the companion of pain.

Pain has a way of repeating itself, though the circumstances often change. I had a good friend once tell me that I gravitate towards depression, that I enjoy it in some way. At the time I was offended, confused even. Why would someone choose to be depressed? Why would I want to feel this way? 

As I got older, I came to understand what he meant. The depression wasn't willfully brought on, but I certainly felt a natural pull towards it, a need for it its familiar borders. My life has been sorrow after sorrow, grief upon grief. It's been the constant of my soul, this settling into pain. Like an old companion that comes up to greet me, all the politeness faded away from years of friendship. And I welcome it in, with little fanfare and no surprise, because I have always known suffering as intimately as I know myself. 

I think this openness to pain has been helpful in my field. Hurting people are everywhere, and mostly they want the affliction to stop. I find it interesting that so often, our suffering is a reflection of the state of our being, of the core of who we are. This is not to say that we are our suffering, just that it serves as a mirror for what lies beneath the surface. And because of this, we often suffer the same thing twice, though it may look different from the outside.

Suffering, then, is rather circular. 

I am learning that so much of the pain I have experienced in life goes back to the same source--back to my fear of abandonment, back to my feelings of shame and vulnerability. The people may change, the setting may evolve, but the suffering stays the same.

None of us are free from ourselves, as much as we may try to deny it. We are our own prisons, and we keep the lock and key just out of reach because avoidance is so much easier. Because trying to fix it from the outside is so much easier, because we want to believe that it is not us who are broken.

But I am broken.

And this attraction towards pain, this tug towards the well-traveled path of desolation? Well.

Maybe it's just a call for healing. 

So often, I look outside of myself to fix what is wrong.

I ask myself questions that reflect my powerlessness, because the truth is I have given my power away. I have let myself fall into patterns of depression and worry and fear because these things are familiar to me. They make sense, they let me know how to survive. 

They tell me what I want to hear--about myself, about what to expect from others. 

What a defeating game we play, this circular suffering. It can feel like we are moving backwards, or like we haven't moved at all. It spins us around and confuses us, it leaves us in the dark.

And sometimes, we convince ourselves that we have just enough light to see. 

But.

Suffering can only steal what we let it. 

And the pain of life is the promise of hope waiting to happen.

I want to live out of the promise. 

These wounds, these scars that keep opening back up over and over again are just a sign that I haven't cleaned the wound out properly. They are telling me that there's something I'm missing, that there's a place I'm avoiding and covering up. And I don't want to circle around to this place again anymore--I don't want to live haunted by the sorrow of a shadowed life.

Suffering, then, is just the pathway to peace. 

When I turn around to look into the face of that which I have been so careful evading, I am forced to come to an understanding of myself--I am made to tenderly examine my hurting places, I am allowed to be broken and that brokenness is allowed to heal.  

I spend so much time convincing myself that depression is a part of life, but comfort is not. 

That I don't deserve the healing, but that I am deserving of the pain.

Life hurts.

But I do not need to hurt myself to go on living. 

My suffering does not have to be circular. It can be linear, growing and changing as I learn to accept and care for myself. As I learn to speak softly to my broken pieces, as I learn to let others love me well.

Do you believe it? 

Can you perceive it? 

That you are worthy of healing, of compassion and grace? 

You have permission to be broken.

And you have permission to heal. 

So let yourself go.

The freedom that was bought for you was made for such a time as this. 

Soak it in. 

Let it fill you up.

Pain will always be apart of life. 

But so will grace.

So will love.

And I want my sorrow to reflect the great hope that swells within me--

rippling ou, bringing the dead to life once again.