I have learned that pain is my beginning. What about you?

Truth is we don’t know how to be in our pain and uncertainty so we try to get to the end of the story too quickly. We numb the pain. We divert out of the pain. We are susceptible to information that delivers us from pain—like changing what we believe about God.

Pain is never neutral. You always bring something to your pain. You will always “preach to yourself” some kind of gospel of rescue.

We never suffer just the thing we are suffering. We also suffer the way we are suffering the thing we are suffering. We trouble our own trouble.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Much pain can and should be avoided, even prevented. Abusive relationships, self-harm, brokenness, dysfunction and pathologies of all kind can be avoided by making braver decisions. We have learned this. That kind of pain is not part of God’s desire for us and violates the deepest, truest thing about us:  that we are deeply worthy of all good things.

But pain still happens. We are not exempt from it.

Evil is real. And evil hates me.

To stop troubling my own trouble (speaking from experience,) I have to feel my pain. This means I ask God my honest questions like “why?” So often those why questions are full of emotions, like anger and despair. When I’m in pain the world feels uncontrollable. So I don’t want to feel the uncontrollable emotions. Numbing seems to be the wiser choice.

Feeling my emotions means I also have to admit my doubts. Like why didn’t God intervene? Where was God when this tragedy happened? Numbing my emotions means I can try to hang on to a small belief in God because my doubts scare me.

The Bible tells me the world groans. You can expect pain because this world is not functioning the way God intended. If you don’t embrace this theology you leave yourself with unrealistic expectations and naïve to the temptations that will come. Because you are expecting you to be the exception. Not one of us is exempt from pain.

I am a broken mess but I have learned from my wrestling and angry times that God is for me. And this I cannot unsee ever again.

“As much as I am loath to say I “learned lessons”—I hate how suffering people are forced to say this—I did learn a great deal about my faith. I came to understand more about the beauty of a God who accompanies you to the very edge.” –Kate Bowler, https://annvoskamp.com/2023/02/when-we-dont-feel-very-blessed/#more-222230

To the very edge. This is what the beautiful people know. This is where our beauty comes from.

To the very edge. I have dangled here.

My ability to move from dangling towards healing is my brave decision.

You are always theologizing to yourself. You are wired by God’s plan to be an interpreter of life around you. Good theology doesn’t just define who God is. Good theology redefines who you are as a child of God. Theology always connects you to Jesus. Connects you to grace. Connects you to promises. Connects you to hope. Always defines your identity.

My theology which I have learned is that God has not abandoned me, something is not wrong with me, and there is beauty in this painful situation. I have learned this but it has taken time.

“Joy doesn’t replace any emotion; it holds them all and keeps any one of them from swallowing us whole. Society has failed to understand this. When it (society) tell us to find joy in suffering, it is telling us to let it go, to move on, to smile through it. But joy says, Hold on to your sorrow. It can rest safely here.” –Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, p. 165

You can rest safely here. Beautiful words from a beautiful soul. Pain is your beginning. A broken heart is always a beginning.