Love and Pain

I have been thinking a lot lately about these two things. I don't know how many of you who read this blog have been watching the show "Once Upon a Time" on ABC. It certainly has an interesting take on the fairytales we all grew up reading. I love the show and the parallels between the "fairytale" and real life. Sunday's episode really has had me contemplating a lot. It was about how Snow White's Prince was suppose to marry another woman, an arranged marriage for the kingdom, but he loved Snow White. The Prince's father told Snow White she had to tell the Prince that she didn't love him or he would kill the Prince. He made this statement, "Love is a disease, and like all diseases it can be vanquished in one of two ways: a cure or death". He then told her that she must break the Prince's heart, lie and say she didn't love him and that would cure him. She did it to save his life and when she did she broke her own heart too. She couldn't take the pain of it. Rumplestilskin had given her a magic potion that he told her if she took it would make her forget and erase all her pain. After she broke her own and the Prince's heart, she was talking with Grumpy one of the seven dwarfs about the potion. Snow White said to him "What if you could erase your pain?" Grumpy's reply is what has stuck with me. He said "I don't want my pain erased. As wretched as it is, I need my pain. It makes me who I am. It makes me Grumpy". Such a profound statement to me. Not many of us can look at our pain this way and say "man I am so glad that hurt me so bad" or "I am so happy I had to experience that profound loss". I work with people everyday who have pain, all kinds of pain some physical, some emotional, and some even spiritual. I don't hear many say that they are so glad for that pain, but I do hear many talk about what they have learned about themselves and others in enduring their pain. Some find peace, some die still looking for it. I see pain everyday, but I also feel it. A part in patriarchal blessing talks about "how I will see things that will cause pain, a special kind of pain, not the physical kind and I will have the power to ease that pain by the things that I believe and the way that I live". I have never thought that I would need to use those skills to cure my own pain. Some days I wake up and think man wouldn't it be nice to forget all the pain I have experienced or have seen others experience. What if we could erase the pain? Would we want to and would we learn what we were put on this earth to learn if we did? I have been struggling a little lately with my own feelings on pain and what that means for me and others.  I have questioned some things in my life and played the "what if" game with myself. The truth is yes somedays I do wish I had a magic potion to erase the pain, but like Snow White the unfortunate side effect of erasing your pain with the potion is that it also makes you forget the love. I truly believe that love is never something that should be forgotten. As cheesy as this might sound I think of the song by Trisha Yearwood, "I would've Loved You Anyway". She says in the song even if she knew her heart would break, she would have loved anyway. To really appreciate love sometimes we have to endure the pain that goes along with it. The Prince's father thought a broken heart would cure his son of the love he felt for Snow White, but it didn't work. He still loved her. I am not sure there is ever a cure for love and I don't believe death takes it away either. Love endures all even the most painful of things. Just like light will always win over darkness, love will always win over the pain. We don't need a potion to do it for us. We just need love.