Fracture Pain Quotes

Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life! Do not be concerned with escaping safely- lay your life before him!!

Some days I wake up and all I feel are the fractures in the flesh that covers the only me I've ever known. Some days, it's those exact fissures that let the light hiding inside me pour out and cover in gold everyone that found enough beauty in the cracks to stand close.

Love is Not All Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.

That’s not the same. What happened to you, to your species, it’s . . . it doesn’t even compare.’ ‘Why? Because it’s worse?’ She nodded. ‘But it still compares. If you have a fractured bone, and I’ve broken every bone in my body, does that make your fracture go away? Does it hurt you any less, knowing that I am in more pain?

Pleasure. This is what true pleasure feels like. It's not just the softness of a kiss. It's not just the delicate touch of hands on breasts and tongues on skin. It's the bite of pain, the threat of danger, the risk taken in dancing wit h the devil

Where is Aelin.” What had he done, what had he done— Pain sliced Lorcan’s neck, warm blood dribbled down his throat, his chest. Rowan hissed, “Where is my wife?” Lorcan swayed where he knelt. Wife. Wife. “Oh, gods,” Elide sobbed as she overheard, the words carrying the sound of Lorcan’s own fractured heart. “Oh, gods …” And

I knew well enough that one could fracture one’s legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.

When I went from feeling nothing to everything and couldn't stop screaming because it turned out the everything was blinding pain.

And more than the quality of its institutions, what distinguishes a developed country from a developing one is the degree of consensus in its politics, and thus its ability to take actions to secure a better future despite short-term pain.

A fractured team is just like a broken arm or leg; fixing it is always painful, and sometimes you have to rebreak it to make it heal correctly. And the rebreak hurts a lot more than the initial break, because you have to do it on purpose P.37

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

Holiness is the union we experience with one another and with God. Holiness is when more than one become one, when what is fractured is made whole. Singing in harmony. Breastfeeding a baby. Collective bargaining. Dancing. Admitting our pain to someone, and hearing them say, "Me too." Holiness happens when we are integrated as physical, spiritual, sexual, emotional, and political beings. Holiness is the song that has always been sung, perhaps even the sound that was first spoken when God said, "Let there be light.

Fiction is empathy's gateway drug. It helps us feel for others when real-world caring is too difficult, complicated or painful. Because of this, it can restore bonds between people even when that seems impossible.

And then he heard Mad-Eye Moody’s voice, echoing in some distant chamber of his empty brain: Jump onto the desk . . . jump onto the desk. . . . Harry bent his knees obediently, preparing to spring. Jump onto the desk. . . . Why, though? Another voice had awoken in the back of his brain. Stupid thing to do, really, said the voice. Jump onto the desk. . . . No, I don’t think I will, thanks, said the other voice, a little more firmly . . . no, I don’t really want to . . . Jump! NOW! The next thing Harry felt was considerable pain. He had both jumped and tried to prevent himself from jumping — the result was that he’d smashed headlong into the desk, knocking it over, and, by the feeling in his legs, fractured both his kneecaps.

Just as a balloon too full of air eventually bursts, a person too full of sadness eventually breaks. Fractures like a cracked bone. Shatters like glass. Snaps like a rubber band.

This is what true pleasure feels like. It’s not just the softness of a kiss. It’s not just the delicate touch of hands on breasts and tongues on skin. It’s the bite of pain, the threat of danger, the risk taken in dancing with the devil.

Hemingway never said any of this. It's all AI-generated bullshit. The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn as an adult is the relentless need to keep going, no matter how shattered I feel inside." This truth is both raw and universal. Life doesn’t pause when our hearts are heavy, our minds are fractured, or our spirits feel like they’re unraveling. It keeps moving—unrelenting, unapologetic—demanding that we move with it. There’s no time to stop, no pause for repair, no moment of stillness where we can gently piece ourselves back together. The world doesn’t wait, even when we need it to. What makes this even harder is that no one really prepares us for it. As children, we grow up on a steady diet of stories filled with happy endings, tales of redemption and triumph where everything always falls into place. But adulthood strips away those comforting narratives. Instead, it reveals a harsh truth: survival isn’t glamorous or inspiring most of the time. It’s wearing a mask of strength when you’re falling apart inside. It’s showing up when all you want is to retreat. It’s choosing to move forward, step by painful step, when your heart begs for rest. And yet, we endure. That’s the miracle of being human—we endure. Somewhere in the depths of our pain, we find reserves of strength we didn’t know we possessed. We learn to hold space for ourselves, to be the comfort we crave, to whisper words of hope when no one else does. Over time, we realize that resilience isn’t loud or grandiose; it’s a quiet defiance, a refusal to let life’s weight crush us entirely. Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it’s exhausting. And yes, there are days when it feels almost impossible to take another step. But even then, we move forward. Each tiny step is proof of our resilience, a reminder that even in our darkest moments, we’re still fighting, still refusing to give up. That fight—that courage—is the quiet miracle of survival.

I can write the saddest lines tonight. Write for example: ‘The night is fractured and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’ The night wind turns in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest lines tonight. I loved her, sometimes she loved me too. On nights like these I held her in my arms. I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes. I can write the saddest lines tonight. To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her. Hear the vast night, vaster without her. Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass. What does it matter that I couldn’t keep her. The night is fractured and she is not with me. That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off, my soul is not content to have lost her. As though to reach her, my sight looks for her. My heart looks for her: she is not with me The same night whitens, in the same branches. We, from that time, we are not the same. I don’t love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her. Another’s kisses on her, like my kisses. Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes. I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her. Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long. Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms, my soul is not content to have lost her. Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer, and these are the last lines I will write for her.

I was watching while you're dancing away, our love got fractured in the echo and sway. How come everybody wants to be your friend? You know that it still hurts me just to say it.

We may have been flawless then— but look at us now. Look how we shine. Look at the map we've made in these fractures— in all the places where the world got its hands on us.

As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face. More faeries wailed now-her kinsmen and friends. The dagger was a weight in my hand-my hand, shining and coated with the blood of the first faerie. It would be more honorable to refuse-to die, rather than murder innocents. But... but... "Let me enter eternity," she repeated, lifting her chin. "Fear no evil," she whispered-just for me. "Feel no pain." I gripped her delicate, bony shoulder and drove the dagger into her heart. She gasped, and blood spilled onto the ground like a splattering of rain. Her eyes were closed when I looked at her face again. She slumped to the floor and didn't move. I went somewhere far, far away from myself.

There is a moment when all hope disappears, all pride is gone, all expectation, all faith, all desire. I own that moment. It belongs to me. That's when I hear the sound, the sound of a mind breaking. It's not a loud crack like when bones shatter or a spine fractures or a skull collapses. And it's not something soft and wet like a heart breaking. It's a sound that makes you wonder how much pain a person can endure; a sound that shatters memories and lets the past leak into the present; a sound so high that only the hounds of hell can hear it. Can you hear it? Someone is curled up in a tiny ball crying softly into an endless night.

To everyone else you’re like this perfect little doll, but I can see how fractured and torn apart you are inside,” he breathed. “I can see the cracks in the perfection. I can see the poison that’s tainting your essence. And every break, every scar and burn and fissure in your soul only makes it more beautiful. Only makes you more perfect to me. This pain is strength. This agony is beauty.

