God: Life’s Greatest Surgeon; Pain: Life’s Greatest Curriculum

My heart has been broken. Sounds like the first line of a(n) country song/teen poem/emo rock group’s title track, and for that, I apologize. But it is true. And the hardest part? She left me for another guy…

The end. I’m not here to write about the woe’s of my life. I’m here to let you know I learned something from it. After she left me, my away messages tended to focus on the “over-you-moving-on” aspect that comes with a breakup. One of those aforementioned away messages said this:

But in the end, the most important thing to accept is that no matter how alone you feel, how painful it may be, with the help of those around you, you’ll get through this too.

Fast-forward a few days and I find myself talking to a good friend about the use of pain in lessons from God. At that exact moment, I have one of those “AH HA!” moments that so often frequent my life. Despite my away messages, despite the songs I played that were filled with either anger or hope of having an entire day absent of the thought of my heartache, I had yet to experience closure. The reason I had yet to even begin to emotionally heal was that I had yet to even begin to grasp why this was going on in my life.

Pain. Doesn’t it seem that life’s best lessons are learned by pain? Stick a wet finger into a socket and see what happens. I’m gonna bet you aren’t going to do that again. Better yet, get two dogs of the exact same breed, potty-train one by simply saying “no” every time (s)he has an accident. Potty-train the other by giving it a swat on its backside each time it has an accident. Which one will learn faster? I believe that it will be the latter canine.

You see? God doesn’t say “no” to us in order to teach us a lesson (at least not very often). He says “no” to close doors on mistakes He just doesn’t want us to make; but when it comes to learning from a mistake or learning how to correct ungodly habits, I firmly believe that God uses pain. I believe that we retain the most amount of knowledge if pain is incorporated into the lesson being taught. It’s like what George Campbell said about the use of pain in teaching a lesson:

Pain of every kind generally makes a deeper impression on the imagination than pleasure does, and it is retained longer in the memory.

J.R. Miller says:

The sweetest things in this world have come to us through tears and pain.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that if little Johnny gets an F on his first math test, you beat the mathematical table into him. Nor am I saying that if your child or significant other hurts your feelings or does something just downright stupid that you should beat them into obedience. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that I have learned more about Who God is, what He wants from my life, and who I am in His eyes during life’s rough patches than when times are good.

Back to my “ah ha” moment: The above quote that kept frequenting my away messages was the lesson I needed to learn. As I grew closer and closer to H.R., I grew further and further away from the family of friends that loved me unconditionally. Not only that, I began to divorce my own blood-family. I was losing my life’s supporting players, and without them…there is no life. And no matter how many times my brother asked me to hang around after church on Sunday, no matter how often my mother’s voice was seasoned with sadness as she said, “Sure, you can go see her,” I never realized what I was doing. Therefore, I honestly believe that God stepped in. God took away the 6-month-old gift in order for my focus to be on the gifts that are years old and needed my attention in order to perpetuate their longevity. The Fray says it like this:

We’d never know what’s wrong without the pain!

The human nervous system is designed to only allow the brain to recognize one form of pain at a time. Consequently, if you have a paper-cut and a gunshot wound, it will only register the gunshot wound. It’s called “The Gateway Principle.” In the exact same manner, God calls attention to the things in our lives that need immediate care by giving us hard times.

What I’m trying to say is what my dad taught me a long time ago: God acts like a surgeon who has a cancer patient on His table. He is going to have to cut the patient’s body open, and that’s gonna hurt when the patient wakes up. But that pain is necessary in removing the cancerous tumor that will cost the patient his life if it is not taken care of. God causes initial pain (cutting open the body) in order to prevent us from experiencing greater pain down the road (suffering from the cancerous tumor).

In an argument between Dr. Perry Cox and Nurse Laverne Roberts in an episode of Scrubs, my point is summed up by Laverne’s response:

Cox: Are you really trying to tell me that things like New Orleans, AIDS, sugar-free ice cream, crack-babies, Hugh Jackman, and cancer all happen for a reason?
Laverne: ‘God works all things for good.’ Romans, 8:28.

A broken heart sucks. Not learning the lesson is even worse. I am beginning to believe that I wouldn’t have had any “help of those around me” had this happened at a later date. It took pain for me to realize that.

We’d never know what’s wrong without the pain…

S(t)uck

It’s what life is. It’s a series of rooms and who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are.

Is that why life sucks? Because we are stuck in rooms? or because we can’t control who comes and goes in our life?

People say that disappointment, hurt, and rejection only makes one stronger. Is this true? Does a gunshot wound actually make the area on the body that was damaged stronger once it is healed? Then how can an emotional wound do the same thing? Maybe I’m being pessimistic, I don’t know. Why is it, though, that pain and rejection teaches some people to never trust ever again and for others it gives them strength to press on?

I’m reminded of a song by one of my favorite artists. It’s called “Move Along.” There is a line in the chorus that says, “When all you got to keep is strong, move along.” So no matter what, just keep moving? Why not give up? I mean, what is strength, and why is it worth fighting for?

Right now, there is a severe winter storm going on outside. Sleet and freezing rain are pelting the iced-over ground. I had to go outside in it and the pain from the tiny pieces of ice that were blown by the powerful winds made me stop thinking about life. It made me focus on the sharp objects that were pricking my face. And that is all I could think of. Why? Is it because the pain that I was feeling inside my body wasn’t as noticeable as the little shards that were, literally, right in front of me? Does that mean that what’s going on inside isn’t that severe? Or does it mean that I should fight hurt with hurt?

We are stuck in rooms. Therefore, we are given two choices. One, deal with what’s going on in that room right at that moment. Two, blow off what’s going on in hopes that what’s outside is better and that outside is actually achievable. I don’t really know which one is the right way to live. All I know is this:

One day, one room.