Share your pain

Sunday's lesson by Cary Hadley at Church of Christ of West Orange was a subject of much debate so I decided to share it with all of you.  


Why does God allow pain?  
1. God has given us free will ( Genesis 1:27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.)  

We are created in God's image.  God is free to make choices and so are we.  He didn't create unthinking robots. 

2. God uses pain to get our attention. (Proverbs 20:30 Blows and wounds scrub away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. 2 Corinthians 7:9 yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.)  

God does not cause our pain, he uses it.

3.  God uses pain to teach us to depend on Him  (2 Corinthians 1:8-9 ⁸ We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,^[a] about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. ⁹ Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.)  

4. God allows pain to give us a ministry to others (2 Corinthians 1:4 ³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.)

So, in summary, God allows pain because we have free will (to make good as well as bad choices), to get our attention, to depend on Him and to give us a ministry to help others.

Have you ever thought, "No one understands what I'm going through? I'm the only who has ever felt/done/thought/experienced what I have."  The truth is, you are not alone.  There is nothing in this world that has not been experienced by at least one other person.  We, as Christians, should and I believe are told outright as in the above scriptures, SHARE our pain.  After all, I have been forgiven of my sins, my pains, my bad choices and I want you to experience the same relief and joy that comes with forgiveness that I have.  

Sharing my pain is exactly what I did when I wrote, "Lessons Learned at Summer Camp".   I was hurting and needed to tell my story.  I'm not good at verbalizing in person, and the story was too long.  Therefore, I wrote it down and decided to share it with the world.   

The following is a short excerpt.   If you'd like to read the book in entirety, it is available on Amazon and Smashwords.  I'll be more than happy to gift the book to you through Smashwords.  

LESSONS: 

“I met my first real boyfriend when I was 15.  Danielle had 2 daughters.  I babysat them quite often.  In the summertime I would spent a lot of time at their house babysitting or just hanging out with the girls at the neighborhood pool.  My mother trusted Danielle, she went to our church, so I was allowed to go over to her house anytime and even spend the night.  The summer I turned 15 the pool got a new lifeguard.  He was the cousin of my friend, who was also a lifeguard at the pool.  He was at least 18, from California, and very tanned and muscular.  Being 15, I was ‘in love’.  He being older and wiser, told me he was infatuated with me.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Keri.

“He wanted her for her body,” answered Joey.

“My first sexual encounter was with him,”  Angel nodded.  “I didn’t know anything about him, but I liked the attention, liked the way he made me feel.  First there was then ‘innocent’ flirting that led to touching and kissing in the pool, after hours and at night.  I liked it.  I had never been paid attention to by the boys in school. I had never dated anyone in school, not that I was old enough in the first place.  I always thought I was ugly, not the type to be popular or even noticed by anyone, much less boys.  So, here was this boy, this nearly man not only paying attention to me but being sexually attracted to me.  I didn’t once stop to think, I am doing the right thing, should we be doing this?  Good golly no!  A boy was kissing me!  I had never been kissed before.  How could I possibly think about anything else?”

At this point, the girls moved in a little closer, sat up in their beds and stared at Angel intently.  She had their attention.  Even the girls in the adjacent set of dorm rooms and their counselors were hovering by the adjoining door.   She took a deep breath, thought to herself, “Help me God,” waved for the new listeners to come in then continued.

“On our first real date, we went to dinner, then to his apartment.  My mother gave me permission to go out with him.  She liked him.  Who wouldn’t, he was cute and polite!  What was she thinking? I was only 15 years old.  While we were kissing, at his apartment, on his bed, he asked me if I was a virgin.  I was embarrassed to say yes, but I did say yes.  To his credit, he said, ‘Then we can’t have sex.  You’re underage.”  I was relieved.  Disappointed in a way, but relieved.”

“He could have been charged with statutory rape,” exclaimed Ana.

“Probably,” Angel continued.   “However, that didn’t stop him, or me, from doing just about everything else.  Oral sex is sex.  I lot of kids don’t think so, but it is and 15-year-olds shouldn’t be doing it.  I did. I had never been told no, that it was wrong.  I didn’t even know what oral sex was.  I was told you can’t have sex, and to me sex was intercourse.  I liked it.  This was more attention than I had gotten up to this point in all the 15 years I had lived.   I was absolutely terrified of all of the feelings going through my body, but I liked it.”

“You were scared?” asked Keri.

“Very. I had no idea what was going on.  He was doing things to my body I didn’t know existed.  My mother had never talked to me about sex.  My friends at school didn’t talk about sex, not that they knew the facts.  I think I laid as still as a statue and didn’t move or say anything the whole time.  It never happened again.  A few months later, he moved back to California.  I was devastated.  He didn’t tell me he was leaving.  Suddenly, he was just gone.  He didn’t call.  He didn’t answer his phone.  He wasn’t home.  No one knew where he was until he called his cousin, my friend, and she told me.  My first love, my first broken heart, my lost innocence – at the age of 15.”

“Jerk,” scowled Joey.

“You’re lucky the dude didn’t give you a disease,” stated Eva flatly.

“I started a new high school in the 10^th grade.  A magnet school for the arts.  I almost fit in.  I actually did, but I still felt like I didn’t belong.  Everyone was different.  Singers, musicians, actors, dancers, artists.  We were all free to express ourselves.  The people who were made fun of in traditional high schools flourished at this school.  We were all accepted for who we were, not made to fit a mold.  I learned about homosexuality at that school.  One of my best friends was a drag queen.  I, however, was still a shy little girl with no self-confidence.  I still wore the mask even in a place where masks were not needed.  I thought I was a good dancer.  Dancing was freeing, liberating at my dance studio.  At this new school, however, everyone was better than me, lots better.  I was intimidated.  Mask on.”

“What does that mean – mask?” asked one of the girls in the doorway.

“It means I was pretending, projecting an imaging, not letting people know who I really was.  Have you ever gone to school or to church mad at the world, just had a fight with your parents, and a friend says ‘Hey how you doing?’ and you answer, ‘Fine,’ with a smile on your face? That is putting on your mask.” the girls nodded, understanding.