A few years ago, I endured three of the greatest pain points life has to offer:

My father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

My husband filed for divorce.

And I discovered a Big Lie that ripped apart everything I thought I knew. 

I wish I could say I immediately faced the pain, but it took many months before my heart came out of darkness and hiding.

Here, on the other side, I’m healing, and I want to share with you the journey of how I made it through.

These are the three stages of pain and how you, too, can overcome the worst of what life gives you:

Stage 1: Pain

This is the dirt-in-your-mouth, I’m-angry-at-the-world stage. It’s full of questions: Why am I here? Does my life matter? How am I ever going to survive? I remember hours spent on the carpet of my bedroom closet. Does God hear me? How will I ever be whole again? In the beginning of my impossible season, I tried to formulate grand “plans” for my future, but I found that I could never finish my list. If you find yourself here, I recommend you embrace the quiet and the simple – don’t exhaust yourself with what you believe you need to accomplish. What you need is a few people who believe in you and love you (and they may be the ones you would least expect). Ask yourself: Who do I know who has been through something similar? Who do I know who knows pain? They won’t have all the answers, but they will listen to the ones that matter most.

Stage 2: Pleading

This is the point at which most people throw in the towel and walk away. We have reached our threshold of what we believe we can handle, and we plead with life to make the pain stop. In the process of this wrestling, vices and escapes easily enter. We want to free ourselves from the hurting of right now. Unfortunately, the very things we think will distract us or help us “get through” only add more eventual pain. Often, they just further entrap us. So, if you find yourself here, learn where your favorite unhealthy hiding spots are and avoid them with your entire being, if possible. Also, no matter what life throws at you, silence your big feelings with a small reminder: This won’t last forever. Even when you can’t see the light, the tunnel will end one day. For myself, it meant praising my efforts and thanking God every single night for surviving. Your survival of today deserves celebration, too.

Stage 3: Peace

Let’s be clear, one day your pain won’t magically disappear. But, I can promise you, one morning you will wake up and find yourself able to navigate the pain you carry with more ease. You may even find that you know when to pick it up and feel it, and when you need to put it down for healthy distancing. Nevertheless, you will see your heartbreak in a completely different way than Stage 1 or 2. You will find that the hurt wasn’t there to harm you, but to help you. You are wiser now. You are stronger now. And though you carry hard lessons and difficult experiences, you find yourself still moving. Because even when a new wave threatens your newfound stability, you trust the way. You are not abandoned. You are loved.

And after Stage 3, life will offer you opportunities to use that peace to make life better for others – to offer those who are hurting a lifeline.

I’ve been in the trenches, too.

Here’s the rope. Hold on with hope.

Because we aren’t here to just live, hurt, and die.

We’re here to survive and thrive.

And show others how the very worst of life doesn’t doom us.

It blooms us. 

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