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.

***

Feature photo ©2010 Christian Holmér | Flickr

An Open Letter to My Fear

We first met when I was young. You wore a crisp, black suit with a black tie. You knelt down, shook my hand, and introduced yourself as a friend.

You were selling me security, safety. My parents, of course, were on board with this. In the beginning, you started off with simple lessons:

Don't cross the street without holding someone's hand; you could be hit by a car.

Don't play with Dad's razor; you could get cut.

Wear a helmet when you ride your bike; you could damage your head.

After a little while, I started to trust you. You became more and more a part of my life--you moved in, you came with me to school, to church, to the park. You followed me, always just behind me, always ready to jump in and save me from myself.

Still, I made you crazy at times. I could be stubborn. Like the time I ignored your screaming at me not to play with fire. That was the day I almost burned the woods down. I spent 30 minutes stamping out little flames, and you scolded me the whole time. I still think it was one of the funniest days of my life.

It took something a little more close to home for me to listen to you, though.

You remember that night, right? The night my girlfriend told me she was upset because I had ignored her, that she spent the day with that one guy, that she ended the night with her lips on his?

I was lying on the floor, pieces of my heart scattered around me, when you laid your hand on my shoulder like the gnarled claws of a vulture and whispered in my ear, "You see? You see what happens when you open your heart? You see what happens when you make a mistake?"

I did see. You helped me up, and you wrapped your arms around me, and you said, "I know what's best." I nodded and rested my head on your shoulder. You smelled like a hospital room.

***

Every day, I affixed all of the pieces of armor you wanted me to wear under my clothes. To protect you, you would say. And I would drag myself, clumsy, clanking, toward the door to face the dangerous world outside.

For a while, I walked only where you allowed me to walk. I tried only what you allowed me to try. I shared only what you allowed me to share. I loved only how you allowed me to love.

I would see someone living out their dreams, but you would be there, just over my shoulder, to point out that I could never do that. Tsk, tsk. Too risky.

I would start to speak up about what I wanted or needed, but you would put your hand over my mouth and remind me that she might leave me. Shh. It's not important, then.

You worked so hard to get me like that. You miss those days, I'm sure.

***

We were in the middle of a fight, you and me. Who knows anymore what set it off, but I was standing there in all my cumbersome armor and telling you how claustrophobic it had all become and how I hated living like this and how I didn't think you actually cared about my well-being after all.

"Without me," you said through clenched teeth, "you wouldn't survive."

I looked at you and began to peel off the armor you made me wear. They fell to the ground until I was surrounded by cast-iron flakes of skin.

"Do your worst," I said.

You pulled a revolver, black as your eyes, out of your coat and pointed it straight at my heart. I followed the barrel with my eyes to your hand and up your arm and shoulder and to your sick, still face with all its quiet hate.

I thought you were bluffing.

I was wrong.

***

After you pulled the trigger, after you left me a bloody mess there on the floor, you thought you had finally broken me for good.

You thought you had made me your blind Samson, shackled and docile, with nothing left to do but grind grain and wait for death.

You were wrong.

***

I saw you, Fear, do your worst, and realized my heart was still squeezing blood to all corners of my body, my lungs were still feeding me air, and that your gospel of safety and security and self preservation was a slick sales pitch designed to steal my life, not protect it.

Now that I've seen you for what you are--not a friend, not family, not someone who wants what's best but a slimy, slithering parasite--I want you out. Gone. You're not welcome here anymore.

No more following me like my shadow. No more whispers in my ear. No more scary stories at night while I'm trying to fall asleep. I'm done with that now.

I'm sure I'll find you on the sidewalk outside my house begging to get a word in, or that I'll find some messages from you late at night trying to tell me about how dangerous it is to put my heart on the line or dream dreams or risk disappointment. I'm sure you'll do everything you can to work yourself back in.

Go ahead and try.

I stared down the barrel of your gun.

I watched you pull the trigger.

I felt your bullet tear through my flesh and lodge itself in my chest.

