Pain, never felt so good in my life.

Pain. The very thing we spend our whole lives avoiding or masking. We take pills to placate its effects. Watch feel good movies, read books, or listen to music to distract us from its agitation. It leads us to a place inside we don’t want to go. The dark and lonely place that no one else has been. Filled with memories and shadows of a past long forgotten, or at least attempted to be forgotten. Kind of like that scene in the movie version of Polar Express when the boy wanders to a part of the train filled with old and broken toys. They hang like nooses from the ceiling and lay as piles of junk on the floor. Maybe at one point you meant to deal with that stuff. Some time in your past you intended to grab a broom and trash bin and a can of Lysol and go to town on that part of your heart, but life carried on and you popped in another Aspirin and started the next episode on Netflix. I wish I could tell you that is the best way to deal with pain. Simply watch another movie, it will go away. Sure, Eminem and Jay-Z will rhyme your anger and depression into oblivion. Keep reading that book every night where the guy gets the girls every time, the hero saves the magical world when no one else could, and the cunning detective solves the mystery and saves the victim from his murderer. Those stories are great and they’ll make you better. Really? Almost as if someone has been lying to you this whole time. Like when you thought getting completely plastered on the weekends was a sure way to a good time and happy social life, until you woke up 10 years later and realized it was all a scam. Playing off your depression and insecurities, convincing you to avoid the pain by drowning it in something else besides your own thoughts. Haven’t you ever heard that country song before? Wake up. You’ve been lied to and it’s time you faced the truth.

Pain. The very thing we need, but don’t want. The best medicine for us, but spend all our time avoiding. Like that one weird kid we all knew in middle school that no one wanted to be friends with, but turns out to be the coolest and nicest person in the whole world. Then we get jealous 10 years later when someone marries them and they end up having a better life than ours. Pain is destined to benefit us, not destroy us. For every negative and painful experience in a person’s life, there is intended to be a positive moment of growth as a response. Yes, even when that person touched you that way as a child. Or when you were bullied that way in middle school. Or when one of your parents abandoned you and never returned. Or when death knocks at your door and refuses to leave you alone. I’m not afraid to hear about these things in your life because I have my own train car filled with brokenness like you. Don’t lie to me behind your mask of Aspirin and Netflix that your life is okay when I can the smell the stench of avoidance on your breath. Wake up. My ear is ready and willing to listen to your story.

Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 states:

“9 But he [the Lord] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Pain. Drives us to our knees. Grace. Strengthens us back to our feet. When the Lord’s grace is given to us like a Christmas gift we really didn’t deserve, eternal joy is the result. There’s a problem though. You can’t earn a gift. You can’t buy a gift from someone. You can’t do a single blasted thing to convince anyone that you deserve that gift, because then it ceases to be a gift. The Lord bestows his gift of grace upon you when you least deserve it. Only at your lowest, darkest, dreadful place in life, does grace taste the sweetest. Pain is necessary because it forces out the junk. It slowly and bloodily removes the nastiness from our hearts, like steel wool on rusty metal or sandpaper on rough wood. The result though, is amazing. Only when Paul was at his lowest and most dreadful weakness could he experience the joy of his Lord’s grace that would strengthen him to eternal joy. When you are at your lowest and weakest, you are strong. Because your strength is not your own. Your strength is pure and steadfast because it is founded on the Lord’s grace and not on your Aspirin and Netflix. Stop hiding. Throw away the pain pills and stop the movie. Grace is knocking at your door, and it’s carrying a broom and a can of Lysol.