“Loss is as much a part of normal life as birth, for as surely as we are born into this world we suffer loss before we leave it. It is not therefore the experience of loss that becomes the defining moment of our lives, for that is as inevitable as death, which is the last loss awaiting us all. It is how we respond to loss that matters. That response will largely determine the quality, the direction and the impact of our lives.” Jerry Sittser

When pain and loss inserts itself into our lives, we react like a stranger has just barged into our house in the middle of dinner, and in a way, it has. No sane person invites suffering and disruption to make their home with us (“come on in!”). But on the other hand, when we try to forcefully evict the guest without attending to what they are doing there, we do greater harm in the long run and actually short-circuit the process of what God wants to do in us.

The idea of ripping our clothes and sitting on an ash heap for seven days like the Old Testament character, Job seems bizarre. In fact, if we passed by someone on your way to work who was grieving in this way, we might put in a phone call to local authorities to “help the crazy man on the corner.” At the very least, we would pity such a person.

Contrast that with the words of Jesus when He says, “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Likely speaking to poor, day-laboring, subsistence-living types of people under the thumb of Roman impression, Jesus says, “the ones who mourn? They are the fortunate ones.” I’m guessing it sounded as crazy then as it does now.

It’s a highly-prized value to be unbroken by life, today. To be unphased. We pride ourselves in overcoming, in rising above the fray (including unwanted emotions and the circumstances they come from). Add to this heritage the common Christian belief that feelings like anger, fear, and sadness are unreliable and should be avoided. Many of us believe that if we have intense anger, fear, or sadness, it’s an indicator something’s wrong with our spiritual life.

As a result, many of us run away from pain and her often accompanying companions anger, grief, and confusion. HOW we do this varies based on our unique family culture and personality, but one common denominator is the distraction of addiction. Pete Scazzero writes, “In our culture, addiction has become the most common way to deal with pain. We watch television incessantly. We keep busy, running from one activity to another. We work seventy hours a week, indulge in pornography, overeat, drink, take pills – anything to help us avoid the pain. Some of us demand that someone or something (a marriage, sexual partner, an ideal family, children, an achievement, a career, or a church) take our loneliness away.”

Lest you read an unsympathetic tone into these pages, let me say that it’s excruciating to face life wholeheartedly. No wonder we numb our hearts in all kinds of ways. It’s practically impossible not to. I empathize with the attempt to escape by getting around the potholes of pain (and I certainly have tried). But the cost of engaging in that kind of behavior is steep.

First, when we refuse to face and feel our pain, we distance ourselves from reality, and in so doing we distance ourselves from God. As Thomas Merton once said, “God is too real to be met anywhere other than reality.” Think about it this way – God is totally and completely present in every moment of life. When we turn our back on any aspect of our lived experience, we turn our back on the possibility of meeting God in that place. We’ve failed to live with both feet planted in reality, and that’s where God always is.

Another cost of closing the door on our pain (without facing and feeling it first) is that our experience of life will be blunted. We can’t selectively numb the difficult parts of life like sadness, shame, and fear and not have the good parts like joy and gratitude be unaffected. Brene Brown has done some helpful reflection on this idea in her book, Daring Greatly. Feelings aren’t on a buffet for us to pick and choose what suits our fancy. There’s an inter-connectedness to all of life’s emotions and our experience of them.

A third, related result – if we pretend rather than attend to life’s brokenness, our formation into the type of men and women God has called us to be will be stunted. As Pete Scazzero says, “Without familiarity with sorrow, we don’t mature. Losses wear away whatever masks or false selves we attempt to present to the world. They topple the monuments of our own importance we build to ourselves. We’re stripped of excess and brought face-to-face with God, ourselves and others.” We quite simply cannot experience holistic transformation apart from dealing with the messy parts of life. Why? There are spiritual truths that we can only know through pain and suffering. I wish there was another way. There isn’t. Jesus Himself learned obedience through what He suffered (Heb. 5:8). If that’s true, there certainly are things about life and faith I cannot grasp (or perhaps better said cannot grasp me) any other way other than through pain.

So, where does that leave us when life hurts? In a post next week, I’ll explore that.