Has anyone else seen this movie? It has its faults (no pun intended), but I
absolutely loved it…even though I cried my eyes out almost the entire
time. It’s a real, raw, honest look at
living with cancer, particularly teenagers dealing with this awful
disease. My first job as a nurse was
working with people who were fighting cancer and I witnessed several die from
the disease, including very young people.
And then I had the opportunity to be with my mom as she lived with,
fought against, and ultimately died from cancer.
But what keeps coming back to me from this movie is this
particular line about pain. Our society
doesn’t like pain. We do anything we can
to escape it, alleviate it, or numb it.
But when the rubber meets the road, the truth is that pain really does
demand to be felt. Or put another way,
in some way, shape or form, pain will be exposed.
We use all sorts of methods to try to escape, alleviate, or
numb the pain that is inevitable in this life.
Drugs, alcohol, sex, food, exercise, materialism, or busyness are just a
few things that come to my mind when I think about ways we try to keep pain
from being felt. We use these things so
we don’t have to feel the pain, but through the use of these “coping
mechanisms,” our pain is often exposed.
Drug addition, alcoholism, pornography, eating disorders, mounting debt,
and running around like chickens with our heads cut off are all ways we
“expose” the pain that we try so hard to not feel.
But where does this get us?
Deeper in pain.
So what’s the answer?
Allow pain to be felt…really
felt.
In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, “We can
ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to
us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is
his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
God used His megaphone in my life as I watched the woman who
gave me life take her last breath. While
it was the most painful experience of my life, it was also one of the most
sacred and special moments of my life. There
is no denying that I felt pain…deep pain in my heart. But it was through this pain that God taught me
this painful truth: pain brings beauty.
My mom had a wonderful life but she also experienced a lot
of pain in her 63 years. However, by the
end of her life, she was more beautiful than ever. Physically she was emaciated from cancer
eating away at her body, but her beauty resonated from something deeper…a
profound peace and faith in God. She,
too, had learned that pain brings beauty.
“Pain demands to be felt” also made me think a lot about
adoption. Is it beautiful? YES! Jenna has been home for 8 months now and it
has been miraculous…truly beautiful. But
with every adoption is pain. My precious
daughter was at one point left on a busy street. My precious daughter will never know the
mother who gave her life and this courageous woman somewhere in China will
never know how amazing her daughter is.
My precious daughter will one day ask difficult, painful questions about
the first 2 ½ years of her life in China.
My precious daughter will be faced with difficult, painful questions
about her genetic skin condition.
I pray
that God will give me the wisdom and courage to help Jenna feel her pain and
then expose the beauty she has to offer this world.
Every child that was once an orphan and now has a loving,
forever family is a picture of God’s grace and testimony to the fact that pain
brings beauty. Hopefully, God will
“rouse a deaf world” by using Jenna and other children that were once orphans
to show that He can create beauty from ashes and pain needs to be felt, not
feared.
God doesn’t allow anything to be wasted, including our
pain. It is always for a greater
purpose. We may not fully understand
that purpose this side of heaven, but there is a purpose. Our job is to feel the pain and then expose
the beauty that comes from it.
Just think how much more beautiful the world would be if we each
exposed the beauty that comes from our pain?
