No one wakes up one day hoping their life will fall apart so it can be rebuilt. Pain is not something we seek. And yet, looking back, I can see that the moments that hurt the most were also the moments that quietly redirected everything. For a long time, I believed that if I did everything right—worked hard, followed the rules, trusted the system—life would stay predictable. But pain doesn’t ask for permission. It arrives uninvited, and when it does, it exposes everything that was built on assumptions rather than truth.
There was a season in my life when I felt completely undone. I was overwhelmed, disillusioned, and exhausted on a level I didn’t know existed. The weight of what I had seen, what I had learned, and what I could no longer unsee pressed down on me daily. I questioned my past. I questioned my future. At times, I questioned whether I even wanted to keep going.
But something else was happening underneath the pain.
God was removing the scaffolding I had leaned on instead of Him.
When everything familiar began to fall away—beliefs, identities, expectations—I had no choice but to sit with the discomfort. I couldn’t numb it with busyness or certainty anymore. And in that stillness, painful as it was, clarity began to emerge.
I started to see my life not as a series of mistakes, but as preparation.
The knowledge I had gained. The harm I had witnessed. The healing I had experienced myself. None of it was random. Pain had stripped away my illusions, but it also revealed my calling. I began to understand that God was not punishing me—He was repositioning me.
There is a difference between pain that destroys and pain that instructs.
The pain that instructs asks something of you. It asks you to slow down. To listen. To let go of who you thought you were supposed to be so you can become who you actually are. That kind of pain is not loud. It is persistent. And it doesn’t leave until the lesson is learned.
As I surrendered—not in defeat, but in trust—I felt something shift. The despair that once felt suffocating began to soften. In its place came a quiet resolve: if I was still here, there was a reason. And if I had been allowed to see what I had seen, then staying silent was no longer an option.
God doesn’t waste suffering.
He repurposes it.
Every time I speak with someone who is sick, scared, or searching, I recognize that pain in them. And I recognize the moment they’re standing in—the moment before everything changes, even if they don’t know it yet.
Pain has a way of opening doors we never would have walked through voluntarily.
It was pain that led me deeper into studying healing. Pain that gave me compassion instead of judgment. Pain that taught me to listen more than speak. Pain that anchored my faith not in certainty, but in trust.
If you are in a season right now where nothing makes sense, I want you to know this: your pain is not evidence of failure. It may be evidence of redirection.
God often speaks the loudest when everything else goes quiet.
And while I would never wish suffering on anyone, I can say this with honesty—some of the most meaningful work I do today was born directly from the hardest moments of my life.
Pain didn’t end me.
It re-aimed me.
And for that, I am quietly grateful.
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