Making Peace with Pain Podcast

Part 1: The pain of the loss of health, pain that comes from the loss of loved ones, the loss of a dream, the loss of promotion, the loss of relationship, financial loss, loss of hope, loss of normalcy or loss of familiarity, loss of a familiar culture, the loss of identity, the loss of safety, the loss of reputation, the loss of control, the loss of position. 

Hurt. Hurt that comes from daddy. Hurt that comes from mommy. Hurt that comes from family. Hurt that comes from church. Hurt that comes from friends. Hurt that comes from leadership. Insecurities. Criticisms. Disabilities. Inabilities. Failure. Failed expectations. Failed dreams. Being passed over. Being passed by. 

Being left behind. Being forgotten. Being ignored. Being abused. being misused, the pain that comes with indecision, the pain of not measuring up, the pain of rejection, the pain of isolation, the pain of addiction, the pain of shame, the pain of being misunderstood, the pain of being wrongly accused, marital pain, physical pain, church pain, kid pain, suffering that comes from my bad choices, suffering that comes from the bad choices of others, the pain that comes when things aren’t as they should be. 

Welcome, everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. I’m Matt Kauffman. With me, Kaleb Beyer, Brian Sutter. Very great to have you guys. Yeah, looking forward to it. Today we’re going to talk about making peace with pain. There’s a certain level of responsibility that the three of us are taking right now, and risk that we would take up this topic that means so much to people. 

And I know you guys are up for the task, but the places of pain in people’s lives. Poke that place in my life, and I’m not sure what you’ll get out. We don’t act like ourselves, and we protect this area of our life. We feel the gravity of even taking half an hour and saying, can we talk about pain? 

Yeah, for sure. We’d like to pretend like pain doesn’t exist. And sometimes you get together and you’re rubbing shoulders with each other and smiling and everything looks good and you can pretend for moments that there’s no pain and it’s not, and there’s good things. Or you have moments of forgetfulness. 

Exactly. Like that kind of fades into the background, but I think there’s just something really helpful and powerful about, oh, there’s a lot of pain and it’s everywhere and acknowledging that I think is important. I appreciate that. Yeah, it gives space to the reality that we don’t really have a choice whether or not we experience pain in a sense in a fallen and broken world. We don’t. It’s just part of it. And so, being able to have space to acknowledge it and live in the reality that there is pain. And we can experience life and together as a community walk through it and learn how to walk through it is important. 

And I would love, Kaleb, that this conversation would approach that end of learning how to walk through it. That really is what this is all about. God created us to experience life, not the pain and brokenness that we’re experiencing. In some sense, we don’t need to shame ourselves or others because there is pain and we’re wrestling with pain. 

Different parts of the journey are going to feel and look differently. And so being able to give ourselves the freedom to experience that as well as the others that we interact with, I mean, sure. I would always like, Matt, if we’re talking about your pain, I’d enjoy it or I’d appreciate if you were in a soft, teachable, help me walk beside you, but there’s going to be sometimes when you’re just frustrated and I maybe need to just sit in silence or I need to just receive your anger and set it down, like this is just part of the journey and giving you the freedom to feel that and giving myself the freedom. 

And I think that’s a big part of it. Because pain doesn’t always bring the best out. Right. And so, we can’t expect that. We want to move towards that, but a lot of times, giving space to the things that are hard or uncomfortable is part of that journey. Sure. There’s no question that pain tweaks the way we communicate, the way we engage others, the way we behave, all of those pieces. 

And sometimes it’s not readily apparent as to what that pain is, right? In relationships or working with couples or even our own relationship. As I see my son or daughter or spouse react, it’s not readily apparent, immediately apparent where that’s coming from or what it’s flowing out of. Which requires a turning towards pain, which is not what we like. We do everything to run from pain, not to welcome it or not to make space for it. 

Or to engage in and heal appropriately. Can I give some biblical examples? Sure. I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that pain is going to be dealt with. And I think we have the examples in the Scriptures to show us this. So let me just give a few examples. Rachel. Rachel was the beautiful wife of Jacob. 

And she had a deep pain of infertility. And not only that, but to be in a family where her sister was having children, and she wasn’t having children in a society where having children was your worth. So, we can imagine the pain and many people have experienced that pain very directly of infertility. 