I felt his pain as my own and I wanted to touch him, feel him, reach inside his fractured heart and pull out all of the love he buried inside. I wanted to kiss every inch of his skin. I wanted to feel his brokenness against mine, like if we held each other hard enough something within each of us would finally heal.

This is what true pleasure feels like. It’s not just the softness of a kiss. It’s not just the delicate touch of hands on breasts and tongues on skin. It’s the bite of pain, the threat of danger, the risk taken in dancing with the devil. I come hard against Zeth’s mouth. He leans into it, growling and sucking and licking as I scream out my release, hands locked on my hips, pulling me into his face.  “Fuck, Zeth! Stop! Please stop!” His back hitches as he laughs, still teasing me with his tongue. My legs scrabble against the bed, desperately trying to escape the intense post-orgasm rushes. He gets up after that, raising one eyebrow at me.

We humans have always been in pain. History tells us that in the artifacts civilizations have left behind. Pain is there in the broken vases, the fractured poetry, the overwhelming music we have played for centuries. We belong to grief until the engine goes out. Then we belong to the dirt, our bodies identical to other fallen things.

Judd’s fists were so tight, he was in danger of fracturing his own bones. He understood why Brenna had needed to talk to Dorian. He even understood that the leopard saw Brenna as a young sister, not a potential lover. None of that made any difference. Judd wanted to be the one she turned to when in need. Ice picks of pain shoved through his skull, dissonance so vicious it nearly shut down his consciousness. The countdown was getting inexorably closer to the end. Uncurling his fingers with sheer force of will, he watched the blood rush back in. Last night had made it clear that he’d already crossed too many lines, broken too many rules. Soon, it would be too late to draw back. “Thank you, Dorian.” No, he would not pull back. Brenna was his. His to pleasure. And his to comfort...

If you have pain in your ass, it doesn’t mean you have done something wrong, but it’s probably because you’re wearing your little brother’s underwear.

We get the darkness and the pain before we get the light of our heaven, huh?

Cauldron save me," she began whispering, her voice lovely and even-like music. "Mother hold me," she went on, reciting a prayer similar to one I'd heard once before, when Tamlin eased the passing of that lesser faerie who'd died in the foyer. Another of Amarantha's victims. "Guide me to you." I was unable to raise my dagger, unable to take the step that would close the distance between us. "Let me pass through the gates; let me smell that immortal land of milk and honey." Silent tears slide down my face and neck, where they dampened the filthy collar of my tunic. As she spoke, I knew I would be forever barred from that immortal land. I knew that whatever Mother she meant would never embrace me. In saving Tamlin, I was to damn myself. I couldn't do this-couldn't lift that dagger again. "Let me fear no evil," she breathed, staring at me-into me, into the soul that was cleaving itself apart."Let me feel no pain." A sob broke from my lips. "I'm sorry," I moaned. "Let me enter eternity," She breathed. I wept as I understood. Kill me now, she was saying. Do it fast. Don't make it hurt. Kill me now. Her bronze eyes were steady, if not sorrowful. Infinitely, infinitely worse than the pleading of the dead faerie beside her. I couldn't do it. But she held my gaze-held my gaze and nodded. As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face.” As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face. More faeries wailed now-her kinsmen and friends. The dagger was a weight in my hand-my hand, shining and coated with the blood of the first faerie. It would be more honorable to refuse-to die, rather than murder innocents. But... but... "Let me enter eternity," she repeated, lifting her chin. "Fear no evil," she whispered-just for me. "Feel no pain." I gripped her delicate, bony shoulder and drove the dagger into her heart. She gasped, and blood spilled onto the ground like a splattering of rain. Her eyes were closed when I looked at her face again. She slumped to the floor and didn't move. I went somewhere far, far away from myself.

But it still compares. If you have a fractured bone, and I’ve broken every bone in my body, does that make your fracture go away? Does it hurt you any less, knowing that I am in more pain?

The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.

If you have a fractured bone, and I’ve broken every bone in my body, does that make your fracture go away? Does it hurt you any less, knowing that I am in more pain?” “No, but that’s not—” “Yes, it is. Feelings are relative. And at the root, they’re all the same, even if they grow from different experiences and exist on different scales.” He examined her face. She looked skeptical. “Sissix would understand this. You Humans really do cripple yourselves with your belief that you all think in unique ways.

There is something in obstinacy which differs from every other passion; whenever it fails it never recovers, but either breaks like iron or crumbles sulkily away like a fractured arch. Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest; their suffering and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.

We are not ‘everything,’ but neither are we ‘nothing.’ Spirituality is discovered in that space between paradox’s extremes, for there we confront our helplessness and powerlessness, our woundedness. In seeking to understand our limitations, we seek not only an easing of our pain but an understanding of what it means to hurt and what it means to be healed. Spirituality begins with the acceptance that our fractured being, our imperfection, simply is: There is no one to ‘blame’ for our errors — neither ourselves nor anyone nor anything else. Spirituality helps us first to see, and then to understand, and eventually to accept the imperfection that lies at the very core of our human be-ing.

Christians we cannot be allowed to be fractured at a time like this. There are more of us, there are more of light in us than in the agents of darkness.

And Frank was right: they were both fathers who had lost children, and somehow they had come through that loss—not without ongoing pain, and not without fractures, but they had endured,

In a fractured national moment of stress and pain, of inequality and injustice, of ethical strain and Moral Exhaustion, we should go easy on ourselves at moments when we fail in our quest to become better people. But we cannot forget this simple truth: we owe things to each other. They may be small things, or simple things, but they’re there, they’re important, and we can’t ignore them.

Being found out, that's not the worst part, Harry now realizes. The anger, the pain, all the things that will inevitably follow this moment, they're just the fallout. This is the worst moment, the flash point, the cataclysm. For as Harry holds the eyes of his wife, he sees confusion in them--genuine puzzlement--and this is the deepest blow: the realization that until this moment it could not possibly have occurred to her that he would lie to her. But, of course, she doesn't know about all the little lies that preceded this grand one, the painstaking edifice of deceit that's about to collapse. He has hurled a brick through her trust, and although he may spend the rest of his life collecting every last shard, massaging the creaky, fractured pane back into a whole, it will always be warped, irregular, distorting the view on both sides.

In the midst of all the pain, oppression, and lack of meaning in life, the Church must proclaim the answer that is provided to us so clearly in Scripture. It is simple. We must be loving like Jesus in this fractured world.

The longer I live, the more I wonder if my inability to see God in my pain is rooted in the fact that I’m not really looking for God. I’m looking for a god to show up in the way that I want him to and to give me what I want him to give me.

There’s a moment when a person knows they’re in love because they find themselves wondering what can be done to make the other person happy, even if it causes their own pain. They find themselves doing things that are completely against their own logic.

The final entity was the beast. The steel juggernaut that raked claws made of screams along the bones of their soul.All of the pain that Jango had endured as a child had never left his mind. That pain had created a sort of primordial ooze in his fractured mind that sloshed and bled until the beast was birthed from the suffering. The beast lived in a cage forged of willpower deep in the recesses of the mad matrix of his splintered mind. It rattled the cage and roared for release, but he was loath to ever set the beast loose…again.

