Not everything is redeemable and that’s okay. Give yourself the freedom of not needing to see redemption in all the tragedies of life.
But if there is no redemption, what are we to do with the pain we feel?
Give Yourself Space to Heal
The thing about pain is that it hurts. We want it to go away as soon as possible. But it doesn’t necessarily. When you smack your thumb with a hammer, pain shoots through your finger and up your arm. It can take the rest of the day for that thumb to stop hurting. I’ve already hit my thumb hard enough that it took several days to heal.
If you want to know what to do with your pain, start by accepting the reality that healing takes time. Healing also takes space. Time in space alone don’t heal, but time and space are necessary for the healing process to go well.
While there is no one-size-fits-all plan for healing, following are a few suggestions on how you can give yourself space to heal.
Don’t make any major changes
In my experience, it was actually in the moment of pain and grief then I was most tempted to make changes. Again, we want to do things to get rid of the pain. Just like we jump around and hoop and holler and wave our thumbs to hopefully get the pain to subside, so our psyches roam to and fro looking for activities or ideas that will soothe the pain we feel inside.
If you take the bait, however, if you jump into whatever new project you think up or make major lifestyle changes, you engage your heart and your mind before they’ve had a chance to calm down and find release from the anguish they’ve experienced. It’s sort of like running right after you eat. You feel full and are thinking about your need for losing weight or getting in shape. But if you go for a run in that moment you re-engage your blood system while it’s still recovering from eating. You will wear out quickly and get a side ache like none you’ve ever had before. In the end, you’ll feel so gross you probably won’t ever want to run again.
But the problem wasn’t the running. The problem was the timing of when you chose to do it.
Whenever a tragedy strikes it almost always warrants making significant changes in your life. Only, be careful that you don’t do it too quickly.
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