When it comes to dealing with pain, I'm a novice really. I'm just trying to figure it out, so I turn to the pros. People who have been there and done that, who have not only survived adversity but thrived. They have much to teach us.
The first important thing I've learned is that we must recognize that there is always a choice. Viktor Frankl, a survivor of on of our world's most horrid injustices, a Nazi concentration camp, said, "A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions...We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Here he teaches that a great stumbling block in the path of every human being is to blame the results of our lives on their circumstances. In doing so we fictitiously relieve ourselves of responsibility--which can never really be--but simultaneously, we also remove our free will, making ourselves victims of those circumstances which we blame. It is a powerless position, and we, who chose agency in the very beginning, don't like the way it feels. It is miserable.
I turn to an anonymous teacher, one who chose not to be identified in an article entitled "The Journey to Healing" in the September 1997 issue of
Ensign magazine. She said this: "I am a survivor of childhood physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. I no longer view myself as a victim. The change has come from inside of me--my attitude. I do not need to destroy myself with anger and hate. I don't need to entertain thoughts of revenge. My Savior knows what happened. He will be just. I will leave it in His hands. I will not be judged for what happened to me, but I will be judged by how I let it affect my life. I am responsible for my actions and what I do with my knowledge. I am not to blame for what happened to me as a child. I cannot change the past. But I can change the future. I have chosen to heal myself and pass on to my children what I have learned. The ripples in my pond will spread though future generations."
She has taken back her power through the powerful tool of forgiveness, a much misunderstood topic. Forgiveness isn't so much for the offender as it is for the offended. Forgiveness means giving up the anger, frustration, resentment, blame, and guilt of what is past so that it no longer can affect the present negatively. It means we trust in a God who can and will make things right, that justice will be done, and that we can have peace now. There are things we must all forgive, and the sooner we can do it, the more happy, peaceful, and productive our lives will be.
There also seems to be a connection in her story to finding meaning in the suffering one has undergone. To hearken back to the wisdom of Viktor Frankl, he has said, "“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice...If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” The anonymous woman, though I'm sure she would trade her past circumstances, may not trade the wisdom, insight, empathy, and self-worth she has gained because of them. Could one exist without the other? Could she have gained those same characteristics any other way? I don't know, but what I do know is that God is capable of taking the ugliest, most painful situations of our lives and using them as our best teachers. This particular woman has given her suffering meaning by becoming an agent for change and a teacher for future generations. She provides a living example of another one of Frankl's resounding truths: "To give light one must endure burning."
Next, in one of the great ironies of life, we must use our agency to submit our will to the Fathers. No where is there a better example of this than in the life of our Savior. A every turn he communicated, "Not my will, but thine." As Robert D. Hales says, "By His perfect life, He taught us that when we choose to do the will of our Heavenly Father, our agency is preserved, our opportunities increase, and we progress." Our agency, the first gift of our Father to us, is truly the only thing that is uniquely ours to give because it is this agency that allows us to choose God or not. He has given it to us knowing that we can wield it to turn away from Him, but if we will lay it on the alter and like Jesus say, "Thy will be done," we are trusting in a creator who dreams bigger dreams for us than we do for ourselves. We rely on the Master who knows more than we know, even about ourselves.
In painful circumstances, we must remember that we are always valuable, that God always loves us and believes in us, and that He will provide every needful thing. In the LDS religion we are taught, "Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their won free will, and bring to pass much righteousness. FOR THE POWER IS IN THEM, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward" (Doctrine and Covenants 58:27-28). What is that power He is talking about? It must be, at least in great part, the power to choose--to choose Him, to choose His Son, to choose happiness, to choose the right, to choose a better way of living.
Life has a way, sometimes through adversity, of questioning us. That, I think, was always God's intent. In response to life's questioning we get to choose, and what we choose to do determines who we will become; that is our final answer.
In Mosiah 8:18 we read, "Thus God has provided a means that man, through faith, might work mighty miracles; therefore he becometh a great benefit to his fellow beings." I still believe in a God that can work miracles, and I might be a little closer to understanding the real miracle of living. I've come to a place that can dash my heart to pieces, it's true; but through my faith in our Savior's atonement it can be repaired, and while it is being sewn up again I gain patience, and wisdom, and generosity, and empathy, and understanding, and kindness, and forgiveness, a benefit not only to me but those in my circle of influence...Isn't
that the miracle? And if the miracle I seek is for him to keep my heart whole in the first place won't I miss what He is really trying to do for me? Won't I miss the miracle altogether?
So I'm grateful for my life--all of it! The mess, the hurt, the worry, the sorrow, as well as all the good stuff that goes along with it. I'm grateful for the miracle that is living and for a wise Father who allows me to experience all of it and who has lovingly provided His Son to make sure I can find my way back home. I certainly don't seek adversity, but I am beginning to understand its needful place in answering this vital question: "Who will I be even when things go wrong?"