And as you read Rachel’s story, you see that pain all over the pages. Wherever she’s mentioned, it’s very, very near to that pain. And she goes to her death cursing the son of my sorrow as she had Benjamin. It would appear she never made peace with pain. And that then became what she defined herself by, and it became somewhat of an attachment that she orbited very, very closely. 

And then let’s compare that with Leah, who also had a pain married to Jacob as well. And her pain was that her husband didn’t love her and that she was just used and was you know, second rate and second best. And imagine for a moment that pain. And you get a sense how much that meant to her, and her first three born children were all named according to that pain. 

And then she comes and names Judah and says, I will praise the Lord. You get a sense that Leah did get to a place where she was able to make peace with pain. And the Scriptures are littered with men and women who did or did not. And I think one of the things that comes to mind even with those two examples is it gives us this picture again that we will experience pain and it’s our human tendency to see our pain and get lost in it, rightfully so. 

And sometimes we all do that. So, it’s not a correction to that, but also just a recognition that in our humanness, that we are going to experience pain. And if we’re not careful, we’ll get lost in it, and that’s all we’ll see. And somehow, in this story here, Leah’s able to find her way through it and be in a place of rejoicing. 

Yeah. And I think if nothing else, it gives us a goal to want to end there. And it’s not a foregone conclusion that’ll be where I end up, right? What would you think about physical pain? Physical pain does not allow you to ignore it. You know what I mean? That’s what I will use medication for that reason, right? 

I can’t ignore this. And so, pain does that very element, Brian, it screams. Yeah. Well, at one level, that’s what’s so dangerous about leprosy in a sense is that you don’t feel pain. And so, you touch things that end up injuring your body and the same is true for us emotionally at one level, God designed our body to be responsive to pain. 

We need to be responsive. It’s just how is it that we respond to it in a way that it doesn’t become consuming and actually feed more pain in those two different ways? Yeah, accounts that you gave. And so, furthering your metaphor, though, to Kaleb, that the pain does numb us to other things that are important, doesn’t it? 

It makes us not as responsive. Both Rachel and Leah, when they were in the in the heights of their pain were not responsive to other areas of their life. I think what’s hopeful about that is even as you think about culture, like there is a, I mean, it’s true of all of us, but also how do you just eliminate pain and do it through pleasure? 

That’s one way to try to eliminate pain is just pursue pleasure, which we know doesn’t work, but sounds really wonderful, right, if I can experience pleasure. But I think the hopeful thing about Leah in that story, Matt, is that actually you can experience worship and life in the midst of pain, like there’s at one level her pain wasn’t resolved, right? 

It wasn’t like, oh, Jacob, it didn’t go away. Yes, correct. But she was able to experience God’s presence and worship of him, even in the midst of that reality that was still there. I bet if we looked at the most lucrative businesses in this world. They very much minister to pain. 

Think about the drug industry, illegal drug industry, all of the things that we salve ourselves with addictions and otherwise, right? We’re talking about major business here. Major business on humankind is dealing with pain. And so that’s why I think this conversation is so important because we’re going to do something with our pain. 

And again, I think it speaks to who we are as humans, that our pursuit, I think, in many ways is comfort and ease, like we want paradise restored today and we will, in many cases, do whatever it takes to get to a place that at least the feeling piece of that is restored where I don’t feel what I don’t like to feel and to know that again, puts us, I think, in a position to be able to make peace with pain rather than to remove pain, and those are very different goals. 

But I think that’s what both of you are talking about. That’s so important for us to put our finger on. And so that in a way is helpful, is hopeful, that there is a good place that doesn’t require plan A, which means get rid of the pain. Am I right about that? Yeah. And it doesn’t mean that my circumstances just have to change, that I’ve got to change all of the stuff out there. Again, that can be our tendency. Whereas really, it seems like Leah had to have changed something in her, the meaning that she put to things and where she started to focus. Something had to shift there to end in a different spot because it wasn’t like out here. 

Was paradise restored? Because Jacob never, we don’t really have that evidence that ever turned around. It’s like in that piece of that, the pursuit of eliminating pain actually becomes more pain inducing. Exactly. Because it entraps, you know, and that’s what we see, I guess, in Rachel, right? 

