Thoughts about pain

It is 1:00am and I am still awake. So much to think about.

I look around me and I see lots of people attempting to escape some unidentifiable pain. What is it about humanness that is so uncomfortable? What are we trying to escape? I am beginning to realize that a lot of modern life is about avoiding pain. I think we avoid pain because we are afraid that once we let pain penetrate us, it will overwhelm us and we will be stuck in pain forever. Sadly this avoidance strategy doesn't really work. In reality, it ends up hurting us. Pain happens in life. All of us have parts within ourselves that have been hurt. By ignoring or trying to stifle the pain in our lives, we attempt to shut down parts of ourselves. This is a loss. No wonder it is so hard for us in modern society to be satisfied with ourselves. We consume and primp and spend in an attempt to be "okay" enough that we don't let our hurt out.
Life's pain is always at our heals as we try to outrun it.

The thing about emotions is that they are not permanent. Maybe pain wouldn't be so scary if we didn't fear getting stuck in it. My friend said that part of becoming a whole person is learning how to return to joy after pain. Knowing that in the midst of pain, the pain will pass and be replaced by joy.
I don't want to undermine the horror of the pain. No, I think that part of life is to experience tremendous pain, but thankfully this is only a part of life, and not the substance of life. Hurt is only a part of a person, not the whole.

I want to face the fullness of life's pain so that I can stop trying to outrun it. Really I don't have a choice given the profession that I've chosen. My life's work is to be a container for pain. I hear the words that cannot be safely expressed in other places, I hold the pain that has become too overwhelming for those who bear it. It is a sacred privilege that both enthralls and terrifies.

To an extent, perhaps it is pain that keeps drawing me back to poor nations. According to my first world conceptions, those in Central America should crumble under the overwhelming weight of the violence, death, loss, poverty, and hopelessness. Yet, somehow in the midst of indescribable pain there is an unexplainable amount of life in those countries. Part of my journey is to learn about this. It is an academic pursuit if I use the terms thriving, resilience, post-traumatic growth... But it is profoundly personal as I wrestle with how be whole and live fully in the presence of pain.

Quote from Henri Nouwen's The Road to Peace:
"Every time we hear more about the way human beings are in pain, we come to know more about the immensity of the love of God, who did not want to exclude anything human from his experience of being God. God indeed is the God who carries suffering people in her womb with the intimicy and care of a mother... Outside of God human suffering is not only unbearable but cannot even be faced" (p. 112).