No pain allowed
Though my enemies press in close
My cup overflows
I don’t know if you know this, but 2019 was probably the hardest year of my life.
I started writing again.
I got a new job.
My best friend walked out of my life.
It became easy for me to cry.
I became a very honest writer.
I started letting people read my stories.
I went to counseling more times than I can count.
I got diagnosed with OCD and am learning to live with it.
I read the Psalms six or seven times through. I’ve lost count.
I’ve prayed and cried out to God for things to change and I’ve fought for my friend and I’ve fought with God to understand why, why did this happen? I thought it was supposed to go so differently.
I’m sure you weren’t expecting this.
But it’s the end of the year.
I wonder why new years make people start over. It is just another day. There are still scars. We still have memories. Regrets. Pain we wish to erase but can never run away from. Promises to keep. Work to get done. Stories to write. Relationships to work on.
New years can never give us clean slates.
Instead, we draw on top of the mess of last year. Or the beauty of last year, for some. For most, the blurred lines we scribble new stories over are a mixture of beauty and scars, pain and loss.
It feels like we are never clean.
I wonder, then, why new years feel fresh. Like I can think, “2019 was the worst year of my life. But January 1st, 2020—now that’s going to be better.” I wonder why we think we can write the story of next year a few days before.
We can never know the future.
I thought I knew the future—I thought my best friend and I would always be okay. Then he said goodbye. I thought I would finish my novel this year. I barely could read through the words I’ve written for it. I thought I would be happy this year—that circumstances, a rock-solid relationship, would fill me with joy. Every part of that happiness got crushed, and I have learned that joy is not held in circumstances or the easing of pain or future stories we write in our heads.
It is stupid to say I am not in pain.
But this is not the end.
Healing will come, one day. The end—that day—is promised.
The steps on this earth will be over rocky ground. I cannot always stand. I am not promised any ounce of happiness apart from the joy which finds me—is given me—in the One who died for me.
Yesterday, I pictured His shame. The way His flesh was bared for people to stare at. How afraid He must have felt, knowing what was coming. How dirty. How human. How the blood must have dripped down His side.
He did that for me.
He bore that for me.
I never saw that weight before—if I did, I have forgotten. I do that often. I need to be reminded that my pain is not ultimate. That broken relationships and fights and best friends walking away from me don’t have the last say—that it will not always be broken. That pain here, on earth, does not last for eternity. That Jesus is coming again, and He’ll gently reach down, and He’ll wipe every one of these stupid, broken, beautiful tears from my eyes. That He cries with me. That His heart is broken with mine. That this word is not the last word.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat at my desk and cried.
But the number of times I’ve truly been happy this year—probably I can count those on two hands.
And still, that joy is often circumstantial. Community. A text from my mentor. A story finally in the hands of its readers. A drive at dusk.
Pain is not over because it is a new year.
But it is a new year.
A new day.
And since living is a daily thing, I am ready. For tomorrow. For 2020. For the part of my story God will write now.
I’m not ready for more pain.
But we are promised joy in the midst of pain.
And we are promised a future that is already written—no pain allowed.