On what should have been my death bed, Love found me, reached inside and pulled the bullet out and reconnected my blood vessels and pieced my tissue back together and set my rib cage back in place and told my heart to beat and my lungs to expand and stood me on my feet and looked me in my eyes and said in a voice simultaneously as powerful as a waterfall and as soft as the dew:

"Fear no longer has power here."

Love has moved in now, and I only have room for one.

I hope you'll understand.

Farewell, fear.

***

Feature photo ©2008 AppleDave | Flickr | cc

When Pain Enters Your Story

If you grew up in a school in the suburbs like I did, there's a good chance you took one of those tests online that tell you what you're good at and what careers would suit you.

I don't even remember what I got because I dismissed any formal career immediately. I wanted to be a musician, an artist. I wanted to avoid the interstates the masses all drove on and take the winding back roads.

Regardless, my high school counselors had the same phrase locked and loaded for all of us: "You can be whatever you want to be."

It's with this extreme optimism, this sense of control over our lives and our futures that we were sent forth into the world.

***

I'm afraid we were partially misled. That's not to say I don't believe we can become almost anything we want, do almost anything we want. What was left out of all of the feel-good future talk is how much we would face that would be out of our control. What our counselors never talked about is what to do when the unimaginable happens, when the levee breaks and storm waters reduce us to rubble.

I know this myself, and I know this of many of my friends.

Pain has entered your story--it has forced its way in the door and jarred you from the peace you once knew.

There are more than a few of you reading this who've been blindsided by that which you did not want nor choose.

You didn't choose to lose a child.

You didn't choose to have a child with health complications or a learning disorder.

You didn't choose to be cheated on.

You didn't choose to have cancer.

You didn't choose to have anxiety, or depression, or bipolar, or OCD.

You didn't choose to be abused by your boyfriend or husband or aunt or uncle or nanny.

You didn't choose your afflictions or your burdens, but they've found you. They've leveled you. They've pulled you until you've nearly come apart at the seams. Some of you have come apart and are trying to gather your insides that have spilled out.

This is not the life you wanted. This is not the life you dreamed of in the library of your high school. This is hard, so much harder than you could have predicted.

But this is your life, and you still have a say in what direction it goes. Naive dreams and easy mantras are not enough to get you through this. But hope is.

Hope isn't some warm-and-fuzzy, cop-out way to live life. On many days, hope is a battle. It looks like clenched fists, like blood and tears.

It's a battle worth fighting.

You are not just bone and sinew, blood and tissue.

You are not just nerve endings and electronic pulses firing back and forth.

You are soul and spirit, and soul and spirit are stronger, more pliable, more regenerative than your atoms and cells.

You are not done. You are not finished. You are in the fog and forest of your story, in the rising action, in the complication--there is more story for you to write.

Keep writing.

You may be using blood, sweat, and tears as your ink right now, but let hope shape the letters.

***

Feature photo ©2006 madamepyschosis | Flickr

I See You

To my friends who are parents or have wanted to be parents and have tasted the loss of a child or children, directly or indirectly.

I want you to know that I have no way of knowing or understanding the depths of your loss. That I have no advice or prescriptions or platitudes for you. No fixes. No solutions.

I want to simply say that I see you.

I see you, and I know that you sport a certain scar that will never fully leave, whether it's been months or decades.

You carry with you something you let very few of us see.

The grief of hopes and expectations frozen in place.

The whiplash in your neck from moving with such great anticipation of life to halting to a stop in the void of it.

The fear, the anxiety, the dread of the thought of trying again.

The moments, days, even seasons of canyons and chasms between you and your partner as you each deal in your own ways.

The knot in your stomach, the gritted teeth when someone asks you why you haven't had kids, or another kid, yet.

The white-hot fire that flares up which you keep under control when someone suggests you are selfish for not having kids.

The frustration you feel when you read yet another news story of someone who abuses their privilege as a parent while you are still left without.

