Pain: the unforgiving road

Pain. It comes in lots of shapes and forms and from different hands. It is a wearisome journey, an unforgiving road. They say it will bring either the best or the worst out in those within your realm of contact. If you’ve been down this road of pain,  you know that how people respond to the pain of others comes in all stripes and colors. 

Sometimes it comes as silence. They say nothing. They see you’re hurting, but don’t stop. Much like the Priest and The Levite  who passed by the Jew who had been attacked on the road in the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

Sometimes they speak and you wish they hadn’t .They  say nice sounding cliches:

“Well at least you don’t/didn’t (fill in the blank).

“Just focus on God right now/cling to Jesus”

“It will get better, you’ll see” 

They see your pain and even go a step further and acknowledge the pain, but what they offer is just a warm well wish (“be warm and filled”) when instead you need to be brought into their home and offered food and rest (a hug, a meal, a listening ear, a gift of some kind to brighten your spirit. Something tangible etc.) They want to do something for you but do not want to pay too high a price while helping you so they throw some good “Christian” phraseology around and pat you on the back and send you on your way.

What they do not realize is how empty that leaves you, how cold and heartless those well meaning phrases really are. How guilt tripping these kind of phrases can be to a person. 

Sometimes people compare their pain to yours. Much like children comparing scrapes from falling off their bikes. Their only goal is to one up you. “Well you think you have it hard....” or “I went through (fill in the blank)”

Pain is NOT nor should it ever be a

Competition.

Some discredit certain trials because they don’t quite hit the level of pain they feel is a prerequisite for something to be called a “trial” or “pain”.

Nothing like someone saying “you’re just imagining all of this”

I lost my baby at 4-5 weeks. Some would consider this to be a “chemical pregnancy”. I consider it a life lost. I don’t believe in “chemical pregnancies. I liken that phraseology to the demonic work of calling a baby an “embryo”.  The latter makes it ok to abort a baby, the other makes a death of a baby seem like nothing at all.

Some want to call it imagined pain.

Finally, some put their time line upon your pain. “She still isn’t over this yet?” Most likely they wouldn’t say this directly to your face. But you pick up on it in their subtle ways. 

Listen, grief looks different from person to person. There is no time line to grief. And the other thing about grief is that it isn’t a time line at all. It is who you are. It becomes a part of you. Always there on the back burner and brought forward to the front by dates, smells, seasons, weather, something someone says in passing. Clothes. Toys. Smells and sights that whir you back in time, bringing with them all the emotions, dreams lost and sinking heart feelings. Grief is now like the watch on your wrist or the ring on your finger. You don’t always notice it is there but it is always there. Yet, it is different than your watch or ring, because you can’t ever take it off like you can a watch or ring, so don’t let anyone ever make you think you can!

So what do we do when these things happen? When people respond in these less than stellar ways to our pain..

We give grace to those who respond in these ways. It will take every ounce of our being and the power of the Holy Spirit to respond in the midst of our pain in this way of grace. I liken it to facing a storm on a ship at sea while a mutiny is going on. Seems impossible, the odds are against us, we want to just give up and give in. We are fighting something without and  within. We are tempted to think “If we cant  beat em, join em”. The struggle to throw words back is real. But grace must win the day.

So we must GIVE grace, but we also must BE grace. When others are walking through pain, be grace to them. Don’t do any of the above I’ve mentioned. Be grace to someone. Paul almost always opened and closed his letters with “the grace of God Be with you all” 

I think that has a two way meaning. May God’s grace be upon you, but may it also shine through you to others. 

So do you know anyone walking through pain right now? Pain is a rough journey, an unforgiving road, so be the grace along the way. My counseling professor said to treat all pain as if it is real, because to them it is real.

Show grace, take a meal, watch their kids, send a package, or a gift of some sort. 

Above all, be there with them, listen to them and pray with and for them. These are key. 

“May the grace of God Be with you all”