Clarity Through Pain

(M. Bartosch - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

If money has the ability to stupify us, to blind us from thinking about deeper more profound and lasting truths, pain has the opposite impact.  Pain has the ability to clarify our deepest values.  While few of us would actively choose to pursure a pain-inducing situation, most of us could probably agree that in hindsight, pain helps us to push the frivilous to the side.  Why is this?

First, I'd offer than pain is a powerful reminder of our frailty and our ultimate end.  I can recall years ago when I was visiting friends in Maine and I had what seemed like intense stomach cramps.  Eventually they passed and I thought that I was out of the woods.  A few months later, the pain came back and after a visit to the hostpital emergency room, the doctors discovered that I had an infected gall bladder.  While I would never estimate what it's like to give birth, some women have said that for men it's the closest experience to labor and delivery.  In that brief (a few days) of intense pain, I was reminded about how frail the human body is, and I was reminded that even when the doctors took out my gall bladder, one day my body would fail.  Pain has that unique ability to remind us that from the moment of our birth, we are all terminal.

Secondly, pain clarifies for us what we want our legacy to be.  When we think about the things in which we invest our time from day to day, we can be so consumed in producing and checking of items from our lists that we miss an opportunity to not just ask "Is it done" but instead "Should I even spend time doing this?"    In pain, we are often challenged to think about how we are using our time, talents, and treasure.

Thirdly, I find that pain has the ability to bring about a thankful heart.  While not always the case, pain allows us to reflect on how much we have or are blessed with.  Just yesterday after shoveling the driveway for the third time in less than a week, my knee was aching.  At first I was slightly concerned that I had done something serious to it, but even as I felt my body communicating to me "rest", I was thankful that I had the ability to shovel, to walk, to live such a normal and pain-free life for the vast majority of my waking hours.  Pain, if we let it, allows us to be thanksful.

Lastly, pain reminds us to Whom we belong.  On this very day, I sat through a funeral of a co-worker's daughter.  Not even 30, she died of complications from cystic fibrosis, but it was alone in a hospital room at sixteen that she opened up a Bible and read of God's love for her and how she was truly His.  Pain presses us toward the things that matter in this life, the things that will last beyond this life, and to the One who from Whom all of life flows.

As we think about the topic of life and deeper meaning, we will next look at what it is that gives life coherent meaning.

- tC