Pain is not the enemy

I was going through all my old blogs today as I put labels on them (a new feature of blogger). Several times I have made the comment "I would never wish this experience on anyone. But I would never go back to who I was before." This comment is actually a rephrasing of a statement my brother Adam has made continually. He says about his divorce, "I would never wish this experience on anyone, but I wouldn't trade it for the world." The reason I have hesitated to say the second part is that I felt if I could have gotten this learning and growth without having to experience so much pain, I would have preferred that. I knew that such a possibility is not likely or possible, but if it could have happened, I would have preferred that (like taking a pill).

But as I thought about this, and as I was reading through some of my other blogs, I realized that such thinking is still putting pain as the enemy. And one thing I have learned is that pain is not the enemy. There is value in pain. And it's not just the growth that it produces. One purpose of pain (physical or emotional) is to alert us to a problem. It tells us when something is wrong. If we didn't feel pain when a knife cut the skin, we may not stop before the knife cut through tendons, muscle, arteries, etc. It is a way to stop further damage. The pain I experienced in my divorce was indicating a very big problem. If I had listened to it earlier, it may not have gotten so bad. But it was only because I had the realization of how bad and messed up I really was that I was able to grow as much as I have.

The pain has also taught me that I can make it through the tough times. Life will always have pain, both small and great. And now I know that I can make it through. I don't have to panic and try to bail out when things are very difficult and depressing and I can't see the end. I know that I can keep trudging through the muck, and that I will eventually make it. And I have learned the value of that process itself, not just the value of the destination. There are precious gems of learning that I could only learn by walking through the valley, even when I felt waist deep in sludge.

You can tell when someone has gone through deep pain. There is a change in them for the rest of their life. Something that distinguishes them from those who have not experienced deep pain. Sometimes it comes through in their outlook on life, sometimes in their patience, or in any number of other areas. One place I really notice it is in how they respond to and act around those who are currently experiencing deep pain. Those who haven't experienced deep pain will often offer band-aids of platitudes and try and make things look better. They are very uncomfortable around such raw deep pain because they have never experienced it before themselves. And they may not know if the person can make it through. But because I have experienced deep pain, I know that it takes time. I don't have to rush the ending. I don't have to try and make them feel better (which is usually just trying to make us feel better about them). I can patiently walk with them because I know that they will make it through, even if the end can't be seen. And it isn't a contest of who has had deeper pain. That doesn't matter. Each pain is different and painful in its own way, and a comparison is really not possible. But there is a difference with those who have gone through deep pain.

So I really wouldn't trade my divorce for anything. Not just the end result (the growth), but the entire process itself. The gut-wrenching brokenness and pain. The disillusionment, the struggles, the stress, the frustration. I wouldn't trade it. This pain is not an enemy to fight and conquer. It's a part of who I am.

The truth

I just finished watching Good Night and Good Luck, which is an excellent movie. On the companion piece on the DVD is a quote by Edward R. Murrow that I loved. In the spirit of this quote, I will refrain from embellishing with my own thoughts, and just let it stand on it's own.

"Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit."

The Disguise of Religion

I am reading the book The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge. In the chapter I was just reading, they were talking about our our search to fill our longing for Transcendence with lovers who are less wild than God. Let's face it, as C.S. Lewis put it, God is not safe, but He is good. But sometimes this wildness and lack of control scares us and we look for other alternatives. Things we can do that give us glimpses and tastes of Transcendence, but still allow us to maintain control. One favorite seems to be religion itself. We get caught up into trying to find the right beliefs, the right practices, the right everything. Religion becomes an intellectual journey that is divorced from our heart. Because it has the disguise of religion, it appears much more acceptable. But it is just as much adultery as anything else. It is like masturbating to a picture of your wife while refusing to have sex with her. If that idea is uncomfortable and repulsive to you, it should be. That is not at all what the relationship is supposed to be like, but it is how many of us approach our relationship with God. We want the benefits (orgasm) and we want to look like we're doing it right (it's within a marriage relationship), but we are afraid of the risk involved (sex requires much more risk than masturbation).

There is a risk in having a real relationship with God. For one thing, we have to surrender control. This can be really difficult because in our really honest moments, we would admit that the way God has done things is not the way we would have done them. There are always those times when we wish God would have stepped in, but He didn't. The question of how a good God who is all-powerful could allow evil to happen to good people (and vice-versa) is a question that has plagued humanity throughout the ages. And while our heads may find a satisfactory answer and we dismiss the questioning as faithlessness, our hearts still cry from the pain. The natural human reaction of protecting ourselves from pain kicks in, and we try to take more control. We will still "give God control of our lives", but only within certain parameters. And since we can't really trust that He will come through when we want Him to, we avoid putting ourselves in those situations. We try to do the right actions and believe the right doctrine, but since our heart hesitates to trust God, we just separate it from the process. What we're left with is a form of religion that may look like what God wants (after all, we're doing the right things), but there is no life to it. The Bible is explicitly clear that our "right actions" must come from a heart of love (read the Sermon on the Mount). But our heart hesitates to trust Him because it has been burned by His wildness. So we are left to choose between a form of religion that looks good on the outside, but still allows us control so we don't get burned. Or we can surrender the control, embrace God's wildness, and trust His goodness. There's a lot of risk involved, but unless we embrace the wildness of God and relinquish our desire for control, we will never experience the full blessing of a real relationship with God.

The Family Stone

A few weeks ago I watched The Family Stone for the first time. It's a really great movie that I would recommend to anyone. The recommendations I had received were so great that I bought it without even seeing it. There were many things in that movie that stood out to me, but there was one line towards the beginning that really jumped out at me. The parents are talking about Meredith, the girlfriend their son Everett has brought home for Christmas. The dad makes the assessment: "She doesn't seem to know herself very well. Which means, I'm afraid, our Everett doesn't know himself very much either." It made me pause the movie and rewind to catch it again. It is something I had never thought about before, but really is true. When we don't know ourselves and are very insecure with who we are, we tend to seek out those same types of people. Otherwise we may have to face the reality that is ourselves, and that is something we are trying to avoid. I definitely saw this in my first marriage as I did not know myself at all. That's one of the inherent dangers of marrying young.

The families' problem with Meredith was not in who she was, it was that she didn't know herself and was very fake. As Ben (one of Everett's brothers) put it, "You have a freak flag; you just refuse to fly it." I love that line! We all have freak flags, aspects of who we are that are unique and strange. Rather than trying to hide them, we need to accept and embrace them as a part of who we are. This doesn't mean we don't grow and change certain aspects. But before any of that can happen, we must acknowledge and accept those things as a part of who we are.

Family

For me, spending time with family is an important part of Christmas. Growing up, I remember having probably 30 or so relatives in our basement every Thanksgiving and Christmas. While we many have moved away, and we no longer get together like that, my immediate family is still growing (currently at 12 people). All of us got together at Thanksgiving, so I took my time at Christmas to visit family in Orlando. While they may not be family by blood or marriage, many of them have become like family for me. I believe that "family is what you make it." During this past year, they have been the ones who have provided me support, fellowship, community, a place of refuge and hope, and so many other things. And like any family, we have our own problems and dysfunction. But this doesn't keep us from getting together and enjoying each other's company at the holidays. And while I do love my biological family, they can't replace the family I have found in Orlando. And I was very glad to spend some time down there and to have Christmas with my family. I love you all.