Genesis 9:18-29
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.)19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded[a] to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.”
26 He also said,
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
27 May God extend Japheth’s[b] territory;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”
28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29 Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.
I once had a friend called Ricky who would walk up to you when you weren’t expecting it and punch you on the arm. Hard! He would then say, “forget about it, it’s in the past.”
And you would be left there, in pain with no sympathy, expected to simply get on with your life.
In a funny way, this is still how many of us think about pain. It is an inconvenience and we should just forget about it and move on.
It is not so simple as that.
The reality is that we are the sum of our experiences. The good ones and the bad ones. They all form us in one way or another. For better or for worse, pain changes us. We come out of these seasons different to how we went in. You can not just move forward from a traumatic season and expect everything to be hunky dory. You have to have a plan to process the pain.
Noah watched as the waters rose and everyone he knew died traumatic deaths. He sat for months trapped on that boat, afraid and stressed. He finally steps out into a new start full of questions and challenges. The ordeal has finished but the pain has not. So, he does what a lot of us would do. He has a drink. In fact he had a lot to drink and he ends up making a fool of himself, causing tension in his family and a mess of the whole restart. God blesses the new start and the first thing Noah does is curses.
How do you process your pain?
Putting it into a box and ignoring it is not a plan.
Over sharing on social media is not a plan.
Building a vineyard and getting wasted is not a plan.
Allowing this season to sabotage the next one, is not a plan.
Unprocessed pain can cause you to lose your smile
lose your bounce
lose your trust
lose your optimism.
Your fight.
Your self-respect. It can derail your future.
When we experience painful events, hard seasons, there is nothing less compassionate than telling someone to forget it and move on.
I have found it helpful to do four things:
- Assume that pain always requires attention.
- Be patient with yourself.
- Chat with someone you trust.
- Daily prayer.
It is not one and done, but a process of healing. Psalm 55:22 says Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.
