Pain

"It is a strange thing that the human species can only go three days without water and three weeks without food, before the body dies. Yet, so many people can go years hanging onto pain and feeling emotionally dead inside. I suppose if it was the other way around more people would go to school to be morticians because of the booming business, or pastors would have to hand out Valium with the sacrament, just to keep the census high."

"In every guilty man, there is an element of innocence. This is what makes any absolute condemnation revolting. We do not think enough about pain" Albert Camus"

"True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it."

"The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another's pain as one's own, and to act to take that pain away,. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness."

"Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, 'You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind' But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: 'Are you hurt? Can I help you up' Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion."

"The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our hearts on the black horse of affliction. Jesus uses the whole range of our experiences to wean us from earth and woo us to Heaven."

"Sometimes there’s a fire in your life and you ask God,“Lord, let me go around the fire.” And God says, “No.”Then you ask, “Lord, then let me go over the fire.”And God says, “No.” Then you ask, “Well Lord, please let me go under the fire.” And God says, “No. Go through the fire and I’ll be with you."

"When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine."

"Pain can either thrust me into the arms of Jesus or make me turn my back on Him. Either way, it's a choice."

"All of us, some frequently, feel undervalued and unseen. Yet, our deepest pains are lessened in that moment of recognition that Jesus...gets it. That his own feet have walked through this very pain. May we stretch to be like him, and live for his accolade alone, his face only before us. For soon, as Scripture promises, we will be face to face." from "The Bare Branch" p.43"

"Paul says that our troubles are “light.” Granted I may not see them as light in the midst of trauma, but looking back on them, they may seem light. He also says they are “momentary.” They only last for a short time."

"Did he know that God loved him from the foundations of the earth? With a power far exceeding the immensity of the cosmos, He turned all His attention to creating that man and declared, "You are My child. I love you."

"And at 3am you sit near the window and wonder if there is magic... because all you need are some fairies to take your pain away and help you sleep... you take a book to read... you take a pen and a paper to write...you cling on some music that might just make you fall asleep... yet nothing helps... another sleepless night and all you want is the dawn to break soon..."

"What is it like to wear another person’s skin?”“I don’t have a good answer for that,” I said. “It hurts.”“Can you remember their stories? Can you feel the love that they felt?"

"The darkness was memory."

"Classifying depression as an illness serves the psychiatric community and pharmaceutical corporations well; it also soothes the frightened, guilty, indifferent, busy, sadistic, and unschooled. To understand depression as a call for life-changes is not profitable. Stagnation is not a medical term. The 17.5 million Americans diagnosed as suffering a major depression in 1997 were mostly damned. (Psychobiological examinations confuse cause and symptom.) Deficient serotonergic functioning, ventral prefrontal cerebral cortex, dis-inhibition of impulsive-aggressive behavior, blah blah blah: the medical lexicon boils emotion from human being. Go take a drug, the doctor says. Pain is a biochemical phenomenon. Erase all memory."

"Whenever it rains, I remember him, not as a tear that hails down as a raindrop, but as a God of fertility. As, every time I remember him, his memories conceive a baby of emotions in me!"

"In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure..."

"In the sea of my emotions, his presence is like a pearl in the oyster. Very hard to locate, yet very precious and still beautiful."

"You cannot make yourself have a flashback, nor will you have one unless you are emotionally ready to remember something. Once remembered, the memory can help you to face more of the truth. You can then express your pent-up feelings about the memory and continue on your path to recovery. Think of the flashback as a clue to the next piece of work. No matter how painful, try to view it as a positive indication that you are now ready and willing to remember."