I did have one lucid thought. It was, "to have a heart that is alive means that you will feel pain." Not exactly rocket science, but it hit me in a new way. There is a price to pay if you are going to be engaged with your own heart, and with life. It means that you will feel pain, and at times to an excruciating level.
I have spent a great deal of my life managing pain, and basically trying not to feel. Frankly, I still spend more energy doing that than I'd like to admit. When I decided to stop "managing" my pain through busyness, various addictions, and straight out denial something happened. I hurt! Exactly what I had been trying to avoid!
The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?
The whole thing reminded me of the scene in the Matrix where Morpheus presents Neo with the choice between the blue pill and the red pill. The blue pill meant very little pain, but it also meant a life asleep. The red pill would wake a person up to real life, and free them to truly live. It also meant that pain and suffering was felt in new and deeper ways unlike that experienced in the Matrix. Morpheus tells Neo, that he is only offering the truth, he gives no promises of a pain free experience.
I am still wrestling with how and why God uses pain. For now I know it leads me to think in terms of a larger reality....that this existence is not the end game. It also makes me hope for a better place, a true home. CS Lewis captured this hope when he wrote: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
