Devotions by Henri Nouwen , The Inner Voice of Love

Today’s devotion is on how to live through pain we may have in our lives.  It could be the pain of not receiving what we need most, a place of emptiness where we feel the absence of love, etc. It is hard back to go back to that place where we are confronted with our wounds and our powerlessness to heal ourselves. We must go to that place of our pain, but only after we have gained some new ground.,,that is when  we begin to know that our emptiness is not the final experience but beyond it is a place where we are being held in love.   As  we are able to trust we can go into the place of our pain with the knowledge in our heart that we have already found the new place and tasted of its fruits. The more roots we have in the new place, the more we can mourn the loss of the old place and let go of the pain that lies there.  We can’t mourn the loss of something that has not died. Still, the old pains, attachments and desires that once meant so much to us need to be buried.  We need to weep over our lost pains to that they can gradually leave us and we can become free to fully live in the new place.