In Pain We Write

Happy Halloween.

 

Boo.

This post was inspired by a devotion by Charles Swindoll on October 18, 2014, called Writing With Thorns.


 
We've all known pain, all known grief, to one extent or another. Some of the most enduring art, be it picture or words, is born from sorrow.
 

C.S. Lewis wrote so poignantly in A Grief Observed regarding the loss of his wife:
 
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning . . . . Her absence is like the sky, spread out over everything.

Ada Campbell Rose, author and editor, wrote:
 
The mantle of grief falls on every hour of the day and covers me while I sleep. Will it ever go away?
 

And George Matheson, Scottish minister and hymn writer, wrote:

Show me that my tears have made my rainbow.

Lord, I wish I'd written that.

Lord, I wish I could grasp the truth of it.

But I feel my tears -- so ever present these days -- are nothing more than a release for the pain, regret, dashed hopes, anxiety, sorrow, and all I carry inside. I'm thankful, so thankful. for that release, because, as it is written in The Color of Sorrow Isn't Blue:

 

". . . there are so many [tears] inside I slosh when I walk."

 

But do I see them as my rainbow-maker? Never. Not once.

The six of us here have all written from our pain. I know many of you have too. We draw from the well of affliction, and amazingly we throw the light of hope and of humor on situations that seem so hopeless, so humorless. We, like you, do it as therapy for ourselves and encouragement for those who read our words.

So, I don't know, maybe I should reconsider my tears, maybe I should look for the rainbow. I just might see






What? What have you learned, shared, written in that dark night of the soul?