Medals Of Honor

This is an article that was self published several years ago. All rights reserved. Portions have been reworked.

Pain should be displayed like a medal of honor. Hold it! Before you disregard that first sentence, hear me out, okay?

I am not saying it should be proudly displayed for all the world to see and exclaim over. Rather, we should wear the discreet modifications it makes in us proudly. We should not hide behind them, ashamed of what people may think if they see our scars. Neither should we wave them in people’s faces so blatantly that they are left with little or no compassion for the path we’ve walked.

Medals of honor are worn on special occasions, to remind us of heroic moments in our lives. That is the essence of pain.  As we make our way through an emotionally turbulent time, we must sometimes use heroic measures to reach the relative safety of emotional balance.

Once we have been in the mire of pain, we can not possibly be the same. Sometimes, we don’t want to own the changes it produces in our lives. Nevertheless, they are there.

At times, while in the midst of some great upheaval, we are allowed to clearly see someone else’s pain. Not because ‘misery loves company’, but because the natural human tendency is to respond to pain we see in someone else. Just knowing that others have experienced pain, even if it is totally different than ours, can give us the encouragement to say, “I will press on!”

This is not always an easy lesson to learn, for we also have a natural tendency to want to focus on our own situation, disregarding what is plainly seen in other’s lives.

True heroes in the realm of pain are those who have survived adversity in the face of overwhelming odds, and triumphed. They are battered, bruised, and yes, scarred, but they are triumphant. This does not mean they have conquered a certain disease or totally mended a broken relationship. What it does mean is that their emotions have been conquered to the point that they can accept the solution presented to the problem (or pain, if you will) at hand.

Pain is truly vanquished not when physical or emotional symptoms disappear, but when we can feel those symptoms, strong as they may be, and still press on toward the goal