Taking the Way that Hurts
Pain...
We all feel it, struggle with it, suffer through it. (I'm currently feeling it as I recover from my Achilles tendon surgery, which took place last week.)
I'm exceedingly grateful for pain; for it, in and of itself, can be quite illuminating. Pain, if I'm listening to it, can tell me a lot about my current situation:
It can tell me when something's wrong within myself.
It can tell me when a perceived wrong is being (or has been) committed against me.
It can tell me tell me when I've exceeded my limits. Like when I've pushed myself too far (or not cross-trained enough) and suffered a repetitive-use injury, a sprained ankle, a pulled muscle, or a severed Achilles tendon (which happened to me about ten days ago). (To clarify: where physical training is concerned, I'm not a "no pain, no gain" kind of guy. Or, at least, not in the way such things are preached and practiced here in the west. I think such an approach to exercise is ridiculous. And harmful.)
It can tell me when I didn't push far enough and, as a result, am suffering the pangs of guilt that arise from half-hearted, easy-way-out behaviors.
It can tell me how important something is to me. (Or, how unimportant it is if losing it doesn't really feel like a loss.)
It can tell me, too, when I'm doing the right things in the right way or just doing my job well.
Given the above, it's hard for me to conclude how this kind of pain could be anything but a good friend. To befriend such a friend, however, requires something of me:
That I feel it.
That I listen to it.
That I respond to it accordingly.
In my earlier years, I was scolded often by my parents for "taking the path of least resistance." Are you familiar with that phrase? I sure am, as I've traversed such fruitless paths far too many times.
In my almost 53 years of stumbling around on this planet, I've concluded that the path of least resistance—the easy way out—is always a path of great loss. I write this because everyone loses out when such multi-lane highways are taken. In fact, the easy way out FAR more often than not results in missed opportunities, broken relationships, and shattered dreams.
But taking the path of greatest resistance—the way that hurts, the way that requires heart—is the best way and, ultimately (as well as paradoxically), the path of greatest ease, growth, and illumination.
Jesus believed this. In fact, He often went out of His way to take the difficult road. And in Him we have a fabulous example of how to live. All He asks is that we follow Him. He will never ask us to do anything that he Himself has not already done.
Pain is your friend; he's mind friend, too. (How's that for a refrigerator magnet!)
Or it can be...
...if you'll let it teach you its wisdom. As Mr. Miaggi once said to a young Daniel Laruso in The Karate Kid: "Not Miaggi rule, Danielson. Rule of life"(see Note 1).
Amen.
Notes:
1. From the film The Karate Kid (Directed by Jon G. Avildsen, 1984).
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