When first writing about pain in my personal journal, I was not sure where God was taking me with this particular piece, especially with the start of the new year. I wanted to do something fun, but He asked me to do something meaningful, reflective, and thought-inducing (not my word, His). At the time, I wasn’t experiencing pain in no area of my life, but then, the new year hit and I started to experience all of this warfare. Personally, it sucks, but it helped me to be guided along on what pain is and what pain can do.
The following excerpt is my own personal, reflective thoughts about what pain is. Through this, I am thinking through, writing down, and talking with God about what I have experienced pain to be and what it still is to me. There is an additional entry that is continuing from January 3rd to January 6th because it wasn’t until I experienced some stuff, I could write about this stuff *insert shoulder shrug here*.
Anyway, I hope that in all of this, it helps you to figure out what your pain is too.
Dear God, 1/3/19
Pain is difficult. It is life-changing and life-altering. Pain is significant and remorseful. Pain has changed me. I used to hate how pain changed me, but now I see that there is beauty in the rain, especially the storm.
Pain has introduced new aspects of life to me that I though would never experience; like grief and loss. But another aspect of pain is that it has made me stay in very sticky situations. Pain has made room for me to move in and stay. Pain made me feel comfortable and showed me that being uncomfortable can be painful too. So, if I stay, the pain is bearable, like it has always been. But I get tired and iffy. What if everything I imagined wasn’t so bad after all?
Sometimes, pain is unexpected. Hitting you like 500 ton brick wall on wheels. Sometimes I can see it coming fast and hard, wondering if I should move out of the way, or, does it have alternate routes? Where does pain end, if ever?
1/6/19
Pain can be unpredictable but fertile. It is full of life’s unexpectancy, good and bad. How can it be good? Hmm… like when that ex walks away and you didn’t know that would ultimately be the best thing for you. Or, like, that friend that was weighted baggage and just jump and ghosted.
Pain has been constructed to be fertile ground in which a painful situation can be used as fertilizer to grow and cultivate a new thing in you.
Pain can call those who have been unresponsive to life to become responsive and responsible for life.
Pain can become unresolved anger that is spiraling out of control into a whirlwind of sorrow and deep anguish. Being angry all the time takes time from us. It cuts our lives very short.
When we choose, pain can be used to uplift us, take the focus off of us and our situations, and mold us. Most of us do not to remain in a painful posture, and sometimes that position that pain hold is enough to swing us into action and tell us to go and move about in life.
Pain can bring about tears and frustration, but it can bring motivation to never go through it again. Pain can uplift us to a greater height of ourselves without having to return to the painful and uncomfortable position/posture of our situation.
Because, lets face it… Some people stay in painful places because of the familiarity and not because of the situation. Repeated pain cycles cause a familiarity and comfortableness that can be hard to leave. Trust… I’ve been there. But even in that situation I had to myself, “Why do I stay?”. The situation never changed for me; most of the time it remained the same with slight increases in pain. However, I continuously chose the familiarity of pain over the unpredictability of change.
You see God, I procrastinate change (according to my mother) and that is something I am working on, especially when it is an unfamiliar change. An unfamiliar change qualifies as something that I cannot safely say is sturdy enough to land on and remain stable. But then God, that defies what faith is. Because faith asks for us to do even when something is in chaos and “looks like” its not going to work. Gotta walk by faith and not by sight, right? Right.
However God, I have learned that I can use pain uplift and propel myself even when my circumstances do not change. I have learned that I rather live with the security of unpredictable changes instead of deep-seated/familiar pain. I rather give myself a chance to catch my footing on solid ground in unpredictability of change instead of suffering because I have become steadfast in my pain.
I have learned that pain is only evidence of my breakthrough.
So God, I have said all of that to say this: It is important to use your pain to your advantage. Get out of that relationship, whether that it is a spouse or a friend. Take time, unpredictable time, to reinvent and heal yourself through courteous and careful self-care. Give yourself the room to love and gift yourself with things that you have, or, have not experienced being given to you. Take time to cultivate yourself and set your roots by the riverside. Move from the familiar and give yourself the chance to place your feet on solid and higher ground.
Hope this blessed yall.
With love,
Love, T.
Enjoying the sweetness of god 