naked pain

"Grief sucks, it really does. Unfortunately, though, avoiding it robs us of life, of the now, of a sense of a living spirit. Mostly I have tried to avoid it by staying very busy, working too hard, trying to achieve as much as possible. You can often avoid the pain by trying to fix other people; shopping helps in a pinch, as does romantic obsession. Martyrdom can't be beat. While too much exercise works for some people, it doesn't for me, but I have found that a stack of magazines can be numbing and even mood altering. But the bad news is that whatever you use to keep the pain at bay robs you of the flecks and nuggets of gold that feeling grief will give you. A fixation can be nicely defined and give you the illusion that your life has not fallen apart. But since your life may indeed have fallen apart, the illusion won't hold up forever, and if you are lucky and brave, you will be willing to bear disillusion. You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then keep crying and then, finally, grief ends up giving you the two best things: illumination and softness."

- Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

I have learned that something beautiful happens when we allow ourselves to enter into our grief and pain.

There is freedom.

We have all been hurt by someone. Often times we shut ourselves off. Because we're guarding our hearts from more pain on purpose. Or we have forgotten to take care of our hearts and they are guarding themselves.

Either way, we build walls. And we think it's OK. It's what society tells us to do. It's even our natural inclination.

To protect something that has been hurt.

Just like we would protect a broken arm.

But those walls we build around our hearts don't help the same way a cast or splint helps a broken arm.

When I finally let myself grieve, even my smallest pains, I entered into the rest of the world.

I began to see that everyone around me was just as broken.

And they were fighting just as hard to keep their walls up as well.

Rob Bell states beautifully in his book, Sex God, "Our healing begins when we participate in the suffering of God. When we don't avoid it but enter into it and in the process enter into the life of God. When we see our pain not as separating us from but connecting us to our maker."

We are so afraid. We are so hidden. I think the world would be a lot better off if we walked around naked in our pain.