"For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay." -Habakkuk 2:3
What is pain?
Well, according to Google:
pain
pān/
noun
1.
physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury.
"she's in great pain"
synonyms:suffering, agony, torture, torment, discomfort
2.
careful effort; great care or trouble.
"she took pains to see that everyone ate well"
synonyms:care, effort, bother, trouble
"he took great pains to hide his feelings"
verb
1.
cause mental or physical pain to.
"it pains me to say this"
synonyms:hurt, cause pain, be painful, be sore, be tender, ache, throb, sting, twinge, cause discomfort;
informalkill one
"her foot is still paining her"
sadden, grieve, distress, trouble, perturb, oppress, cause anguish to
"the memory pains her"
Maybe it seems silly, but I think there are a lot of holes in that definition. When I think about pain, I think about the result of damage to nerve endings in the body. So when I touch a stove burner when it's on, pain is the negative feedback loop that tells my body 'maybe don't do that because it damages your body'. Makes sense. So next time, my body learns that hey, stove is hot, hot is bad, don't touch hot stove. Rocket science.
The problem I've been having is with the last part of the Google definition; the 'sadden, grieve, distress, trouble...' part. Mainly because my science brain has a hard time reconciling physical pain with mental/emotional pain.
Let me explain:
If physical pain is my body's attempt to help me not die by telling me what is physically damaging to me, one would think the purpose of mental/emotional pain would be similar; to teach me what is not good, and what I should avoid in the future. But there is a problem with that, isn't there? First of all, Physical pain and emotional pain don't come from the same place. Physical pain is the result of damaged nerve endings, but emotional pain is NOT the result of a damaged anything. The term 'broken heart' is simply a term, meant to allude to the discomfort we feel inside with the circumstances at hand. But where do these feelings actually come from, if not from nerve endings?
What I've been learning is that emotional pain is actually not pain at all; in fact it has nothing to do with a feedback loop that is meant to teach us what to avoid - but simply a break in our perspective and understanding of the world.
I submit this: Emotional pain is caused when we experience circumstances that shatter our understanding. We grow up learning one thing, and then in a moment we are taught the hard way that in fact, that's not how the world works at all.
I equate it to getting a credit card, or paying taxes for the first time after you've spent years on the receiving end. Just kidding.
When things go against our logic, something happens to our brain and we are forced to admit that we don't actually know as much as we think we did. And as much as it sucks, I think it's a pretty brilliant way that God has designed us to keep us humble.
So, why do we feel pain when our understanding is challenged? After all, I thought constantly learning was always a good thing...And it is. I think, where my pain comes from at least, control is the main factor. See, my box of understanding of the world is pretty limited, but at least I'm comfortable with it. If I know that I'm going to fail at something, it's so much easier to commit to failing than stretching myself to actually believe I can do something, and then having that belief shattered if I do fail.
That sounds depressing - but wait for it, I'm coming around to the punch line.
That's where the small box is my problem. MY 'pain' comes from MY limited understanding and fear of hoping for more. But when I look at that statement I just made, there are so many holes in it. For one thing, if I take that one occurrence of 'failure' and move beyond it and try again instead of stopping, it's no longer failure but practice. And that's my point: what if our pain comes from the fact that we haven't waited long enough for the reveal to see the whole picture? What if we allow ourselves to wallow in the self pity of failure and regret and hopelessness when the truth is that if we just kept moving, we would eventually see the pieces fit?
I was driving in the mountains recently, and I was hoping to take some pictures. As per usual when I go on my road trips, God ended up showing me some things through the world He made. It ended up being SO foggy and snowy that I couldn't actually see the mountains. There I was, in one of the most BEAUTIFUL places, and I couldn't even tell because I was in the middle of a snowstorm, and the mountains were hidden from view. Now, I wasn't completely lost because I of course have been there enough to know they were there...but what if it had my first time through? What if I had been driving into the mountains looking for the mountains, but unable to see that I was in fact already where I wanted to be? I think I'd be pretty disappointed to get there and realize it was nothing like I hoped! We know that of course the fog has to clear eventually (unless you live in Vancouver, where it lives all winter), but sometimes it can linger for awhile, and you can't do anything about it. My life lately has felt a little like that: trying to put together a puzzle that I got from a garage sale just to realize I'm missing some pretty key pieces (THE FRUSTRATION). And no matter how much I want it to be complete, those pieces aren't just going to appear.
