What have I learnt about pain?
The hymn ‘How Deep the Father’s Love’ talks about the pain of searing loss. The loss of my mum to cancer gave me a new appreciation of pain. While I had been familiar with it in a physical and emotional way before, the loss I felt can only be described as trauma. The brutal reality of knowing that I would never see her again, that she would not be in my life to share any moment was a surprise to me everyday. After many months of ‘coping’ I turned to counselling and to my sketchbook. I was encouraged to notice how I felt physically; this was a pain that stayed in my body, a burning sensation that overwhelmed me. As I put pain and paint to page I remembered the phrase from the hymn ‘searing loss’. The word searing seemed a perfect description of how I felt and so I focused on it as tears streamed down my face. After some time, this overwhelming emotion eased and passed, as I was told it would. Something else I have learnt: that feelings pass and don't last forever, and that the pain I felt would not kill me (although at the time I thought it would).
sear 1 (sîr)
v. seared, sear·ing, sears
1. To char, scorch, or burn the surface of
2. To cause emotional pain or trauma
3. To be felt or remembered because of emotional intensity
n.
A condition, such as a scar, produced by searing.
Has the pain left me forever scared? Some people say that you get through grief, I am here to tell you that, for me, that's not true. ‘Through’ suggests an endpoint or ‘another side’... how can there be an end to missing someone you loved so deeply? The hole will always be there. I see grief more as an absorption, adjustment, acceptance and altering. A poem by Gwen Flowers was the most accurate collection of words to describe what I was experiencing.
Grief
I had my own notion of grief.
I thought it was the sad time
That followed the death of someone you love.
And you had to push through it
To get to the other side.
But I’m learning there is no other side.
There is no pushing through.
But rather,
There is absorption. Adjustment. Acceptance.
And grief is not something you complete
But rather, you endure. Grief is not a task to finish
And move on, But an element of yourself – An alteration of your being.
A new way of seeing.
A new dimension of self.
Over the days, weeks, months and years that have followed since I lost my mum I can say that I was taken care of. Despite moments of despair, and through the pain, the Lord was with me, He gave me my counsellor, friends and family as gifts to help me adapt and adjust to my new reality (I don't say ‘new normal' as I hate that phrase). I am at a point where the pain is not wasted. I think in some ways I love more deeply. I can now give myself permission to feel whatever I feel, knowing that the Lord gave me my emotions to be fully human, after all, the pain is the price of love, when we love deeply, we feel deeply and we lose deeply. I really want to encourage all of you who face a similar journey to allow yourself to feel even the most desperate and heartbreaking pain, because I think to stare it in the face with the Lord surrounding you, will mean that you will be altered for His glory.
Has my mum's absence become part of my lived reality? Most days I think so, but I am profoundly changed. I can genuinely say that the pain has brought me closer than ever to the Lord, His word, His face and His everlasting love. When I asked the Lord for a word after my mum died He said "For (I) so loved the world that (I) gave (my) one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16 NIV). You see, the searing loss that is spoken about in the hymn is actually the loss the Lord felt as he gave His son, Jesus, up for us...so He understands, he feels my pain, the pain of death...and it is this sacrifice that shows us the depth of His love for us.
How Deep the Father's Love for Us - Stuart Townend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzQj7XvKFmA
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