about pain

When I was much younger, probably early elementary school, I did something really stupid.  I was at my babysitter's house - this older couple who I called Granny and Daddo, and who really were more like grandparents - and I put my hand on the stove burner.

They had an electric stove, the kind with burners that glowed orange as they grew hot.  I loved watching them heat up; I loved the warm, familiar burning smell they gave off.  So one day, after Granny had cooked us pasta on the stove and removed the pot, I was watching the hot orange coils and just stuck my hand out and placed it on top of them.  I'm not sure why I did it - I guess my fascination just made me want to touch the stove and see how hot it really was.  Let me tell you - it was quite hot indeed.

For the next few days I walked around like a little wounded puppy, a big blister on my palm that pulsed with pain.  That's the thing with burns - they stick around so much longer than they are welcome to.

The funny thing is that to this day, whenever anyone tells me they got a burn, I think back on my little childish hand and how badly it hurt, and it makes me feel for that person.  Maybe it's a silly example - but the memory of my pain helps me understand just how annoying and awful it is when you burn yourself on a hot pan, or with a curling iron, or even get a bad sunburn.  It makes me, in a small way, an empathetic person.

This is something I love about the fact that we are bone & flesh human beings and not robots.  When something happens that hurts us, be it our fault or not, it becomes part of our story.  And as we share our stories in relationship with other people, our pain becomes a point of connection.  It creates little windows and doorways and cracks where we can get in and say yes, I know exactly what you mean, yes, I know exactly how that feels.  Our empathy with each other is key to our relationships.

I think this is true because the more that I learn about the life of Jesus, the more I see that empathy was at the heart of his journey on earth, and at the heart of sharing God with us.  Jesus came not only so that we might know him, but that he might know us.  He came so that he might feel, to the fullest extent, the brokenness that plagues our lives and the sorrow that bears us down.  He came so that we could crawl before him in our weakest states and say "this hurts" and be able to hear in response "I know".

What I love about our wonderful, alchemist God is his ability to take our horrible trash and turn it into treasured gold.  That he can take our pain and build these doors of empathy that make us feel known and understood - that is gorgeous.  That is about the most hopeful thing I've ever known.

I know a lot of people who are in or have been in extreme pain.  Strike that - everyone I know is in or has been in extreme pain.  And I just think that we need to stop boxing up this pain and throwing it in the junk closet so that no one can see, because our pain is useful. Our pain is meant to be shared, and it is meant to be understood.

I think we need to remember who our God is, what he can do.  We need to start looking at our pain and saying to it "you are not my burden.  you are my doorway, you are my uncovered gold."