“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Before the dawn of healing can arise, we must survive the traumatic wounds we suffered in our loss: the acute bleeding out, sudden broken bones, the shock, the pain. While the pain doesn’t subside with the healing, we can hope that every day has improved our chance of survival. We can accept that this really happened and wasn’t only a bad dream, waiting with longing to jump from your sleep. It happened. We were actually ejected through that car window at high speed, glass shattering, head on into a still standing tree. The past we had still smolders in mangled metal and leaking gas, rising smoke and dying flames, wrapped unrecognizable around it’s trunk. Our body lays only feet away. We can see our wreckage, but we cannot return to it. We cannot, despite our deepest wishes and most anxious desires, rewind the accident that occurred to the moments before the crash. We close our eyes, the enormity of the suffering washes over us, we wish for deliverance.
While the wounds begin to heal there are many things to keep in mind. The first, is that in our trauma we can persist in that state of fear and withdrawal, continually hunkered down in fear letting the suffering claim our every moment. That is absolutely a state we can remain in forever. The problem is that the wounds will heal in time, but on their own. And without the proper attention and care they will heal into deformities that will claim you disabled for the remainder of your time. The memory of this loss is debilitating enough, God knows. Why add further dysfunction and suffer the loss of quality of life?
The second thing to keep in mind, is that the wounds of grief, denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and all the emotions they bring with them may dissipate but the pain is going to be there no matter what choice you make. If you sit with the pain, it hurts. If you get up and try to rehabilitate, it is going to still hurt. The poison you choose does not take away the immediate pain. For all I know, nothing will. Pain is still a constant in my life. But the distraction of healing, the goals you set in recovery, the changes you make so you can experience the best of what is left in life- they can bring hope and at least a little more peace than sitting at the site of the wreckage hoping for what will never come.
Finally, remember that the suffering you feel while sitting beside your wreckage praying for that car to reverse back into a whole piece with all the survivors in tact is reliving the acute and sudden pain in a way that will only intensify the suffering you have been damned to endure in this life. The suffering you will feel while you heal, and heal well, will at least be suffering with progress. That accident, the loss that destroyed your life, has been recorded in time. It has already affected the timeline of everyone and everything. Let it be remembered, not relived.
“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one your book.” Psalms 56:8
This all starts with honesty. Ironic, as a lack of honesty often put us in our darkest hole. But even if your tragic loss was just an accident or the sadness of death, the start of a healing journey requires the same honesty. The truth about your pain, its existence, your role in it, the justice in it, the injustice of it, the inevitability that the change in your reality will never return to what you had once found your greatest peace in life. Pain cannot be hidden. Suffering cannot be avoided. The truth cannot be held captive. We fear that taking an honest look at the monster will hurt us beyond what we feel now. But the suffering of what we imagine only prolongs the suffering that must come.
We are going to have scars. We will never forget how we suffered. When Jesus was resurrected and showed himself to his followers, he did not come back from his suffering scar free. They were there. Evidence and memoriam of the pain that had to be endured in a long journey to healing.
“Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe.” John 20:27
Living Phoenix 