Avoiding the Pain

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We are a pain adverse culture. We try to avoid sadness, mourning and pain at all costs. We deny our feelings, pretend to be OK, mask the pain with activities or addictions, anything we can do to escape it. We want to be happy!

What we miss out on in this quest for happiness at all times, be it real or artificial, is the blessings that come with and after the pain.

Without mourning, I can not learn what it is like to heal. I can not come to a full appreciation of what I have been given and the people that I love until I am aware of the mourning that comes from loss. I can not come to know the comfort that the Universe will hold me in until I am willing to admit to and go through the sadness and hurt. It is in the healing that I come to know how gracious and loving the Universe is.

It is in our willingness to travel through loss, sadness and grief that we learn how to navigate that road for the future. I remember when I was young having difficulty sleeping without a night light. It seems trite, but it wasn't until I was willing to sleep in the dark for several nights in a row that I came to believe that light would return in the morning and that I had nothing to fear. Going through the dark night unaided by artificial light took away the fear of the darkness completely. Sadness and grief are like that too.

Even in our greatest loss there is blessing. We are all terrified at loosing the thing most dear to us; a relationship, our job, a possession, you know what I am talking about. The thing that we feel identifies us and which we would be nothing without. In surviving those huge losses, allowing ourselves to move honestly and fully through them, we become aware that the Universe is bigger than that and It's creation of us is also bigger than any one relationship, possession or loss. Creation and God are truly about life. Life continuing, life returning, life surviving.

Mourning as a blessing... Loss as something not to be hoped for, but to be thanked for the lessons, gifts and blessings it brings.

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