Good Pain

When I was pregnant with my babies, the midwives tried to prepare me for the labour. In prenatal class, they told us fledgling, soon-to-be mums that there was such a thing as good pain. Pain that was healthy and meaningful. Pain that produced results: the whole body working together to bring your child from your womb and into your arms. My twenty-something year old brain rejected the concept. Good pain? I thought incredulously. Who are you kidding? Pain is pain and I don't want a bar of it.

I epi-duraled my way through two labours. Ah, the bliss of liquid numbness, seeping through my spine and filling my body with blessed relief from contractions that rolled like merciless waves over my tired body. Why would anyone do it any other way? I thought.

Fast forward a few years.
I have come to realise exactly what the midwives were talking about.
We might be able to skip the pain of labour, thanks to some pretty magical medications, but sooner or later, life is going to present us with a situation that there is no easy way out of.
While my epidural took away my labour pain, I did miss an opportunity to develop confidence in my own endurance. Now, that being said, there is absolutely no shame in choosing medication for labour and I do not take any moral stance against it. What I am saying, is that for me, the choice echoed similar choices I had made over the years; which was, when things got hard, I lost my nerve. I simply believed I could not do anything that hurt or challenged me.

A lifetime of avoiding scary things, difficult things, painful things, resulted in me struggling in my confidence as an adult and feeling powerless in my world.

A few years ago, I was about twenty kilos overweight. I lamented my pre-motherhood figure. I envied mothers who 'bounced right back' after labour, squeezing into their tiny jeans with their flat tummies. Finally, after five years, I realised, I wasn't going to get my figure back by complaining about it. I was gonna have to work for it.

Enter the concept of good pain, once more.
Ah, the good pain of a tummy that craved chocolate and fast food. The soreness of muscles that were learning to jog. The feeling of frustration when the weight didn't peel off. Was all this effort actually achieving something?
My give-up nature poked and cajoled me at every turn.

There is a point in our challenge where our work does not seem to be accomplishing anything. In weight loss, it is the point where you are exercising and moderating your food choices but you're still in the same dress size. In labour, it is the point where you've been huffing and puffing through contractions only to be told that you are barely dilated.

This is the painful ground; the point where hard work and it's sweet rewards have not yet married, and Lord, it's tempting to give up. But you mustn't! You must tenaciously engage your will, knowing that what you are doing will bring a harvest. The midwives had it right. Not all pain is bad. Some pain is proof of your effort, proof of your accomplishment. As in weight training, where the muscles are literally torn and healed to bring strength, so in life, we must experience a little discomfort to bring about great strength and endurance. You can do it, you are doing it, and you will reap a reward.

'And let us not lose heart and grow weary and faint in acting nobly and doing right, for in due time and at the appointed season we shall reap, if we do not loosen and relax our courage and faint.'
Galatians 6:9. (Amplified Bible)

Bad days

They happen to everyone.
Most people shake them off.
For us perfectionistic, analytical types they can become proof of our worst fears about ourselves. They become evidence of our failure, our inability to rise above the circumstances. We can get into a loop of backward thinking. We think that these lapses are actually the accurate measure of our life. We might say things like, 'I always cave under pressure' or 'I can never get my act together when such-and-such happens.' When in reality, that may not be true at all. We simply may not be counting the days we succeed.

You see we each have what Psychologists call a negativity-bias. What this means is that we tend to attribute more weight or value to those negative events/words/thoughts than the positive ones. It's understandable. They hurt. There is a designated part of our brain that diligently records these painful experiences, burning them into our brain matter. Its called our hypothalamus. When things go wrong we have a store of 'evidence' to back up the fact that we are always failing/disappointing others/getting hurt/making mistakes. In reality, it is just our trusty hypothalamus drawing links and presenting its supporting evidence.

From a statistical viewpoint, this 'evidence' is actually not so trustworthy at all. It is drawn from all the most negative experiences in our lives. That means that half (or more) of the information is missing! Would you trust any election if only the negative votes were counted? And yet often this is what we do to ourselves! We only count the evidence of our failure, our hurt, or bad experiences.

This is why God repetitively tells us in His word to meditate on the good. To cast down thoughts that rise against what we know to be true. Note the word 'know' not 'feel' Sometimes things simply do not feel true. To say 'I am more than a conqueror in Christ' does not feel true when I've spent the day yelling at the kids, battling a panic attack or failing to get on top of my to do list. But guess what? It is no less true than on that day when I was mum of the year, snapped my anxiety and did my errands before morning break! The great thing about God's word is that it does not change according to our circumstances or our feelings or our successes or our failures. It stands apart and separate from us and is the definitive measure of truth; the plumb line by which we can measure our worth and all of our happenings.

The hypothalamus has its place. It is protective by nature, serving as a warning to avoid certain situations/people/cycles. Out of place, it can distort our perspective and present faulty evidence that feels truer than the breath within us.

Good thing we have the unwavering measure of who we are, recorded on the pages of our Bibles and whispered into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Bad days are not proof of our failure or evidence that we will never get on top.
Bad days are simply those days when we have to fight harder to believe the truth.