There is no growing up without pain. There is no existing without pain. Pain in all aspects of being. The newborn, when leaving the womb, cries, cries a lot, cries because of the pain, the pain of the first breath that fills its lungs and this causes pain. We are born with the sign that breathing hurts.
Pain is dispensed with by the mother, who before her child is born, she feels pain, the joy of pain that generates life. We always learn that, a priori, joy is loaded with pain.
And throughout our lives, throughout our existence, we carry pain, the most diverse, the baby who cried in pain for breathing for the first time, the teenager who has pain due to age and height, teenager comes from “ador-lescere”, carries at the root of the formation of a certain time in life, that in order to grow, it hurts; the joints, the bones, the body hurt as a natural part of the life process, pain in order to grow.
The pains of old age are inherent to existence itself, they are pains on all sides. These are natural pains, no one escapes them, divine nature showing that human nature can only exist in pain. Inevitable pains.
And the existential process? It hurts a lot. We spend our entire existence dealing with these pains, the pain of loss, of failure, the pain of betrayal, the pain of abandonment, the pain of non-requitation, the pain of gratuitous hatred, the pain of frustration, the pain of non-recognition […] at the end of everything that is perjury, what remains is the pain, and not the words and their meanings; Losses, abandonment, tribulations, and everything else mentioned, are only what they are because they hurt.
Therefore, pain is what sums up everything, and all we have to give it is pain, be it body, soul, spirit. Even loving hurts.
How are we dealing with our pain?! If pain is an inevitable process of existence, when it passes or is inside me, what do I do? How do I deal with it?
I remember that a few days ago I received a prayer request on my cell phone. The sender asked for prayers so that God would give him patience to endure the suffering that the pains in life were causing him. I was moved by these words. The usual prayer requests are for God to take away his trials, for God to pay his late car payment, I have even received a prayer for God to make his car more economical!!! But this, patience to endure the pains!
James, the brother of our Lord Jesus Christ said, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
Paul, the apostle said that tribulation produces patience, and this experience.
The believer in Jesus must understand, with full awareness of the Gospel of Christ, that it is the pains of life and in life that make us grow. Growth without pain is a utopian, fantasy world, the Disneyland of life; there simply is no being without pain.
We have to take from our pain a product for life, make our pain a step in existence, or we will have pain with bitterness or we will have pain with great joy, the great joy of pain are individuals who have understood being in God. Pain does not reach us to death, pain reaches us to life, after all the process of growing will always hurt.
It is only the joy of hurting, and the understanding of the divine privilege of saying “ouch” that does not allow us to turn pain into a hole, an abyss, a dungeon of the soul.
Say it hurts when it hurts, but know that it is possible to have joy even in pain.
Happy sorrows in life, and be a giant among men.
In pain,
Fabiano Moreno