The Pain you choose
Last week I started cleaning out my truck a bit. Lately it has doubled as my transportation and my office! I have a compartment where I jam all my receipts and papers I don’t know what to do with.
As I pulled those papers out and started looking through them, I was horrified to find a seat belt ticket I got months ago that I forgot to pay. It was a $20 ticket I got on the backroads to my neighborhood. I would say 98% of the time I wear my belt, and this one time happened to be in the minority.
I assumed the worst because it had been over three months since I got it, so I immediately called the county clerk to figure out what I needed to do. The sweet lady on the other line took my information and informed me that the ticket was now overdue, and was now a $100 fine, and she subtly added that there is a warrant on me and my vehicle. YIKES. I was now a man on the run. A classic situation of allowing a small problem to become a crises.
She told me I would have to go to the El Reno courthouse, more than 40 min away, to pay the fine in person. Immediately the next morning I went and cleared the situation up. The officers on duty at the courthouse had a good laugh at my expense, I don’t blame them. I will say those 13 hours of being a wanted man were exhilarating.
It was a painful lesson.
More importantly it got me thinking about the connection of pain in our lives. I would say that for the most part pain for the general public is something we like to avoid. That’s why there are very few professional athletes and Olympians. During the latest oplympic coverage they interviewed a USA cross country skier and they asked, what makes you so dominate as an athlete, and her response was, “I can suffer longer than you.” It sent chills down my spine! I was both inspired and terrified.
I remember listening to a pastor once who quoted the classic line of “No pain, no gain.” And he went on to state that he and his dad had a saying instead that went, “No Pain...No Pain.” It garnished a good chuckle, because he was talking about physical exercise, and you could understand his intention with the statement pretty easily. There is a part of me that resonates with that statement.
However, it’s just not true. There is a specific pain that comes from action, but there is another kind of pain that comes from passivity, and I’d argue it may actually be the more miserable pain of the two.
It was painful when I got that $20 seatbelt ticket, yet my action of neglecting to pay that fine in the appropriate manor was far more painful as it caused for me to disrupt my day by an hour and a half, use a big chunk of gas during a high gas price season, cost me an extra $80, and a momentary warrant. My passivity caused much more pain.
“No pain, no pain” is not a reality that we get to except in our lives.
In a similar vein there has been a post that has been going viral online that reads something like this: “Divorce is hard, Marriage is hard; Being overweight is hard, being healthy is hard; being in debt is hard, being financially disciplined is hard; Being lonely is hard, living in community is hard – Choose your hard.”
The sentiment is obvious. Though there are holes in the statement I find myself agreeing with it.
Another writer I really enjoy reading states that there are many dragons that we face in life and that the default setting in our culture is to run and hide. But the truth is whatever dragon you are hiding from eventually it will find you and destroy you. Rather you should begin to see yourself as someone who faces the dragon, you sharpen your sword, and you attack. It’s risky and it’s hard, but the alternative is at least you give yourself a fighting chance and you if go down you go down nobly. It’s ancient language that stirs the heart in ways that just saying “be more responsible” doesn’t.
What dragon are you avoiding and hiding from? Is it the work that is necessary to have a healthy and whole marriage? Is it the discipline of not swiping the card for another toy or gadget you don’t really need and is causing financial strain? Is it the pain of fighting through bitterness to extend forgiveness, maybe even to yourself? Is it the need to learn how to be a better communicator, so you can have healthy relationships? Maybe it’s seeking the help necessary to conquer a food or substance addiction? I could go on. I would say there are very few that don’t have some sort of dragon in our lives that need slaying.
As someone who chooses to follow Jesus, it’s easy to think that I am exempt from having to choose which pain I need to face. But even Jesus himself calls his followers to pick up their cross and follow him. A call to embrace the pain that is necessary to help build a better future.
I talk a lot about how life is lived in the meantime. That the experiences between Point A and Point B are what make up your life and who you are, not just the arrival to Point B. My hope is that in my life and in yours our goal is that IN THE MEANTIME we choose the pain that will help us build a more healthy-whole life, to build a healthy-whole world.
I want to be a person that gets the plank in my eye in order before I start telling my friend about the speck of sand in theirs. This type of lifestyle takes humility, courage, and pain. Yet, I think it is one that overtime helps us achieve the ultimate goal of building a healthier whole world.
So rather than leaving you with self-help hacks on how to get there, the first step probably needs to be you and I taking some time to audit our lives, figuring out the dragon we need to slay, and stepping into that pain. As we conquer the first, we will begin to build the necessary strength to conquer the next. The pain you face today will give you the strength to face the pain that is to come tomorrow.