My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn't just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can't effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it. We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. The ways in which I have been hurt - and have hurt others - are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I'd always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we're fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we're shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We've become so fearful and vengeful that we've thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak - not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we've pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we've legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we've allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We've submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken - walking away from them or hiding them from sight - only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity. I frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations - over the things they'd done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done. I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn't belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my clients for years. I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things that you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.

I call it your source-fracture wound, the original break in your heart from long ago. It may have happened in an instant--a little rejection, a shocking abandonment, or a slight misattunement that suddenly made you realize how alone you were in this world. Or perhaps it was a bit-bu-bit splintering as over the years you met with an intermittent meanness, an unpredictable but repetitive abuse, or a neglect that stole your childhood inches at a time. Wherever, however, or whenever it happened, one thing we can assume is that no adult helped you make accurate meaning of your confusing and painful experience. No grown up sat you down and lovingly said, "No, honey, it's not that you're stupid. It's that your big brother is scared and insecure." "It's not that you don't matter, angel. It's that Daddy has a drinking problem and needs help." "It's not that you're not enough. It's that Mommy has clinical depression, dear, and it's neither your fault nor yours to fix." Without this mature presence to help explain to you what was happening to your little world, you probably came to some pretty strong and wrong conclusions about who you were and what was possible for you to have in life. And those conclusions became a habit of consciousness, a filter through which you interpret and then respond to the events of your life, making your grief all the more complex.

This boy, hell-bent on fighting rather than finding a family. The Lightwoods guarding against a vampire, when they could have extended some trust. This vampire, holding every friend at bay. All of them had their wounds, but Brother Zachariah could not help resenting them, for even the privilege of feeling hurt. All these people were struggling not to feel, trying to freeze their hearts inside their chests until the cold fractured and broke them. While Jem would have given every cold tomorrow he had for one more day with a warm heart, to love them as he once had.

Few things have hurt the cause of Christianity more than the pain inflicted on Christians by other Christians. Ask most Christians who used to go to church why they don’t go anymore, and they’ll tell you: it’s the Christians. An online search of the number one most common reason for leaving the church is not Jesus—it’s His people.

In 2002 Hamilton crashed early in the three-week Tour of Italy, fracturing his shoulder. He kept riding, enduring such pain that he ground eleven teeth down to the roots, requiring surgery after the Tour. He finished second. “In 48 years of practicing I have never seen a man who could handle as much pain as he can,” said Hamilton’s physical therapist, Ole Kare Foli.

That's not the same. What happened to you, to your species, it's... it doesn't even compare.' 'Why? Because it's worse?' She nodded. 'But it still compares. If you have a fractured bone, and I've broken every bone in my body, does that make your fracture go away? Does it hurt you any less, knowing that I am in more pain?' 'No, but that's not-' 'Yes it is. Feelings are relative.

I have spent most of my life outside, but for the last three years, I have been walking five miles a day, minimum, wherever I am, urban or rural, and can attest to the magnitude of the natural beauty that is left. Beauty worth seeing, worth singing, worth saving, whatever that word can mean now. There is beauty in a desert, even one that is expanding. There is beauty in the ocean, even one that is on the rise. And even if the jig is up, even if it is really game over, what better time to sing about the earth than when it is critically, even fatally wounded at our hands. Aren’t we more complex, more interesting, more multifaceted people if we do? What good has the hollow chuckle ever done anyone? Do we really keep ourselves from being hurt when we sneer instead of sob? If we pretend not to see the tenuous beauty that is still all around us, will it keep our hearts from breaking as we watch another mountain be clear-cut, as we watch North Dakota, as beautiful a state as there ever was, be poisoned for all time by hydraulic fracturing? If we abandon all hope right now, does that in some way protect us from some bigger pain later? If we never go for a walk in the beetle-killed forest, if we don’t take a swim in the algae-choked ocean, if we lock grandmother in a room for the last ten years of her life so we can practice and somehow accomplish the survival of her loss in advance, in what ways does it make our lives easier? In what ways does it impoverish us? We are all dying, and because of us, so is the earth. That’s the most terrible, the most painful in my entire repertoire of self-torturing thoughts. But it isn’t dead yet and neither are we. Are we going to drop the earth off at the vet, say goodbye at the door, and leave her to die in the hands of strangers? We can decide, even now, not to turn our backs on her in her illness. We can still decide not to let her die alone.

Pain has a way of revealing who you really are and what you really believe. Pain doesn’t destroy your faith; it simply exposes it. Instead of seeing pain and suffering as the worst thing that could happen to you, it’s life-saving to see suffering as a pathway to God. Instead of allowing suffering to deconstruct your faith, consider how God wants to use your suffering to reignite your faith in Him.

During the Second World War, for example, Lieutenant Colonel Henry K. Beecher conducted a classic study of men with serious battlefield injuries. In the Cartesian view, the degree of injury ought to determine the degree of pain, rather like a dial controlling volume. Yet 58 percent of the men—men with compound fractures, gunshot wounds, torn limbs—reported only slight pain or no pain at all. Just 27 percent of the men felt enough pain to request pain medication, although such wounds routinely require narcotics in civilians. Clearly, something that was going on in their minds—Beecher thought they were overjoyed to have escaped alive from the battlefield—counteracted the signals sent by their injuries. Pain was becoming recognized as far more complex than a one-way transmission from injury to “ouch.

As long as this “brokenness” of existence continues, there is no way out of the inner contradictions that it imposes upon us. If a man has a broken leg and continues to try to walk on it, he cannot help suffering. If desire itself is a kind of fracture, every movement of desire inevitably results in pain. But even the desire to end the pain of desire is a movement, and therefore causes pain. The desire to remain immobile is a movement. The desire to escape is a movement. The desire for Nirvana is a movement. The desire for extinction is a movement. Yet there is no way for us to be still by “imposing stillness” on the desires. In a word, desire cannot stop itself from desiring, and it must continue to move and hence to cause pain even when it seeks liberation from itself and desires its own extinction.

As though he’s reading my mind, he grits out a pained, irritated “Fuck, it should be me.” I squeeze my thighs together to relieve the pressure between my legs. Sorry. Better luck next time. The pulse only grows stronger, and I know there is no stopping my unraveling. “Why the fuck isn’t it me, L?” His voice has this carnal edge to it. “Why am I not the one touching you right now? Fucking why?” I visualize it. Imagine it. See his tongue teasing my pierced nipple, and a soft moan shoots out of my mouth before I can stop it. This seems to trigger him because he groans a low, desperate “Christ, just tell me who you are. Fuck the pact. Fuck the secrets. Fuck it all. Just tell me who are you, L. Please. Let this be real.” The sentiment fractures my heart into a billion tiny pieces. I want it to be real, too.

A spill of blue hair made my gut clench and I gazed in at her curled up in bed between the paws of a white Wolf. My heart fractured and my body deflated as I watched them together. My eyes tracked over her face, her expression taut like she was trapped in a painful nightmare, but then Seth nuzzled into her in his sleep and the tension in her features eased. “Blue…” I rasped, inching forward, pressing my hand to the glass as I prepared to smash my way in there and make the Wolf bleed and hurt and beg for a mercy I was never going to give.

