What Can I Learn From Pain?
Natural disasters happen all over the world. When they occur, their aftermath is devastating. Not only to the area where they hit but to the people who have been victimized by the ruthless invasion upon their lives. Tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis all leave in their wake a loss of much more than property. Life can leave us feeling a bit storm tossed too.
The stress, anxiety and fear of these events can leave a person mentally searching for something to hold onto for stability and normalcy. The same can be said for the aftermath of a bitter divorce, the loss of a loved one, or the betrayal of a trusted friend. Life can hand us sorrow and grief that we never planned on experiencing and wish we hadn’t.
There is nothing that can be done to water that has gone under the bridge so to speak. Once we have been shoved off center by a life altering event, we are then left to try and sort through the debris as best we can. How we chose to respond to life’s storms can make all the difference.
These stressful events don’t come with a pamphlet with the “how to” of navigating a disaster, so we sometimes make more mistakes while wading through the uncharted waters of pain and loss. There is a saying that you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to what happens to you. It’s the one thing we can control. Ourselves. But even that takes some practice.
Ann Voscamp put it this way, “It’s ok to feel your feelings-because you don’t judge your feelings, you feel them-and then you give them to God.” In the aftermath of painful events, we FEEL all kind of ways, it’s important how we respond to those feelings and what we do with them.
While grief is a process we need to understand, its symptoms sometimes catch us off guard. Our emotions are powerful in pains wake, learning to safely surf the waters of adversity can be challenging. I for one have had my fair share of grief and you have too. But I’m thankful that I have learned valuable lessons, lessons I would not have gleaned without the pain.
I like to think of these situations as “opportunities.” What can I take away from this? How can I salvage something good from all of this bad? Here are a few questions we can ask ourselves?
1. What can we pull from the rubble left behind that is valuable? We can’t change what happened. I can’t go back and change my childhood, but I can go forward having learned many ways to address that pain either with a Counselor, a good book on the subject, and in much prayer. We can learn what NOT to do from what was done to us. If we choose to gain good from all the bad that happened and understand that the situations, while unfortunate, also made us into who we are today. They can give us fortitude, resilience and compassion for hurting people. God is a redeemer, and he can take what the enemy means for harm and turn it into good somehow. #winwin
2. What things should we leave behind from what happened? We must leave behind unforgiveness. If we take that into our future, it will poison all that lay before us. We must leave regret behind. We cannot change what was. We can only go forward and choose to treat others better than we were treated. We must leave behind bitterness. Bitterness is a poison that eats away at our soul, never the person that hurt us.
3. What is it that we can pass onto others that we have learned from our pain? The most valuable gift we can give to others is the knowledge we gained through our own struggles. If pain has a redemptive quality, it’s knowledge. Depending on how we go through the process, we can gain invaluable understanding from pain. If we’ve never hurt, we have no empathy for the hurting. Choosing to use the devil’s own strategy against him by helping others he is hurting is pay back extraordinaire.
I think of the immense suffering that Jesus went through on the Cross. Suffering that forgave my sin and provided healing for every affliction. What a shame it would be if I then refused to let him touch the things I keep hidden, buried under the rubble of pain, the wounds of my heart. I shudder to think his suffering was in vain.
What are you holding onto from what has happened to you? I challenge you to take an inventory of your heart, ask the Holy Spirit to show you what needs to be dealt with. He is our Helper and knows just how to get to that buried pain and restore you. He loves you and wants you to be whole…. will you let Him help you? #selah