If it Wasn’t for the Pain…
“What do I do with all of my pain? It’s like a bad burrito eating up my insides and making me sick. It’s become the poison I designed for others, but really, it’s only killing me. Sometimes I’m angry for no reason I’m aware of, but I end up taking it out on others whether or not they deserve it. I feel so alone in this.”
Do you ever feel this way? It’s more common than most people realize. Unfortunately, recognizing our issues doesn’t mean we know how to deal with them. So, what do we do when these types of emotions hit us?
This may sound weird, but the first thing we need to do is dig down to the root of the emotion. Take anger, for example. If you stop and trace it to its source, it might surprise you to find that what you’ve labeled ‘mad’ is really sad, hurt, frustrated, scared, and so on. In fact, anger is always a “secondary emotion”; what this means is that every time anger is present, something came before it. Anger is always second in line. Beneath that fiery rage, there is an emotion that kicked the party off. It’s important when we find ourselves mad to figure out where our anger is coming from so that we can deal with it effectively.
Often, the struggle in coping with the bad stuff that’s happened in our lives is the very real fact that those struggles have come through people who’ve been selfish and hurtful. They have made choices we can’t control, and any loss of control can also make us feel upset and angry. It’s that feeling of powerlessness that kicks off a chain reaction of frustration, anger, resentment, and bitterness. And dealing with things beyond our control? Yep, it’s a surefire way to turn us into emotional volcanoes. The simple truth is, we can’t control other people. The only thing we have power over is how to decide to respond to the situations we find ourselves in.
I once watched a fabulous tiktok video of a father showing his teenage boys why reacting to a situation in anger is a terrible idea. He handed a soda bottle to each son and told them to shake it up. After a full 30 seconds of shaking, you could see that they were roiling with explosive tension. He said to the first son, “OK, now imagine that a situation happens, and it shakes you up, just like this soda bottle. Open it.” Of course, the soda went everywhere and made a big mess. “This is what happens when we let anger take control over us. It makes things worse, not better.” Then he said to his second son with the bottle that wasn’t opened, “Son, I want you to wait before opening it.” After waiting a period, when they opened the second bottle, it was no longer explosive. There was no mess to clean up or damage to take care of. Then he handed his son a tube of toothpaste and he said, “I want you to squeeze a bunch out into the sink.” The son obeyed. He said, “When we react in anger and we allow our emotions to run wild, sometimes we say things we can’t ever take back, and that’s like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. Squeezing toothpaste out of the tube is easy, but once it’s out, it can’t be put back in. So we have to not allow our anger to control us and we have to be careful always in how we use our tongue. Words can be the deadliest of weapons.”
Sometimes, there’s no ‘they’ causing the pain. It’s us, our choices, our limitations, or how we’ve interpreted things. But no matter the source, the pain’s real. And when we can’t process or change it, we often slip into a spiral of emotions.
Different folks handle pain differently. Some vanish. Poof! Others turn into the ultimate risk-takers, almost challenging the world to take them on. Then there are the ones who hide their hurt behind a facade of perfection, slowly dying on the inside. And let’s not forget the firebrand warriors, fueled by bitterness, out to fix the world’s wrongs. Ephesians 4:26 tells us “Don’t sin by letting anger control you, do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” Take control of your anger, dig under it, and figure out how to release it. Okay, that’s great, but how?
Feeling our pain is a very important step in healing from it and disabling it. Acknowledging our pain, exploring it, feeling what it brings up for us, and owning it and then re-framing our association with it- is what it takes to heal. Feeling negative emotions and exploring them is something most people struggle with. It’s human nature to move away from things that are difficult or uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, the first step in healing often involves feeling the pain. It’s tough to confront our emotions. Sometimes, we either dive too deep into them or stuff them in a box, hoping they’ll magically disappear. But the truth is, allowing ourselves to feel without letting those feelings dictate our lives is a game-changer. It’s like owning up to a mistake without letting it define us.
Often, digging into our emotions reveals that we’re ill-equipped to deal with the cause of our pain. But guess what? God offers to take our burdens and to trade us beauty for ashes (all the destruction in our lives), joy for mourning, and praise for despair. (Isaiah 61:3). God offers to take our burdens and trade them for joy, beauty, and healing. He’s the ultimate healer, the emotional guru we never knew we needed.
Life hands us pain—it’s part of the package. But what if we surrendered that pain, received healing, and helped others do the same? What if our suffering didn’t have to make us enemies with everyone around us? What if, when things went haywire, we turned to God for strength and guidance?
Psalm 34:17 says, “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them.” Why not give your pain, anger, hurt, bitterness… whatever it is that is torturing you on the inside, destroying relationships on the outside, and keeping you from living life to the fullest… over to God and let Him begin the work of healing you and setting you free.