The Offing - And if the sky itself, no matter its hue, were to fracture... What then? Would I then know freedom's name? In my wake lies the shore—a past where I had been happy—refusing to yield to the tide. Before me, upon the horizon, is the sun... hesitant... inert... A new day cannot rise if its ancestor does not fall. Am I but a pawn in this game? I cannot command the sun to set, nor will the moon to take its place and wash the shore away. That power belongs to kings. To drown in the offing. Such sovereign beauty. Such exquisite pain.

A NEW, MORE FRACTURED LIGHT Dear Sugar, My parents recently decided to get a divorce. To be more accurate, my father left my mother for a younger woman. A cliché story, except when it happened to my family I was shattered, as if it was the first time it had ever happened. I’m an adult. I’ve always been close with my father. I looked up to him as a role model. To find out he’d been seeing someone else without telling my mom and that he’d been lying to all of us about it was very painful. Suddenly I can’t trust this man I’ve always counted on and loved.

Cutting redefines the body's boundaries, differentiating self from others. Blood flowing from the wound proves there is life inside the body instead of nothingness. On a subconscious level, according to psychoanalytic theory, stimulation of the skin through self-mutilation helps reintegrate the splintered sense of self by reactivating the body ego—perhaps by re-creating a tactile experience that, at least to cutters, is pleasurable and soothing. This fracturing of the sense of self is not the result of minor or accidental insults. "At some point every baby is going to roll off of the changing table, and it's met with great alarm and she gets scooped up and taken care of," says Scott Lines. "What we're talking about with cutters are impingements that happen so frequently that they become not only expected but the child believes that they are brought on by herself." Children in this situation begin to blame themselves for being abused or mistreated. Lines thinks it is no accident that the skin is the cutter's site of attack. He also wonders if it is no coincidence that the arms are the most common target, perhaps a symbolic attack on the mother's arms that did not adequately hold the child and keep her safe.

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX) - 1892-1950 Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution's power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.

And you,' she hissed at me. 'You,' Her teeth gleamed- turning sharp. 'I'm going to kill you.' Someone cried out, but I couldn't move, couldn't even try to get out of the way as something far more violent than lightning struck me, and I crashed to the floor. 'I'm going to make you pay for your insolence,' Amarantha snarled, and a scream ravaged my throat as pain like nothing I had know erupted through me. My very bones were shattering as my body rose and then slammed onto the hard floor, and I was crushed beneath another wave of torturous agony. 'Admit you don't really love him, and I'll spare you,' Amarantha breathed, and through my fractured vision, I saw her prowl toward me. 'Admit what a cowardly, lying, inconstant bit of human garbage you are.' I wouldn't- I wouldn't say that even if she splattered me across the ground. But I was being ripped apart from the inside out, and I thrashed, unable to out-scream the pain. 'Feyre!' someone roared. No, not someone- Rhysand. But Amarantha still neared. 'You think you're worthy of him? A High Lord? You think you deserve anything at all, human?' My back arched, and my ribs cracked, one by one. Rhysand yelled my name again- yelled it as though he cared. I blacked out, but she brought me back, ensuring that I felt everything, ensuring that I screamed every time a bone broke.

Then, as though she held a dandelion blowball in her hand, she simply blew away the nightmare that dominated her life for so many long years. She released each painful memory to dance on the wind, to soar high with each tiny propeller from the seed head. With the last puff of breath, she found a measure of forgiveness for her father. With that act, the cell imprisoning her mind fractured. The walls split and fell apart, the roof slid to one side, and the terrified girl was freed. As bricks and timber disintegrated into dust, she stood in a meadow surrounded by tall trees. One half bathed in sunlight, the other wrapped in shadows and dark. "You are free to walk whatever path you chose,

Silence. Then, “For five hundred years, I fractured in the dark. A man, slowly twisting into something terrible. I saw no sun, no moon. All I could do was remember the terrible things that had happened. So I forged a place to put away the King who once lived—all his pain—all his memories. A place of rest.” Ravyn turned. When his eyes caught the Nightmare’s yellow gaze, he knew. “That’s where she is. It’s why I can’t hear her with the Nightmare Card. You have Elspeth hidden away.” His throat burned. “Alone, in the dark.” The Nightmare cocked his head. “I am not a dragon hording gold. The moment Elspeth touched that Nightmare Card and I slipped into her mind, her days were marked. I was her degeneration.

I opened the John Green and read the first five pages. At first, I mistook my stomach pain for the aftermath of a chilli garlic chicken curry I had eaten that night, and powered on past page one, wincing at the knots, until I arrived at page five and vomited blood over the e-reader in the shape of a fractured heart. I doubled over, howling in pain. I could not believe a book could be that appalling. I screamed out: ‘I called this book a daring take on a controversial topic! I said this was a brave and beautiful novel to be cherished for decades to come!’ I clutched my stomach and screamed. I ran out onto the street, shouting nonsense, assaulting people who tried to help, eventually passing out in a motorway layby, covered in slime and scum, having leapt into a polluted pond to cleanse myself of the foulness that had overtaken me. Then I entered the most horrific dreams, the content of which I am not prepared to speak about and that I will take to the grave.

timelines register the pain of her loss for the first time. “I’m sorry, honey.” He remembers the day she died, eight weeks ago. She had become almost childlike by that point, her mind gone. He had to feed her, dress her, bathe her. But this was better than the time right before, when she had enough cognitive function left to be aware of her complete confusion. In her lucid moments, she described the feeling as being lost in a dreamlike forest—no identity, no sense of when or where she was. Or alternatively, being absolutely certain she was fifteen years old and still living with her parents in Boulder, and trying to square her foreign surroundings with her sense of place and time and self. She often wondered if this was what her mother felt in her final year. “This timeline—before my mind started to fracture—was the best of them all. Of my very long life. Do you remember that trip we took—I think it was during our first life together—to see the emperor penguins migrate? Remember how we fell in love with this continent? The way it makes you feel like you’re the only people in the world? Kind of appropriate, no?” She looks off camera, says, “What? Don’t be jealous. You’ll be watching this one day. You’ll carry the knowledge of every moment we spent together, all one hundred and forty-four years.” She looks back at the camera. “I need to tell you, Barry, that I couldn’t have made it this long without you. I couldn’t have kept trying to stop the inevitable. But we’re stopping today. As you know by now, I’ve lost the ability to map memory. Like Slade, I used the chair too many times. So I won’t be going back. And even if you returned to a point on the timeline where my consciousness was young and untraveled, there’s no guarantee you could convince me to build the chair. And to what end? We’ve tried everything. Physics, pharmacology, neurology. We even struck out with Slade. It’s time to admit we failed and let the world get on with destroying itself, which it seems so keen on doing.” Barry sees himself step into the frame and take a seat beside Helena. He puts his arm around her. She snuggles into him, her head on his chest. Such a surreal sensation to now remember that day when she decided to record a message for the Barry who would one day merge into his consciousness. “We have four years until doomsday.” “Four years, five months, eight days,” Barry-on-the-screen says. “But who’s counting?” “We’re going to spend that time together. You have those memories now. I hope they’re beautiful.” They are. Before her mind broke completely, they had two good years, which they lived free from the burden of trying to stop the world from remembering. They lived those years simply and quietly. Walks on the icecap to see the Aurora Australis. Games, movies, and cooking down here on the main level. The occasional trip to New Zealand’s South Island or Patagonia. Just being together. A thousand small moments, but enough to have made life worth living. Helena was right. They were the best years of his lives too. “It’s odd,” she says. “You’re watching this right now, presumably four years from this moment, although I’m sure you’ll watch it before then to see my face and hear my voice after I’m gone.” It’s true. He did. “But my moment feels just as real to me as yours does to you. Are they both real? Is it only our consciousness that makes it so? I can imagine you sitting there in four years, even though you’re right beside me in this moment, in my moment, and I feel like I can reach through the camera and touch you. I wish I could. I’ve experienced over two hundred years, and at the end of it all, I think Slade was right. It’s just a product of our evolution the way we experience reality and time from moment to moment. How we differentiate between past, present, and future. But we’re intelligent enough to be aware of the illusion, even as we live by it, and so,

