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Here’s the inconvenient truth about pain. It doesn’t actually go away when we hide from it and try to cover it up and act like it’s not there.I desperately wish this weren’t true, but it is. It is true. Not one of us actually makes it all the way through childhood and adolescence without a secret list of wounds and broken places and weird coping mechanisms we use to mask tell-tale symptoms of our deep pain.So what happens when we try to slog through adulthood without unpacking and working through our various odds and ends that have been stacked and packed and carried through our lives? The pain doesn’t go away when we run from it, push it down, cover it with achievements or relationships or any other created thing.Pain, ignored and silenced, doesn’t disappear. You’ve watched this play out, I’m sure.The pain doesn’t go away.It transfers.Usually onto the people closest to us, and often before we realize it’s happening.Each of us, by thirty or sooner, if we're lucky, has a choice to make. Am I going to continue to stuff the assortment of goods I was handed back down into this overflowing suitcase I’ve been dragging?When we choose that option, the people nearest to us will be forever scurrying around behind us, trying to help us contain our messes and surely taking on some of our mess as their own.  So all our grief and pain is still in a suitcase and it’s still being carried, but now some of it is being carried by someone else.There is another way.For some, it looks like committing to clinical help unpacking the burdens and marks we’ve been carrying or handing off to others to carry. For some, it may look like a commitment to introspective prayer, and conscious and slow unburdening in the prayer room with God alone. For some, it may mean accountability or intentional community with people who can see through your messiest messes and see past your best-painted masks. Some of us may just need to start walking in the direction we were pointed years and years ago. I’m figuring out, slowly, what that unpacking process looks like for me. What might it look like for you? Which direction does the still, small voice tell you to place your next step?Hurt people do hurt people, it’s true. But what if it’s also true that people who are committed and doggedly pursuing their own deep, inner healing are the ones who can actually heal the whole world?What if the most important Kingdom work we ever do is within our own hearts and minds and homes? What if by fighting for our own healing, we actually are becoming healing for the world?You are the image of the divine. Jesus calls you the light of the world. Honoring your own brokenness is holy work and I hope you’ll do it. I hope you’ll do it even if you know other people have suffered much more than you by comparison. There is no such thing as the suffering Olympics. Pain is not elite. You are worthy of rest and peace and healing and wholeness, too.Bless you, today and every day.A note: There are many among us who do not have just access to mental health care. Clinical help may be out of reach for some who read this and I just wanted to say: I see you. I honor you. I know I can’t fix what is broken or dismantle all the systems that work against you. But I will leverage my power and my privilege and my vote until we are all covered and cared for. You, uninsured or underinsured friend, are the light of the world and I see you.