Never waste the pain

Sometimes I have those days where I don't know why I do something, but God reveals to me later His plan.  Today was one of those days.

I went out last night and stayed up a little too late.  I didn't wake up until 9:30am.  Normally I am at church at 9:30am.  I decided to get out of bed, make pretty and go to the late service.  I could have easily stayed in bed, loafed around and not gone, but I had that feeling I should go.  I'm glad I did.  Jill Briscoe was doing the sermon this morning.  I like hearing her speak.  She is usually down to earth, easy to understand with a good mix of humor.  She has a way of taking everyday things and making biblical sense of it.

This morning she was talking about looking back at our past can help us understand our present and future.  Toward the end of the sermon (if you want to watch it, it will be available at www.elmbrook.org on Monday afternoon) she was talking about an author who spoke of a farmer pounding nails into his apple tree to get it to produce fruit.  The following year, the apple tree produced some of the best fruit it had.  It had started to become dormant and complacent and the nails remind the tree it was a tree and it's job was to produce fruit.  It jolted the tree to be productive.  Jill was talking about difficult news she had received and how her friend reminded her to not waste the pain.  Use the pain to bear fruit.

So often in our lives, God pounds nails in our trunk.  He tries to remind us what our purpose is and tries to get us to bear quality fruit.  He doesn't want us to waste our pain.  He wants us to use our pain to help others, work harder, produce better fruit.

It's no secret the past year or so has been the most painful of my life.  For so long, I tried to understand it, make sense of it, dissect it, digest it, but I still couldn't grasp it.  I was in the middle of the pain and couldn't use it.  My nails weren't done being pounded in my trunk and I needed to take the time to heal and grow before I could produce better fruit.  So often we try to rush through our pain because we think we can't handle it.  We try to avoid it because it's pain.  Who wants pain right?  We get to the point where we can't handle the unavoidable pain because we never took the time to learn how to deal with it when it wasn't overwhelming.

Now that I'm moving past the pain, I realize I don't want to waste it.  I realize I have something to offer and I wouldn't have that had I not gone through the pain.  For instance, my friend's dad recently passed away.  He had been battling cancer and found out he was running out of options.  My friend was telling me about the options and was feeling discouraged.  I shared with him how my dad had passed and the lack of options we were faced with.  He hoped to have more time with his dad, but unfortunately, he left this earth in the middle of his latest treatment.

In the past, I wouldn't have understood my friend's pain.  I wouldn't have been able to give him kind, compassionate comfort and advice.  I wouldn't have been able to give him the perspective I gained by going through the pain.  I feel compelled to reach out to him.  I feel obligated to be available to him.  I feel honored that God equipped me with the tools to help.  Since my grief is still fresh, I know what gave me comfort.  I know what made me feel better.  I know what made me feel worse.  I know how hard it was to make the phone calls to friends for help.  I know I felt like a burden.  I know my grief was overwhelming.  I know people who hadn't gone through it didn't understand and didn't know how to ease my pain.  Here I am, knowing what it feels like to lose a parent.  Knowing what it feels like to lose a parent unexpectedly to cancer.  Knowing what it feels like to be at odds with my surviving parent.  Knowing the guilt, pain, failure, doubt, and uncertainty.  But here I am, knowing what it feels like to work through it.  Knowing was it feels like to resolve the pain.  Knowing what it feels like to get past the difficult feelings.  Knowing what it feel like to heal.  My pain was not wasted and it is not in vain.

At the same time, I am also 2 days post divorce.  I thought this process would be more difficult for me.  I thought I would be sad, but I'm not.  I am relieved.  I feel alive.  I feel like I've been given a second chance at happiness.  The chains that were holding me back from being true to myself are gone.  I am starting to be myself again.  I am starting to find the happiness I had once lost.  But I also don't want to waste that pain.  I know there is a plan, but I don't know what it is.  There will come a day where my divorce, and all the struggles that caused it, will be used to comfort someone else.  My pain will be used to help someone else going through a similar situation.  It will not be wasted.  It will not be in vain.  I hate that anyone has to feel an ounce of the pain I have been through recently, but I know it is part of life and the other part of it is reaching out to those who are in pain and helping them through it because they would do the same for me.  There have been so many amazing friends and family that have reached out to me to give me comfort because they know the pain.  They have been through a divorce.  They have been through divorce for the same reasons I was going through one.  They know how hard it is to adjust to single life again.  And they've been there for me.  We aren't meant to go through difficult situations alone and if we didn't have go through it ourselves, we wouldn't have the training to help others through similar challenges.

I know I'm not done working through my pain, but I know I've been through enough to understand how I can be there for others struggling through their own pain.  I know God's training has brought me to this point.  I know the people God has put in my life to keep me from falling.  I know I'm not going through this alone.  I know I'm growing into a stronger, better Dana.  I know my new normal is nothing like the normal I had a year ago.  I ran into a friend of mine at church today.  She was in my first bible study and we had to interview each other and tell the group about the other person.  I said "we're not even the same people we were 2 1/2 years ago.  Look at how much we have changed!"  We have come a long way.

Never waste your pain.  Live in it.  Go through it.  Don't avoid it.  Understand it.  Feel it.  And when the time is right, let it be your guide.

Dana