We aren’t simply looking at a demographically induced economic breakdown; we are looking at the end of a half millennium of economic history. At present, I see only two preexisting economic models that might work for the world we’re (d)evolving into. Both are very old-school: The first is plain ol’ imperialism. For this to work, the country in question must have a military, especially one with a powerful navy capable of large-scale amphibious assault. That military ventures forth to conquer territories and peoples, and then exploits said territories and peoples in whatever way it wishes: forcing conquered labor to craft products, stripping conquered territories of resources, treating conquered people as a captive market for its own products, etc. The British Empire at its height excelled at this, but to be honest, so did any other post-Columbus political entity that used the word “empire” in its name. If this sounds like mass slavery with some geographic and legal displacement between master and slave, you’re thinking in the right general direction. The second is something called mercantilism, an economic system in which you heavily restrict the ability of anyone to export anything to your consumer base, but in which you also ram whatever of your production you can down the throats of anyone else. Such ramming is often done with a secondary goal of wrecking local production capacity so the target market is dependent upon you in the long term. The imperial-era French engaged in mercantilism as a matter of course, but so too did any up-and-coming industrial power. The British famously product-dumped on the Germans in the early 1800s, while the Germans did the same to anyone they could reach in the late 1800s. One could argue (fairly easily) that mercantilism was more or less the standard national economic operating policy for China in the 2000s and 2010s (under American strategic cover, no less). In essence, both possible models would be implemented with an eye toward sucking other peoples dry, and transferring the pain of general economic dislocation from the invaders to the invaded. Getting a larger slice of a smaller pie, as it were. Both models might theoretically work in a poorer, more violent, more fractured world—particularly if they are married. But even together, some version of imperialist mercantilism faces a singular, overarching, likely condemning problem: Too many guns, not enough boots.

Chatting to the gossip of flames waking from the slumber of our flesh-drunk night together— it’s only when I step out to pee do I notice— how far, burgundy-dark, the moon has risen…. On four paws the shepherd- dogs bound, lightly though the trees they hardly touch on earth— we saw it from far sunk here in an always-ache…. Dyeing paling twilight woods— a pair of wasps, spiraling, writhe…. Wetted lips of hers and mine, just-parted, move over each other with tongues just-coming but refuse— like mists of evening they've no place to settle…. Just-here though she's singing she’s in some song from long ago— poised on the brink of twilight longing three thousand miles rush through my heart…. Under undulating curtains— I hover above her the tips of me brushing the tips of her— breathing back and forth a column of air we share our breath slowly asphyxiating…. From burning wood campfire sparks dart off extinguishing in the wet blue dark… how you blow your long wind across my embers, through my soul, she pleads me, take away the pain— I dip a branch in blue water and plunge it into coals…. *** In pre-dawn dark, against a leaping inferno of flames black monolith of wood in the cast iron compartment softens, and—gradually— fractures to cells, warping upward, until from the top a shard splinters: pearls of flame string a fiber and leap in little tongues while the log, glowing, engulfed, is consumed by the inferno contained…. A shadow daunts me, haunts and taunts me now reaching far, now recoiling, now growing bold…. I once sang eruptions and the wind— then appeared you it took my whole life singing only the songs of you and still I sing for you what other refuge can stay me from this torment? So— my doppelganger has arrived no one said it would happen this way but the way his hands fold like mine, the style of his humor, broadness of his smile— even the way he walks…. Licking and lapping these lashings of grasses are in tongues at my feet smoldering's the fury within me— I have seen my fields of daylight warp to noxious-air infernos but still to the clean blue of the flame I take rest in her breast…. His songs I mouth, and in my head is his voice— I cannot hear my own…. in my mind I see myself— thin, stupid— my arms too weak, my own chest too frail— and besides I prefer him more…. Along spiral lines, seed-heads decay— swept away they whirl and writhe in the hot blue fire of evening…. Stuck in a mural of sticky flesh— the family… I am locked-in-arms with brothers and sisters, drooping at the thighs with nieces and nephews, grafted to parents at the scalp, and pasted with toddlers all over… hived, sapped, black I sit, subject to the flavors and aromas of your abuse…. Then— be wrapped in his presence… crescendo to his warmth the cascade of your laughter search in his wrinkles for the boy inside him… I’m just biding here, bragless, trying to admit these rival-streams that flow in one latticework of blood…. Halves of flesh and bosomy hips, lips like dark ripe fruits they're chasing— I chased them… full-feathered was their hair like floss in the sunshine fine-fingered was their style like laces cut to curves: and then there was you, returning one, just there like the midnight moon in my sky at noontime….

A well-conditioned oarsman or oarswoman competing at the highest levels must be able to take in and consume as much as eight liters of oxygen per minute; an average male is capable of taking in roughly four to five liters at most. Pound for pound, Olympic oarsmen may take in and process as much oxygen as a thoroughbred racehorse. This extraordinary rate of oxygen intake is of only so much value, it should be noted. While 75–80 percent of the energy a rower produces in a two-thousand-meter race is aerobic energy fueled by oxygen, races always begin, and usually end, with hard sprints. These sprints require levels of energy production that far exceed the body’s capacity to produce aerobic energy, regardless of oxygen intake. Instead the body must immediately produce anaerobic energy. This, in turn, produces large quantities of lactic acid, and that acid rapidly builds up in the tissue of the muscles. The consequence is that the muscles often begin to scream in agony almost from the outset of a race and continue screaming until the very end. And it’s not only the muscles that scream. The skeletal system to which all those muscles are attached also undergoes tremendous strains and stresses. Without proper training and conditioning—and sometimes even with them—competitive rowers are apt to experience a wide variety of ills in the knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, ribs, neck, and above all the spine. These injuries and complaints range from blisters to severe tendonitis, bursitis, slipped vertebrae, rotator cuff dysfunction, and stress fractures, particularly fractures of the ribs. The common denominator in all these conditions—whether in the lungs, the muscles, or the bones—is overwhelming pain. And that is perhaps the first and most fundamental thing that all novice oarsmen must learn about competitive rowing in the upper echelons of the sport: that pain is part and parcel of the deal. It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.

