The Loss of Avoiding Pain

In his interview with Conan O'Brien (seen here), Louis CK gets it.  If you've heard his comedy before you realize he's gone through the hells of divorce, failure, and religion for a lot of years.  His comedic rant against cell phones tapped into a truth our culture loves to avoid.

'I look around and pretty much 100% of people driving are texting.  And their killing --everybody's murdering each other with their cars.  But people are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own, because they don't want to be alone for a second.'

He's spot-on.  This sense of deep loneliness, like a burr in our soul, is what we avoid like a plague.  Smart phones have made this easier and instant, but consider for a minute the thousand different ways we escape pain: we plug away at jobs for 50+ hours a week while remaining disconnected from our kids and spouses, pornography is still a multi-billion dollar industry, teenage kids (and their parents alike) are numbed by a cocktail of mood altering drugs, our religions teach us to think more than feel, our country is on a constant move towards further obesity as we eat our feelings away, and on and on and on.

Louis goes on to speak about the worst part of constantly distracting ourselves from pain.

'You never feel completely sad or completely happy.  You just feel kind of satisfied with your product.' 

I think this interview struck such a chord with me because of an experience, similar to the one Louis mentions, which I had earlier this week.  One morning I woke up with an acutely nagging sense that it's not okay, that life is severely doomed.  The amount of pain shared with clients I've grown to love, the failures of mentors, questions unanswerable, and the mess I've made in my past decade of marriage laid on me thick.  My first instinct was to escape this - numb it.  By God's grace I didn't, and instead I sat in it, and I wept.  The lonely pain I felt pushed me to call a fatherly friend whom I trust and love.  Had I played on my phone, worked on something, or done one of a thousand easy distractions, I would have missed out on such a gift.  My pain gave me an opportunity to love and be loved.  My sadness opened me up to a clear awareness of my needs, and readied my heart to receive care from a friend.

My challenge is this: don't waste your pain.  Louis puts it pointedly when he says that sadness is a gift.  Sit it in, receive it.  When we allow ourselves to feel deeply, we allow ourselves to drink deeply from life.

If you need a jumpstart to feel, here's the Springsteen song Louis mentioned in his interview.

When Circumstances Won't Change

Typically when I hit a crisis in life I carry a belief that 'life will get better once it's over'.  The problem comes when the crisis/crises don't seem to end.  Finances won't shore up, relationships disintegrate, children fight, addictions rear their head, and God seems to be out to lunch.

A friend and mentor reminded me yesterday that it's in these times that we have the choice between resentment and gratitude.  For most of my years I've thought this type of talk to be empty and callous at best, but I trust this friend.  Another friend and mentor sat with me not too long ago and echoed my prayers of anger and frustration with God.  His response to my cries shocked me at first, but led me to a freedom of dialogue with Abba.  Later I heard more of his story, the pains of long addiction and ruined relationships.  His response to his troubles knocked my legs out from under me.  He was grateful, really and deeply thankful for his pains because they drew him into an abiding place with God that once seemed impossible and too far removed.

I'm learning, slow and steady, that in the times that I hit a wall of pain, frustration or insanity I can be grateful, and not just with empty verbal platitudes.

-I can be glad for my addiction because it forces me to reckon with my inability to control life and turn towards the guiding care I can receive from Abba.
-I can be grateful for my unstable finances as they teach me to receive what I am given as all coming from a watchful and gracious God.
-I can be thankful for my rocky, ruined and disintegrating relationships as they draw me, through my loneliness, into a deeper abiding with a God who calls me His beloved.

I'm not saying this is easy.  In fact, I'm saying that just a few minutes before I started typing I was overcome with resentment, anger and distrust.  My mind constantly pulls me in this direction; but today I choose to be grateful.  In the midst of my ship seeming to be capsized and flooded, I'm glad for my Captain and my crew-mates.

When this seems impossible, that the odds are stacked too highly against you, you're not alone.  The Serenity Prayer has long been used to help re-calibrate our souls towards abiding gratitude.

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can & wisdom to know the difference: living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time: accepting hardship as a pathway to peace: taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it: trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will: so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen."                     Reinhold Niebuhr 

This intentional abiding in God, despite external circumstances, is what allowed Paul to speak so boldly about gratitude in the face of suffering.  

 "Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse...Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. I’m glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess...Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am." Philippians 4:8-14 (The Message)

Ask yourself, am I choosing gratitude or resentment, peace or despair, rest or anxiety, a glad heart or a downcast spirit?  Abide in the One who calls you His beloved.