As it entraps her versus with Leah, there is a shift, right? Because if our big goal is something that we cannot actually achieve, then it becomes hopeless. And that just begets more pain and more pain. And again, we’re not saying in any way, hopefully where we started would clarify that we’re not saying that this is easy. 

We’re saying that this is really painful, and this is really hard. And thinking about how to walk through it well when the pain continues and is likely to continue forever, for the lifetime. That’s a difficult place to navigate. Yeah. So, you often hear of a runner’s high. Okay. In order to experience that, you actually have to run, you’ve got to get out a hundred yards. I can tell in his eyes that wasn’t a better answer. So, there’s something about it. That’s one example, but we could think of other examples where pain actually is needed in order to experience some sort of pleasure in life. Yes. And that’s in some ways the way our brain is designed like this fulcrum of balancing pain and pleasure. And that’s what gets mixed up in addiction when you’re constantly seeking pleasure. And if we could place Christ and Satan in two categories, Christ is life and Satan is death. That’s the direction they run. That’s what they do. 

And for Satan to work all pain towards death. Which he does through these unhealthy attachments we have that become idols to us and forever cripple us to Christ doing just exactly what you said, Kaleb, using that pain for life giving is pretty mind blowing really. Yeah. And I think with that, we would also say the caveat, even as we think about using pain or how God uses pain, we would never say for a victim of abuse that somehow God’s okay with that experience in some way. 

Right, when we’re talking about pain, we do experience pain, but there’s also sin and evil that’s directed on someone that God is not saying I’m okay with that. Right. And that you should be okay with that. He can redeem it, certainly. I think one of the things, and I don’t know if this is helpful or not, but sometimes for me to, to simplify things is helpful. 

So, there are different categories in my mind of pain, just big buckets I think of one being the pain that we experience because of someone else’s sin or action towards us. And if that’s where we’re at, to think about what is that push on that’s really hard for me to sort through and to be able to come to terms on. 

Then there’s the pain over here that comes from my own sin. And that’s going to be very different, probably questions and things that I’m going to have to sort through. And then there’s the pain that just comes from living in the fallen world that’s not necessarily anybody’s fault. 

It’s just the carryover of the fall and all that comes with that. And that’s going to have a little different question and a little different pain spot. And for me, it can be all of those at once. But for some, I think that’s helpful for me to think through. Okay, what are some of the questions? 

What are some of the sticking points in my own pain that will be important to confront and walk through? Yeah, that’s helpful Brian, just in making those distinctions and how you would approach them differently. All of them are pain and painful but the way that you would step into them and think through them and walk through them varies and so to your point, Kaleb, what is it that we’re making peace with then? I think that lies at the crux of the matter. What are we making peace with? And what does making peace with pain mean? Kaleb, you’re saying it doesn’t mean necessarily that we were glad for it, or that it was a good thing, or that even God inflicted it. 

That’s not the end of the story of making peace with pain. What is making peace with pain then? So that’s my question. Yeah. And with that is even using the phrase making peace with our pain. It’s like fundamentally you’re like, if I’m in conflict with you, Matt, right? There’s tension in a relationship. 

So, what does it mean to make peace with you, Matt? Well, in some sense, I’m moving into acknowledging making space for, but I’m fundamentally changing our relationship. And so, part of making peace with pain is changing the relationship we have with pain, right? It’s how I’m navigating and engaging and relating to my pain fundamentally has to shift and change as we saw in the story of Rachel and that’s what happened. 

Leah got a different relationship with her pain and Rachel was stuck in that relationship. I think that’s hugely helpful. Yeah, I think that’s really good and I think in some ways what it makes me think of is it helps as part of the journey is shifting from I want to get rid of the pain to how do I engage life now as the person God’s called me to be? 

And that’s no easy task, but I think that’s a target. Yep. Pain gives me a certain set of lenses through which I see the present day and how do I slow down enough to begin to step into things and have different experiences outside of the lens of pain, and that helps me shift that relationship. 

It’s not just working in this relationship with pain, like Brian, as you’re saying, it’s actually engaging life in a way that pain can be here, but yet I can step into coffee with a friend. So, I think you’re partly answering my question, Kaleb, but let me just voice it. How does a person know they need to deal with pain that maybe pain hasn’t been made peace with? 