The difference is, I know that Jesus has all of the pieces. I just really want Him to cave and show me the pieces so I can complete the picture. I know SO many people who go out to see mediums and seek out 'enlightenment' so they can know what's going to happen, so they can have peace with emotional pain they've been feeling. For many of them, they've lost loved ones that they're not sure how to live without, and they don't believe in God but they want to believe that their loved ones are still with them. Others just want to know what's going to happen so they can have peace with the fact that whatever else happens, they won't end up alone or miserable. And I'm in all of those boats! Of course I feel like it would be easier to live in the moment if I had peace that everything would work out, or get messages from people that have moved on to let me know I didn't have to mourn or worry.
But does that ever really work?
I talk to plenty of people who have been to mediums. They talk about how it's given them SO much peace...but they're still so insecure and afraid. No one who has lost anyone and been to a medium has all of a sudden stopped mourning their loved one because they've received an encouraging message from them. It doesn't make the pain go away. Why?
It's because there's a process. Just like we can't cram for an entire course in an hour and expect our brain to understand and integrate all of that information, we can't just see a piece of the future and expect it to fit in our current box of logic.
I'm not a video gamer, but as a kid I played some of those family-friendly ones, and the best analogy I can give of seeing a piece of the future is when you get that mysterious key that you can't even use until waaaaay later in the game, after you've gotten through a bunch of other levels and acquired a bunch of other skills that have equipped you to get to where you are. Getting the key in level 1 that opens a door in level 17 doesn't automatically mean you are ready to go through the door in level 17 and face whatever is behind it, it just means that when you get there, you have a key. And you can try that key in every door you encounter to see if it fits, but it's just not going to work until you get the right door. Anyway that's all I have to say about video games.
By the way, I'm not just talking about mediums, prophets and seers and the people who seek them out. We love to predict our own futures, no help needed. I love to decide for myself if something is going to work out or not and if it seems like it isn't, avoid it entirely. Spare myself the possibility of pain and disappointment. So when I find myself desperately hoping for something, I try to put as little focus on it as possible, even talk down about it like it's not a thing and convince myself that it's not a possibility.
Do you know what sucks about hope? It's a lot stronger than fear, and it's really, REALLY hard to hold down. In fact, I find the more I try to convince myself there is no possibility of something happening, the more I find myself desperately hoping that it will. And that causes an insane amount of pain. Desperately hoping for something you've already decided is impossible...can you say living in despair?
THAT is what I think it means in the Bible, in Proverbs 13:12 where is says "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a hope fulfilled is a tree of life." The act of deferring or putting off hope makes the heart sick because hope is hard to kill, and trying NOT to hope for something that we long for makes a great big hole in our lives that only fear or faith can fill. Most of the time we choose to fill that hole in our understanding with fear. We decide that we're so afraid of the pain of the possibility of disappointment that it would be better to hold back and put a damper on our hope for it. When we do that though, two things DON'T happen: A) we don't actually shut down our hope for that longing of our heart, and B) We don't give ourselves the ability to move forward. We continually force ourselves to mourn the loss of that thing that we hope for, because we have to actively choose to decide it's not possible.
Here is a truth you need to know:
We are programmed for possibility. Whether you believe it or not, we have a God through whom everything and anything is possible, and because He made us in His image, we actually cannot believe in impossibility. We can come up with a bazillion attempts to explain things, but we can't honestly believe that something is impossible. So when we tell ourselves that we can't do something or can never achieve or acquire something we have in our hearts, we can't actually shut down our default to hope for 'impossible' things, because we know in our inner workings that it simply isn't the truth.
