Pain

As Americans, we’re really into self-medication. Pain is the enemy right? Get rid of it.

But on the larger scale, we don’t manage pain nearly as much as it manages us. You’ll often notice how surprised, how shocked and how utterly ‘knocked off course’ students are when difficulty comes. These are the tender times. The window of opportunity. Our lives- embedded deeply in the pain and discovery of life- are a gift to them. A calm during the storm.

We like to reference four types of pain:

• Personal
• Professional
• Partner
• Parent

You’ll notice that suffering has a way of intermingling within the range of our roles; from our personal journey, through business, marriage and parenting stages.

As we hang with students, we should expect their shock and initial power-reactions to pain, slowly using situations to express care and draw them into the bigger life. One where they trade in ‘using God to fix their problems’ for ‘using their problems to know God’