Pain and sorts

As humans, we naturally and fleshly want to avoid pain of any kind.  Some people even inflict themselves with pain in order to relieve another area of pain just hoping for some type of relief.  We get crazy when we are in pain or when we know it's coming.  The thought of it can cause us to live in debilitating fear if we allow.

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis basically says that the problem of pain is that we don't want it.  There are times in life where we choose a certain path and the pain that inflicts afterwards is only a result of our choosing.  And then there are other times in life when we are just walking along minding our own business and we are hit with a mack truck of pain that we never saw coming.  In either of those situations, God is there.  Whether we inflict or are inflicted, He is sovereign.

Over the last few months, two people whom I love dearly have literally been saved because they were experiencing a great deal of physical pain.  I hated so much to see them go through such a hard time but as I look back, I am so thankful that the Lord made our bodies in a way that they tell us when something isn't right.  At the time, you just want to die but the truth is that if not for the pain, you would have died by not knowing that anything was awry.  It really is amazing.  Our spiritual lives are so similar.  It's the emotional pain and heart break that seems to bring us back to life if we will let it.  You may not even realize that you are slowly dying spiritually until you experience a great deal of pain and then it wakes you up to new life.  I mean seriously, Jesus suffered more emotional and physical pain than I will ever know and it saved me.  It woke me.  It lives in me.

In the last year or so, I have had such a love/hate relationship with pain but as I am allowing the Lord to do His work in me, it is beginning to transform from a love/hate stance to a trusting stance.  In the pain I will trust.  In the pain I will abide.  In the pain I will give thanks.  In the pain I will love.  In the pain I will not fear pain.  It brings me into such an intimate place with my Savior that I cannot stand to hate it.  I just sit in it.  And sitting in it draws me in deeper and I drink Him in.  He is life.

I haven't written anything in a little over a year because my life got crazier than I ever expected, but I'd like to pick back up.  I still haven't told the story of how we met and welcomed Chance and Emma (my 21 month old twins) into our home and I would also like to share some other tidbits of life.  I love the bloggers who keep it real so I'll do my best to do the same. :)