Well, I think one of the things I would say to that, which is really hard to say to judge yourself, but I think it’s something to think about and maybe even to invite others into it. And that would be if you’re responding to something in the present in a way that seems disproportionate to what’s actually going on in the present, like that maybe is a signal that there’s other things that are tied into it and that your pain is really what’s getting poked more so than this thing that’s going on right here right now. 

That would be one big signal. I would think about this. And avoidance is another one even if I mean in some ways avoiding those things that you would typically engage in as a result of not experiencing pain. And I have this image in my mind of my son who cut his knee. And when he was recovering, like all of us do, you protect that wound. Yes. And so, there’s a lot of energy expended and protecting those sensitive parts of our where we’re hurt. And so being aware of. the choices that we make, you know, as a result of that pain and how much that’s operating and sometimes that’s more apparent with people in our community than it is with us, right? 

Yeah. So maybe the question is, engage people. Sometimes we know, right? Yeah. And they might be able to shed some light on that. And the reality of that too, is that there are some things that are to avoid, right? And so, because you’ve wizened up exactly like, okay, we’re not going to go down that road every time because we always end up in the ditch. 

Okay, well, let’s take a different road. So, there’s avoidance that’s out of wisdom and protection and health. And then there’s avoidance. That’s like, no, I’m just not going to go down that. But then that keeps your mind from being able to update with actually, maybe that’s not actually the problem, or that’s not as dangerous as what it appears. 

It’s different than this thing back here where the pain really originates. Yeah. When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Those things that endure and pass down, and our children find them as great as we do, and our grandchildren find them as great as grandpa and grandma, I mean, those things are rare. 

This hymn has done that. Oh, yeah. And it’s got to be because it connects with the human experience in a very authentic way. Yeah. There is pain and yet there is a wellness that comes with peace. I think that’s beautiful. And with that we’ll conclude. Thanks, each one for being on. God bless you as you make peace with pain. 

Part 2: Just a few lyrics out of a prayer written by Douglas McKelvey. You, God, are sovereign even over my pain. Over my tears, my confusion, and my disappointment. But I still feel, in this moment, as if I’ve been abandoned. And if you do not care that these hopes have collapsed to rubble. And yet I know this is not so. 

You are sovereign of my sorrow. You apprehend a wider sweep with wiser eyes than mine. My history bears the fingerprints of grace. You were always faithful, though I could not always trace quick evidence of your presence in my pain. Yet did you remain at work, lurking in the wings, sifting all my splinterings for bright embers that might be breathed into more eternal life. 

Let’s go now to the space of how to make peace with pain. And I recognize this is very nuanced. We just read a huge list of pain that looks very, very different, but there’s got to be some handholds here. And I would love to hear some of those handholds that say, listen, when we make peace with pain, there’s going to be a few things that are very likely need to happen. 

How would you help us with that? At one level, I think, Matt, that in pain and healing from pain, we don’t always get the questions answered. So, I think part of what we are, at times, we would say accepting or receiving or making space for some unknown. We may be able to make sense out of pain at some level, but to actually fully understand or know it, part of making peace with it is being able to acknowledge and accept the unknown or uncertainty in that or behind it at some level. 

Yes, we can learn from it, like with Job or like with Leah, there are certain questions that weren’t answered and that won’t be answered, and that doesn’t mean we can’t have peace with it. There was some letting go that needed to happen. Yes, some things that had to be let go of. Right. And I think, oftentimes, those are things that are very legitimate. So, there’s the question of why. That’s a reasonable question but also to move towards acceptance is to say, wow, as much as I would love to know that, and it seems very legitimate, I don’t think I’m going to get a sufficient answer. I mean, I can get an answer on one hand, but it’s not going to be a sufficient answer or how could this happen? Or what’s God’s hand or role? 

Those are really complicated. And you’re not going to feel like, oh, yes, I got it now. But it’s moving into acceptance and there are questions, there are unknowns that I’d like to know. And maybe someday I will, but maybe not in this lifetime and yet to trust. And I think that’s to be able to see and try to focus our energy on God who calls himself good. He is in fact good. How do I reconcile that with this thing? And some are obviously much more difficult than others. Those would be part of the acceptance. So, you’re really coupling acceptance with trust. Oh, I think so. Yeah. Acceptance without trust is just a tall ask, but acceptance with trust is possible. 

Say more about the trust part. What is it that we’re trusting? Yeah. Well, I think when it comes to God, we’re trusting how he describes himself to be in the Scripture, more so than our experience and our emotion. That we’re trusting that if he says he’s for us, somehow, he is for us. When he says he is good, somehow, he is good. 

When he describes himself as merciful, I trust him at his word. And yet, that doesn’t mean that it feels good, or that it’s flowery, or if I go off and high five, that’s like a lot of times like weeping and just wrestling and wanting that to be true, and yet it’s still unknown and confusing. 

Trust is, we are clinging to truths that we hold and know dear about who God is, even in my present reality. So, I think there are truths about God that we can come back and ground ourselves in, even in the reality that we can’t answer the why question or we can’t answer or fully understand the pain or what happens. 

Really what you’re doing is you’re expanding the acceptance. You’re making room for accepting not only the pain and the circumstances, but you’re accepting more, and you’re allowing God in that acceptance. I am accepting this about God as well. So, I see it as an expansive acceptance. Yeah. Which is really healthy. 

Yeah, I think that’s helpful. And I think that’s a huge part of being able to make peace with our pain is pain tends to narrow our view and narrow what we can see and we want to try to keep expanding in lots of different areas and trying to look around and see the other things where pain doesn’t really like that. 

That’s helpful. Okay. Acceptance. Does that sum it up or what else would you say in terms of how to make peace with pain? Well, one of the things I was going to say is at one level related to making peace with pain. We’d also say that this is an ongoing journey. It’s not like as we say that we can imply that, oh, we reached this point and we’ve made peace with pain in the sense that now we’re good and we’ll continue through life. 

But actually, we’d say this is an ongoing journey. I mean, part of being a disciple of Christ is dying to self, which is deeply painful. So, you’re suggesting Kaleb, we’re going to have to come back to acceptance. At some level, yes, it might not be this situation or circumstance, but I think ongoing life in the kingdom is one of dying so that I might live. 

And so, viewing it as, okay, yeah, I’ve figured out how to do this. And so now I’m going to have peace with pain is just not possible as we walk in a broken world and realities that the way that I hear what you say there, Kaleb is this is almost a human discipline to be healthy. Well, this is true or false to be a healthy human being. 

You need to learn the skill set of making peace with pain. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it’s a requirement because it’s going to be part of the journey and being able to make peace with it is going to be key. I think another part of the acceptance is, we’re getting on thin ice here so I want to be careful, but I think another part of acceptance I would say is just to come to terms with the reality that people cannot live up to our expectations, that we have expectations for how they ought to treat us, how they ought to engage us how they ought to do life, and they are not going to be able to meet those expectations. 

Now, as soon as I say that I recognize fully there are people out there doing unimaginably wicked things. Okay, so that’s true as well and we say, that’s not right, and we would expect different, sure, but the reality is too, that our fellow humans need the grace of God working in our lives to do anything good, and for us to be able to move into a place of humility, our own need, as well as that of the people that we rub shoulders with, are not going to be able to treat us in the ways they should treat us. 

I think coming to terms with that is really important. And not very fun. You know what? I actually just recently had the aha that whenever I act poorly, I judge myself acting out of character, and when somebody acts poorly towards me, I always judge them as that’s their character. That’s interesting. That’s exactly how it works. Yes. But you’re really flipping that script around, I think, is part of the point. 

Yeah, trying to, yeah. And I think, getting back to your point just a second ago, that’s a lifelong process. Yeah. It’s not like we arrive at that. It’s just like, oh, there I go again. Okay. Yeah, Matt, as we’re thinking about this process of making peace with our pain and changing fundamentally the relationship we have with pain, part of the aspect of that, in some cases where we’ve been sinned against in particular, requires forgiveness as believers. We often talk about forgiveness. First and foremost, what we’ve been forgiven, but then from the vertical place of forgiveness, extending that horizontally. And certainly, we see that in the life of Joseph and maybe even back to Leah, you know, at some level, we don’t know what was going on inside of her, but I would have to think she had to release the debt of Jacob actually being a husband that was one that cared for her and was sensitive to her. 

And, you know, in order for her to get to a place of worshiping God and releasing Jacob of the debt or the expectation though, in some places, as you were talking about earlier, Brian, Joseph is a great example of a man who had the pain of being falsely accused, abused and mistreated. And yet forgiveness was his path forward. 

Yeah. But you also see in Joseph, and I think this is where we get into forgiveness and like in certain relationships, we would not say then everything’s okay. Right? In other words, back from learning from pain in the past is like maybe doing things differently in the present, just like Joseph tested them. 

It wasn’t like he just said, Oh, yeah, that’s wonderful. No big deal. But he tested their heart to see, you know, and they were able to recognize the guilt for what they had done wrong. And so, I think that’s an important component as we talk about. Right. And I think to be able to move into forgiveness, requires like we talked about before, just being able to trust God that part of extending forgiveness is trusting. Wow, he’s extended forgiveness to me and he’s going to do justly over here. 

And so, I think that’s part of it. The other part of forgiveness I think is interesting, I don’t really like the term self-forgiveness, but I think it’s important to think about what it looks like to walk through our own sin in a way that we receive and trust the forgiveness that’s for us. 

Amen. I’m amazed when I think of Peter and how well he was able to do that after denying Christ or Paul after he kills Christians, like so many of us would have just said, there’s just no way there’s a place for me in the kingdom, and yet they were able to make peace with that somehow, in a way, that’s amazing. 

That helped them then go on to serve Christ and bring many to know him and worship him in really powerful ways and I think that’s a part of this as well. There’s a real freedom that we’re really speaking about here, isn’t there? The hope of making peace with pain is freedom in life, isn’t it? 

Yeah, it is. It does offer a lot of opportunity and life on the other side. But not only for the other, but for ourselves and one of the things that is in presence of pain is difficult because it filters, is seeing God in the presence of pain, right? I mean, we would just acknowledge that oftentimes when we’re in that desperate spot, it’s difficult to see God. And so that’s part of making peace with pain. But one of the things throughout Scripture is you see both in the Old Testament with the kings is that part of what God called them to is that they’re responsive to the weak, the downcast, those in pain, to justly rule. And then we see in the New Testament, Jesus, in the way that he navigated and engaged in the gospels was one of being responsive to pain. 

So, you’re making a case that God is near to the pain ridden. Yes. Even near enough for him to allow himself to experience it himself. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And he didn’t need to experience that to know what pain is. He’s God. Yeah. But he did it for us. So that we might at least to be able to connect to him on a deeper level. He didn’t need that, but I think when we are in pain, it’s very easy to have this idea that God is not present there. I mean feelings are absent. God seems distant. We’re isolated. He seems disinterested in our pain, which all makes pain more painful. Yeah, but what you’re suggesting here is to have a good understanding that God is present. And I think present, too, in a way that’s not distant or frustrated with us, but present in a way of when we hurt, he hurts with us. 

That he’s there with a soft look and a tender touch and care, not like a, come on, this isn’t that big a deal. Get over it. You know, don’t you know the end of the story and all the things that we can kind of rehearse to ourselves. That’s not how he meets us in pain. 

If you’ve got appetite for one more biblical narrative. There are few believers that will ever hit the mark of Moses, but Moses had pain. You read it here in Deuteronomy 3, which is this final discourse. So, this is at the end of life, and you can tell by what he’s saying here, this is very near to him. 

He talks about, I pleaded with the Lord at the time saying, please let me go over and see the good land of Jordan. And we know the story. A man commissioned to take a million people from Egypt to the land of Canaan and he took them 99. 9 yards and was not allowed to go in himself. That’s painful. And the Lord said unto me, this is Moses’ recounting, enough from you. 

Do not speak to me about this matter again. Go up to Mount Pisgah and look over. You can tell that this must be something that Moses struggled with. I don’t know if he made peace with it, you know, I don’t know. And I like to imagine him because he had such an interesting death there on the mountain. 

God buried him. I like to think that there was a sweet interaction between him and God where the presence of God made it all go away. Don’t you think? Yeah. And I wonder in that moment where the peace with his pain was made really out of the presence that we have promise with the Holy Spirit, right? 

I think that’s beautiful. And with that, we’ll conclude. Thanks, each one for being on. God bless you as you make peace with pain.