Blessed are the courageous, who nurture a relationship with their pain

We all have pain. If we face it and feel it, and it doesn’t floor us, we have the opportunity to bear it. But if we feel it and it’s unbearable, and we must turn away from it, our act of turning away reduces our capacity for life, and the healing process continues to remain a future possibility. 

There is certainly a process in being sanctified through pain. And that can take a very long time. Indeed, I would argue that that bearing pain that cannot be reconciled is the ultimate faith, hope and courage. Those who bear enduring pain exemplify Jesus. 

… the gospel is indelible hope in the presence of pain.

We may wonder, though, how a good God and pain can fit together in the same sentence. But as soon as we realise the Bible documents how Jesus overcame it all, even as pain threatened to swallow him whole, we are shown the key for whatever pain we patiently (or not-so-patiently) bear. Let’s make no bones about it, pain is a crushing reality.

Of course, we must qualify pain. It’s such a broad term.

I think of it as anything that occasionally or continually threatens our wellbeing. Many people have chronic physical pain they live with 24/7. Others bear a situational pain, for instance, trauma survivors when they’re triggered or when they’re anxiously hyper vigilant about the potentialities of triggering events. Whenever we struggle with our mental health, we’re in pain. The past can be full of fragments of unreconciled pain. The future could be so bleak as to manifest to the present moment the pain of depression. That kind of darkness is as unfathomable as the deepest grief.

Being human at least involves what we call existential pain—a pain we experience in being human and in being alive. It’s the mix of fears, sadness, limitations, uncertainty, thought of death and other harms, and concerns for love and loss, amid the confusing wonder of life.

In the realm of existential pain is the bearing of the eventual frustrations that press upon all our lives. There is also the regularity of bearing moments we would prefer were over already. How few moments are true bliss! Yet, hope abides as we hold out for the notion of comfort. As humans, we are cravers of comfort.

I know and admire many people who bear either an unusual kind of pain or an extraordinary amount of it. Honestly, I marvel how they do it.

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The truth of the matter is we all have a thorn in the side, that Paul said God allowed to prevent us from becoming conceited (See 2 Corinthians 12:7-10). It’s only those who sense they have no debilitation who are proud. Anyone encumbered by some manifestation of pain is humbled by their experience. And humility, we know, is to be prized, so we can value the role of pain, even if on the other hand we despise its presence in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones.

An elderly couple my wife and I know from our church have inspired us greatly to this end. Recently, the wife who was in her 80s died of cancer; a very painful battle. 26 years previously she had such a debilitating stroke it left her with the use of only one arm, and the rehabilitation process, to begin with, took several years. She lived a quadriplegic existence. Her husband has battled chronic pain all his life, yet he diligently cared for “his precious love.” The enduring image we have is of their smiling faces despite the pain and impairment they have borne continually for decades. They pray for everyone else, and I’ve never received more encouraging emails from anyone than them. They have prayed for my wife and I and our family continually for all the years we’ve known them. They ooze gratitude and thankfulness. Yet, there’s the reality of their pain. They’re real about it, but they don’t dwell on it. Out of their thorn in the side comes a courageous humility that would not be there otherwise.

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Blessed are those who nurture a relationship with their pain, for theirs is a kingdom that endures and eventually overcomes. These don’t look like overcomers in the world’s eyes, but their attitude to life commutes courage for the fear that would otherwise cripple them.