She squirmed with delight, making him groan. Her wriggling must test him. Some devil made her move again. "Jesus, Grace," he gritted out. "You try my limits." "I hope so," she purred. He felt so wonderful inside her. As if he supplied part of her that she only realized now she'd lacked. She bent her knees and tilted her hips so he went deeper. She ran her hands down the tense muscles of his back. He flexed under her touch. "That felt good," she said breathlessly. "Do it again." "If I start, I won't stop." his voice was rough. "Start." She shifted again and felt him shudder. "Grace," he grated out. He withdrew, then plunged into her. Her nails sank into his back and her womb clenched in welcome. With deliberate slowness, he set the familiar rhythm. Except none of this was familiar. Every time he settled in her body, he forged an emotional connection that nothing could sever. On and on he went. Possession. Release. Possession. Release. Every thrust another link in the chain that bound her to him. Eventually his inhuman control fractured and he drove into her faster, more wildly. With every thrust, her excitement built. It echoed how she'd felt when he kissed her between the legs. That had been wonderful, astounding.But this was more powerful. Because he was with her. He pounded into her as though he meant to crush her. She didn't care. She never wanted this spiraling feeling to end. The storm swirled her higher and higher. Ecstasy poised her on a knife edge. She cried out and rose to meet him. He changed the angle of his penetration and went even deeper. The pleasure edged close to pain. She tensed as he pressed hard inside her. Then her womb opened and she took all of him. Her inner muscles convulsed into spasms of delight and she screamed. Violent rapture flung her against the doors of heaven itself. She was lost in a hot, dark world where nothing existed except Matthew. All she could do was hold him and prayed she survived. Through the tempest that blasted her, he reached his climax. He groaned and convulsed in her arms. For this moment, he was unequivocally hers and she reveled in the possession.

With tinny drumbeats, the rain pounds the roof My teary eyes compete They can't keep up Breathe Let it go Breathe The vice on my chest tightens its razoring grip I gasp No relief If only tears could soothe the pain Then, I would look upon the tidal waves against these walls without fear Crush and roll me, I'd plead, Mold my body anew But with these tears come no healing, Just death, slow and determined This old girl, this old woman, this old soul lives here inside A tortoise outgrowing this hare's body This youthful skin encasing a crumbling frame I smooth the matted web of curls off my sweaty neck And roll my eyes at the clock How slowly the time squeaks by here in this room, In this comfortless bed I abandon the warmth from under my blanket tower and shiver The draft rattles my spine One by one, striking my vertebrae Like a spoon chiming empty wine glasses, Hitting the same fragile note till my neck shakes the chill away I swipe along the naked floor with a toe for the slippers beneath the bed Plush fabric caresses my feet Stand! Get up With both hands, Gravity jerks me back down Ugh! This cursed bed! No more, I want no more of it I try again My legs quiver in search of my former strength Come on, old girl, Come on, old woman, Come on, old soul, Don't quit now The floor shakes beneath me, Hoping I trip and fall To the living room window, I trudge My joints grind like gravel under tires More pain no amount of tears can soothe away Pinching the embroidered curtain between my knuckles, I find solace in the gloom The wind humming against the window, Makes the house creak and groan Years ago, the cold numbed my pain But can it numb me again, This wretched body and fractured soul? Outside I venture with chants fluttering my lips, Desperate solemn pleas For comfort, For mercy For ease, For health I open the plush throw spiraled around my shoulders And tiptoe around the porch's rain-soaked boards The chilly air moves through me like Death on a mission, My body, an empty gorge with no barriers to stop him, No flesh or bone My highest and lowest extremities grow numb But my feeble knees and crippling bones turn half-stone, half-bone Half-alive, half-dead No better, just worse The merciless wind freezes my tears My chin tumbles in despair I cover myself and sniffle Earth’s scent funnels up my nose: Decay with traces of life in its perfume The treetops and their slender branches sway, Defying the bitter gusts As I turn to seek shelter, the last browned leaf breaks away It drifts, it floats At the weary tree’s feet, it makes its bed alongside the others Like a pile of corpses, they lie Furled and crinkled with age No one mourns their death Or hurries to honor the fallen with thoughtful burials No rage-filled cries echo their protests at the paws trampling their fragile bodies, Or at the desecration by the animals seeking morning relief And new boundaries to mark Soon, the stark canopy stretching over the pitiful sight Will replace them with vibrant buds and leaves Until the wasting season again returns For now, more misery will barricade my bones as winter creeps in Unless Death meets me first to end it

Once our attention is called to it, we notice these fractures all over the place. There is hardly a bone in our bodies that has escaped injury, hardly a relationship in city or job, school or church, family or country, that isn’t out of joint or limping in pain. There is much work to be done.

Humans are fragile creatures. We fracture easily, and there are some pains even magic can't heal. Broken hearts. Empty bellies. Lost dreams.

Then a hand gripping his hair, yanking back his head as a dagger settled along his throat. As Rowan's face, calm with lethal wrath, appeared in his vision. "Where is Aelin." There was pure panic, too-pure panic as Whitethorn saw the blood, the scattered blades, and the shirt. "Where is Aelin." What had he done, what had he done- Pain sliced Lorcan's neck, warm blood dribbled down his throat, his chest. Rowan hissed, "Where is my wife?" Lorcan swayed where he knelt. Wife. Wife. "Oh, gods," Elide sobbed as she overheard, the words carrying the sound of Lorcan's own fractured heart. "Oh, gods..." And for the first time in centuries, Lorcan wept. Rowan dug the dagger into Lorcan's neck, even as tears slid down Lorcan's face. What that woman had done... Aelin had known. That Lorcan had betrayed her and summoned Maeve here. That she had been living on borrowed time. And she had married Whitethorn ... so Terrasen could have a king. Perhaps had been spurred into action because she knew Lorcan had already betrayed her, that Maeve was coming... And Lorcan had not helped her. Whitethorn's wife. His mate. Aelin had let them whip her and chain her, had gone willingly with Maeve, so Elide didn't enter Cairn's clutches. And it had been just as much a sacrifice for Elide as it had been a gift to him.

But even if you forget about me, I'll never stop cherishing the pain that lives in my heart from you. Because your love made me so much better than I ever would have been without you.

In the realm of boundless skies I soar, With the fire of beginnings, I implore, Though thorns may pierce, and darkness may loom, I'll test my strength in thunder's fierce boom. For high above, I seek my place, In the heavens, a name to embrace, Yet every breath fuels my might, As I brave the storms, take flight in the night. In the face of dust, my resolve remains, Despite the wounds, and life's crushing pains, I stand unbroken, my spirit's ablaze, In the crucible, I'll burn and amaze. Though I may stumble, and falter, and strain, In my heart, the desire remains untamed, With sparks in my eyes, and hope in my veins, I'll rise from the ashes, through trials and gains. For I've etched in my fists, a star's radiant gleam, In the city's uproar, I'll conquer, it seems, Though darkness may fall in an infinite stream, My end won't be falling; it's more than it seems. On my face, I may wear the marks of the fight, With a broken resolve, a fractured light, But within my core, strength takes its flight, And from the embers, I'll emerge in the night. Though breaths may shatter, and heartbeats may sway, In the depths of my being, I'll find my way, With fiery gaze, and a steadfast say, I'll conquer the tempest, come what may. I've woven a star in the palm of my hand, Let the drums of the city resound, understand, Though shadows may gather, like grains of sand, My fall is not final, I'll rise and expand. In the realm of boundless skies, I roam, With a heart unyielding, I'll find my home, Through trials and triumphs, I'll ceaselessly roam, My end isn't falling; it's where I'll become.

