What to Do when the Pain Won’t Go Away
None of us want to admit it, but we all have it. Or have had it at some point. Emotional pain that just won’t go away. Sometimes we think we’ve stuffed it, but then – bam – something seemingly innocent happens and it all comes crashing back.
Daniel was so past his divorce. He’d made his peace with it. Until he went to his nephew’s wedding. Emotions he thought were long gone were really only hiding. They rose up and slammed him out of nowhere. He drank way too much at the reception. And every night after that.
Melanie was over her abortion, or so she thought. No one knew, and she’d moved on. Until her best friend invited her to her baby shower. And it all came crashing back. She went and put on a happy face. No one knew she was dying inside. But she was.
Sometimes we can’t even begin to stuff it, and we just learn to live with it. Or better put, survive with it.
Lisa cannot remember a time when she wasn’t battling depression. She lives in a box, behind a mask, trying desperately to keep the outside world at bay, to stay in control. Where is the joy all the other Christians have? Are they just faking it, too? Or is there something wrong with her? She suspects the latter. She desperately hopes this next relationship will fix it all. Again.
Somehow we learn to cope. Maybe we self-medicate. Maybe we control. Sometimes we put on a face and pretend, hiding the real me. We’ve coped with it for so long we think it’s normal. But it’s not. Although it’s very common, just coping forever is not healthy.
God has something for us so much better than coping. He has a new-normal for us, without the pain. It’s called healing. But how do we embrace it? How do we move into that place?
The short answer is, Be the buffalo not the cow. Dude, what are you even talking about? What do bovines have to do with deep emotional pain? I’m glad you asked.
When there’s a thunderstorm on the plain, buffalo and cattle both panic. Both herds stampede, and you don’t want to be in the way! But there’s a major difference.
Cattle take off running away from the storm as fast as they can. If the storm’s coming from the west, they stampede east. This is the obvious, no-brainer thing to do to avoid the storm. The problem is, they’re running the same direction as the storm’s moving, and the storm always moves faster. So it eventually overtakes them anyway. And since they’re running the direction it’s moving, they actual maximize their time in the storm.
On the other hand, buffalo run straight at the thunderstorm. So if the storm’s coming from the west, they stampede west, right into it. This seems really dumb at first glance, but it’s actually brilliant. Since they’re running the opposite direction the storm is moving, they minimize their time in the storm. And they get rewarded with the yummy, just watered, fresh grass on the other side. Bonus!
Most of us run from our pain, like cattle running from a thunderstorm. But avoidance just maximizes our time in the pain when it catches up with us, and it always does.
John Sanford, founder of Elijah House Ministries said, “We need to embrace the fireball of pain.” Wow. Seriously, dude? Yeah, seriously. We need to go where it hurts, not avoid it.
Ok, you sold me. How do we “embrace the fireball of pain?”
I’m glad you asked. There’s 3 steps to start this process.
1) Start the journey with God.
Be honest. Don’t hide it or pretend it’s not there. Honestly tell God how you feel. It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to not feel joy. Read the Psalms. Many of them are written from places of extreme pain. They are examples of God meeting people in the middle of extremely painful circumstance, doubt and fear. For a start, look at Psalms 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 17, 22, 28, 40, 120, and many, many more.
What gets scheduled gets done, so schedule time to pray and meditate each day with God, even if it’s just 10 minutes during a break. Stopping, unplugging, and getting alone with him, even if just for a few minutes, makes a huge difference.
2) Start the journey with someone else.
You don’t need to tell everyone everything. But you need to tell someone everything. So often the pain’s power over us is rooted in shame. Shame protects itself by isolating us. We think we’re the only one. But we’re not. Often, sharing our pain with someone else breaks the shame and that’s 80% of the healing right there.
So often we the church do such a disservice to people by forcing them to either hide their pain or face our rejection. I know someone who, in a vulnerable moment, shared the pain in their life. They were actually told by their Bible study leader at church, “Well, Christians are supposed to be joyful, so if you’re not feeling joy, are you even saved?”
What rubbish! Jesus does not deliver us from pain, he delivers us through it. He never promised we wouldn’t have trouble in this world (in fact just the opposite, see John 16:33). He promised us he’d be there with us in the middle of it. So we should be there for each other.
If your church shames you for having pain in your life, find a different church. There are many churches out there that get this right. Find someone you trust that you can share your journey with, and who is willing to share theirs with you. You’ll find that, no matter how perfect they look, they have pain in their life, too.
3) Recognize the season.
Healing is a season, it doesn’t happen overnight. The season can be weeks, months, years, or even decades.
Sometimes, for whatever reason he alone knows, God doesn’t heal as we expect. I know some very strong Christians, men and women of deep intimacy with the Lord, faith and power, who have battled depression their whole life. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them or their faith. It means God is choosing to use that for his glory in their lives (see John 9:3). He is meeting them right there in the middle of it, just like he did the Apostle Paul, who, by the way, God also didn’t heal (see 2 Corinthians 12:7-9). So if this is you, you’re in good company.
