The Beauty of Pain

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Pain is something anybody has never desired to have at any moment of life. Yes, even when we cause it for ourselves still we don’t want it our way.

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 and truly, others don’t anyway 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 self helplessness. 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 to the extent of even the under wears sometimes, 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, and then give me a psyche click and check.

 The beauty of pain is when I sit back 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 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 him/her to do anything for me. When slowly I dislike but gently love the time-loneliness. A time when I bear a free and fair face, not happy but 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.

It’s only at the time of selfless pain that I realize big that I had and still have a mission on earth, when I feel limited in performing what I used, should and hoped to do within a given range of time. In mind I get an understanding of an obstructed mission that I had right from the word “go” of my creation.

When I realize I am carrying a unique cross from others around me. This is because we may suffer from the same disease but we can never have the same pain, the level of perceived and feeling of this pain varies from person to person. This is the 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 when I always starred in memory at the times I fell down to back to almost the first pain just because I was trying to now go on alone. My transition could physically come after a fall e.g. a fall while on emergency POP (”cement”) and a fall on final POP while using a wheel chair, truthfully, my first time on clutches, Oh my God! They had to put me down in order to stand up and go on, on them. For every new stage (emergency POP, final POP, wheelchair and clutches) I had to fall so as to stand up changed and transformed automatically to that level/stage.

This was gratefully to tell me again how everyone is a gift to me, how pain is bad not only but good. Pain will either quickly or slowly, peacefully or forcefully teach you and me a lesson and give a kind of discipline you never imagined of. Ha-ha! “Pain is 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 and then recovering, he said “It was after losing my leg that I got my leg.” Encouraging to me! With this in reflection, I feel I have finished the first part of my mission that only God the cause and reason this current me can affirm whether I successfully lived it as I hope or not for the past twenty one years.

I now feel in this my new now 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 or may not be easily realized. 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.

The days after the 2nd x-ray when the cast (POP) was removed 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’ discussion 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 Hospital-Kisubi, I had a contemplative journey to Kisubi, heart beats increased on reaching the hospital, touched by the sicker people than me 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 at 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 my mind and called me “Jean Marie, calm down and 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 they said okay, calm down he instructed Fr Hans in my presence on what to do and hoped to hear from us after 2 weeks.


Indeed I am so grateful to my formators, brothers, parents, brethren 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 my prevailing situation. God! Bless them all. Bless the Society of the White Fathers, Amen. To God be the Glory, May His Will Be Done. 

Amen! Amen!
Jean Marie Bamutaze

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