"To the Pain"

To set the stage, I have a friend of mine from high school of whom we communicate via Facebook (one of only a few redeeming qualities of Facebook). She has recently has suffered from rejected love. To my friend, I truly wish her well, a healed heart and to find her soul mate with whom they may experience the joy of serving each other as their love increases. 

Her plight had me begin to thinking and it lead to somewhat of an epiphany. I think we a society have failed to prepare ourselves for those moments of pain. In my lifetime, I have seen us as a society stop teaching pain. Be that pain in he form of physical, emotional or spiritual pain, pain is a part of our human existence. From the start of scoreless soccer and football games to trophies for everyone - the dreaded "participation trophy", we've removed pain in almost every way possible from our children's lives.

The lesson of pain is a required lesson for life. It prepares us for the inevitable times of misery and woe. Misery and woe, no matter how much we don't want it, is a necessary and unavoidable part of life. From the times I was a kid, and learned from the loss of a football or basketball team, to the perpetual rejection of girls through my adolescents, to rejection in my professional life, I was at least prepared to, "pick myself up by my bootstraps" or "get up and dust myself off," to start off again in which endeavor I was currently engaged in.

The funny part, which seems to elude most parents when avoiding this lesson of pain for their children is the more often they experience and over come pain, the easier it is to overcome more pain, deeper pain in the future.

Physical pain is the easiest pain to overcome. In almost all occurrences, that pain is temporary. However often physical pain is self induced, which means as humans we have the capacity to lean how not to repeat that physical pain. I mean, how many times does it take to hit your thumb with the hammer before you learn to hit that nail compared to your thumb?

Emotional pain is much much tougher. As men, we are do not easily admit to emotional pain, and we are even more reluctant to do anything about that emotional pain. Emotional pain has too many sources to simply suggest avoid that pain. My observation has been that men (well at least this man) have a tendency to avoid pain of rejected love because it's the simplest pain to avoid. However, it's the wise man that knows such pain is temporary and once overcome has the ultimate reward of love and joy.

Spiritual pain can only be overcome by one source, God the Almighty. I know controversial at it is, your personal connection and relationship with God is the only way I have ever observed relief of spiritual pain. Perhaps it's ironic that to know God better one must go through such spiritual pain. However, once one submits or humbles him / herself before God the Almighty, and lives according to his plan for happiness, not just happiness occurs, but joy - everlasting joy (so long as you live according to His principles) is the end result.

No one wants to go through pain, but in order to know joy and happiness pain is a required element. Without opposition in all things, how as human beings would we know joy from pain? I submit we would now know the difference without experiencing both.