Surprise! Our Lord has already provided for you. For me. For everyone you know and love and care about. For everyone else, too.
So let’s receive and accept the Provision already given to us.
You can feel the pain. You pretty much cannot help but feel it. So…choose to allow yourself to feel it. (You are going to feel it anyway.) Just being aware of the emotional or the physical pain — or even both kinds of pain!
Allow yourself to not be attached to the pain that you feel. You can feel it yet not identify with it – NOT as if to say to yourself inwardly, “I am this pain”. But rather, “I am aware of this passing pain.” Because….
All pain passes. New pain may come, but all pain passes. Acute pain may be terrible but usually does not last long. Chronic pain is usually not as strong as acute pain, but it goes on for a while – usually too long. It passes. All pain passes, and pain has a process.
Yes, pain has a process that too few of us know about and even fewer of us remember to use often enough. (I am beginning to learn to use this, and I thank God for this!)
I wake in pain nearly every morning. I am learning: breathe deeply. Feel the pain and let it be what it is, just feel it – it is in process. Feel it without identifying with it. It is there, it is all too definite. I am not that pain.
After I feel the pain for a while – which was going to happen anyway, it eases off. It disappears. It has gone through it’s own process.
But how do we not identify with the pain and keep some distance? How do we really have awareness of pain without it filling us up so much that we are literally full of pain?
One of the best ways is to invite Holy Spirit. “Lord, fill me with more of your Holy Spirit”, you can ask. Use words and labels that are evocative for you. Pain is very, very personal. So you get to be personal.
The Kingdom of God is literally within reach. Now. God’s rule instead of the rule of an Adversary in a broken world where there are to many kinds of pain and problems. Reach out, ask, call on the name of the Lord. Really, yes, really do this. With deep and focused intention.
He has promised he will come and save you when you call on him. Many times he has made such a promise. (Use your search engine to find many such promises, if you like. You can make note of them, write them down, underline them, highlight them – whatever is helpful and good for you.)
When you are aware of even a little bit of Holy Spirit, when you are aware of even a little bit of the Presence of God, or of Immanuel – a name of Jesus meaning, “God is with us” – and nearby if not even in you already – use such a name; or Yahweh, if you like. Or the short form, Yah! Of Yeshua. Or simply Jesus. Or “I Am”. Whatever name of the Lord you relate best to, in this moment.
When you have such awareness, your emotional of physical pain is in process, you are not completely identified with it, it is not all that is filling your conscious awareness.
The pain is processing. You are breathing deeply in an ongoing way. The pain eases off and gradually disappears.
Do this often enough and you will come to trust this process, this provision that God has given us already – you will come to trust this process even more. Which will make willingly going through this process more inviting and certain to you.
You may become aware of another pain. Pain is often in layers, like an onion.
Reiterate the process. Repeat it with every kind of physical and emotional pain that arises into your awareness. Preferably one at a time.
God has created a process for pain. Promised to be with you, in you, for you – and to respond when the name of the Lord is called.
So put these to work.
The process I have described here with many words is actually quite simple once you are doing it.
Do it.
Don’t just read about this, please do it.
And I’d love to hear from you, about how this went well for you or not. I can learn with you, maybe even say something useful. Or you say something useful for me. Or better yet, even both!
I’m David@DavidBurnet.com. Email me, I’d love to hear from you.