Pain

There is something about pain that affects us more than any other emotion. It permeates even the most random of circumstances, and finds us in the most unlikely places, at times where we feel the most safe. We live life anticipating its arrival, yet it always seems to shake us to the core when it finally finds us. Pain brings about many things, many unexpected things: anger at those who inflict it, resentment towards those who allow it, love towards those who receive it. Pain causes us to reevaluate why we do things, and who we do them for. It molds we think we are into sometimes the worst versions of ourselves, our fleshly shadows who thrive on the crumbs of suffering.
However, there are those rare occasions when pain accidentally messes up its own mission, and shapes us into something that slightly resembles the silouhette of Christ. The pain of nails piercing flesh resonates within our beings, relates to our deepest wounds, and gives us the peace of companionship to bring us through the darkness. We see that pain can sometimes be the result of love, even the method love uses to reach us when nothing else seems to work.
For me, pain is a refreshing reminder that I am not numb. That I feel. And that is a beautiful thing to me. Though it can temporarily blind me, incapacitate me, knock out the very breath with which I cry out to Jesus, I embrace it if it means I can be more like Him. After all...His favorite voice to use is a whisper.