It hurts

 One day as my granddaughter went out to do her "farm chores" she ran into something she wasn't expecting. The bottom step of the new deck we built had enough ice on it to make it slick. Sure enough she slipped scrapping up her knee. 

 

 

As we looked for a bandage she complained about it hurting. "Grandma, it hurts," she said again and again. After giving her a hug I told her, "Well, it wasn't meant to tickle." Later as the words I spoke to her echoed in my mind I thought about them in my heart.

 

 

I meditated on the different situations in life that create pain and how grand it would be if they were meant to tickle. Unfortunately that isn't the way it works. There must be a reason that we experience or have to deal with pain.

If you think about it pain teaches us things. You hurt yourself on a hot stove you've just learned to not do that again. The pain of our choices teaches us to not make that choice again. Pain teaches us to rely on God more. It helps us to learn endurance which is something we need whether we ever experience pain or not. Pain prepares us to be able to help others thru it.

We don't have to go seeking pain in order to become wise and strong early in life, pain finds us. Our part to play is to be prepared for it and know how to handle pain. Sadly enough there are a lot of people who don't know how to handle their pain. Some get angry and try to cause other people pain to go along with the misery they are feeling. Some run from pain and commit suicide. Others give in to the pain and become worthless to themselves and others. Others like to bury it alive and not deal with it. It doesn't work. 

 

 

My granddaughter knew exactly what to do when she hurt her knee. She ran to grandma and the medicine cabinet where the bandages are kept. My prayer for her and all my grandchildren and love ones is that they will know exactly what they need to do when they experience emotion, spiritual, and even physical pain and that is to Jesus Christ and the medicine cabinet of the Bible, God's holy word to see them thru. My prayer is that none will run or hide from it or get lost in it.

The solution is Jesus. Pain is inevitable, certain, unavoidable, predictable, in other words it's going to happen sooner or later. It doesn't matter if it's a little or a lot we need to be ready. We don't need to compare our degrees of pain and figure who is worse off than who. Pain is pain and we need to use it as a tool to learn not one to use as our play toy for a pity party of "why me" why not someone else.

Practice preventive medicine and turn to God first and stay close to His medicine cabinet, The Bible, God's Holy Word.