Rachel Marie Kang’s words will awaken your heart to hope. Poetically, she puts a candle to our places of pain, shining light on a way to tilt our chins and lift our eyes upward. This is a collective call to look upon our landscapes of loss and horizons of hurt as we tenderly name the good that could be—and the God who helps us do just that. It’s a grace to welcome Rachel to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by Rachel Marie Kang

The nightmare comes when I least expect it, waking me up in the middle of my sleep only to leave me gasping for air and crying, all in the same breath.

It’s the nightmare where my oldest brother lies limp on the floor. His body, thin and wasting away, is surrounded by a chalk-drawn outline. And there I am, the one who loves my brother and would do anything for him. Except, I cannot save him. I cannot save his life.

This haunting dream always comes with a cut and a sting, showing itself as something that I can see through but never see past. I’ve wondered if it is God’s way of telling me that I’ll someday see this vision lived out in the flesh. That someday I’ll see every chilling scene of that nightmare pan out in real life, and there won’t be anything I can do to stop it.

There is a place inside every one of us, a hidden place where we tuck away our tragedies, burying them deep in the heart where we veil our vulnerability and cover the things that have no cure.

This is the truth about my place—the place where pain shattered my soul as I watched my oldest brother grow up and suffer with seizures.

And I know you have a place like this too. A place that is heavy because it holds on to hurt. It might be a word that someone spoke over you or a loved one you lost too soon. It might be the loneliness that’s lingered long or the ache of dreams deferred or dead. I wonder how long you’ve carried your pain-filled place.

“There is a particular kind of art form that extends an invitation to peer into—and, perhaps, beyond—pain”

I wonder if you believe that hope is on the horizon or that the dawn will rise even if you’ve lost the will or the words to pray.

There is a particular kind of art form that extends an invitation to peer into—and, perhaps, beyond—pain, to stare straight into your very own eyes and look within. It is the self-portrait, which is a representation of an artist that is drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by that artist.

And, as far removed as you may feel from this art form, the truth is that it might be one that hits closest to home.

Have you ever considered the fact that when you post a photo on Instagram, you are not just sharing your face but you are sharing your soul? Every time you photograph yourself, you are not only capturing an image of yourself, but you are confessing the inside of yourself.

I wonder if you know the power of a self-portrait, of a photo taken on your phone. I wonder if you see the emotion that drips from your face. I wonder if you know that it shows whether you were overjoyed in that moment or if there was a part of you, as seen by the look in your eye, that ached.

Anna Abraham writes in The Neuroscience of Creativity that our knowledge sometimes keeps us from knowing more. She writes that it is difficult for the human brain to deviate from what it knows—so it is easiest to ritualize that which it already knows. This idea is called conceptual constraint.

Conceptual constraint bids us to settle, comfortably, into what we know. What we have experienced becomes what we expect over and over and over again. The trouble with this is it, in turn, inhibits our creativity.

This means that instead of trying new things, we will resort to doing the same things. We do this to avoid the hard work that comes with figuring something out and doing it for the first time.

“Repetition is easier for the brain than reimagining.”

Repetition is easier for the brain than reimagining.

Perhaps this is true of the heart too? Perhaps repeating the same narratives and telling the same stories is easier than reimagining new ones?

I wonder what this means for those of us who are ready—or want to be ready—to live beyond our places of pain. How do we imagine hope in the midst of pain? How do we envision realities different from all we already know?

“It takes creativity to imagine—to visualize—the possibility that there really could be something else on the other side of your pain.”

It takes creativity to imagine—to visualize—the possibility that there really could be something else on the other side of your pain.

This kind of creativity is the essence of our faith and, ultimately, our hope. It is a miracle that we might peer into our places of pain, see that we are not in control and ultimately trust that God is.

You can bravely look within yourself, to all there is within. You can peer ahead to see the possibility that lay beyond the horizon of your hurts. Not as a way of pushing down the pain but as a way of pressing on through it. Not as a way of ignoring the pain but as a way to imagine new life and hope beyond it.

If ever there was an image portraying the paradox of someone in pain but also peering into the possibility to come beyond it, it would be those rusty nails driven into the outstretched hands of Jesus Christ. It would be a portrait of the “man of sorrows” hanging on a tree, suffering his love while simultaneously giving it away.

“You can peer ahead to see the possibility that lay beyond the horizon of your hurts. Not as a way of pushing down the pain but as a way of pressing on through it.”

It is courage that we would tilt our perspective away from pain and toward possibility.

It is creativity that we would use our imagination to see something other than what has been embedded into our minds by way of living, by way of losing.

Isn’t this the heartbeat of our faith, though? Existing in this broken world that we call home, all the while making room within our imagination for the hope that heaven—a place we’ve yet to see—really is on the other side of earth.

May courage and creative reimagining lead us on in the hard work of facing all that is within us.

May we release our grip on all the ways we’ve allowed pain to define us.

May we whisper prayers, asking for grace to ground us as we name the things that grieve us. May this newfound perspective of peering beyond pain guide the plot of our stories and determine the direction of our dreams and doings.

May it bring us to healing; may it bring us to hope.

[ Our humble thanks to Revell for their partnership in today’s devotion ]