On the surface we may all wish for this. However, the reality is that this inability to experience pain is incredibly destructive to one who feels no consequences of harm done to her body. Young Gabby would bite her tongue and fingers until they bled and “looked like hamburger.” She unknowingly tried to destroy her own eyes before the intervention of doctors to sew her eyelids shut and later her parents insisting she wear eye goggles. Her mother had to check her feet several times a day to see if thorns, glass or stones may have imbedded themselves and infection might have set in. Gabby could not tell from “feeling pain” whether she had injured her body. So even though her parents tried to watch her every move, little Gabby was literally destroying her own body. (A Life Without Pain, a Documentary, Melody Gilbert,  http://alifewithoutpain.com )

The result of not feeling physical pain can be self-destruction. Pain is really a gift that no one wants, but none of us can do without. The ability to feel physical pain actually is a God-given means of preserving life.

Because we were created in the image of God we are pro-life—meaning pro my life. When we sense a threat to our existence and well-being, we spontaneously act to protect and preserve our lives.     ….we normally adopt defensive, self-protective thinking and behavior patterns when we feel emotionally or relationally threatened and wounded. Emotional pain, like physical pain, draws attention to the fact that something needs to change. (Hurt People Hurt People, Sandra Wilson, Thomas Nelson, 5.)

Touching a hot stove sends the message to the brain that says, “Stop! Remove finger from stove immediately.” In a similar way, emotional pain alerts a person to the fact that release should be sought. Relief is seldom as simple or easy as removing one’s finger from a stove top. A person in emotional pain is alerted to finding the source of the pain and like cutting an onion, peeling away the layers of thinking and behavior patterns she/he has acquired through a lifetime that intensify the painful responses to the immediate circumstances.

Birth pains are an essential part of giving birth to a baby. Although we work to minimize that pain, we know to completely eliminate birth pains is not the primary concern. The primary concern is to deliver a healthy baby and have a healthy mom.

Perhaps the caregiver’s job is to help the person understand the message or purpose of pain. Too often the shepherd herself feels a discomfort with the pain of another and instinctively joins the help-seeker in finding ways to cover up the sensation. This is more likely to occur if the shepherd’s pattern of dealing with her own pain is to simply find a quick relief.

DO know that another’s pain may feel uncomfortable to you.
This is the third Guideline for Shepherding (in our listing of Do’s and Don’ts) that we’ve been considering (For the first two Guidelines, see “I was a young inexperienced and untrained pastors’ wife when I first met Marianne.” )

Remind yourself that even though another’s pain may not be something you enjoy seeing, it may be a necessary part of growing. (Certainly exceptions to this are physical and sexual abuses. If a person is in immediate danger of abuse she/he certainly needs to be relieved of that kind of pain.)

After the Novocain injection relieves the pain of a toothache, should a patient get up and walk away from the pain-inducing process of filling a decayed tooth, he is no better off. Obviously, the numbness will soon wear off and the pain will return because the underlying cause or source of the pain has been avoided.

There are multiple biblical texts encouraging us to “…greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (I Peter 1:6-7). “…Whenever you face trials of many kinds…you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything….” (James 1:2-4).

Often it is in a painful place that God gets our best attention. To simply relieve or deny the pain (if that is even possible) may be to rob a person of God’s best work in her/his life. Rather, walking along side someone IN the pain may be some of the most effective work of a good shepherd.

Quotes taken from the following:

Shepherding Women in Pain, Bev Hislop, Moody Publishers, 23-24.
Hurt People Hurt People, Sandra Wilson, Thomas Nelson, 5.
Shepherding a Woman’s Heart, Beverly W. Hislop, Moody Publishers, 137-138.