Perspective on Pain

I have some friends who are in pain. One recently miscarried. One struggles with infertility. Another knows pretty severe crisis in her marriage. And yet another is in the throes of depression. These are not small issues; tiny irritants that pass quickly. They are deep, marring realities that carve rending paths of frustration, sadness, anger, confusion, even despondency and withdrawal.

In every situation I wish I could help. I wish I could deliver the magic balm or secret formula that would make everything right: restored pregnancy, fertility, relational healing, and hope. I cannot.

Pain will not be refused. It cannot be whisked or wished away. It sits with them, like a shadow. No volume or depth of conversation, compassion, or consoling can move it.

Only time will bring healing – if it comes at all.

Pain is a marching-in-place, really. We are immobile in this dark, melancholy, and seemingly-infinite space. No matter what we do, our feet are stuck.

And then, one day, they aren’t. And then we move. And then light breaks.

But between the depths of darkness and the tightly-gripped anticipation of eventual light, all we can hope for is perspective. And all I can hope to offer is the same.

As much as I dislike pain for myself  and others, I am increasingly compelled by women’s proclivity and capacity to bear it. As much as I wish it were not true, most stories of women are colored and shaped by it. As much as I hate to type these next words, they remain no less true: I believe that the very nature of being a woman means, at least to some degree, its experience and, in such, profound levels of beauty, strength, and the divine.

I come to this conclusion based on my own story, for sure, and those of so many women I know. But I also come to it because of my own faith tradition–filled with stories of women. Sadly, far too few of them have been told as frequently as those of the men and therefore their realities are not as well known. (I’m working to fix that.) Here’s the Cliff Note version: their predominant and consistent reality is pain. I’d have to search my memory banks, but I think I’m right in saying that none of their stories are absent of it. It’s inherent in the text. Blatant, even.

At first blush that may sound shocking, if not angering. What?!? Every story of women is imbued with pain? Are you kidding me? What’s up with that? I used to feel that way, but I don’t anymore. I have a different perspective on their pain. And because of such, a different perspective on my own and others’.

It is the shared experience of womens’ pain that creates our awareness of one another, of our strength and capacity, of our connection to the divine.

Awareness of one another:

When I struggled with infertility even women who did not, somehow understood my plight. They couldn’t fix it or begin to feel what I did, but those who were even remotely sensitive, felt my pain. And I felt less alone.

When we hear the story of another woman’s pain – especially someone we know and love – we feel it ourselves. We take it on. We grieve. We ache. We hurt. We labor. We struggle. We strain. We work to make sense of something that makes no sense, even though it’s not ours to bear. What’s more, we have multiple stories of other women who have done the same for us.

Likewise, when I read the stories of women in Scripture, when I recognize their pain, I feel this connection to them. I know I am not alone. Awareness of one another – in the midst of pain.

Rachel. Leah. The woman caught in adultery. Martha.

Strength and capacity:

In the hardest years of my marriage (and the subsequent hard years that followed its ending) I could not believe how much pain I felt and still, I carried on. Though there were days in which I was certain I could bear no more, I did. Though there were moments in which I was sure I would drown myself and others with my tears, I did not. Though there were periods of time in which I wondered if I could make it through even the next hour as a mom, I did. Though my strength and capacity wavered, they did not leave me – ever.

Whether our own pain or that of another, strength and capacity are rarely, if ever in question for women. Somehow, deep within, we know we will survive, carry on, persevere. It’s what we do.

The women in scripture are no exception. What they bear defies all logic at times. And it is not just what they might have borne in the story itself; it’s the ongoing misinterpretation and misalignment of those very stories, their very lives as interpreted and often silenced throughout the years that makes me wonder how their narratives survived at all. But they did. They do. Strength and capacity in the midst of pain.

Hagar. Miriam. Bathsheba. Hannah. The woman at the well.

Connection to the divine:

Though I could have easily been convinced that my faith would not survive the long seasons of pain that ensued (and continue) the opposite actually occurred. My faith strengthened. Not because of some god-on-high who swooped down and miraculously made things better (oh, that it was so). Instead, because over and over again I saw evidence of the divine–certainly in the presence of the women who surrounded me, but also in myself. I got a glimpse of my own divinity, the bloodlines of royalty within, a connection to a lineage of women throughout time who link me to the very source of life itself. It’s as though god dwells within me. And of course, s/he does.

Whether we have the language available to us or not, we display and make manifest the divine simply because we are women. We can’t not.

This is what feminine love does. It reunites us with each other, with nature, with the whole. It causes us to look deep into the face of whatever is before us and understand that it is our very sister we are gazing upon. And more than that, it is our very selves. (Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine)

Again, the women of scripture invite me to this truth. They provide me generous opportunity to see the Divine-made-manifest: in their stories, their lives, their choices, their loves, their parenting, and yes, their harm. Manifestation of and connection to the Divine in them reveals the same in me in the midst of pain.

Eve. Elizabeth. Mary. The woman of Revelation 12.

• Perspective on pain is all we have when we’re in the midst of it.
• Perspective on pain is all we can offer when we witness it in the life of another.
• Perspective on pain is what women offer one another – over and over again – in Scripture, in history, in friendship, in compassion, in lived reality.

• Awareness of one another.
• Strength and capacity.
• Connection to the divine.

These realities don’t lessen my own or another’s pain, but they do remind me that I’m not alone, that I will survive, that my faith is worth holding on to.

You’re not alone. You will survive. And your faith is worth holding on to, as well.

Perspective on pain. Perspective in pain. Mine to hold on to for myself. Mine to offer you.

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I have conversations about this kind of stuff all the time…about women, yes, about pain and struggle and the truth of our lives, about the ways in which Scriptural narratives of women actually matter and still have the capacity to speak powerfully. In large part, it’s what I do (in writing) through Truth Caching and (in dialogue) through Spiritual Direction. If you resonate with any of what I’m saying AND have questions, ponderings, or just general malaise, I’d love to talk to you.

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Tagged as: alone, capacity, crisis, divine, divorce, faith, feminine, friendship, God, infertility, loneliness, marriage, miscarriage, pain, perspective, Relationships, Scripture, strength, struggle, women