Deferred Pain

It’s never fun dealing with tooth pain. I like to think I am sympathetic to dentists for the bad rap they get for always bringing bad news then drilling it away with a painful tool. It’s not their fault most of us don’t take care of our teeth as we should. But on a week like this, when I have horrendous tooth pain, dentist deserve the reputation! My pain makes it easy to target them, even if they are the only one who can relieve the pulsing tooth in my head.

Pain makes lots of things easy. Pain makes it easy to forget other people and their needs. It makes it easy to justify my horrible attitude. It makes it that much easier to put off tasks I already don’t want to do. Pain makes it even easier for me to be the center of my universe. It makes it easier to take cheap shots at people and refuse reconciliation. Thanks for the help pain!

Pain hurts, but we need it. It’s difficult to know something is wrong inside my body if pain isn’t informing me of the problem. Pain helps in a similar way relationally. Without pain giving signals, we have a hard time noticing something has been strained between us and others. But what happens when we try to defer pain?

When I ignored the slight sensitivity pain sent my dense brain months ago, telling me something was wrong with my tooth, I paved the way for the sleepless nights I have endured this week. A small problem got infected; nerves got more exposed, and what would have been a small filling turned into a needed root canal and crown. If my wife asks, I will deny any fault for my present misery, but whimpering in pain at 2 a.m. I know I am to blame.

It’s the same emotionally and relationally. When we attempt to ignore the hurt we feel, we simply add intensity and length to the pain. Pain stuffed down strengthens its force when it pushes it’s way back to the surface. A simple conversation would have once brought quick healing, but deferred pain takes more than simplistic words. A giant wound festers when being nursed in dark isolation. Ignoring our hurts only leads to an eventual break down that is harder to diagnose.

I saw a dentist yesterday hoping to get the pain relieved so I could get on with my life. But she couldn’t do anything except prescribe antibiotics first to clear up the infection my delay allowed to form around the tooth. Only after the infection clears up can she start working on the problem truly causing me pain. Healing will now take even longer. When we attempt to posture away pain’s existence we create more problems. The time it takes for us to face the relational difficulty we have adds distance that must first be overcome before the initial hurt can be addressed.

While pain makes it easier to be rude, unforgiving, and self-centered; it also makes it difficult to ignore for too long. Pain is a good thing because it helps us identify something that has gone wrong, physically and relationally. But refusing this invitation from pain compounds hurts and allows decay to spread between us and those we need. We know it well, but insanely we refuse the simple reality: ignoring our pain and hurts makes our hurts more painful.

Image Credit: http://www.wholehealthdds.com/making-choices-about-tooth-pain/