But then, pain is another thing that will always be part of life, it can never be completely out of the body. It can surely reduce or increase but not free from it.
Pain is not tangible (physical) but also not emotional yet we can physically or emotionally express it. Some people express pain with a big concern of silence, some with bitterness and truly, others don’t give it room but inwardly respond to it. Pain once present must in one way or the other be responded /attended to because of the much or little by little discomfort it brings about.
The beauty of pain is not the intense enormous care I get when my pain is a question of selfhelplessness. No, not even the concern of the general public who come around with different messages that approach sympathy and consolation. In fact it’s the ugliness of pain when I look someone doing for me something that even an eight year old sharp can offer him/herself; bathing me, just always bringing for me food, washing for me everything, myself crying time over and again etc! I can say they indeed happen but if they don’t make me sicker, reminding me always how helpless I am! Then they give me a psyche click or check.
The beauty of pain is when I sit back with my pain in an open and quiet environment: left in solitude for an hour or plus: on bed alone in a room for a couple of sleepless hours. When only the melodies of nature seem talking to me. Personally lost in my on and off thoughts. Seeming helpless but much helped. Taking myself in a process of transition to this my new identity. At this moment I feel free and contented with what is around me and if anyone comes to my sight I won’t ask for any help. When slowly I dislike but gently love the timeloneliness. A time when I bear a free and fair face, not happy but not really sad/worried.
It’s at this moment that the beauty of pain is felt. When I realize my “aloneness” at the time of my creation. Sure, my uniqueness is now portrayed, proving how I can never be another person but “me, myself alone!” Glancing at people doing what I best did before I was relaxed from most of them. This gives me an answer to how everyone is a gift to me and how I too am a gift them and to nature, how complementary human beings we created and intended to be. When I realize I am carrying a unique cross from others around me, it is simply because we may suffer from the same disease but we can never have the same pain. The level of perceivity and feeling of this pain varies from person to person. This is the first gift of my pain that I can only welcome and have to then realize the beauty of pain.
I felt much disciplined with my injury (fracture) of the completely broken fibula bone whenever I starred in memory at the times I fell down back to almost the first pain, just because I was sometimes trying to go on alone. My transition could physically come after a fall e.g. on emergency POP, final POP, wheelchair and Oh my God! The first time on clutches, they had to put me down! This was in order to stand up and go on, on them. For every new stage I fell so as to stand up automatically changed and transformed to that level/stage.
The days after the 2nd Xray, which happened after removing the cast (POP), were of limited physical joy and much internal tension. I had a meditative journey to Rubaga hospital Kampala! I then went out of myself when the doctors’ discussions surrounded on an operation. This made me inquisitive to everyone and everything around me even God! On the ground of operation, we were referred to CorSU HospitalKisubi, I had a contemplative journey to kisubi, heart beats increased on reaching the hospital, but I was touched by the sicker people than me that I found. I asked, “God! Why me and now?” But consoled myself saying, “God, may your will be done.” My greatest fear was when I was called to the operation room, and asked to climb the operation bed. I saw the doctor as my god of that time; I was lost in thoughts and scared of every doctor’s touch on me. My company in all this time was Fr Hans, he read the signs of the time and called me, “Jean Marie! Calm down, open yourself to anything” “I am with you and God is right here.” No doubt, this turned me greatly to the present then. Surely! I could not believe when the doctor said ok, “come down” he instructed Fr Hans in my presence on what to do and hoped to hear from us after 2 weeks. Surprisingly, from that very day, I started putting down the clutches one by one until I walked without any! To Be The Glory!
It’s only at this time of selfless pain that I realize big that I had and still have a mission in Life. When I feel limited in performing what I used, should and hoped to do within a given range of time, in mind I hypothesize an obstructed mission that I had right from the word “go” of my creation. This selfless pain gratefully tells me again how everyone is a gift to me, how pain is not only bad but also good. Pain will either quickly or slowly, peacefully or forcefully teach you and me a lesson, or give a kind of discipline you never imagined of. Haha! “Pain is a bad company but an extremely good and experienced teacher who is always available wanted or not.”
Looking at St. Ignatius of Loyola, one time after being shoot in a war, upon recovering he said, “It was after losing my leg that I got my leg.” Encouraging to me! With this in reflection, I feel the secret in “pain” is “preparation” for a more meaningful happiness. We lose our full ability for a time so as to gain “Complete” life ability for our abilities. Thus, pain is not pain as such but a preparation. Indeed, after happiness we find pain but again after pain, we find happiness. I feel I have finished the first part of my mission that only God the cause and reason of the then me, can affirm whether I successfully lived it as I hope or not for the past twenty years.
I now feel in this my new state, He (God) is preparing me for the next mission that He wisely thought that I must undergo all this in order to fully know, carry on, enjoy and purposefully live well equipped for it, though it’s a day to day mission that may seem obscure. The uniqueness of the preparation (pain) conforms how unique and special you and I are, both of us totally different and with uniquely very great and important but complementary individual missions to accomplish in life.
Indeed I am so grateful to my formators, brothers, parents and friends who have always been and still are altruistic and serene to my subtle moment, giving me company; I really feel after all their efforts to make me feel at home and sure I have not yet at any moment felt abandoned in this prevailing situation. God! Bless them all. Bless the Society of the White Fathers. To God be the Glory, May His Will Be Done. Amen! Amen!
Jean Marie Bamutaze