By Jeff Zhorne
``People are the gifts of life, not the source of it." This statement from Bob George, author of Classic Christianity, was brought home powerfully after my separation and subsequent divorce last year.
During the first few months of agony I went on missions to feel good. I'd do about anything to get out of pain, anything to shortcut the suffering. I didn't realize how that was actually short-circuiting the healing.
Trips, movies, dinners out with friends--I activitied and relationshipped myself to death. Not that anything is wrong with those things, in themselves, but they can't be substitutes for legitimate suffering.
Thankfully a wise counselor admonished me: "Sit in your pain." If we don't sit in our pain, if we're not patient, then we don't learn from our losses. We get married again too quickly or blunder into any available job or make major decisions rashly.
As we open up to our honest feelings, letting them wash over us, we will feel pain. But we also can discover a way through the pain. It hurts to remove glass from my foot, but it also gives my foot a chance to heal.
So often we try to bury our feelings or shortcut the process. The Bible warns about that, and I like how the Living Bible paraphrases James 1:2-4: "Is your life full of difficulties and temptations? When the way is rough, your patience has a chance to grow. So let it grow, and don't try to squirm out of your problems. For when your patience is finally in full bloom, then you will be ready for anything, strong in character, full and complete."
So often, though, we wriggle away from the pain. We do many things to avoid pain. We may experiment with different options. Compulsive and addictive behaviors stop pain--temporarily. Some use alcohol, drugs, relationships or sex to stop their pain. We may talk compulsively or fixate on other people's needs as a way to avoid our own pain.
We may resort to denial of how we are feeling to stop our pain. We may stay so busy that we don't have time to feel. We may spend money, exercise or eat to stop our emotional pain. Food's a biggie: "Here, have a cookie, you'll feel better." Some of us have been fighting that a long time.
But all of these are Band-Aids, just short-term energy-relieving behaviors. None of them can stop our pain; they only postpone it.
We can even use religion to avoid our feelings. Religious obsession lets us escape. Christian acts of kindness are great things. But we can't let these things be substitutes for facing our emotions and moving beyond our losses.
Dwight Viehe, a local church elder in Grand Island, Nebraska, wrote in the Good News Grapevine: "There is no growth without change, there is no change without loss, and there is no loss without pain. When you're tired and stressed to the limits, you don't want to have to face the pain, so some choose not to experience it.
"They don't even want to seriously consider the new understanding. The old is so deeply ingrained that the thought of having to change is too great, so they refuse to do so, and they run to some other organization where they can avoid the pain."
Before I was brave enough to sit in my pain, I kept wanting to fill empty nights with engagements. I didn't want to learn about my responsibility in a failed marriage. I didn't want to ponder possibly painful spiritual realities. I steered clear of letting suffering be a springboard to positive change, inner strengthening and spiritual growth and maturity.
Healing--true, life-lasting healing--comes only by steering into the pain. Drivers on snow and ice know that when their cars start to skid, the kneejerk reaction is usually to steer away from the curve. But that usually causes a loss of control. The correct way to maneuver in a skid is to steer into the curve rather than jerk away.
It's the same with healing: We can't avoid the pain or refuse to talk about it. Instead, we have to drive into the pain because that's where healing begins. That's where we find God.
I knew from Larry Crabb's writings that our deepest pain drives us to God. Yet my desire for God and finding him is so easily blunted with cheaper, baser desires. I prefer to arrange for my life to be comfortable and orderly. And I want God to help me accomplish that.
"Our desire is to build our city here and make our world work," Dr. Crabb writes. But God ensures "we can never mistake this world as a place of final rest."
God doesn't say it's his will to solve my problems. But he does say he wills me wisdom, endurance, strength, his divine love.
In those painful months after divorce, I felt so alone, so abandoned, so rejected. When I dropped my 3-year-old daughter off at her mother's, I felt like I'd never see her again. I can't explain that.
Efforts to stanch what felt like a bleeding heart--watching television, getting involved in others' needs, going out, even writing--seemed to provide no relief. Nothing seemed to reach the level of my hurt.
Maybe God intends that nothing except him can satisfy our deepest desires. In the abyss of agony, despair and confusion, only one Source satisfies--not people, places or things. Not the drinking buddy, not loud music, not trips to the beach or the desert, not spending money.
During tough times of pain and suffering, through perhaps years of drought and frazzle, we can come to grow in our appreciation and love for each other.
Love is the environment where faith can grow. Faith propels us to new reach heights we would never have reached were it not for the pain and the frustration and the sorrow. God will see us through; our role is to trust that process. The flower that follows the sun (Son) does so even on cloudy days.
Jesus Christ is the preeminent message, not good works, not positive thinking, not good books, not being widely traveled, not earning a good education (as fine as all those things may be).
Christ and Christ alone satisfies. He changes our boredom and emptiness to meaning, direction, hope, encouragement, a reason to go on and--best of all--deliverance from despair.
Jeff Zhorne, former managing editor, is a member who attends the Pasadena congregation.
May 21, 1996, Worldwide News, page five
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