understanding pain

It's a concept plaguing my sense of humanity for ages. It's like trying to contain fire and reduce it to it's simplest form in a laboratory. Truth is, you just can't do it. you don't know what fire is made of. you can certainly find it's source, how it started, how to put it out within permeters of science. But you don't know what fire is made of. In the elementary periodic table of classification, is it gas? Is it a solid state, or molten? Wikipedia informs us that it is an exothermic. Huh? Yup. Exo-thermic. As opposed to endothermic. Some kind of thermodynamic study.

Pain, really, is a cousin of passion. How do you explain passion? It goes against all logic, rationale and principle. Against all of our wisdom of good and bad, right and wrong. It either drives you to achieve things people normally don't end up getting. Or paralyses you beyond reason and the resolve of the mind is not enough. Passion fueled by some form of love and hope.

So the reminder came up again. Pain hit the core with fear wrapped around the bullet. Why do i seem to tread this with so much trembling? Love and fear, love and fear, as Leunig says. When you love, you fear hurting the one you love. Or is it so two dimensional? I am for one, an easy pushover. Doesn't take a lot to get what you want from me and I may even end up serving it on a silver platter. Indulgence, as my special friend calls it. You just need to win my trust, my respect and my love and you can have everything. Seriously. The hardest part is winning, though. After that, you can bully me into anything and I will willingly mop it all up. I am probably the kind of father who would spoil his kids and the thought of it made me shudder. This, I guess, is the part where God train my fingers for war. A big part of me just wants to sweep it under the carpet. Because it carries with it so much at stake.

The weight of so many images and people walking away still plays in the memory of my movies. And being cornered to my sense makes it much worse than I can handle. I can try and tell myself not to let it consume me. But it is burning inside. It's like sitting inside a slow burning building and trying to put it out the fire with my bare hands. People are telling me, angry with me, ridiculing me, shouting out my name to leave and abandon ship but I know I made a promise to hold the fort. I will perish with the fire and if war breaks and the shrapnel fly and slit my wrists and throat, I will go down willingly. For I know fire will test the integrity of the heart and I am standing too near and underestimating what its doing to eat me up inside. I'm still unwilling to open my mouth and testify and bare this bleeding heart trying to hold the grenade pieces together.

And it pushes me to a very strange place. I refuse to tip the toe and as such become unable to connect with the common people to avoid having to lie, having to outright deny in defense of love and honor. All because I know i will at the drop of a hat. And on the other side of the coin, I keep a distance to guard the temple stone and the maiden protected within its walls and risk disappointing, time and again, the hopeful friends who are reaching out with a helping hand. And so my weekends, Saturdays and Sundays become my living hell, my cold turkey, my cell tucked away from light. My community is tugged from under my feet as I willingly lay my life down and take the high road. For what do you do when the blood between brothers is thicker than water? It pushes my instinct to hide and walk into a crowded lonely alley unknown to strangers, and on the surface, looking like I'm in a constant clinical state of depression. What do you do when you hold love more important than food and fun? To protect and serve.

You only understand pain when you pray for weekends to pass quickly and for Mondays to arrive. If this fire and brimstone is going to continue, let it burn away meaninglessness and leave only the integrity stones intact for His holy life to germinate and break out from within us. Give me wisdom to take ownership with the ones I name with honor and affection. Give us grace enough to sustain life void of meaninglessness. Give us this day your daily instructions, food the soul, clues to follow and love enough to grow old. Jesus come save us.

The past is a nasty reminder of what the scary future could look like. So teach me to be present and do what I know, say what I mean and let the pioneers collect the deluge.