Live Your Wounds & Befriend Your Pain – Henri Nouwen Daily Meditation October 9th, 10th

I love these two short daily meditations from Henri Nouwen. I see so much of what drives my addiction as an unhealthy response and relationship to pain. I have been a pain killer and am now learning, with the help of a Higher Power and my A.A. community, to be a pain healer. That transforming way of responding differently to pain lies at the heart of recovery for me. This begins with me accepting the reality of my wounds and pain … not denying it or running away from it or trying to numb or kill it. The next question may be ‘what am I supposed to be learning here’ or how to ‘seek to heal’ with caring, curiosity and compassion. And it seems quite accurate to describe this process of ‘moving toward’ not ‘moving away’ as changing my perception of pain into a perhaps misunderstood friend and teacher. For me, ‘practicing these principles’ with my wounds and pain has revealed the reality of how Light overcomes darkness and how my life changes when I find a way to stay connected to this Light especially as I face my wounds and pain. – Bruce M.

Live Your Wounds

You have been wounded in many ways. The more you open yourself to being healed, the more you will discover how deep your wounds are. . . . The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your hurts to your head or to your heart. In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them. But no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go down to your heart. Then you can live through them and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds.

Befriend Your Pain

I want to say to you that most of our brokenness cannot be simply taken away. It’s there. And the deepest pain that you and I suffer is often the pain that stays with us all our lives. It cannot be simply solved, fixed, done away with. . . . What are we then told to do with that pain, with that brokenness, that anguish, that agony that continually rises up in our heart? We are called to embrace it, to befriend it. To not just push it away . . . to walk right over it, to ignore it. No, to embrace it, to befriend it, and say that is my pain and I claim my pain as the way God is willing to show me His love.