The dagger that sticks you as you read another post of a happy couple with the happy news you wanted to have.

The shame that constricts your chest for feeling jealous of those couples.

The little things--a date on the calendar, a scent, a line in a movie, an item in the grocery store, a family at the park, a balloon, a sound, a song, the family picture that could be three instead of two, four instead of three--that bring your grief rushing back momentarily like brain freeze.

The nights of restlessness.

The feeling of powerlessness.

The questions.

The doubts.

The anger.

The sorrow.

The hundreds of little things that I and most other people in your life will never see, hear, or know.

Even with those secrets, I see you. I see you carry all of it. I see this part of your story.

I want you to know that when I see you, I see strength. Even if you haven't felt strong, you are. And you blow my mind.

I see life. I see life in you and the way you love people. I see life around you in the way people love you because of who you are. I see life ahead of you because there is so much in store for you.

With all your joy and grief,

your laughter and hidden tears,

your hope and anxiety,

your strength and your scars,

I see you.

"It Was the Best of Times..."

"…it was the worst of times." Nobody can quite prepare us for the worst times of our lives.

Sure, we've heard that life isn't easy since we were young. Someone says, "Life can be tough," and we furrow our brows, we nod our heads, we think, Message received, and we go on with our days. We hum as we go off to work or school. We dance slowly to the music playing in our cars. We graduate from high school or college and we take pictures and we assume that we'll smile and laugh and dream and love like this, always.

But we've had no class, no formal education to train us in the art of navigating pain, disappointment, tragedy, or disaster.

For some of us, these worst times make a grand entrance. They announce their arrival via a doctor's diagnosis. They shout through the phone and pierce our ears with bad news. They slam into our car at fifty miles per hour, ripping steel and shattering glass. They stop us cold in our tracks.

For me, these worst times have been more like a parasite. They made a stealthy invasion, subtle and secret. They fed on my blood and bones. They grew larger and stronger by sucking the life from me. Before I knew it, I was looking at a full-grown monster I didn't know I had been carrying with me and I didn't know how to get rid of.

However it happens, we will all have some encounter with these worst times. They're looking for us, and they'll find us.

They are not our friend. They're here to steal, kill, and destroy the life we have now and the life we were meant to have. They will do everything to knock us down, to squeeze the air from our lungs, to take us out of the race or at the very least, leave us paralyzed.

They will tempt us to think that they're in control, they have the power, they run the show now, they're here to stay, they'll get the last word.

Listen to me: That stops now. That stops today. They're wrong.

Even in the midst of my worst times--the seemingly endless storm clouds that loom in my skies, the constant barrage of stinging hail stones, the avalanche that has tried to bury me again and again and again and has made me want to tap out so many times--my best times have followed me into the darkness.

As much as my worst times have tried, they haven't been able to suppress my best times. These are the moments of calm in the chaos. These are the oranges and pinks of sunrise after the grays and blacks of night. These are the pillars that keep the ceiling from falling in on us and crushing us under its weight. These are the buds of green that break through the surface of scorched earth. These are the moments when we're caught up in that beautiful work we know we were born to do. These are the friends who inspire us, challenge us, laugh with us, and cry with us. These are the hands of mercy we lock fingers with and the faces of compassion that meet us in our brokenness.

These best times are the collective embrace of hope that reminds us that we can live our best lives even now. Even in our hurt.

These are the worst of times, but it's time we unseat them from the throne we've given them, overthrow their authority over our attitudes, our hearts, our hopes, our dreams. We're done with you, our worst times, no matter how much you try to keep your office.

We refuse to give you that power over us any more.

We refuse to let you hold us under your thumb.

We refuse to let you bury us, to choke us, to drown us in your black water.

Despite all your effort, we're here, still standing, still breathing.

These are our best of times. We choose to see them brighter, hold them closer, and place them higher than you. Try as you might, we won't let you steal one more day, one more precious moment from us.

Come what may, but we're done with you now. You don't get the last word.

We do.

***

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us...

~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities