As I read stories of child sexual
abuse and the like, I struggle to identify with that pain, much like people who’ve never been divorced, for
instance, might struggle to identify with mine. Pain becomes a very personal
thing.
We all have a suite of pain, yet
most of us have had pretty normal lives.
When we’ve no ‘extraordinary’
story to tell, however, our lack of purposeful emptiness presents us with an
emptiness nothing can touch. The emptiness of the relatively unscathed, those
well-adjusted and functioning adults everywhere in our world, is poignant.
They do not feel special, just
perhaps average. Is there anything worse than feeling just average? Like a
featureless number? Like someone not worth caring much about?
An Unnamed Pain
This unnamed pain belongs to
countless thousands, and, though it’s unparalleled in its commonness, we never
feel quite as isolated. Isolation works suchlike: we’re in effused manipulation
devoid of the full truth, tricked by ourselves and what we ‘lack’. What we
feel, the emptiness of the unscathed, is a central part of the human condition.
We carry this unnamed pain of spiritual
disconnection with ourselves and to our world silently; without umbrage. But in
solemn moments it grinds away at our minds, paralyses our hearts for feeling,
and erodes at our souls.
We receive such pain as a
consequence of not having been scarred in a life that scars us
all.
What We Never Think To Do
In the normality of life, we never
think of what we have as much as what we don’t have. We look at those who are
admired for the conquests they’ve made of their lives and our admiration sits
astride a knife’s edge—we’re quickly envious. We’d never want their pain, the
depth of their affliction they’ve gloriously overcome, yet climbing within us
is the feeling of, ‘If only I’d done something so terrific with my life!’
It’s normal to think and feel these
ways, particularly in our world of hyper-exposure and media-glam, but knowing
this doesn’t seem to help much.
How We Matter To God
One day all that happened to us
and all we achieved will have no significance or consequence. One day it will
be meaningless. One day there’ll be no comparisons and certainly no envy or
inferiority.
We gain great comfort in troubling
moments of emptiness to know we matter to God—despite our pasts, or who we are, or what we’ve achieved. Just
as we do matter and have mattered, we will always matter to God.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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