The Aching

It's funny... the things you learn from pain. Everybody has pain. Whether it be great or small we all experience pain. And even though we try to comfort ourselves by appreciating the fact that so many others have it worse than we do...it still doesn't lessen the pain...not even a little bit. Why is that? I think pain was designed to make you aware of danger. Meaning if you couldn't feel pain you might not realized that you just leaned against the burner and are about to loose your hand. Follow me? So I think it was intended to alert you to something that would hurt you so that you can stop it. But what about the kind of pain that we can't escape? What about emotional things...the loss of loved ones...the loss of a career...the loss of a dream....the loss of a friend...the loss of a lover? What do you do with that pain? I mean if you're leaning against a burner you quickly stop before there is any damage. But with matters of the heart...pain doesn't come until you're already too deep into it to protect yourself. Hmph.

Let me first say that I have, by no means, cornered the market on pain but over the last few years I have discovered what it's like to feel loss...in more ways than one. I have lost so much and continue to loose. I know what it feels like to ache in the most hidden places of your soul. To ache so hard that your body responds the only way it knows how...to curl up into a fetal position, the very basic of comforts, and scream and wail until there is not a tear left inside. It's funny how, even as an adult your childlike instincts can be very strong. David understood that pain. You know, David from the Bible, in Psalms?

So much has transpired in my life. As the aching in my heart got too great to bear I turned to old faithful...the Bible. l flipped open the Bible and arbitrarily landed on one verse. The page was full of words but my eyes saw only 4 of them. "He restores my soul...." (Psalms 23:3) The tears poured down my face. "He restores my soul..." There has been so much going on in my heart and my mind, it's amazing that somebody would WANT to be invited into the madness of my soul with only one purpose...to restore it.