When You’re In Pain, The Pain Is All There Is
This is how to save a life.
Pain. It’s completely mind-consuming.
At least that’s the case with excruciating pain, like childbirth, earaches, and toothaches. Those are just the examples that come to my head immediately, and there’s a reason for that. I have an earache, and it’s been so bad I haven’t been able to think about anything else.
A hurricane could be going on outside, but my ear hurts and if the house blows away, I will somehow get another one.
Maybe a hurricane is an extreme example, but you know what I mean. When it hurts, it hurts, and it takes a lot to distract you from it.
But pain isn’t always physical. Emotional pain has the tendency to do the exact same thing, yet we don’t give enough credit to its power until a devastating consequence, like suicide, forces us to look at it for a minute or two. Any longer than that and we’d be caught in the trap ourselves, and I’ve seen it happen.
In the town next to me lived a young man, we’ll call him Johnathon. I didn’t know him.
Johnathon was twenty years old. Hardly old enough to make life and death decisions, but he was a police officer and a volunteer fire fighter. It seemed as if he had it together.
