Your Pain is Your Lane

A Year of Hope

Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash

“Your pain is your lane,” she said.

I thought of my pains.

Then I thought about

MADD – Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The grief over the death of her son in a drunk driving accident

Driven

so others may be spared.

If not,

a community to turn to.

Pains – some so grievous, there are no words.

I thought my own pains would go away with

enough time and

distance.

But they never did.

Then I remembered,

after Christ's resurrection,

His glorified body still bore nail marks.

We identify with Him, His wounds.

Maybe our glorified bodies will bear our wounds

Wonderfully made beautiful

Because God

is the God of the impossible.

No pains are minor;

they are only so

because of their relativity to the majors.

My minors mostly stem from my majors.

Maybe yours do too.

My major – the mother wound.

We all ache with various sized wounds

limp along

with ticks

strange behaviors

spilling out

sideways and

every which way.

In suffering, we develop compassion for others.

Sometimes this empathy turns into a lane, giving purpose to pain.

Ministry, mission,

tears that turn into a well of service.

Our ministry lanes

come about

in many ways.

Often unexpected and seemingly absurd.

Imagine my incredulity

when a shadow of a Holy Spirit thought dawned:

Be a mother to others.

What?

So what

if I no longer drop to my knees, cripple over, when I see a mother-daughter out-and-about doing mother-daughter things.

What nonsense

But sometimes our pain is His lane.

My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Cor 12:9

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways…Isaiah 55: 8

The past doesn't change.

But exposure to God’s light,

can transfigure.

Only Christ gives meaning to our pain.

Sometimes, healing happens while we serve.

When I signed up for a ministry,

Happy to be called. Too eager to bother with the fine print.

Not expecting to give my witness. Too late to about-face.

In walking in the nave-to –

to write, to speak, to reach out to hope –

the hemorrhaging slowed to a trickle.

God transfigures wounds. Because

people who are bleeding can’t donate blood. Because

people with festering wounds can’t mend. Because

of love

God picks your time to mobilize because

Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build…Psalm 127:1

For now, I mostly drive in the lanes of my minors:

Raised with a pagan catechesis, baptized in the ways of the world's lies

There’s much to shake off.

Like gum on shoes, the residue lingers.

Writing about prayer and God’s love

scrapes off the residue

for others and for me.

Desperate to show my children the love

the world doesn't offer,

Famished for them to taste the peace that surpasses all understanding

To find the hidden treasure

the pearl of great price

Hope upon hope

Prayer upon prayer

falling down in faith,

skinned knees

skinned heart.

Catechizing fresh littles

an assuage of re-dos

from the Wisdom Incarnate

Pains are life but

God redirects and even bears fruit through them.

What to do with our pains?

Where to find hope?

How to begin again?

In this jubilee year of hope,

Expose our pains to the light, so

the God of second chances, thirds, and beyond,

shows us the way to begin again.

…Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope 1 Peter 3:15

It’s been 12 years since my mother passed away. In this jubilee year,

God sets me on a new highway of hope

.