Hope fulfilled.
That's the hard part of that verse for me. Heart-sickness I know, and I know it well. But hope fulfilled? pffft. I know as a Christian I'm supposed to go through the whole 'Jesus is our hope so that means if I have Jesus my hope is fulfilled and thus I am a joyful, happy tree of life"...but I actually don't know if that's what it means. I know Jesus is the source of my hope, because it is through Him all things are made to be - but I think (at least at this point of my understanding) that part of the verse has a lot to do with my waiting. If I just decide that I'm deeming something that I hope for impossible, I make myself live in despair. But if I embrace the truth that everything is possible, and I know Jesus knows me and my deepest longings, and I know He is the Father who gives good gifts, then I really only need to learn how to wait for the reveal, and trust that He knows when the gift will be good for me, for His Glory, and for the world. THAT is the tree of life: living in possibility, letting your heart hope and trusting that He will give you what your heart desires, though it might not be what you think right now, and knowing that what you have here in this moment, is enough.
For me, it's knowing that here in this moment, I am enough. Not trying to tinker with my own soul, but trusting that I am enough now, and as He wants me to improve He will give me trials and circumstances that will increase my understanding and grow my character for His Glory, in His timing.
It's not easy letting go of the reigns and allowing possibility to rule over our lives. We like boxes, because even if they're tattered and smelly and small, they're familiar and constant, and it's easier to adapt to one thing and remain static than it is to live in a fluid-like state.
It reminds me of a word I got from the Lord while I was in Peru. I was sitting on the shore of the rock beach, watching the waves crash. As I watched, I saw that each time a wave crashed the rocks that were in the way would be smashed into each other, thrown around. The ones that were further up on the shore got splashes sometimes, but were mostly just dry. The differences between them though were so great: the rocks in the waves were so smooth on account of the fact that they had endured being thrown into others so many times that their edges had been worn away. In addition, their colors were so much more apparent! I saw flecks of green, red, purple, gold, silver, blue, yellow, black...all in a stone. And while I'm sure the others far up on the beach would be just as lovely, because they were dry they were all really just the same - browny grey, dull and jagged. The word I received was that living in possibility in Christ is like living in those crashing waves. We're always in a dynamic state; always moving, always changing, always being challenged. Sometimes, it's even violent - but that's where our understanding grows the most and our edges are worn away; when our true colors are revealed. Otherwise we're like those who live up on the shore - JUST as beautiful and precious as any other, filled with just as many colors, but living in deferred hope; with a heart sick from longing for seemingly impossible things, edges jagged to protect ourselves from the impending doom that we brought upon ourselves (NOT a statement about hell FYI) when we decided something that we hope for would be impossible. I think that might be why the Bible says it's not wise to seek out people who tell us the future or communicate with the dead - it makes us feel like we're cheating, getting an extra piece of the puzzle than we were meant to and thus giving us some extra comfort and clarity about the direction we should go. The truth is, though we don't think about it like this, is that the puzzle we're putting together has 10000000000000000000 pieces...so getting ONE piece that sits in the middle when we only really have the border might bring us comfort because we have it, but it's ultimately useless and just a source of confusion until we get to the point where we can use it........and that time point is ultimately up to Him anyways.
Anyways, It's late and my brain is tired and stretched enough for the evening.
There is beauty in the 'now' friends. Don't make your heart sick, live in possibility! Don't be afraid to hope for things, and don't be afraid to fail...because it's just practice. And for anybody who might get offended or feel like I'm attacking you because you've sought the advice or word of a medium or shaman, I'm not against you. I'm fully aware that I don't know everything and I don't come against you with arrogance. All I can speak to is what I've seen, and the words in the Bible that I believe with my whole heart which, if you don't believe, I have no reason to hold you to. But if you ever want to talk or 'enlighten' me on your experiences, my heart is open for you :)
Always,
Love you guys!
-B.<3