How much worse off we would all be without physical pain! As counterintuitive as it sounds, pain is your friend. Pain is a mechanism to warn you that something is wrong. Imagine a scenario where there was no physical pain: When you get sick with a virus, you don’t feel bad, so you don’t take care of yourself. The virus spreads rapidly because there is no way to know that you have it until it is too late and people start dying! Death or relentless monitoring become the only 2 ways to know that something is physically awry. Who would want to live like that? Dramatically shortened lifespans and constant paranoia? No thanks!

Twenty years ago, when I was first diagnosed with cancer, it was pain that made me go see a doctor. Thank goodness the pain arrived in time! The doctors found it and treated it before it was too late. I’ve received 20 additional years on this good earth because of this good friend, pain. If it weren’t for pain, I wouldn’t be alive to write this today. I am grateful!

Because it is so familiar, physical pain is no longer very intimidating to me. Of course I don’t like it, but it’s manageable. Besides alerting me to something being physically amiss, it is helpful because it is purifying. It calls me to something higher. For instance, when a tech comes into my hospital room to wake me up in the middle of the night to draw blood, I am challenged to respond with kindness and docility. She appears abruptly with a bright light and sharp needle to do her job. This is rather unpleasant for me, but it’s also for my good. The LEAST I can do is be pleasant to her regardless of how I am feeling. Subtle sighs or groans of annoyance or self-pity only serve to assault her with an air of needless negativity. What good does that do? I admit that sometimes I fail, but the pain offers me a great opportunity. It calls me to become the best version of myself.

Compared to mental, emotional, and spiritual pain, physical pain is not so bad. As I look out over the city from my 10th floor hospital room, I know that there are people out there who are suffering greatly in far more profound ways. Loneliness, betrayal, injustice, discouragement, depression, shame, fear, grief, regret. I know all too well that that kind of suffering is greater – much greater – than my shivering, body aches, and throbbing IV entry point at the moment. It’s not even close. But even non-physical pain serves a purpose. It implicitly screams, “You were NOT created for THIS! This is NOT how you are supposed to feel!” Again, it reveals to us that something is wrong.

If we approach it properly, this non-physical pain can also be purifying. Nothing is more beautiful than a person who accepts his or her cross and joyfully carries it without anger or self-pity. I once knew a woman whose husband cheated on her and left her alone as a stay at home mom with five young children. Her pain was almost unimaginable. She dedicated the rest of her life to loving and caring for those children in a joyful way AND to praying and offering her suffering for the spiritual benefit of her philandering husband who had moved far away to start a whole new life. This woman had taken a vow on her wedding day and it wasn’t conditional. It was unconditional. So she simply lived out her vow. To witness such a person is to witness a depth of goodness and fidelity that is hard to fathom in this day and age. The pain and difficulty that she faced made her even more beautiful than before. She was heroically beautiful. 

The good C.S. Lewis once said that pain is a megaphone to rouse a deaf world, that God whispers in our joys and shouts in our pain. I am well aware that I am sort of thick-headed, hard of hearing sometimes. I need to be shouted at. Pain helps me to correct my behavior. Thank goodness God created a mechanism to get my attention!

So how do YOU deal with pain? Does it make you more beautiful like my friend? Or does it turn you into a nasty self-absorbed person who then inflicts pain on others?

Although no one enjoys it, pain is a necessary evil. How you respond to it may determine your eternal destiny. Going forward, will you embrace your pain and choose to transcend it with LOVE or resent your pain and choose to be bitter?

The choice is yours.