5 Short Thoughts on What to Do With Our Pain

a poem, a vignette, a question, and some quotes from wise people who know

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’

—C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

1.

WE DON’T HAVE TO BE WILD-EYED ANIMALS

We can be sage old women       
      with our hands clasped,       
      our golden bands       
      spinning       
      on fingers reduced       
      to bone  

like our spirits which       
      have long shed their       
      excess; all that remains       
      is flint       
      and marrow  

which conveniently       
      is all we need      
      for the long 
      journey home.

2. One weekend in 2021, we gathered in that living room night after night and put on a different movie from their childhood.

   Arms and legs and pillows and tired heads covered every inch of furniture and floor as we all squeezed in—the siblings, the spouses, the grandkids, the honorary family friends. I can’t tell you how many bags of buttered popcorn I popped during that time, or how many scoops of ice cream I piled into bowls and mugs and other clean-ish vessels. As if to say, “This is the lowest of lows—can you even believe how low this is?—yet there is still mint chocolate chip ice cream, and—come now, there there—I’m a generous scooper.”

   Though we watched other films, for whatever reason it’s the night we watched The Sandlot that I return to whenever grief comes peeking into my windows and I’m forced to talk with her, make room for her, entertain her (the audacity!) again.

   My mother-in-law, Anne, had brain cancer. And as if that wasn’t enough, nearly everyone had come down with COVID—and not this namby-pamby modern strain, but the OG Omicron, which sounded (and acted) like some evil transformer my 5-year-old would play with. We were the walking wounded—an entire family stricken with ailments of the heart, the body, and the spirit.

   But when Squints kissed Wendy Peffercorn, my nephew still said, “ICK!” and buried his face. And when Ham said, “You’re killing me, Smalls,” everybody said the line with him. In that moment—with spoons scraping out the last bits of ice cream and sibling banter bouncing from couch to couch—I had the uncanny sense that we were cocooned inside a benevolent hand. That while the sharp edges of our current reality were so painful that we could barely mince from moment to moment, we were given the mercy of being able to laugh, to make fun of one another, to remember that there was life outside our present bleakness, to be together.

   The Sandlot and that living room became holy territory. The kind you slip you shoes off for. It wasn’t just that God’s presence was nearby—it’s that we were inside it. The air quivered with it; my spirit sensed it like a dog’s hair rises on its back.

   And here’s what I keep coming back to: we would never have asked for it. At all costs, we would have avoided it. But in the grief—a gift. A sacred something that would not have been delivered otherwise.

3. “Our first, most spontaneous response to pain and suffering is to avoid it, to keep it at arm’s length; to ignore, circumvent or deny it.

   Suffering—be it physical, mental or emotional—is almost always experienced as an unwelcome intrusion into our lives, something that should not be there. It is difficult, if not impossible, to see anything positive in suffering; it must be avoided away at all costs.

   When this is, indeed, our spontaneous attitude toward our brokenness, it is no surprise that befriending it seems, at first, masochistic. Still, my own pain in life has taught me that the first step to healing is not a step away from the pain, but a step toward it. When brokenness is, in fact, just as intimate a part of our being as our chosenness and our blessedness, we have to dare to overcome our fear and become familiar with it. Yes, we have to find the courage to embrace our own brokenness, to make our most feared enemy into a friend and to claim it as an intimate companion. I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we don’t want to know the pain…When we need guidance in our suffering, it is first of all a guidance that leads us closer to our pain and makes us aware that we do not have to avoid it, but can befriend it.”

   —Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved

4. Lately, I’ve been entertaining a crazy thought: What if we can live in a way that is pain-accepting?

   And I’m not talking about in a defeated kind of way, but rather in a even-you-have-your-beauty, come-on-now, we’re-not-afraid-of-your-rough-edges kind of way.

   Like a bully who you’ve discovered is just an insecure softie, and—because of this—you can learn to forgive their cruelty, and to see humanity twinkling even in their eyes. Despite yourself, you might find there’s even something to be liked about them—though to be sure, it takes a little extra curiosity and patience and innovation to draw it out.

   Pain has always felt angular and unforgiving and awful to me. Dreadful. Worthy of dread. Ready to slash soft flesh and leave brutality in its wake. But—could pain (and suffering) usher in its own kind of softness? Could it be like the folds of a billowing blanket in the sun, caressing us in a dance with a partner that we’d never have chosen and yet—it makes our bodies move in ways we never imagined and opens our eyes to perspectives we’d never have seen?

   What if pain is all brutish and rough on the outside but with something of value within, an unexpected dazzling bit of crystal trapped in grey stone? It is hard work to extract it, there’s not denying that. Though we’d rather tumble through cheerful tide pools of joy any day, what reward is to be found in the curious chipping away of flint?

5. THE GUEST HOUSE

   This being human is a guest house.
   Every morning a new arrival.
   
   A joy, a depression, a meanness,
   some momentary awareness comes
   as an unexpected visitor.
   
   Welcome and entertain them all!
   Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
   who violently sweep your house
   empty of its furniture,
   still, treat each guest honorably.
   He may be clearing you out
   for some new delight.
   
   The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
   meet them at the door laughing,
   and invite them in.
   
   Be grateful for whoever comes,
   because each has been sent
   as a guide from beyond.
   
   —Jalaluddin Rumi

Which number spoke to you most today? I’d love to know.

P.S. I’d live to offer a special shout-out to

Alicia Hamilton

for inspiring me to try a new form of essay-writing, this 5-things essay! Check out her original prompt here and, while you’re at it, subscribe—because she’s wonderful!