FOODFORTHOUGHT

How I love that saying, "Pain is inevitable but misery is optional."
I definitely am one of those people who do not like to suffer more
than I have to. I fully believe that trying to live life without
suffering is like trying to take a shower without getting wet. But
you will not catch me volunteering for more suffering than is
already built-in in life. What suffering life sends me I will join
to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross, hopefully, with a gracious
spirit but I do not believe in horsehair shirts and self-
flagellation. I think our enjoyment of God's blessings also
please God when we do it for His glory (1 Cor. 10:31)

That is why I have latched on to humor as a pain-reliever as are
prayer and looking at things philosophically. I try to see if
another angle might diminish suffering. For example, "Why do I think
this new arthritic pain in my knuckle is painful? If I thought it
was pleasurable, would I still think of it as pain?" So while I'm
experimenting with those attitudes, I am distracted long enough to
not feel the pain for the duration of the distraction.

I have also reflected on what causes us the most pain. I thought that
maybe if I identified all the things that could bend me out of
shape, I would somehow learn how to deflect them the way the Shaolin
monks deflected spears in "Kung Fu."

Surely for me, the loss of Papa. To be separated by eternity from the
person who held life's meaning for me took everything I had to make
sense of living. Loneliness is hideous. There is simply no way we
can get around the soul-shredding grief that comes from losing
someone we love dearly in death.

There is a pain in missing those we hold dear from whom we are
separated by distance. Happily, e-mail allows us to stay bonded in
mind and heart from day to day. The love and relationship can keep
thriving because the investment of time and caring remains unabated.

Ongoing silence from the ones we love is the subtlest and the most
painful rejection of all. But one learns to live with it. We do not
have to accept the punishment others deal us because it gives them a
sense of power. Silence is a spear I can deflect.

Loss of friendship is painful. Without explanation, without rhyme nor
reason, someone you thought and valued as a friend is no longer
there. Thankfully, I have never lost a friendship though because I
have never put my end of the friendship down. "He drew a circle that
shut me out / Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout / But Love and I had
the wit to win / We drew a circle that took him in." (Edwin Markham)

Physical pain and loss of health are major crosses. Yet we take good
health for granted and merrily abuse our bodies as if we were
invincible. So we take care of our health as assiduously as we care
for our possessions because health is a primary asset.

Loss of material things we value is nothing to sniff at either. It
is an ongoing struggle not to be attached to the things we own. So
we meet and get acquainted with St. Francis' Lady Poverty.

Failure doesn't faze me because failure is my familiar as well as my
teacher. Churchill said, "Success is never final. Failure is never
fatal. It is courage that counts." I claim I have never failed
because I'm still in here trying.

Criticism, disapproval, insult, anger - all hurt. And so we turn
to "Do good to those who hurt you. Bless those who curse you." And
constantly I remind myself that WE LOVE GOD AS MUCH AS THE PERSON WE
LOVE THE LEAST.

Feeling that we don't measure up, that we fall short, that we are
inadequate nags even the strongest of us. So God says, "My grace is
sufficient for thee" and I can say, "When I am weak, then I am
strong," for God's power is made perfect in my weakness.

Spear, deflect. Arrow, deflect. Bullet, deflect. We have that
choice - we are not at the mercy of life. We are bigger than life.

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