In 5th grade I changed schools, it was a traumatic experience. I had moved from a small safe setting designed for kids who had learning differences. The new school had large open classrooms (a nightmare for ADHD learners). One of my teachers didn't even know my name 6 weeks into the school year. There also happened to be an extra-large, almost full grown young man who was a student in my fifth grade class. I had never heard the kind of language that came out of his mouth and I had never experienced my head being shoved into a water fountain, until I met Raymond. I was undersized for 5th grade, so as I saw it, my options were few. I now recognize that the world he grew up in probably had few tools to cope with life other than physical strength, harsh language, and whatever strong arm tactics would ensure “survival of the fittest.” I also recognized that my life and pain coping tool box had little more than silent, numbing and hiding behaviors that included eating a half a loaf of cinnamon toast smothered in butter and powdered sugar, then going to bed all afternoon on the hard days, so I could dull the pain.
There seem to be three basic ways we deal with our pain. There are two ways we handle our pain and they are bad for us and those around us. When we 1. project our pain outward on others or we attempt to 2. protect ourselves by numbing and escaping inward. Either way we harm healthy relationships. There is however a relationally healthy way of handling our pain, we can 3. process it. Jerrod Justice tells us, “Our pain is either transmitted or transformed.” When we project our pain, we hurt other people. It can be someone who hurt us, as we exact revenge, or it could just be someone around us, unrelated to the hurt, who happens to be weaker and convenient. We can gossip, berate, or belittle others. We can also intentionally ignore, exclude or abandon these people or even physically harm them. We can become the worst version of ourselves. When we protect ourselves from pain, we hide from other people. We try any way we can to just escape the pain. We just want it to stop. We do need to protect ourselves from further harm, but there are some really unhealthy ways to do it which diminish who we are. We can numb ourselves with food, drugs, other chemicals, porn, alcohol and unhealthy relationships. We can even convince ourselves that excessive exercise, religion, work, or sleep is a good option here. We may hide behind an armored persona never showing who we really are for fear we will be hurt again. When we hide our true self, we have cheated the world out of experiencing the very relationships to which we are meant to bring life. Processing our pain with the Wonderful Counselor, Jesus is the best option. It allows us to connect with other people instead of hiding from them or hurting them. We need to process our pain with the God who sees us, hears us, and cares about us. We do this by praying and seeking some comfort from His presence, His Word and His people (maybe a trained counselor).