The pain that pierces through the fog of shock is like being struck by lightning. Ripples of damage shooting from my fingertips that once gripped the note, straight to the depths of my fractured soul.

We’re all tempted to reach the wrong conclusions when we’re living under the weight of our pain. Pain has a way of distorting our perspectives, especially when it’s the supposedly godly people in our lives who are inflicting the greatest pain on us.

Hellfire and brimstone don’t inspire us to change; they lead to guilt. Guilt is a coping mechanism that allows us to merely limp along with our anxiety. It’s what we feel when we engage in some action that goes against our deeper principles, but that we don’t actually intend to change. Guilt is an insincere self-apology for a painful internal fracture. It leads us to symbolic actions that allow us to function with this fracture. Why not just heal the fracture?

I need more than tweetables and popular hashtags when I’m hurting. In the valley of the shadow of death, I need to know that I follow a Savior who is not oblivious to my pain.

It’s in learning to become aware of God’s presence in our pain that the scales are tipped toward freedom.

If you’ve ever felt the sting of disappointment and pain, it’s not hard to wrap your mind around my friend’s words: Doesn’t God care enough about me to end my suffering?

The longer I live, the more I wonder if my inability to see God in my pain is rooted in the fact that I’m not really looking for God. I’m looking for a god to show up in the way that I want him to and to give me what I want him to give me. I’m like the disciples; I beg Jesus to stop my storm now. I’m like Mary and Martha; I want Jesus to heal my sick brother now. Some like to think that because Jesus suffered once, we never will have to. That because Jesus was wounded, we’re promised permanent healing; that if He was abandoned by God, we never will be. But what if the very fellowship of His suffering is meant to draw us closer to Him? What if our very pain is meant to help us see Him more clearly?

C. S. Lewis once wrote that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”1 But I’m left to wonder, if pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world, why do so many of us remain oblivious to God’s presence in our pain? Why is it so hard to hear Him when we need Him the most?

Pain’s gift is that it increases awareness. Suffering heightens our sense of need and deepens our heart’s cry for help. While suffering hurts, a growing sense of God’s presence heals.

These days I need more than just three steps to get there. I need the reality of God’s presence. I need the truth about God. I need a God who will save me on my worst days—even when I know better. The good news of the gospel is that we have such a God in Jesus. But that good news of the gospel is still ours to be received. God’s goodness is meant to be received in the midst of our pain, not proven by the absence of our pain.

The reality is that often we’re never as close to our Father as we are in our suffering. We’re never as alive to God’s purposes as we are when we suffer. We just have to learn to see it more clearly. We just have to learn to live in awareness of God’s presence even in our pain—or especially in our pain.

The following lists some of the signs and symptoms of gluten sensitivity: diarrhea or loose stools, abdominal pain, bloating or abdominal distention, excessive gas, pale and foul-smelling stool, irritability, depression, weight loss, anemia, fatigue, general weakness, muscle cramps, achy legs, tingling in the face or extremities, dermatitis herpetiformis (painful skin rash or rough texture), mouth sores and mottled tooth discoloration. If you note that you have more than three of these signs or symptoms, it may indicate you have a sensitivity to gluten.

I knew better than to wish pain didn’t exist.

When ego, unopposed, assumes its throne, The world, in fragments, reaps the seeds it’s sown. A kaleidoscope of discord and divide, Where separate streams in ceaseless turmoil bide. Through ego’s lens, reality transforms, A battleground where rampant desire storms. A sphere of strife, of victory and loss, Where fortunes shift as dice of fate are tossed. In ego’s solitary, narrow view, The world is painted in a hue so skewed. Confined by fears, by selfish dreams confined, Its canvas bears the limits of the mind. Thus, perception, in its manifold grace, Reflects the light of ego and soul’s face. In balance, may the truest sight be found, Where essence and ego in harmony abound. In the crucible where essence blends with sight, A wondrous transformation takes its flight. Where once division’s shadow coldly lay, Interconnection’s dawn breaks forth in day. What opposition’s harsh gaze once discerned, To harmonies of concord is now turned. The essence, with its ancient wisdom’s glow, Unveils the unity that lies below. Each leaf and stone, each soul that wanders free, A note within reality’s grand symphony. Essential, bound within the vast expanse, In life’s intricate, cosmic dance. This alchemical shift in vision’s sphere, Brings forth changes profound, both far and near. Challenges, once daunting, now unfold, As growth’s opportunities, bright and bold. Foes, once clad in enmity’s harsh guise, Transform to teachers, wise beneath the skies. Each joy, each pain, in life’s intricate weave, Threads of our evolution, we perceive. No longer a stage for vain rivalry’s play, But a landscape where learning’s blossoms sway. Growth and learning, in rich abundance, thrive, In this new world where our spirits come alive. Where once the ego’s voice, in solo strain, Ruled with iron will, in self’s domain, Now in harmony with the soul’s sweet song, It finds a place where it truly belongs. No longer master, but a partner kind, Guiding through life with a humble mind. It learns compassion’s tongue, intuition hears, Acts with mindfulness, as purpose nears. In perception’s alchemy, a journey grand, From fractured states to unity’s soft hand, From discord’s harsh cacophony to peace, A path that leads where true essences release. This sacred path, evolving as it weaves, Into our nature’s heart, where spirit cleaves. The veil of separation gently falls, As interconnectedness softly calls. Upon this path, with every step we tread, Our world transforms, new visions in its stead. The mundane now with sacredness imbues, The ordinary in extraordinary hues. Each day becomes a picture, rich and vast, For deepest truths, in vibrant colors cast. Through alchemy of sight, our roles transcend, Not mere observers, but creators bend. In world’s unfolding tale, we play our part, Co-architects, with collective heart. A reality, where highest potentials shine, In this, your design, our spirits intertwine.

He stayed there, quiet now, feeling a pure and strangely joyful pain wash over him, knowing that as much as it hurt, it was something he had to accept, a winter before the spring, letting its ice freeze and fracture his heart before it could heal.

If you are good," he said, "and if you are thoughtful, a fractured pelvis on the gridiron will pain you less than a life of engineering and management. In that life, believe me, the thoughtful, the sensitive, those who can recognize the ridiculous, die a thousand deaths.

have a boyfriend, I told her in my head, a small part of me hoping the pieces of her that had been passed down in the blood now rapidly carrying oxygen out of my brain might overhear. I would never tell Mother Bhūmi I was queer aloud. By then, I had imagined that she was sealed off by her own carceral ways of thinking—punitive ideas she heeded that encouraged harming those who did not fit this society’s norms around gender, even if they were family. It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand my queerness or love me if she knew, but I believed that the parts of her that would understand and love me were buried so deep beneath her own pain that they would take years to excavate. Years I knew she didn’t have. Years that had been stolen from her, just like my childhood had been pried away from me. How much could I blame her for what she replaced them with? How much could I blame myself for internalizing self-hatred while trying to find what about me was worth saving in an anti-Black, anti-queer world that hated me, too? How much could I blame Mata? And how much should I hold accountable the world that separated us from our childhoods in the first place and told us that blaming each other was all we could ever do about it? Was it my, my mother’s, or my grandmother’s fault that we were too fractured ourselves to hold every aspect of one another, or did the problem stem from an anti-Black society that wouldn’t allow any of us to exist as fully whole people within it?

