Month: October 2021

My daughter Hannah got a blister on the monkey bars at school a few weeks ago. She absolutely loves the playground, whether climbing, swinging or getting as high up as she can, which raises my heart rate, but I instinctively want to trust her, to let her not be afraid of taking risks and show her I know she can do hard things.

The monkey bars are one of her favorites, so Hannah was bummed when she developed a huge blister. We covered the wound with a bandage, which held up but needed replaced frequently. Hannah quickly realized that she couldn’t do a lot of things she used to before she hurt her hand. She had to hold things awkwardly, eat differently, and she needed to ask for help doing things she could normally do herself. Hannah quickly got frustrated.

“You have to adapt,” I told her. “You have to learn how to work around or through the pain.” I explained that she would get used to the Bandaid, and she would eventually learn how to do things differently until the wound healed.

As I reflect on the past year and a half, I too have done a lot of adapting. Bending at the curves, covering the pain with a bandage and learning to work around it. Adapting to the challenges and pushing through when it’s been hard. As difficult as it’s been (and still is), and as much as I haven’t wanted to, I’ve learned to accept things as they are, and very slowly I am finding my way.

The process of adapting, I have come to realize, is twofold. First, in order to learn how to work through our pain we must let ourselves truly feel it, fully and completely, without trying to avoid the pain or numb ourselves to it (because let’s be honest no one likes to face the hard things). When Hannah needed staples in her head for an injury last year (I swear there are times I want to wrap the kid in bubble wrap!) she had more pain in her head when she had it cleaned out in urgent care than when she actually injured it or got the staples put in. Digging deep into the wound hurt more than anything. But it was a necessary first step so Hannah’s wound could heal properly.

Just like injuries to our bodies take more time to heal depending on their severity, so do our life experiences and the pain caused by them require more time for us to heal, especially if we do not properly address our wounds to begin with. When we do, in time, we realize the second part of adapting: We may have to learn to do things differently or not the way we are used to. We may have to learn how to live our life with pain without letting it consume us. We learn to accept life as it is, even if it’s not the way we imagined. Because we can still experience joy and see that there is beauty to be found in this life even when we still feel pain.

That’s grace, that’s the goodness of God at work in our lives.

Here’s the thing about pain that I’ve come to realize: Too often, it is in our nature to want to skip over the hard parts and taking care of the wound itself. It feels much too hard to feel the pain intensely, to fully acknowledge everything we are feeling so deeply. I too have tried to skip over this part, to try to adapt to life as it is without feeling the depths of what I’ve gone through.

When we try to skip over this part, the wound gets bigger. The pain cuts deeper. But we don’t realize it until it starts to bleed again. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, yet still struggle with, it’s that I have to go through this life one step at a time, one day at a time, letting myself feel everything even when it hurts.

I tell my girls all the time that it is okay to feel what they do, and there are healthy ways to feel and experience their emotions. I sit with them through their big feelings and accept them as they are. As parents we feel like we need to be strong all the time, but I have to remind myself of the same thing I tell the girls.

So, I let myself adapt. I feel the depths of everything, I admit that it hurts. I also know that I am finding my way, my footing even where the ground feels shaky. I step forward along the path, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. I know that this life isn’t what I imagined but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t good, and there are an abundance of blessings I can count each day. I see the good and beautiful gifts God has given me, and I trust in the plans he has for me and the love poured out that gives me hope.

Today, I adapt. Tomorrow I will, too. One step at a time, I will find my way.