Where Will Your Pain Float You?

The LORD is great and righteous; our God is full of compassion.

Psalm 116:5

Stretched. Strained. Challenged. Expanded. 

I spent the last week reading Jeff Goin's Wrecked. His book wrecked me. Wrecked dares us to live bigger, love wider and splash our world with a typhoon of compassion-fueled action. 

Frankly it's easy for me to sit in suburbia, nod my head toward suffering with a donation, a remembrance of bygone mission trips and a mention of my church's work in the inner city. It's so safe here our realtor left his BMW running in the driveway when he went in to show us houses. I'm insulated from shock.

Shock can stun you so badly that you don't do anything. Or it can be used to help. But eventually, the shock goes away, and what remains is what we choose to do with the pain that lingers. ~Jeff Goins in Wrecked

 I looked particularly good the February day life shocked me. My hair had been expertly cut and highlighted. My soul had been saturated with scripture. My heart floated above me with exhilaration. A brownie was the punctuation mark on my perfect day.

I settled my two toddlers down for a nap and slid into the kitchen on the wheel of anticipation. A serrated kitchen knife willed my brownie from its comfortable spot in the pan.  It landed in my palm instead.

I had seen enough CSI to know blood squirting out of my hand wasn't good. I wrapped my hand in a red towel to calm my head from my hand's flow. I applied pressure to my gaping wound and left myself with no hands to dial or drive.

Mercifully I found the neighbor's two doors down home. She stayed with my children as he drove me to the hospital. About halfway from my door to the ER, shock melded with reality and pain slammed into my hand like a brick wall crushing my resolve. 

Two hours later I was stitched, wrapped like I was ready for Halloween and enjoying my meds. Four years later my hand is whole but it still hurts. This is the kind of shock Jeff's referring to. We can be shocked by poverty, brokenness and needs but if we don't let shock fade to pain, we have no incentive to keep going.

Loving others is hard. It's costly. It hurts and is rarely comfortable. That day in my kitchen I gave far more of myself to my day then I intended. It cost me and I was never the same.

Today I want to throttle the BMW of my heart where it isn't safe. Where loving might just not cost me something but everything. Where getting involved means giving more of me then I intend. With certainty, I will never be the same again.

Have you been wrecked? Will you wash up onto the shore of compassion-fueled action or let the pain that lingers float you toward futility?
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Do you want to know more about Wrecked? Visit Jeff's website at goinswriter.com to explore the book and Jeff's writing.