I don’t believe that pain always has a lesson. Sometimes pain is just pain. Sometimes it just hurts. Mostly we won’t know why until we see the face of God: and even then, I’m not sure there will be a neat bowtie to the whole thing.

Until then, I don’t want to moralize my pain. I refuse to connect the dots at someone who is aching in the lowest bottom of their soul. I will not pretty-up grief with retrospective hindsight or poetic reflection. I will not diminish someone’s tragedy into an allegory. I cannot take a human wound and flip it into a cute outline for my logical sensibilities.

Pain sucks. It’s dirty. It’s not fit for books and movies. It doesn’t always resolve. It’s not romantic. It doesn’t need an answer or a fix-it-all, and that drives me crazy: but nearly every answer has always come up short and trite and impractical. I just know that pain is a terrible teacher who we try to force answers from, but maybe we’re demanding something that pain can’t give.

I want to let pain be as it is, because it’s what makes us human. It’s to be experienced, not always explained. And I’m trying to be okay with that. I’m trying to live with the wounds. I want to let life unfold, to not escape or avoid or deny: but to let the deepest hurt become part of me, a part of our human story.

— J