I was greeted this morning by the most annoying and painful sound. My husband got a new alarm clock and iPhone dock for Christmas and decided to lovingly set it for me. I don’t know what he set the sound to, but I think it was the “Foghorn Leghorn” setting. Needless to say, it was a rude awakening. I tried to find the off button, which I did by pushing every button on the top of the thing, that’s what I like to call the “woman method”. This method also includes shaking things to get them to turn on and beating on the side of them to get them to work properly. I would love to be an IT tech at a company, every time someone calls about a problem with their computer I would just go down and smack the side of it a few times, smile, and say, “Always works for me.” LOL

But back to my painful awakening, it was amplified by the fact that I had stayed up the night before until 2 am, and the previous two nights until midnight. I became aware in that loud moment that I really needed to get to bed earlier. It made me start thinking about the purpose of pain in our lives, I know pain seems like a bad thing but it really is just a wake up call (albeit a hard one) that tells us that something needs to change in our lives.

I have been looking at pain differently for quite awhile now because I realized that every time I started experiencing pain in a certain area of life, like a relationship or with my physical health, it was happening because I really needed to make a change in the way I was doing things. It’s easy to think of these things in a negative way but I encourage you to remember that there isn’t any lose, only win or learn!

Think of pain like an annoying alarm clock or the service engine light on your car. It’s there to show you that something is not right and you need to start focusing on this area and see what needs to be done differently. I remember watching a show on TV about a little girl with a nervous system defect that caused her to not be able to feel pain. Her parents couldn’t let her do the simplest thing like brush her teeth because if she applied to much pressure she wouldn’t know it until the blood began to flow. There was no pain to warn her that she wasn’t doing it the right way, and if she didn’t stop it might cause permanent damage.

Pain is your friend, it’s a caution sign that you are headed for trouble unless you change your direction. Take a few minutes to think about an area of your life where you have been having some pain, maybe it’s in your marriage, perhaps there has been a lot of fighting and resentment. Now ask yourself what needs to change, and don’t just say him or her! Ha ha! But really seek truth, what can YOU do differently to make it work better. A lot of times pain in relationships is caused by neglect. It could be as easy as spending some more quality time together that doesn’t involve talking about the kids or the bills. Just time together doing something that you both enjoy. If you have nothing in common then find something, there has to be at least one thing!

Don’t ignore pain in any area of your life but seek to understand what changes need to be made. I have heard story after story of people who ignored pain in their lives for years when a few changes could have completely altered the outcome of their situation. The truth is that the pain associated with making changes is only temporary, but the pain of never changing lasts forever.

It’s time to wake up and start living your Real Life!