Afraid of Pain

If I look back on my life and evaluate my heart at different stages I never would have anticipated for 25 to look quite the way it did. It sucked!

There were days I would find myself staring at the mirror wondering where I had lost the owner of my body because the current occupier didn't have the faintest clue what they were doing. I totally crashed. There was a point I would create timetables of what I should do by the hour because looking any further than that was too much for my system to handle. As the year went on we made progress but I found myself closing the year at a funeral and this the summary of what I learned.

Before I get into it let me give a quick back story, I'm Kenyan and the funeral was held in our village in western Kenya. Firstly Kenyan funerals are long with almost 6 days of mourning, secondly they are not done in isolation, everyone shows up and thirdly they are loud, people are very vocal about their sense of pain and loss.

Being in that for the first time made me realise that I am a product of a culture that has taught me to be afraid of pain. I have never seen someone wail, at most I've seen people cry but never wail. Bad things happen here everyday but why in all my years have I never seen anyone wail? In fact I feel like I need to define it for you, wailing is the type of crying that is so raw and deep that it makes everyone around get misty eyed. Nothing communicates pain like wailing. It is in plenty of historic writing yet we never see it anymore. Somewhere along the line, our culture didn't know what to do with it so it was relegated to the writings of historic authors.

Central to the function of our society is to minimise and remove pain where possible. I mean where we once walked, we now drive. Where there was once shame, we defiantly championed with imaginary pride and where people once grieved, we medicate into cooperative numbness.

As I watched my family so publicly mourn it struck me that I don't have a framework for grief. In fact, I don't even have a grid for gradual healing and when I look at my friends I realise that the fear of pain has normalised 2 responses: celebration of the pain or avoidance of the pained.

1. Celebration of the pain

As a culture we are determined to pursue a label aka a diagnosis for every type of pain. The diagnosis gives a why to the feeling or behaviour. This allows us to immunise ourselves from having to deal with the person- the tears, the emotions and social responsibility to make sure they come out of it unharmed.

And for the person in pain pursuing the why can be especially harmful. It distracts from the process of healing and drives us into accusation and eventually bitterness which is far far worse. By finding a person or circumstance to blame we can quickly find ourselves slaves to the question of why. I am convinced that the author of calamity isn't so much bothered by the calamity itself but by the opportunity it presents to plant seeds hatred, bitterness and un-forgiveness which derail destinies.

Avoidance of the Pained

I am this person- I avoid the pained. After not seeing breakthrough in a few weeks I really don't know what to say- so I'll wait for you to figure it out and then meet with you when you perk up. Not because I don't care but because I don't have a clue how to deal with pain in any other way than to kick it out. Problem got worse when for the first time I was the the not ok person and admitting that was like going against my faith, like I failed God by even having these emotions.

Incredibly my personal breakthrough came when for the first time in my life I witnessed the uncensored mourning of people I cared about who freely shared their pain without a religious cliche, I understood why we have the Bible verse 'Jesus wept'. I saw the validity in it and realised that it is very possible to know the answer and feel absolute brokenness at the same time, they do not automatically cancel each other out.

The process of mourning (whatever it may look like) isn't denying the presence of an answer, it doesn't dishonour the people around you and it most certainly isn't dishonouring God. There is a place for it. In fact

'Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted'

No more emotional constipation- being in pain shouldn't turn you into a 21st century leper. Let's develop relationships that can withstand the 'I'm not okay' and trust that allows us to let ourselves fall knowing we will be caught.

Thank you to my dear sisters Lusike and Kamule, Khuli Fwesi!