The human experience comes with pain. Some periods of pain can feel unbearable. If you happen to be going through pain today, I hope this post will act as a sort of buoy to lift you up.
The False Evidence
To start, it’s important to remember that all pain is temporary. There are absolutley no exceptions to this rule.
As the night turns to day, as the winter turns to spring, the dark seasons of our lives are always proceeded by times of peace and joy. That is one of the few things I know for certain.
In the dark seasons, we tend to believe “this is the way life is”. That life is terrible, scary, exhausting, and tragic. We begin to focus on evidence to support this argument. And yes, there is plenty of evidence to justify this view. We could spend many hours listing off the tragedies and losses, dark spots and failures.
But the evidence for darkness falls apart on close inspection. Ultimately, life events and circumstances cannot touch us. They are temporary. Don’t look to the fleeting transfigurations of your life as evidence.
Money comes, money goes. Bodies are born, bodies die. We succeed, we fail. Not a single shred of this is evidence for anything beyond the fact that people, places, & things are not solid.
The Solid Evidence
The evidence I’d like to point you to is all the things in your life that haven’t changed. The things in your life that have been reliable and solid.
These are the peices of evidence I offer you.
Exhibit A – You are alive. The enormity of this fact is lost on most. If you stop, even for a second, and consider the fact that your heart has not skipped a beat from the time of your birth, this evidence would suffice for the rest of your life. The only force possible of such a feat is pure love. Love courses through your veins. Love organizes your cells. Love breathes you.
What would it take for you to manually pump someones heart from birth to death? Imagine it. If such a feat even were possible, the only way you would or could ever do it is with otherworldly love.
Exhibit B – There is always NOW. It is completely clean. A fresh slate that’s free of the past and future. It is yours. It belongs to you. And it has never left you.
Exhibit C – There is always choice. You have a choice in what you focus on, and where to invest your energy, and what you choose to do with your precious life. What an immense power this is. Choice is there for you no matter what.
We must all ride the waves of pain. That’s a inevetiable part of life.
But as you surf through this temporary riptide of pain, remember that the wave is not solid. The wave is just a wave. Life’s tragedies are just ripples on the surface.
The depth of love that is holding you is untouched by the ripples.
And the depths of you cannot be touched by the waves.
❤️,
Brenda
