Henri Nouwen and healing pain’s wounds via eternity’s gratitude

PAIN is the very portent of hope for something different.  The mere presence of pain heralds hope for what is beyond it.  Nobody who is in pain likes being there and remaining in it.  Pain calls us beyond it... into peace... healing... gratitude... joy.

I want to wrestle with some hard truths in this article by the thoughts of Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932 – 1996).  Below, quoted, is Nouwen’s wisdom:

“To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections that requires hard spiritual work.  Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment.  As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.  Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.”

This is a very hard thing.  I wonder if you balked at some of this.  We all suspect that the best life is the grateful life.  Yet, in this quote above, Nouwen tells us that in all things — even and especially the horrendous — there’s the redemptive “guiding hand of a loving God.”

Let’s face it, if it weren’t the case, there would be no hope.  To process pain, we need hope.

We must somehow believe that there is a benevolent purpose in all we experience, and where we cannot see it, that it’s faith we show when we believe it must exist.

At the very least, such a challenge to our thinking is bound to stop us in our tracks and compel a sharp reflection.

Rather than dismiss it out of hand, if we can trust the guidance of a master in healing wounds, we do stand to learn something; for one thing, to have our perceptions turned upside down.  Don’t be surprised when this happens.  So many of us testify this is what the journey is life.

Whenever I’ve approached any sort of loss or grief with an attitude that “this, too, is a life experience, and I’m thankful I endured it,” something has happened to allow me to be freer.

Many times, it’s a slow process of allowing those partitions to fall, so we might readily allow those hard nodules of hurt to be massaged through the simple act of letting those experiences be a part of us — not to rip us apart by pain or shame, but that in them being there, they cannot conquer us.  It’s very hard with trauma, but not impossible, just a slower, gentler journey as we gradually learn to accept and manage triggers.

Here is a second quote:

“There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.”

The normal journey through pain is inevitably one where we experience the complete continuum — fully absorbed by pain’s ferocity at one end and often distracted by intentional denial at the other.

Being able to FEEL pain — to feel our feelings — is the key to increasing both healing and emotional intelligence.  If we can feel our pain, almost nothing can conquer us in this life.  But if it all becomes about our pain, we remain in it and we don’t move through and beyond it.

Getting to a place where pain has been processed to the degree that there is purpose and meaning springing from it, as life experience I mean, gives us something of a tool for the rest of our lives.  This is the importance of pressing into the pain sufficient that it can be processed, without becoming ultimately consumed by it.

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I’m fascinated with the concept of gratitude on the other side of pain.  What must be understood about gratitude, however, is it’s an all-consuming superabundantly positive attitude for the reality of all a person has and is and has experienced — in all ways.

When I read Paul in the final throes of Philippians when he says, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me,” and that he, “has learned to be content,” whether he has plenty or is in want — especially in view of all the betrayal, loss and disappointment he experienced — I know Paul experienced what is possible for every person to experience.

That is the capacity to overcome what would normally overcome a human being.

Photo by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash