What My Pain Has Taught Me

Life will beat us up. We can try to avoid it, but like the IRS, life will come knocking to collect its dues. When it collects, it usually gives us a black eye. Draws blood. Breaks hearts.

It's happened to me. I'm sure it's happened to you. Better yet, I can guarantee there's more on its way.

Encouraged yet?

I don't know why terrible stuff happens to us. I won't try to go there. But I do know our pain shapes us--for good and for bad. I know that we can grow in astonishing ways from our pain--if we're intentional about it.

The best-case scenario for us is not to avoid pain altogether (because it's impossible); it's to learn as much as we can from every fight to better prepare for the next one, and to leverage our pain to live the fullest, deepest lives possible.

To that end, I thought I'd share the top three lessons that my pain has taught me. They're lessons that have changed the trajectory of my life and continue to shape and influence my decisions. I hope they're useful to you, too.

The first lesson is this:

I can't do it alone.

As I've gone through trials, the single best decision that I've made has been to invite people into my struggles.

My story goes down a much different, much darker path if not for the people who provided me with support. I had friends and family praying for me, sending me texts and emails, dragging me out for coffee or dinner or a hike--all to encourage me, to listen to me, to help carry some of the weight, and even to let me know when I was being an idiot.

The support didn't stop with friends and family. In some of my deepest turmoil, I was juggling work at school, church, and grad school on top of maintaining my relationships, all while floundering in heartbreak. I had tried to keep it all together, stay upright as the wind and waves tossed me around, but at some point it became impossible. I needed help.

I'll never forget the unbelievable understanding and compassion my bosses, professors, and advisers showed me when I opened up to them. The best thing a drowning person can do is ask for someone to toss them a buoy.

I still tear up when I think about all of these people and what they've done for me--they saved me. They walked with me through darkness until I found light.

I might have never found it without them.

The second lesson is a resolution that I forged in the fire fueled by years of feeling like I wasn't enough:

 I won't waste another second of my life trying to convince someone I'm worth being loved.

Somewhere along the way, some of us get it into our heads that we have to work at deserving love. That we're not yet worthy of that prestigious honor, and we have to do just a bit more to get there. Sometimes this is because of a romantic partner; for others, it's a parent, a teacher, a friend, or a boss.

Personally, I've spent far too many years of my life in relationships that were one-sided or, at the very least, significantly unbalanced. I've spent too many nights wondering what was wrong with me and what I could do next to deserve someone's love.

To anyone who relates to that, I would start here: Your worth is not dependent upon your performance or how someone feels about you. You are worth being loved, right now. As you are.

If you're married or in a significant relationship, that means that you're allowed to ask to be loved or express that you're not being loved. Yes, there is a symbiotic, two-way street that should compel you to do your part in loving the other person. But you also have the right to expect to be loved. It's not a "When you start doing x, then I'll start doing y." For either party. 

For those of us who are single, this means that one of our top deal-breakers is a simple one that a stunning amount of people ignore: the other person should be into you. You shouldn't have to convince them that you're worth their love or affection. If they don't get that, they're not ready for you.

Some of you are going to disagree. There a lot of couples that seem to be an exception. One person continued to wear down--I mean, pursue--I mean, be interested in---the other until he/she gave in--I mean, reciprocated. I'd say this: if being in a relationship or specifically a relationship with that person is that important to you, I wouldn't stop you. I hope that the investment of your time and heart that you'll pour into that situation will be worth the gamble.

I know this for me, though--being in a relationship is not my end-all, be-all. It would be nice, but my goal is to live my life to its fullest. With or without someone. I have more important life work to do than to try to chase someone down who may never feel the same way.

By this point in my life, I've learned that I don't want to storm the castle for a girl who needs to be saved. I want a girl who knows what she wants.

The third lesson I've learned from my pain has particularly transformed my life:

My worst decisions are made out of my hurt. My best decisions are made out of my hope.

Most of the bad decisions I've made in the last decade were made from a place of pain. Someone disrespected me, neglected me, or otherwise inflicted pain on me. In response, I said or did something that was a knee-jerk reaction borne of anger, vengeance, or self-preservation. When that happens, I always make the situation worse. Always. A person who makes decisions from their pain is like giving a toddler some finger paint and setting them free in the house. There's bound to be a mess.

In some strange, ironic twist, it took some of the most heart-wrenching situations to eventually teach me how to respond to pain better.

