"I am one who has seen affliction"*

Have you ever been so sick that you wished you were dead? I got really sick when I was in junior high or maybe early high school. I don't think I've ever had a headache so bad. I don't remember anything but the pain. I remember looking out the window and thinking, "Death would surely be better than this." And then a couple years later when I had my heart broken for the first time, the pain was different, but I had that same wish again.

I figured that as I got older, pain would be easier to bear. I would be stronger, healthier, maybe even smarter. But today, as I feel some old pain flaring up, I realize that pain is pain no matter how old or young you are, and that a heart can be broken at any age, and for any reason, however strange.

My good friend reminded me today that the pain of grief is not something to run from. When we look outside ourselves to find ways to ease the pain, or numb it, or disassociate from it completely, the pain sticks with us. We may think that we're outsmarting it, but the opposite is true. We are only delaying the inevitable. The feeling of your heart, dead in your chest, cannot be escaped. "Can't go over it...can't go under it...must go through it!" the bear hunt song goes (circa 1987, at least, because I remember it from kindergarten).

So now I begin the process of bearing my pain without hurting myself or others, or trying to escape from it. Funny enough, this is the best way. The pain will pass, eventually. Even when you feel like you can't breathe and you're crying on the shower floor, it will pass.

*Lamentations 3:1 (NRSV)