Quest 18 - What Do I do When I am In Pain?
Pain is something everyone experiences. Due to that, it’s become very obvious to me that people have a wide variety of responses to that pain. Some are funny, some are sad, some are just plain weird.
For example:
When I am in pain, I like to get really angry.
When one of my friends is in pain, he laughs.
When my sister Abbey is in pain, she puts on a stone cold face like the Easter Isle Statues.
When I had a friend find a slingshot and a skewer stick then proceed to turn his thumb into a Kebab. He just stared silently and said, “Oh man. That stinks.” (Don’t ask me why he thought that would be a good idea….. Because I tried shooting the stick with the sling shot 45 seconds before he did.)
Let’s be honest here, pain stinks. We don’t want it and we don’t enjoy it when it occurs. The problem is, like I said earlier, everyone experiences it. It’s unavoidable because of sin. Previous to that and the fall? We were good. Now? Not so much.
The difficult thing is that physical pain is terrible, but we are all dealing with a weight that we don’t like to open up and talk about: The mental, emotional, and spiritual pain of life.
C.S Lewis said it eloquently in his book The Problem With Pain (a terribly sad, yet uplifting book), “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”
It’s really hard to say my heart is broken. My dad has always said, “Everyone takes their turn with tragedy.” Which means at some point, everyone has the feeling of a broken heart. That is PAIN.
The natural question following this is… When I am in pain, what do I do?
I unfortunately can't give you every answer for that, every answer is different because every situation is different. Yet, I can give you 2 answers out of Mark 1:29-32 that are a part of the solution.
1. Connect with people.
When you read Mark 1:29-32 it is very easy to focus on the part of Peter’s Mother-in-law being healed. Naturally that’s where the story takes you and is the central focus. I want to look at the subtext though. Think about the situation that is occurring at this point. Peter and his brother Andrew’s family member is on the brink of death. They are in emotional pain, they are hurting, and they are probably feeling isolated and stuck.
Think about this: Jesus, James, and John were just at the synagogue. You know who wasn’t? Peter and Andrew. Why? Because they were with Peter’s MIL. What follows that? The three J’s come over to the house to be with Peter and Andrew. Can you imagine how good of a shoulder Jesus was to cry on? To ask questions? To be in the presence of?
This was a moment that wasn’t just healing for Peter’s MIL, it was a moment of healing for Peter as well! Emotional pain was being healed by being connected to his people.
When you are dealing with pain, make sure you are connected to your people! Don’t isolate yourself, don’t try to do life alone, invite those people into your world and talk about what’s going on in your life. That’s what they did!
2. Continue to trust the power of Jesus.
The scripture doesn’t give us a lot of details about what the conversation looked like, the emotional state, or even if there was an ask. All we know is that it says this in verses 29 and 30, “As soon as they left the synagogue, they went into Simon and Andrew’s house with James and John. Simon’s mother-in-law was lying in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.”
I don’t know what it came down to, what I do know is that there had to be continued trust in Jesus’ power. Regardless of how this situation turned out, the fact that they told Jesus about the situation was a sign to me that they had a belief in Him.
What would it look like if she wasn’t healed? We don’t know because she was healed. I would hope in this situation though that Peter would continue to trust in the power of Jesus and that he could do something amazing through this story either way.
Because here is the truth: No matter if she was physically healed or not, there was going to be healing. It might be one day in her future, it might have been that moment, or it might have been through Peter, Andrew, James, or John. Somehow, someway Jesus was going to heal through this situation.
That’s the power of Jesus.
So no matter how much pain you are in, continue to trust the power of Jesus.
Mark said it really well in Quest, “The healing of our bodies is a temporary gift of God. Not everyone receives physical healing, and everyone who receives it eventually dies. Our ultimate healing is the restoration of our souls. That’s the power of the Gospel.”
Pain is going to happen and I hate that it will. I don’t look forward to it for any of us. I hope though that my words are helpful for you and for myself. That we will all connect to people and continue to trust the power of Jesus when we feel pain, because sometimes….. sometimes that is all we can do.