiveness and healing in you (even when you don't want it) and know that even the biggest mistake is not fatal in God’s economy.

Pain & Suffering

1:43:00 PM

I stumbled across an article today about Mitch Hedberg, and it made me sad. A good friend of mine introduced me to Mitch a few years back. I promptly laughed, then I laughed some more, and then I found out that he had passed away. This then made me not laugh. So, now, every time I hear his simple genius (and laugh again), I am sad that he’s gone. 

Then, last night, I was introducing my fiance to a new sitcom I really liked on the Hulu. During the mandatory commercials, I saw one of the main actors in a commercial for a new show, on a different network. This got me curious, so I looked it up: cancelled. This is a brilliant time for dramas and even, one could argue, dramadies, but the sitcom is currently–with a few outstanding exceptions–trite and boring. So, it was a shame to see a show that genuinely surprised me with laughter at times, go away. But, that’s the nature of this world, isn’t it? 

Good books end, comedians die, they stop making Ding Dongs (no, seriously, that was a thing). But those people, and things, leave an indelible mark on us.

Especially King Ding Dong

We are changed by that which we love. My grandmother passing away over ten years ago is still the most significant loss in my life. But her death has forced me to deeply consider her life. The fact that I miss her has made me gather up all the wonderful things about her and think about them more just for the simple reason that there will be no more.

Do I wish she were still here to take for granted?

Absolutely.

But, hi, welcome to Earth. (sigh)

So, that’s what I (try to) do. I mourn, but then I rejoice that I had that thing at all. I find satisfaction in the idea that I was added to by that thing that is no longer a part of my life. 

Whether it’s a piece of entertainment, highly processed food stuffs or a flesh-and-blood piece of my metaphoric heart. I am different in some fundamental way because those things existed near me. I choose to see it that way. 

Otherwise, I’d go mad with grief. 

I definitely wouldn’t want to have never had those experiences just because I can’t have them again. (I mean, I can’t imagine seeing rice and not thinking to myself, in Mitch's voice, “I like rice. Rice is a really great when you’re hungry and you want 2,000 of something.”) So, thanks, Mitch. And, thanks grandma. Thanks guy who invented ding dongs and cast of cancelled sitcom. 

I’m sorry you’re gone, but I’m so thankful I had you.

Photo used under CC

Pain & Suffering

11:03:00 AM

I sat, in the dark, hunched over, my fingers digging into the carpet as I prayed. I was never possessed of the ability to harm myself—at least not in any way defined as suicidal—but as I sat there, quietly weeping as not to wake my parents, I asked God to end it. Just thinking about this, writing it down, all these years later, and tears come to my eyes. The experience was so existential that its emotion seems to transcend time.

PAIN DEFINES US

In ways I don’t even understand, I am defined by the experience leading up to, and after that night. In ways that are both negative and positive, parts of my core personality were birthed out of that experience. Most certainly empathy, but also an unfortunate inclination for relating peace with drawing away from others.

I’m not sure about you, but I suspect you’re a lot like me in that when you look back over your life, the bad looms over the good, making it difficult to see it in its shadow. Our proclivity toward pessimism defines us as well.

A young man with a joyous outlook on life became an angry adult, tasked with fixing the world and its idiocy, only to become embittered by the fact that I could not change a single soul. I became so afraid of my feelings—so crushed by the world and my faulty expectations—that I pushed them away. I swept them away so often that I became numb. I have always been an unapologetic clown, but then I was an angry, unfeeling, bitter clown. But a clown nonetheless. And it’s difficult to tell a person is in pain when they can make you laugh.

PAIN EMBITTERS US

Hebrews 12:15 says that we should avoid a bitter root growing up in our midst. This verse seems to speak more of uncorrupted doctrine and heart than actual bitterness as we think of the word, but the acrimony and sullenness that comes with bitterness is, in my estimation, also a corruption of Christ’s law of love.

That misinterpreted verse was my mantra coming out of a heart-wrenching pastoral experience as I entered my thirties. But I watched myself slowly sliding toward bitterness, even as I begged myself not to.

Life events give us forked roads. Jerk that life is, it often greases the road toward resentment and self-pity (or maybe that’s me). Once you’ve gone down that road, it is difficult to find the other path. Even if you see that you should, and cut through the trees to find it, bitterness comes bounding after you, knocking you down and pulling at your pant leg to go back.

I often went back.

PAIN LEAVES US LONELY (OR DOES IT?)

Pain, whether mental, physical or emotional, leaves stark scars—some of which are even visible. I often wondered if there was anyone who could truly understand my specific brand of pain.

A high school teacher friend of mine told me about a student of hers whose parents are so rich that he simply can’t comprehend what it means for someone to not have money. She was startled by his lack of empathy. It once occurred to me to question if God could possibly understand what it means to be in pain. I wondered if the perfect God of the Universe, who knew no sin, just looked at us and shook his holy head, wondering why we just didn’t get over it.

Then I remembered Jesus.

Hebrew 4:15: “For we do not have a [God] who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”

That was an important revelation for me. It was something I knew, but it wasn’t a truth that I’d connected with on a personal level. God knows what it’s like to hurt. He knows what it’s like to be betrayed by someone you love. He knows what it means to grieve. He knows how hard life and people are.

The next verse in Hebrews 4 goes on to say that since we know we have this kind of a God—a God who understands, we should “come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”

Our God understands our pain, and so he knows exactly what we need, when we need it most. I don't know about you, but for me, that means everything.

Photo by JD Hancock used with permission under CC

Pain & Suffering

11:15:00 PM

Being sad and vulnerable is generally seen as a negative thing. So much so that me offering to disagree with that assessment is probably looked at askance. I think that’s largely because we have no idea how to comfort people, so we try to bully them out of their pathos: “You look so pathetic.” “It can't be that bad.” “You don't need Prozac. You just need Jesus!” So, on top of already feeling like crap, because of being made to feel wrong for feeling like crap, we also experience a nebulous guilt about feeling like crap. But, I offer the hope that, perhaps, being pathetic isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Pain & Suffering

5:50:00 AM