I broke my arm when I was a little girl. It actually wasn’t 100% my fault, my brother’s best friend accidentally jumped on my left arm breaking both my ulna and radius bones. I have teased him about this for years, the joke never seems to get old. I’ll never forget seeing my arm unnaturally bent and instinctively knowing I needed my mom – like NOW! Turns out the bones weren’t completely broken, so when I got to the hospital the doctor had to break the bones and reset them so they would heal properly. I think I was a pretty tough kid, in fact, I still think I’m pretty tough, but it hurt. I remember being alone in the exam room with the doctor and the nurse. It had been decided they would not numb my arm before doing the procedure since little kids are terrified of needles (but he didn’t realize I had absolutely no fear of them). They also wouldn’t allow my mom to be in the room with me because I had been to the hospital so frequently with various injuries they seriously thought she might be beating me up. Don’t worry, she wasn’t, I just had a really hard time walking and running without finding some way to put a gash in my face large enough to alarm my mother.
I remember that exam room vividly, my mom’s face in the window in the door and feeling sad she couldn’t be with me. She was out there plotting ways to inflict serious physical harm on the doctor – trust me, she was not happy they didn’t allow her in the room! Anyway, what the doctor had to do hurt, seriously hurt, but it had to be done or my arm wouldn’t heal the way it needed too. I remember a single tear falling down my cheek and the nurse praising me for being so brave.
Life is pain sometimes. It honest to goodness just hurts. The older I get the more pain I experience and the more I see those I love go though painful circumstances too. We all hurt for different reasons and the degrees of our pain may vary – but the reality is sometimes we just have to hurt. I hate that.
There is this circumstance in my life today and I’d like to deny that it’s bothering me, but it’s time to get real, it’s bothering me. It is this lingering ache that intensifies every so often and pain from my past rears its ugly head and I just hurt. What amazes me is how I can be so happy one moment and then the next be brought to my knees in literal agony. I’m not kidding you – agony. My natural response it to find something to numb the pain. I want to be distracted, I want to shut off my brain and not think about it, I want to feel better even if it’s just for a moment. I run around looking for ways to numb this pain and, honestly, none of it actually works and some of it brings even more pain. I have this incredible ability to stuff my hurt back to the farthest corners of my brain and leave it there. Sometimes I even forget it’s back there, but it is back there, and the longer I ignore it the more it festers and grows into something ugly. I know I should deal with it, but it’s easier to find other things to distract me from it.
I was never a very athletic kid, but my brother was. There was this time when my brother was playing soccer with friends and I was the annoying little sister who begged to play, so he put me in the goal. Smart, Matt. It wasn’t long before I had a soccer ball right in the face. My nose was bleeding, but I wanted to keep playing. I remember Matt coming over to me and telling me to go home and deal with my nose – I couldn’t keep playing when I had blood on my face. I was convinced he was just being mean and didn’t want me to play...but I went home.
I’m still that girl sometimes – the one who wants to pretend there isn’t blood dripping down my face and keep playing. I want to clean the blood up and stay in the game, but sometimes we just need to step out for a moment and deal with what’s hurting us.
What I’ve been learning is that I need to simply face that pain. I need to stop seeking ways to erase it from my life and instead feel it. There are these circumstances that are completely out of our control – when someone else hurts us and there is literally nothing we can do about that hurt. It’s there and it isn’t going to go away. And in some cases, the source of our pain likes to step in and hurt us a little more. Like salt on our wounds and what we thought was healing is all ripped up and hurting again. We begin to think we have completely lost our minds, crying over something we shouldn’t be crying over. And our enemy, the devil, sees us with our guard down and capitalizes on our weakness. The battle just got really ugly.
I had to hurt the day I broke my arm – there was good reason for more pain to be inflicted on my little body, because without it I wouldn’t heal properly and I wouldn't be able to use my arm. The pain was actually for my own good. Feeling it meant healing. I wouldn’t heal well if I didn’t experience it.
The pain this life brings us is, yes, really horrible but if we just ignore it or put band aids over it we'll never really heal. It’s an opportunity. In some crazy, God-only way, our Father uses that pain to show us these amazing parts of Himself. Qualities we’d miss if we weren’t curled up in a ball crying our eyes out. We run to other sources of comfort and find relief for a moment, but it really is only in His presence that we can find healing. He doesn’t take the pain away. Nope. He doesn’t miraculously make it possible for us to simply not feel the hurt. I’ve asked Him to do this for me, and He hasn’t decided this is a good idea. Instead He loves, and comforts, and through His Spirit ministers to my little breaking heart. He doesn’t let me skip over the pain but asks me to trust Him in allowing it. I'm thinking, I'm hoping, that this is how it is for all of us...
So it's true, life hurts...sometimes it really hurts. But...
There will come a day, standing face to face. IN A MOMENT, we'll be LIKE HIM. He will wipe our eyes dry, take us up to His side and FOREVER, WE WILL BE HIS!
This is what I cling to in these moments...when life hurts...when the past weighs heavy on me...when I feel alone...when life feels hopeless...I look to HIM and I look forward to that moment when He draws me to Himself, wipes my tears away, and I am forever His. Suddenly, I am surrendered. The pain rages on, but I hold fast to Jesus and His promise to one day take me away to the place where my pain is no more and He is all I see.