I started to think about what I hoped for instead of reacting out of my hurt. When I framed a situation with hope, it gave me perspective. I began to envision how I wanted to recount this painful situation in six months, or a year, or ten years. I began to make decisions that future me would be proud of. I couldn't control what anyone else did in my life, but I could at least let hope inform what I did.

This approach didn't solve all of my problems. It didn't lead to all of my conflicts ending like a Full House episode--sappy music and apologies and group hugs. It did keep tough situations from being tougher. It kept the shrapnel from painful situations from digging in deeper and breaking off into smaller pieces in our flesh. It put me and involved parties in the best position to allow grace and love and compassion and forgiveness to do what they could.

I've had many opportunities to let my pain dictate my direction, or to let my hope do it. I guarantee that one has been better than the other.

And as the famous line goes, "It has made all the difference."

Feel free to share some of the lessons you've learned from your pain. I'd love to hear from you.

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Feature photo ©2010 Christian Holmér | Flickr

When We Don't Have the Words

"I wish I knew what to tell you." I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say this, or something like this, to me. It's usually happened during times I was with a friend and carrying a heavy burden.

These friends would sit across the table from me, or next to me on the couch or in the car, or over the phone. They'd say different versions of the same sentiment:

"I don't have any great advice for you."

"I'm sorry I don't have anything better to say to you."

"I don't have any answers for you."

"I don't think there's anything I can tell you to make this better."

Every time, I'd look at them, smile, and say, "I know. And I didn't expect you to."

When I look back on those times, it's not some sage advice, some powerful maxim, some quotable proverb that I remember or appreciate.

It was simply that friend's presence.

It was that they were there with me, they had taken the time to hear me and see my pain. That made all the difference in the world. I didn't need anything more from them. I didn't need them to bear the responsibility of shining a bright light with the perfect words. Simply sitting with me kept the darkness at bay.

So don't feel bad when you're sitting there with a friend who's going through stuff and you don't have all the right words to say.

The fact that you're sitting there is already enough.

Flickr photo ©2010 ...storrao...

Blessings That Don't Feel Like Blessings: Moving Friends

What are the things you love about a good friendship? Maybe your list looks something like mine:

Laughter. Settlers of Catan. Beer. Wings. Good coffee. Singing loudly to songs we pretend to hate but secretly love. Spontaneous adventures. Inside jokes. Watching "Anchorman" for the twentieth time. Texting ridiculous memes to each other. Bacon. Bubbles. Bad dancing. Speaking only in movie quotes. Late-night runs for disgusting food. Doing nothing and loving it.

Oh, and helping each other move.

I know. I know all about the drawbacks: Getting up early. Giving up a day off. Moving heavy objects. Moving objects that can't be carried in a non-awkward fashion. Sweating (and why do people always move in the summer?). Innumerable trips back and forth between the house and the truck, sometimes up and down a flight or two of stairs. Discovering weird items you weren't supposed to find but your friends haven't packed up everything yet. Oh, and did I mention sweating?

Despite all of that, I'd like to make a case that helping a friend move is actually a blessing. And not only for the friend, but for you.

I get it--since I graduated from high school, I've moved ten times. Every time I move, I send out an email or make some phone calls, almost apologetically, nearly begging, to ask people to help me move. I've recruited many friends to toil in the heat and humidity and deal with my lack of organization, dust bunnies, and oddly-shaped furniture. Once, I lost the key to my storage unit on moving day and had my friends drive me across town so I could find it. Fortunately, they suppressed the urge to murder me and stuck with me for the rest of the day. I tried to appease their wrath with an offering of kind-of-just-okay pizza from around the corner of my new place, but I suspect they still fight back the occasional impulse to slap me in the face from time to time.

I realize that helping a friend move, for all of us, has been a necessary evil that we bear through as part of "the deal" if we're to be friends. The more and more I've been presented with the opportunity to help a friend move, though, the more I've undergone a change of heart.

It's easy to be a "great" friend when we're talking movie night or grilling out. You don't have to twist my arm to go hiking or wine tasting, take a trip to the beach, meet up to watch a football game, or celebrate a birthday. Those things are easy and how we experience friendship 90% of the time. Those moments, those good times, those fluid and seamless interactions are necessary for a thriving friendship. But you never really know how strong your friendship is until tough times arrive.

We're not often presented with the opportunity to really prove how much we love our friends, to go beyond the easy stuff. That's a good thing, by the way--I don't go around hoping that my friends will go through really tough times. So when someone asks for help moving, I jump at the chance to be there. Very few things speak to how much you love someone more than freely and gladly offering to help take on a tough burden.

