Sharing pain is more lifegiving than hiding it

​"Pain is the ultimate healer of pain, and relating to each other's pain is the foundation of all meaningful relationships."

I wrote that in an article yesterday. An article that suggested pain can become a beautiful tool through which we minister to others.

After reading that, a dear friend asked, "why do some people hide that pain, and others minister from it? What is the turning point to minister to others?"

Such a powerful question. One of the reasons I write is to stir questions like that. In others and in myself.

Her question definitely stirred me a lot yesterday. I stirred on it through the lens of my own turning point, because indeed I have not always used my pain to minister.

I guess it starts with the discovery that my hiding from pain is a bigger threat to my existence than sharing it.

For five decades of my life, I hid from pain. Often unknowingly. I had applied so many layers of masks on the surface of my life that I accomplished what I didn't even know I was trying to accomplish; I forgot my pain.

But the pain was still there. Eating away at my insides like an invisible parasite.

Then one day a friend overwhelmed me with safety. And every story of my life suddenly seemed like an important story to tell. Many of those stories were shared like findings of an ancient archeological dig. Or actually, maybe more appropriate, like retrieving journals from the attic of an old and long forgotten abandoned house.

When you let things out you've been hiding for decades because of their ugliness, and they are greeted with loving acceptance, you begin to experience the definition of healing. I had read the definition of healing before, but I felt it in that moment.

You can often deny the things you read; you can never deny the things you feel. Not when they are as powerfully truthful as healing.

That was the turning point. Discovering that not everyone will hate the parts of me that I had hated. Feeling the volcanic release of burdens that had been buried beneath the thousand pound weights of alcohol and depression and fear and so many other masks.

Safety was the turning point.

Safety then truth then acceptance.

And then I came to realized how many volcanoes there are living and walking among me. I realized how many people have come to believe hiding their truths is a dearer friend to their survival than sharing them.

Many of my pains have not gone away. But my view of them has totally changed. Pain is unbearable in hiding; but pain is liberating and healing when shared with the world.

Pain can be ministry. I could never have seen that theology coming.

But today it is my ministry.

Advocating for safe spaces for people to share their truths. In buildings and in communities and in relationships.

Reminding people that most people will not hate the parts of you that you hate. But if they do, you need to run from those people and not from yourself.

I love teaching people that pain is an invitation to get to know ourselves and each other on a deeper level. Pain is a window into our greatest strengths and our most victorious victories.

That is not the story we tell until we tell our story to someone else.
We will rarely see our stories as strong until someone else hears them and reflects them back to us as strong.

So that's my reflection to my friend's question. I don't know if it's an answer; I don't believe in answers as much as I once did. Mainly because answers are often fleeting. Any my answer is not always your answer.

I think reflecting on our own truth's and how we get to them is often more valuable. And just maybe sharing those truth's can be of some value to someone else's reflections.

Maybe in some ways that's how pain ultimately becomes a healer of pain.