Healing
The Blessing of Pain
By David Wiseman
C.S. Lewis once wrote a book calling pain a “problem.” Why is it that we always look at pain as a problem? Maybe that is the problem. Pain tells us where we have a problem. If I get a cut on my back, I’m thankful for pain, otherwise I would never have known that I was hurt. Pain tells us what needs attention. Without pain, our cuts would go on untended until they festered, and, at least, forced us to have serious medical procedures, and at worst, killed us. While, yes, pain is unpleasant, yes, while it lasts we hate it, and want it gone, it is for our good in the end.
It’s the same way with emotional pain. If it didn’t hurt after I had a fight with a friend, I would never go back and fix it, and at least it would be much harder to fix later, and at worst, I could lose the friend and a huge part of myself. If it didn’t hurt after someone insulted me, I would never go back and tell them that it hurt me, and try to fix things.
The sad thing is that there are people like this, people who never understood how to deal with the pain, and so they stifled it until they got to where they couldn’t feel it anymore. This doesn’t end in comfort, only a false sense of calm, and a dull throbbing under the surface. Worse, it allows them to hurt those around them, and cause irreversible damage without ever feeling it, without knowing to repair it. They are able to go through life destroying themselves and those around them without ever knowing it. In the end, there is nowhere for them to go but to self-destruct.
Not too long ago I talked to a girl I’ll call Ally. Ally’s mom, I’ll call her Deb, often puts Ally down. Deb has no idea that she’s hurting Ally because she has become numb to it. When Ally tries to talk to her about it, she brushes it off. Ally has gotten so tired of dealing with the pain, when there really seems like there’s no out for her, she started cutting. Cutting gives her a sense of peace and calm. But all this is doing is numbing the pain, not dealing with the problem. The wound is still festering while Ally feels nothing. She has no desire to fix the problem when she’s cutting, because it doesn’t hurt her. The only way it can end is by her relationship with her mom completely dissolving, leaving Ally short in a very important part of her life. Thankfully, Ally has stopped cutting and is trying to deal with the problems. But what if she hadn’t? She would have lost her relationship with her mom, lost that emotional support, not learned the things from her mom that she needs to learn. It would have left her only half a person.
People say that pain builds character. I wonder what they mean. Pain is there to point out problems. We’re not supposed to just deal with it, we’re supposed to fix it. Would you take Tylenol for a broken arm? All that would do is make it stop hurting, while the problem is still there. For that matter, would you just grit your teeth and go on with life? The problem is still there, and if the arm doesn’t heal right, it can wind up handicapping you for the rest of your life.
I have another friend, I’ll call her Jamie, who was jumping over a fence and tore her ACL. The ACL is a ligament that holds the knee in place. She went for weeks ignoring it. Every once in a while her knee would pop out of place, and she would have to sit down and literally pop her knee back into socket. When she finally had surgery done to replace it, it was much worse than it would have been if she had gone in right away, and Jamie, a regional champion in her sport, had to sit out the next season because of her knee.
Pain is not a problem, it is not something to be ignored, it is something to be used as a guide to fix problems in our lives.
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