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Only a warped few enjoy watching others suffer.
As this is written, one of the growing, significant emerging leaders I mentor is with his wife as their newborn son fights for his little life in a Colorado hospital. The urgency of things not going well has startled all of us who know and care for this couple.
It was just a week ago that we were laughing and sharing in the pending joy of a healthy birth while celebrating a mutual friend’s graduation from grad school. Listening to this expectant mother and father, hope was rampant. The nursery was complete. Any moment the boy-baby could decide to show up. All seemed to be well.
And now we join them in hoping. Praying. Wondering. Any one of three outcomes are possible. This little lad could breathe his last. He could live, with complications. The seriousness of the moment may fade, healing prevails, he lives a full life.
As of this hour there is no knowing. But whatever takes place…from deep grief and sorrow to relieved, life-enhancing joy…this couple, in time, I’m confident will choose the transformation that only our God can give, no matter how low the low, or how high the high.
Why do I suggest such a thing when the outcome could be so dire?
Here’s the confidence I have in this young mother and father. They know who they are. He is an associate pastor. She has worked with a non-profit. Their stories to date, for him, for her, for them, is full to the brim of life lessons, hard and wonderful, that who they are is of way more value than just what they have done or what they do.
Pain will show all of us who we are. The real you. The real me.
Pain will either drive us nuts, or…….pain will reveal who we are.
Yup! I for one vote for as little pain as possible. Who among us says, “Bring it on!”
Emotional pain. Organizational pain. Physical pain. Financial pain. Relational pain. Spiritual pain. I have yet to hear anyone pray, “Dear God, tomorrow, will you please bring me more excruciating pain. Lay it on me. Make sure it’s the worst.”
Too often, when the worst of pain hits, we are wondering where in the universe is God?
I have friends who have had so much pain in their lives that they don’t even believe God cares.That is their choice. I still value them as friends because I’ve caught some glimpses of who they are, even in the midst of their deep pain. I hope and pray for them a better future…that some day who they are will transcend what they currently believe to be true, in their pain.
I’ve no clue why some people experience what they do. I ache with them over the mistreatment, the grief, the miscues that have shattered their dreams.
There is a truth that no one is immune to having hard moments.
I’ve experienced them. I’ve been angry. I’ve been disappointed. I’ve disappointed. I’ve been mistreated. I’ve almost given up. I’ve been wounded. I’ve wounded.
And yet, my belief, shared by many, not shared by others, is that the One Who created the universe, you, me, does not have it out for us when we are in pain. The writings of C.S. Lewis have been a “distance mentor” to me. He writes about the choices we have on what we do with our pain from his well known tome, The Problem of Pain:
“Pain insists upon being attended to.
God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks in our consciences,
but shouts in our pains.
It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Pain is a doorway to transformation.
Of course, pain is not the only way to experience transformation. However, in my life, and the life of many others, the other side of pain has seemed to have the most lasting impact on my life. Pain has taught me about who I am, has taken me from who I was, right into who I need to be.
Trust me. It’s not been a perfect journey. I haven’t said, “Oh, here’s pain again. So I must be on the grow to something really good.”
When my heart and mind and very life, during the hours of the days where both good and not-so-good have taken place, when my heart and mind and very life have been aligned with what I believe to be true about why I am alive, seeds of transformation are often planted, even among the potential weeds of the moment. It becomes my choice for what I will nurture. That is true whether one believes there is a God, or not.
It is recorded in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, those we commonly refer to as the Old Testament, in a rather profound writing in an olde tome called Deuteronomy, these words (30:19):
Choose life
so that you and your children will live.
And love God, your God, listening obediently to him
firmly embracing him.
The best of intentional, deep change, whole life, transformational mentoring prepares one to be fully alive, no matter the circumstances. Transformation is a choice. Transformation takes place out of what you believe to be true about life, your life, the life of others. Transformation is a life-long process, no matter who you are, what you do, where you come from, your ethnicity, education, bank account, or convictions.
You can choose to live. You can choose to die. If you choose life, to be fully alive, prepare to be transformed. This is what we are about within Leadership Design Group with men and women literally around the globe.
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As a reasonably new father, the story at the beginning of this post is heart wrenching because every parent has this fear lingering in the back of their minds during the pregnancy and leading up to the birth.
As a person who has experienced his share of pain in the past 5 years I understand the wrestling and the questions that pain invites us into.
One question, I’ve never asked “Is why me God?” I’ve never thought that life was unfair because I didn’t get what I wanted. Life would be unfair if everyone else experienced pain except me.
Pain has both weakened me and strengthened me. I think pain clarifies things for me, it definitely humbles me and in many ways it has been purifying me of judgment. It has made me a better man but I still don’t think of him(pain) as my friend.
Thanks for this exceptional post on a very difficult topic.