I’m Fine I stand on the precipice of solitude, A tempest raging within, unseen by all. They depart, like autumn leaves in the wind, Their absence a hollow echo, a fading call. I don’t care who leaves my life, Their footsteps erased from the sands of time. The bonds we wove, now frayed and brittle, Yet I stand resolute, unyielding, in my prime. The pain, a searing fire, consumes my chest, Anger coils like vipers, venomous and cold. They say love is a balm, a healing touch, But what if love itself is the blade that unfolds? I lose them, one by one, like stars in the night, Their constellations fading, swallowed by the void. Yet I cling to my essence, my fractured soul, For in this desolation, I find strength, unalloyed. I don’t care who I lose, for they are but shadows, Their laughter, their tears, mere echoes in the gale. As long as I don’t lose myself, my core unshaken, I’ll wear this mask of indifference, my heart’s veiled tale. So let them depart, let them fade into oblivion, I’ll stand here, battered and scarred, but alive. For I am the tempest, the flame, the unyielding force, And in this fractured existence, I’m fine

I’m not saying shit because I regret saying it, Reed. Yes, I fucking meant it. I love you so badly, I can hardly stand it. But I didn’t mean to put that on you when you’re going through so much.” “You don’t try and influence or control me. You want me to be who I am. And Mason, I want that for you too. The good, the bad, the ugly; I hope you know I accept all of it. I accept all of you.” “I’m not good enough for you, Reed.” “You are. Just like I’m good enough for you, even if I didn’t believe that when I first came here. And do you want to know why?” He nods, words not getting out, and I’ve never seen him this vulnerable. “Because yes… we’re both fractured and still healing, but we don’t bring out the pain in each other. We bring out the good. You bring out my good, Mason. And that’s all I want to do for you.

I could never regret you. Even when it hurts, I want to feel that pain because you make me remember that I’m alive.

Too much pain, or in too potent a form, can increase the risk of becoming addicted to pain, something I’ve witnessed in clinical practice. A patient of mine ran so much she developed fractures in her leg bones and even then didn’t stop running.

You can stand the emotional intensity of visiting the wreckage of your trauma-fractured life for only a few seconds before your brain starts to do things to protect you from the pain.

Tell me what you’re hiding, what you’re harboring, what you don’t want the world to know about yourself for fear that it will be cast into light. Tell me about the times you couldn’t save yourself. Give me your broken parts, your fractured pieces, everything that’s weighed too heavily on the floor of your heart for you to ever reach down and reassemble. Tell me where you went the first time that you lost yourself. Tell me the ways in which you never came back. Give me a map with coordinates that lead into the deepest, most twisted corner of your soul where all of your unconquered demons still lurk. Let me see them. Let me reach out and touch them with my own trembling fingers, because I still can’t bear to face my own. Give me your shortcomings. Tell me the story of the first person you never became and all the ways in which you let him die. Tell me which regrets tear on your heartstrings and which unfulfilled dreams still take up residence under your skin. Show me the mountains you never conquered, the roads you never traversed, the battles you surrendered before ever setting foot upon enemy soil. Show me the things you never measured up to because there’s no war more wounding than the one we never waged and there’s no road more daunting than the one that we never walked down. Give me your struggles and impurities. Tell me about the worst thing you have ever done. Tell me about the regret that slithered under your skin and beat through your bloodstream like an unwelcome disease after you made the biggest mistake of your life. Tell me how it ripped straight into to your soul and took you over. Talk to me about the times you couldn’t look at yourself in the mirror or fall asleep at night because the malevolence and madness of your own mind kept you reeling. Give me your vices and misjudgments because I can match each one with my own. Tell me all the ways in which you’re scarred by your own capacity for darkness. Let me fall in love with your human parts – the battles you can’t fight, the wounds you can’t heal, all the ways in which you are not enough for yourself. Give me your joys and your pain in equal measure because you are the most brilliant and terrible mixture of both. I don’t want your good intentions and your well wishes. I want the whole of you, the depth of you, the breadth of all you are and the light that shines in between your broken parts. Let me fall in love with what you’re missing, what you’ve lost and what you’re still holding onto, through and despite all of it. Show me the things you haven’t lost along the way. And I will show you your own greatest strengths.

I am fractured and fragmented in the oceans of pain you endured and I cannot help and this hurts like hell

Do you know how hard it was?” he breathes, his palm resting on my neck, his thumb smoothing across the sensitive area. “I’m sorry you had to do that.” I place my finger over a small hole in his chest where one of the tubes was embedded. “I really am, especially since you had to go there pretty much for nothing.” He shakes his head. “Not that… I’ve already told you that pain isn’t a big deal.” He brushes his lips across mine. “Being away from you… it gets harder and harder… I swear to God it actually feels like I’m dying.” I don’t know what to say at his honestly raw admittance and he doesn’t give me time as he crashes his lips against mine.

S.P. is a 68-year-old retired painter who is experiencing right leg calf pain. The pain began approximately 2 years ago but has become significantly worse in the past 4 months. The pain is precipitated by exercise and is relieved with rest. Two years ago, S.P. could walk two city blocks before having to stop because of leg pain. Today, he can barely walk across the yard. S.P. has smoked two to three packs of cigarettes per day (PPD) for the past 45 years. He has a history of coronary artery disease (CAD), hypertension (HTN), peripheral vascular disease (PVD), and osteoarthritis. Surgical history includes quadruple coronary artery bypass graft (CABG × 4) 3 years ago. He has had no further symptoms of cardiopulmonary disease since that time, even though he has not been compliant with the exercise regimen his cardiologist prescribed, he continues to eat anything he wants, and continues to smoke two to three PPD. Other surgical history includes open reduction internal fixation of the right femoral fracture 20 years ago. S.P. is in the clinic today for a routine semiannual follow-up appointment with his primary care provider. As you take his vital signs, he tells you that, besides the calf pain, he is experiencing right hip pain that gets worse with exercise, the pain doesn't go away promptly with rest, some days are worse than others, and his condition is not affected by a resting position. � Chart View General Assessment Weight 261 lb Height 5 ft, 10 in. Blood pressure 163/91 mm Hg Pulse 82 beats/min Respiratory rate 16 breaths/min Temperature 98.4° F (36.9° C) Laboratory Testing (Fasting) Cholesterol 239 mg/dL Triglycerides 150 mg/dL HDL 28 mg/dL LDL 181 mg/dL Current Medications Lisinopril (Zestril) 20 mg/day Metoprolol (Lopressor) 25 mg twice a day Aspirin 325 mg/day Simvastatin (Zocor) 20 mg/day Case Study 4 Name Class/Group Date ____________________ Group Members INSTRUCTIONS All questions apply to this case study. Your responses should be brief and to the point. When asked to provide several