By Seth Haines

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)

In the waning years of his life, I had the privilege of knowing a real holy man named John Paine. There is a disquieting stillness when you sit with a holy man. There—in his office, on his back porch, in his bedroom, wherever—stillness is acute, sharp, maybe a needle point. It’s the stillness that pushes through skin, muscle, bone, and marrow into the very center of something. (The heart? The soul?)

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Terminal Illness Brings Intimacy with God: An Interview with John Paine]

The holy man knows who he is, and he rests in the way and shape of his life. The student or novice or receiver (in this instance, me) does not know the way or shape of holiness but instead fumbles to hold the weight of any wisdom. Holy men smile at this fumbling. They know that fumbling leads to holding, at least in time. (Just as it is with children, it takes time to develop the capacity for holding.)

“I have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease,” he said, pausing every two words so that his BiPAP machine could push oxygen into his lungs. “After my diagnosis, they gave me two to five years to live. That was 16 years ago. I’ve lost the use of my fingers, toes, arms, and legs. The pain is insufferable. All of it—the pain, the loss of function and mobility—it killed the man I used to be, the one who was in control of everything.”

Here sits the dead man walking.

In the days of learning to love Paine, I watched a great well of wisdom suffer suffocation. In that slow slide, I had the great privilege of speaking with him each week, and on one of those calls, he told me of his creeping pain. “My nerves are lit up these days,” he said, “and I can’t move to soothe them. In the night, I feel like one thousand bugs are crawling across my skin. It’s enough to drive you mad.” He was considering clipping the nerves, he told me. The specialists at Northwest Medical Center could identify the nerve branch giving him trouble, could find the root of that branch in the spinal cord and could cut it clean. It is as easy as cutting a limb from a tree, he said.

“There’s only one problem. Without the nerves, I can’t feel the pain. Without the pain, I can’t tell whether my skin is rubbing raw or whether there’s too much pressure on any area of my body. Without the pain, how will I know if a bedsore is working its way to the surface?”

He paused.

“Did you know an infected bedsore can kill you in less than seven days?”

The pain—it was a signaler, and an important one. The pain kept him aware, attuned to his body, to the places he needed treatment. Without the pain, wouldn’t he be at risk?

The Gift of Pain

This is the way of holy men: they give the facts to you straight, draw you into their stories; then they blindside you with the truth below the facts.

“Physical pain is a curse, but it’s sort of a gift too. Isn’t it?” John asked.

He paused for effect.

“Is emotional pain any different?” he asked. “Isn’t emotional pain a gift too? Isn’t it a sign that we need treatment? Isn’t it a signaler, an opportunity to invite the great God of healing and comfort to be with us?”

Pause.

Rewind.

“Isn’t it a signaler, an opportunity to invite the great God of healing and comfort to be with us? For so long I nursed my emotional wounds in silence. I pushed back the abusive words of my father, the ways he made me feel I’d never measure up. And what did I do to try and deaden those emotional nerves? I worked and worked and worked, as if that might make me enough. What do others do? Shop, eat, drink, whatever. I wish I would have stopped and listened to the signals.”

These were his words, not mine, but couldn’t I have said something similar about my life, how I’d used alcohol and any number of other things to push back the pain? Though the substances and pains might vary, couldn’t we all say something similar?

Taken from The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love That Reorders a Life by Seth Haines. Click here to learn more about this title.

We all have our habits to “help” when life gets hard. Yet there’s only one force that can offer us true healing from life’s pain. Join award-winning writer Seth Haines in The Book of Waking Up for a guided experience into the Divine Love of God that transforms a life.

The inevitable pain of life gives us many reasons to check out – and many ways to do it. Alcohol, entertainment, pills, shopping, porn, chasing success, cashing checks, and collecting social media “likes” — these and so many other things anesthetize us from the wounds of everyday living. As Seth Haines wrote in his award-winning book, Coming Clean, “We’re all drunk on something.”

In his compelling follow-up, The Book of Waking Up, Seth invites you into the story of healing. He invites you to see your coping mechanisms for what they are — lesser lovers, which cannot bring the peace, freedom, and wholeness you crave. Through guided reflections, sustainable soul practices, and stories from Seth’s life and others, The Book of Waking Up invites you to wake to your coping mechanisms, find the why behind your pain, and walk into the Divine Love of God.

As Seth writes, “Addiction is misplaced adoration.” Now, join him on a journey toward the only Love worth adoring, the only Love that cures a soul. Join him on the journey to waking up.

Seth Haines has experienced the grace that comes from a God who lives in mystery, who works through both joy and pain. Seth’s first book Coming Clean: A Story of Faith received a Christianity Today Award of Merit in the publication’s 2016 book awards. Seth’s poetry and prose has been featured in various publications, including In Touch Magazine, Fathom Magazine, Tweetspeak Poetry, and at SethHaines.com. He makes his home in the Ozarks with his wife, Amber Haines, and their four sons.

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