Pain, Injury and Sickness….Oh My

This week’s Peace Talk podcast episodes are about sickness, injury and pain….oh my.

Lions and tigers and bears….oh my!!

Many of us agree with what is frightening, horrifying, tragic and awful about life.

I don’t even need to tell stories to remind you.

You’ve already learned what is “bad” in life, right? You learned it at a young age.

When I was six I stepped on a rose bush that had been pruned to the level of the earth, so it barely stuck up out of the soil, when running around in bare feet in the garden.

The very sharp base of this old rose bush went right into the soft center of my foot deeply, and the pain was agonizing….blood everywhere.

I had that memory for years.

The body getting hurt, sick, being in pain, feeling less than ideal….so hard to experience. Even the image of the body being ugly–too fat, too thin, too short, too tall.

All of this, trouble.

But who would you be without the belief that this difficult health experience, this hard or painful trauma, that condition….

….is not beautiful?

Weird, right?

And yet, fascinating.

It doesn’t mean you’re going on airy-fairy-sugar-and-sweet-peas weirdo to consider you might be wrong about seeing what you see as terrible…as terrible. It only means, you’re open to other options, to other ways.

I find it exciting, far less traumatic, and that a piece of me is actually in tune with what is….not with my opinion of what is.

Maybe more than only a piece of me.

What if there was an opportunity, in this condition you experienced? What if there was something beneficial, or helpful, or interesting in what’s happening for you, that so far has felt mostly frightening?

What if you aren’t seeing the whole picture, when it comes to the imperfection of life?

What if this world’s woes and sorrows aren’t really out of order?

I notice, it seems to be the way of it…..that things decay, get hurt, end, are destroyed, and come to a conclusion.

The way of it.

“Realizing that your life is never going to work out, and that it cannot ever work out, and that it isn’t ever supposed to work out, is the greatest relief, and brings the greatest ease, drawing you deeply into the sacredness of things as they actually are. Your life may be an imperfect mess, but it is an imperfect mess that is perfectly divine–a work of sacred art, even if you forget that sometimes.” ~ Jeff Foster

Maybe it’s OK that this rough, difficult, unexpected event or life-change has happened.

What if that was just as true, or truer, than your original thought?