“The cure for pain is in the pain.” – Rumi

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain.” – C.S. Lewis

We can do everything within our power to avoid pain, but simply living makes it inevitable.  It seems to be interwoven and linked to the human condition – an inescapable and obligatory part of who we are and our existence.

If the Creator is love, and the Creator loves us, then pain is a representation of that love.  With intended design, it is intertwined – knitted into the fabric our lives.  In fact, we need it more than we realize in order to become who we were intended to be.  It is a gift of loving kindness – a tender mercy like no other we will experience.

You think I’m crazy…. don’t you 🙂

Who needs pain anyway?  Who in their right mind wants to deal with it? 

Think for a moment about the pain you are experiencing in your own life right now.  Keep that thought as we walk through the following points:

The Voice of Pain

Nothing, and I mean nothing, speaks to us like pain does.  It has a voice that is clear and definitive – bold, intense, and authoritative.  It seems at times like it almost shouts to us.  It tells us that we need to stop, to reassess, and reevaluate where we currently are.  It declares a new direction to take, a different course to pursue, a new way of thinking, and often expresses what has lead us to its doorstep in the first place.   It’s a warning sound filled with grace and loving kindness.

Ease, comfort and pleasure barely register a decibel of sound.  They seem to have no voice at all.  Not only do they rarely speak, but it seems as we are experiencing them, we become deaf to everything else around us.

Think about how your pain is speaking to you now.  What is it trying to say?  Are you listening to it?

Don’t mistake the voice of pain with anger, vengeance, fear, or malice.  These voices will rise up during painful times as well, but remember, they can easily be separated out.  For you see, none of these things are connected to loving kindness, tender mercies, or undeserved grace.  The voice of pain speaks for your ultimate good, where the others are filled with evil intentions.

The Momentum of Pain

Ease, comfort and pleasure keep us stagnant – anchored in one place.  When you think about it, even in the moments of our lives that are filled with great blessings, we were never expected to remain in that place, but to move and grow and become a greater blessing to others.

The beautiful thing about pain is the momentum it carries with it.  It drives us to look for another path, to head out a new direction, or to change the status quo.  Rarely do we remain in a place filled with pain.  We seek and strive to go to a place far away from where it is felt and experienced.  Pain creates the gentle push – sometimes the stinging, uncomfortable poke or nudge that moves us toward our destiny.

You can become a prisoner to your pain – incarcerated by it instead of choosing to move away from it.  Can you see how being held captive, becoming a prisoner, or being trapped by your pain is stagnant?  Can you see the evil at work within this line of thinking?

Think about how your pain is creating momentum and movement in your life.  What new direction or fresh start is it taking you too?  How is it pushing you to look at different alternatives, new ways of doing things, or moving your thoughts toward enlightenment and alignment?

Pain has a way, filled with love, mercy and grace, of getting us up on our feet and changing our course – unlike anything else in our life.

The Enlightenment of Pain

Ease, comfort, and pleasure create feelings of entitlement – where pain (over time) creates a sense of clarity and enlightenment.  I have experienced this transformation in my own life and I have seen it unfold in the lives of close friends and family members who suffered.  Pain causes us to look at the deeper meaning behind it – not just how we feel the moment we experience it.  It changes our hearts – making us more compassionate toward those who experience it as well.

Entitlement is a gift to the ego. Enlightenment is a gracious, loving gift from the Divine 🙂   Often, this clarity and awakening of our soul is directly correlated to the pain and loss we’ve experienced.

Think about how your pain has changed the way you think, the type of person you are becoming, and how you interact with others as a result of it.  How has it made you look deeper within yourself?  How has it changed your heart?  How has it brought more enlightenment and clarity to what you’ve experienced?

If you’re currently experiencing pain within your life, listen hard to what it is saying to you, how it is urging you to move from the place where you currently are, and how it is deeply and meaningfully changing who you are inside.  When you do, you will see it in a way you never have before.

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” – Romans 5:3-5 NIV