The last thing I'd want you to do is to take this post too literally and feel like I'm only talking about moving, or talking about it in a compulsory way. The fact is, some of us shouldn't or can't help friends move. There's an article I love by Anne Lamott in which she argues that no woman over the age of 40 should have to help anyone move ever again. But they could offer to bring sandwiches and drinks for the folks who can help move.

What really matters is this: we should all be looking for ways to really show our friends we love them. Some of the best opportunities to do so present themselves not in the perfect, summer sunset of a family picnic, but in the tough, gritty work of laboring with our friends in the trenches of their lives: taking their crazy kids for a night so they can recharge, driving them around when their car is in the shop, sitting with them until well past your bedtime because they need to unload their problems for a while.

We can't plan a lot of these opportunities. Sometimes there are seasons where they're abundant, and sometimes there are seasons when they're few and far between. So when a friend calls me up and asks, "Hey, would you be able to help me move?" I consider myself blessed to be able to let that person know just how much they mean to me.

Warning Lights

Relationships are like cars.

You laugh, but it's true. You know where else you'd hear something like that? The old show Home Improvement. (Remember that show? So great, right?)

I remember an old episode of the show called "Nothing More than Feelings." (See the bottom of this post to watch the first portion) In this episode, Tim Taylor's wife, Jill, ignores the oil light in her car, which subsequently leads to the engine being shot. She doesn't realize this, of course, until Tim goes to the garage to move her car before he leaves for work. Here's how the dialogue goes after Tim comes back in from the garage, clearly miffed:

Jill: Tim! You're still here? Tim: Oh yeah. How long's the oil light been on, Jill? Jill: Oil light... Tim: The oil light. Next to the speedometer, a little red light with the oil can on it? Jill: Oh, that thing. I don't know. Two or three days. Tim: Two or three days?! It's a warning light--didn't it occur to you there might be a little problem? Jill: I thought if there was a problem with the car, the light would get brighter or there would be a buzzer.

As sad as it might be to know how many of us have similarly neglected our cars, I wonder how many of us are like this with people in our lives.

Someone told me once that we're like vaults. When someone does something to show they care for us, it's like dropping money in the vault. When we're neglected or ignored, we feel a gnawing because our vault is low. It's an okay metaphor.

But I want a metaphor that rocks my face. Like the car metaphor. I like to think we're all like cars who aren't in mint condition, who need constant maintenance. Our oil leaks or burns off, and so we need to replenish the oil or else risk the engine.  Losing me here? Let's turn to Tim Taylor for his explanation of why oil's important to a car:

Tim: Inside of a car is an internal combustion engine composed of many precision parts running at a high RPM. High RPM produces friction. Friction produces heat. Heat is dissipated by lubrication--OIL. When the car doesn't get the oil that it needs, it tends to seize up into a ROCK...We now own a four-thousand pound, four-door boulder.

We are each unique beings, running our own unique engines, going about our lives at a high RPM, producing friction and heat, requiring something to help keep us running.

In a perfect world, we could get a one-time fill of a word of encouragement, a hug, a gift, a conversation, a night out, or a hike in the woods and be good for years.

But we're a little broken. A little bit worn. We don't run at optimal efficiency. We have some gaskets loose. And the effect of those words, those hugs, those gifts eventually burn up or leak out. Some time goes on, and there's nothing to keep the friction and heat of the burdens of our daily lives from grinding us down and breaking our hearts down into glorified rocks.

But most of us treat our relationships (and not just the romantic ones) like one fill-up in a blue moon is enough.

Some of us would never dare ignore the oil light in our cars (although some of us might, and have probably paid good chunks of what could have been Bahamas money), but we ignore the lights on the people around us. Or sometimes we see them, and like Jill, we mistakenly assume that everything's fine until we see the light get brighter or a buzzer goes off to let us know someone's really in danger. Sometimes, we discover too late that the engine's in serious jeopardy.

Once that engine goes, the damage is done.

The road to repair at that point is disproportionately more difficult than the cost of regular maintenance.

Whose light have you been ignoring? Which important people in your life have you been driving and driving and expecting that they will just start up the next time you need them to?

How many of you have been afraid to speak up and say what you need from the people around you? How long have you been riding just above the red line, scraping by on nothing while continuing to push yourself in overdrive?

Just like cars, man. Just like cars.

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