We all go through hurt and pain in our lives. What differs are the experience we go through that bring about the pain.

I am not an exceptional. I also have had my moments of pain and when I weigh life, they seem to take the bigger percentage of it. If I will be honest with you, sometimes it is very hard to understand the meaning of life. One moment you are happy and then the other you are just going through the valley of the shadow of death. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine recently and we were talking about pain and its purpose in our lives. She echoed something that got me thinking real loud. She noted that we go through so much pain in life, only to enjoy life while getting to our sunsets and some unfortunately never get to enjoy it. Is that not true? If you look at it from her angle, we are in the hustle of life, sweating to ‘make it’ but we rarely get the satisfaction we so desire in life. Some in desperation to ‘make it’ engage in all manner of activities just to get to live the soft life.

Is hurt really necessary in life? Why must we go through the bad to get to the good? Must we be poor to finally be rich? Should we get sick to fully realize the value of good health? Hurt and pain, we are told, are necessary ingredients in life; they add to its flavor. In this new blog series, I will be sharing my experiences with hurt and pain. Why did I feel the urge to write this? Firstly, this is my safe space. It is where I express myself without necessarily having to hear the feedback of people because trust me everyone has an opinion. Secondly, I need to vent. I feel like for so long I have held on to pain that has led me to a destructive lifestyle and I am just tired of trying to ‘hang on in there.’ I believe pain demands a lot from you to cover it up. Sadly, you might lose yourself in there trying to fix yourself. I am tired of trying to fix myself.  Maybe if I just let it out there, I might get some of the load off my back. Lastly, I also believe that we live in a world full of hurting people and maybe, just maybe, if I share my experiences, I might just save someone out there who feels like pain is only unique to them. We all have our experiences with pain but most people choose to die with their pain. If there is something I have noted, pain will hurt you if you hold on and will eventually kill you if you choose to die with it.

Before I begin sharing my experiences, allow me to share some of the random things I have noted about hurt.

1. Pain is a heart issue. The heart is where your pain resides. Have you ever wondered why in the field of love when people get hurt, we say they are heart-broken? Every pain is felt in the heart before it is felt in every other organ of your body. The Bible actually says that out of the heart flows all the issues of life. The heart feels. The heart hurts. The heart heals. The pain we go through breaks our hearts. Often, most people are not able to rise above their hurt. There are people who have harbored resentful attitudes for years. There are children who have grown up hating their parents, until they were adults, because of what they went through. There are people who have never risen above their first love heartbreak. If you ask them all, the pain they feel is in their hearts.
2. Pain is an emotions issue. While the heart is where you feel the pain, emotions are how you feel the pain.  Pain takes us through a ride of an emotional roller coaster. Sometimes we weep, we cry and at other times we feel like screaming. At other times, we just want to be left alone. At other times we just want to sleep it off while other times we feel like we need to drown in strange substances. What you feel are your emotions. Pain reveals a lot of our emotions.
3. Pain is a mind issue. Pain has a way of messing up with our minds. I know it because I have been there. Pain plays tricks on you. It makes you think of very strange things that you have probably never thought off before. You start thinking a lot about unnecessary things. You start getting your priorities wrong. You start getting stresses, hopelessness begins to slither in, desperation gets a hold on you and finally depression wins the day. We all know what happens when depression knocks you out; death, mostly through suicide, seems like almost the expected outcome, right?
4. Pain is a relational issue. Have you ever realized that pain is caused by people? As long as you are living amongst people, you can expect that at one point you will hurt someone and you will be hurt. I certainly believe however that the greatest amount of pain comes from those we love. Look at the pain you have gone through in life and assess. Where do you think your greatest pain came from? Family and friends? I thought so too.
5. No pain is little pain. You have heard people say that there is little pain. I choose to disagree by fronting this statement; people hurt differently and what you would consider to be little pain to you could be the greatest pain to someone else. Experiences may differ but pain is pain. I think it would be unkind to say to someone that, ‘you have not felt the pain that I have felt.’ While that may be true, you haven’t also experienced pain that they have. No pain is little pain.

That said, I will be sharing my experiences with pain and hopefully they will lift someone out there and also encourage them.

Help, I’m hurting!