How to Move Forward When You’re in Pain: Part 1

Some of us have a much higher pain tolerance than others. Meg’s pain tolerance is off the charts compared to mine. EXCEPT for when she chops jalapenos and declares that her, “fingerprints are going to burn off.”

No one enjoys pain.  Unfortunately, pain is a part of life.  I have yet to meet anyone who hasn’t gone through some kind of physical or emotional heartache in their life.

Today as I write this post, I am preparing to attend a funeral of a very special lady who died much too young.  She was a great mother, sister, friend, daughter, aunt and wife. And her passing will be painful for the people who loved her so much and miss her dearly.

So if pain is inevitable, my question for you is, when you go through pain, how do you move forward from it?

Unfortunately, Megan and I have experienced a tremendous amount of pain and loss in our married life.  (You can click here or here to read more of our story OR hear our testimony-“Learning to Dance on the Water” from Megan here)

But we have learned the invaluable lesson of how to move forward when you are in pain.  And over the next three weeks, we want to give you three steps you can take to move forward when you experience emotional pain. Pain is a part of all of our journey’s, but it doesn’t have to be our final destination so let’s unpack the first step.

Step 1:  Allow Yourself Time to Grieve

When life takes a tragic turn and you find yourself in pain, you need to allow yourself time to grieve.  The bible says in Ecc 3:4, “there is a time to weep and a time to mourn.”  Because pain is so uncomfortable, too many people shove their feelings down (I’m guilty of this) and try to move on without taking the proper time to grieve.

When Megan and I first heard the term “infertility,” it felt like someone stabbed a sharp object right into our hearts.  It was surreal.  We were in shock, filled with questions and in crushing amounts of pain.  After years and years and doctor after doctor, the words, “we have done everything we can do, I am sorry it didn’t work out,”  hit us like a ton of bricks.

Instead of taking the time to mourn the loss of the dream like we should have, we pressed on in ministry, we pressed on believing it wasn’t true, we pressed on full speed ahead in life and never gave ourselves time to mourn the loss of a dream.  We were in denial and we didn’t want to face our new reality; the reality that, without a miracle, we would never know what it felt like to be in a delivery room and experience the joy of childbirth.  We would never hear people say, “she looks just like you.”  We would never get to plot out Christmas morning presents; I would never get to walk my daughter down the aisle. Our new reality was different than the life we had always anticipated and we needed to take a few months to grieve, but that didn’t seem appealing or faith-filled, so instead we rolled up our sleeves and kept going. But it began to take its toll on our lives.

We found ourselves depressed, hopeless, and bitter.  I wished we would have given each other permission to cry, to mourn, to be sad for a season of time instead of trying to fix each other and always trying to make it better.  The truth is, there was no fix.  We couldn’t make it better.  No one could.  People would try to fix it. They meant well, but would minimize our situation by saying things like, “Don’t worry it will happen for you someday.”  Really, you sure about that?  You know that it will happen for us?  People would say, “all in God’s timing.”

Thanks, “church-y answer” that fixes everything!  😉

People would say, “at least you have each other,” this was very true and we were very thankful for each other,  but that didn’t fix our pain.  “You can always adopt,” …because adoption is so easy, not expensive at all, and is the right choice for everybody right?  I know people meant well, I do, but the best thing was when someone just said to us, “what you are going through sucks!  I can’t imagine how hard this is for you right now.  Tell me how are you guys coping with this?”  In the 11 years of walking through this, only one time did someone from my community call me up and invite me to lunch just to ask me how I was doing.  He bought me a steak, and asked questions about how we were coping and dealing with this situation.  He didn’t try to fix it.  He didn’t try to say the right thing that would turn our whole situation around.  He just allowed me to vent, to grieve, and to mourn.  He even shed a tear with me at one point.

And it was unbelievably refreshing.

After all, doesn’t the bible say to, “mourn with those who mourn” and “carry each other’s burdens?”  I don’t see anywhere in scripture where it instructs us to fix each other’s problems, but there are countless verses about showing kindness, love, and gentleness to those who are hurting and in pain.  Take it from me, give yourself a season of time to be sad, to mourn, to cry.  Only allow people to validate your pain and mourn with you for this season.  Once again, this is just for a season.  Some people will use an unfortunate circumstance to be bitter, angry and depressed the rest of their lives.  That is not what I am saying at all.  There will be time to strategically take steps to get better, but this isn’t the time for that.

There are no shortcuts, take some time to grieve properly.

Action Step:

Think about the pain in your life.  Have you grieved properly over it or have you shoved it down?  If you haven’t taken time to grieve properly, start today. I know you don’t want to. I didn’t want to either. But do it now as a gift to yourself in the future. It’ll be worth it.

Grab a journal or a laptop and write down the circumstance that led to pain in your life and how you feel about it. Get it outside of just you and don’t let yourself hold back by only writing what you believe you’re “allowed” to feel. Give yourself permission to be honest.

I know this step is kind of heavy, but click here for our second practical step in how to move forward when you are in pain. It won’t be easy, but I promise you, it’ll be worth it.

Until next time,

Chris

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