There are a lot of topics that didn’t fit into the Youtube narrative, and this is one of them. When you’re walking through hardships, pain and grief, it can be so important to sit in that pain in a healthy way.
When you feel pain, it hurts. And it’s so easy to try and avoid that pain to protect yourself! You can put up walls, numb the pain, and draw out the grief by not sitting in it.
This pain can come from so many different sources.. loss, abuse, a relationship ending, but there are different levels of this pain as well. This can affect everyone around you. We have a natural tendency to run away from the pain, but if we buck up against it, there can be healing on the other side of it.
Minor & Major Pain
I have a minor story about pain, but also the most painful story I’ve had to walk through.. so we’ll start with the minor!
We’re in the midst of quarantine, and if you know me, you know I am not a good cook! There are many things in our kitchen that I still don’t know where they are. It’s not my gift, and I’ve accepted that. But Evy and I decided to make some banana bread! I was holding Graham, while trying to grab the bread out of the oven.. and my thumb was on the oven rack. The pain was so intense and I couldn’t take the ice pack off without my thumb throbbing! We had plans to go for a bike ride at the park, and I was going to help Evy ride her balance bike. But I just couldn’t imagine taking this ice pack off!!!
I took off the ice pack.. and the numbness started to wear off to intense pain. But as I let that pain happen, it started to feel better and by the time we were walking back, I didn’t even notice it anymore! I learned from this that instead of letting the pain happen, I kept trying to cover it up, ice it, and numb the pain.. But by sitting in the pain, I was able to move past it.
So how does this relate?
When you’re in the midst of pain, it is so hard to CHOOSE to stay there. I can remember this so clearly when we found out at 20 weeks that our second baby wasn’t going to make it. I would just lay in bed with a million thoughts in my head about how I couldn’t do it. Our life coach, Julia, walked us through coming up with a vision for this season. So instead of avoiding the thoughts about giving birth to a baby without a heartbeat, we made a plan for this experience to be beautiful, when it was so full of pain. That is just one of many examples that we had to walk through during this season..
When you let yourself sit in the pain and let yourself be transformed by seeing pain differently.. it will change everything for you.
There are three main reasons why it can be good to sit in the pain :
- Healing comes after hurt. You can run away from the pain, but you might not see the other side of the healing.
- You can shorten the duration of the pain if you sit in it now. You can heal from the ground up, rather than just fixing surface level items.
- It can give you freedom from the pain.
It is okay to cry, sob, be mad, and angry at God.. you can feel all the feelings. But it’s good to sit in the pain and find freedom through it.
Sitting in the pain of losing a child changed me and transformed me. I was so thankful for the life that I was able to experience with him.
I want that freedom for you too! My encouragement to you, is to not numb the pain. Journal through it and find the purpose in it!
Thank you for listening!
Thanks for reading!
— Katelyn
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