I can’t promise God will eventually heal your situation. Often he totally does. But I can promise God is always good, and will meet you in the middle of it.
Personally, a moment of vulnerability here, I still struggle with self-hatred. But I’m getting stronger and it’s a lot weaker than it used to be. I’m learning how to not agree with it and instead agree with what God says about me. Jesus has been my deliverer in the middle of it. And continues to be.
So what about you? Where do you come down in all this? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share if you think this would bless someone else.
Free Resources:
Do you know God wants to talk directly to you? Do you have trouble hearing him? Find out how to hear God with Dave’s free ebook “Hearing God and What’s Next: 12 Ways to Hear God, 3 Things to Do about It, and 6 Ways to Know You’re Not Crazy.”
Does your heart need healing? Learn the steps to inner healing with Jesus through a fun and engaging fictional story. Download Dave’s free ebook “The Runt: A Fable of Giant Inner Healing.”
pain? yep been in it for a long time with no deliverance. Where is God? How much begging and pleading do I need to do? At least He could take some of the intensity…
Marie, I’m so sorry for the pain you’re living with. There are no easy answers. But you do not have to walk through it alone. Janet and I would be happy to help you find a local supportive community, as well as provide whatever support we can. Please email us at dave@IdentityInWholeness.com if connecting with us would be helpful to you.
I go out of my way to try and find something, anything to help ease my conscious reality and this is the first result on my page? How much money did you shill to peddle your unfalsifiable story? Nothing, and I mean NOTHING is different between faith and denial. If anything you’re just relinquishing what final fragment of self you have for a promise with no guarantee. Pitiful. It really is no surprise that the lot of you detestable cultists prey on those who feel they have nowhere else to look. Line your coffers and recite your psalms, nobody is listening to your sad stories.
Ioan, thank you for your comment. You make a good point that faith and denial look the same, especially to those who don’t have faith. We are all denying something. The question is, Are we denying the truth or the lie?
I did not shill out any money to come up first in your search results. The proof of that is you don’t see the word “ad” or “sponsored” in the search result that bought you here.
Our promise in Jesus actually does have a guarantee: His Holy Spirit that lives in us (Ephesians 1:14). And our personal experiences with him are the proof of that guarantee. But the Kingdom of God is all upside-down and backwards compared to the world: You get the guarantee after you buy (i.e., believe), not before.
Say you have an infected abscess on a tooth. You can mask the pain with Tylenol or Advil. But if you want it healed, eventually you’re going to have to go to the dentist for a root canal. And that will hurt, but that pain will bring healing not harm.
I pray that you find the healing in your life that you’re looking for. I believe the only real healing is in Jesus, but you’re free to not believe that. If and/or when you’re ready, know that you are always welcome here, friend.
Why does a God who is supposed to be all powerful only choose the heal over a season? I’m sick and tired of baring my broken spirit and asking for healing to a God that remains silent. The just believe God is at work and it takes time including potentially decades is shallow promise. I can tell you first hand that God is not meeting me in the middle of it.
James, I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. It sounds really painful. I don’t know the details of your story, so I can’t answer your question. Even if I did know your story, I don’t know that I’m smart enough to answer for God. But two things I do know. God is good. And God is faithful. Eventually. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I really want to hear your story. Let’s connect via email (I’ll email you shortly) and maybe we can hop on Zoom if you’re comfortable with that.
Beautiful words of enlightenment and vulnerability! Thank you
Thank you so much Charlene!
I deeply cried with this. I can’t thank the you enough. Best wishes and kudos to you, Mr. Dave. I thank you for helping me find meaning in pain. Your specific examples and elaborations in this post just give me a vivid view and feeling of the deepness in our personal pains, even if they are not really temporary, and may persist and trigger spontaneously within us at many moments in our entire lifespan. Thank you once again for the wisdom.
Wow, thank you, Ron! Comments like yours are why we do this. We have friends whose only son committed suicide after being involved with an abortion. They lost their child and their grandchild. Some pain never goes away. But God is good and faithful. He keeps bringing us through waves of more healing as we can handle it.
So beautiful Dave and so very much on point! The “Fireball of Pain” – what a perfect description I had to go through at several key turning points in my life. We can’t save anyone from theirs and we have to go through our own to be healed. It takes trust and definitely someone to walk with us. Great wisdom you have Dave!
Thank you for the kind words, Jane! Yeah I love that John Sanford quote about “embracing the fireball of pain”. So true, so scary, and so healing!
Sometimes you don’t even know your in pain. God is so good about peeling back the layers of hurt and leading us to wholeness by trusting in Him and submitting our hearts, knowing he will heal the hurt.
Yeah, stuff can be buried really deep. Often when God wants to heal something, he’ll bring circumstances that bring up the pain. So if suddenly something’s hurting again and won’t go away, maybe it’s a sign that God wants to take us to a deeper level of healing.