Pain and Revelation
I
Pain can bring out the best in us.
It can make us better versions of ourselves.
Like coarse sandpaper scraping away a veneer, pain reduces us. It eliminates us, rendering us to dust. Removing the appearance, gloss, and pretentiousness. Pain makes its way down to our core to reveal us to ourselves - who we are and what we truly care about.
Pain reveals our true self. It digs up and dismisses all our pre-conceived notions - what we should do, who we should be. Exposed to light, the flaws, ignorance and meaningless of our pre-conceived notions are revealed to us at once. It is overwhelming, unbearable, depressing, and emancipating.
Pain emancipates us by offering a choice. A choice to forget the pain once gone, or leverage it to reach higher ground. This is how pain can free us to become better versions of ourselves.
While pain can break us, it could also open and humble us unlike anything else. You fundamentally understand this if you have ever suffered profound pain. Pain that leaves you gasping for air, begging for help, feeling a deep empty void in the center of your being. The type of pain medicine rarely remedies and only time may alleviate.
You also understand the humbling power of pain if you have ever completely relied on the pure kindness of a stranger, or asked and received help when you were at the edge of losing hope and your mind. If you have ever suffered from real hunger or excruciating physical pain, and had to depend entirely on someone to alleviate it for you. If you have ever suffered profound existential pain and loss leading you to question your faith, everything you believed and learned, and been rescued. Experience this type of pain and you may never see life through the same eyes again. The life you knew will have been upended, turned on its head.
You will walk again amongst us, differently.
II
Think about a time when someone shared a painful story with you. What happens to them? They pause. They stop. Before they speak, they ask for time and forgiveness. You can immediately feel how they change. Time stands still, and their entire being shifts. Like an unmasking, their true self shows up. The memory of the pain alone cuts at them - they turn inside, become pensive, speak softly, slowly. Nothing else matters at that moment. The world disappears, falling away like a curtain. It’s only you and them.
There is inherent value in pain. How it pushes us to stop, sit in quiet reflection, recognize the error of our ways, remember how deeply we love something or someone. Seen through this lens, pain is an invaluable gift. To appreciate the gift requires you to find a way to incorporate the pain and its lessons into your being. To not forget, once the pain subsides, what it revealed to you. To avoid the temptation to move on quickly, applying another light coat of varnish.
But instead extract value from the pain by dwelling in it. By immersing yourself entirely in it. Soaking yourself deeply in it. Inviting it to become a part of you. Allowing it to rock you to your core. To permanently disfigure who you were, like a blazing hot iron branding you with its soul piercing lesson, changing you forever for the better. Run toward that blazing hot iron. Cry until you feel you cannot cry any more, then suddenly burst into tears again uncontrollably. When you feel compelled to run from it, sit with it, anguish in it. Force yourself to endure the severe mental and physical pain.
Then, ask yourself for forgiveness, and beg a higher power to be re-born from that pain. Pray to no longer recognize the person you were before. Pray to walk again amongst us, differently - with wisdom and understanding.
Pray the pain opens the door to a new dawn, a new day and freedom. Pray that when the pain eventually subsides, the loss becomes a vivid memory, and you emerge a humbler, kinder, gentler and stronger human being with a clearer sense of self and God-given purpose.
“And God said unto him [Solomon], Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judgement;
Behold, I have done according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee.” 1 Kings 3: 11-12
