Pain Has a Purpose What Life Teaches Us Through Hurt
Late afternoon has a way of turning ordinary things into little movie scenes.
The light comes through the window just right. The house gets quiet. Niko settles nearby with that serious little look dogs get when they know more than they plan to say.
And there I am, thinking about an apple.
Yes, an apple.
One bite was all it took for my body to make an announcement: “Donna, we are never doing that again.”
Niko, of course, had his own memory playing. Pizza.
One delicious decision. One miserable stomach. Two creatures sitting in the golden light, quietly remembering the things that hurt us.
At first, it made me laugh. Then my mind did what minds do. It changed the scene.
The apple became eyesight. The pizza became pain. The moment became memory.
And before long, I was thinking about all the ways hurt has shown up in my life, not always as punishment, not always as a lesson, and not always with a neat little bow tied around it.
Sometimes pain warns us. Sometimes it changes us. Sometimes it simply reminds us that something mattered.
That is why I believe pain has a purpose, even when the purpose is not easy to name while we are still living through it.
Some pain tells us not to touch that again
The body can be very direct.
Touch something hot, and the message comes fast. Eat something that disagrees with you, and the message may take a little longer, but it still arrives. Trust the wrong situation one too many times, and that kind of pain speaks too.
Some pain is a warning label written in real life.
The apple taught me something small, but clear. My body did not need a speech. It did not need a debate. It simply said, “No more.”
Niko’s pizza lesson worked the same way. He may still dream about the smell of it. He may still think the whole thing was unfair. But his stomach told the truth.
We laugh at those moments because they are easy to understand. The cause and effect sit close together.
Eat the thing. Regret the thing. Avoid the thing.
Life, of course, does not always keep the lesson that simple.
There are pains that ask deeper questions:
What keeps hurting every time I return to it?
What have I been calling normal that is actually damaging?
What decision keeps costing me peace?
What has my body, mind, or spirit been trying to tell me?
Pain can be a signal before it becomes a crisis. It can be the quiet knock before the door comes down.
That does not mean every discomfort deserves fear. Growth can feel uncomfortable too. But some pain carries a clear message: stop touching what keeps burning you.
The older I get, the more I respect that message.
Some pain changes how we see
There was a time when seeing clearly was not something I could take for granted.
I struggled with keratoconus, a condition that changed my eyesight and changed my life. It was not just a medical word. It was the daily reality of trying to function when the world would not come into focus the way I needed it to.
I waited for cornea donors.
That kind of waiting does something to a person. You hope. You pray. You wonder. You think about the generosity of strangers and the strange truth that someone else’s gift may become part of your healing.
And while waiting, life does not pause.
Bills still need to be paid. Children still need care. Responsibilities still stand at the door. You still have to live inside the uncertainty.
Then came surgeries. Recovery. Discomfort. Adjustments. The long process of teaching my eyes and my life how to work together again.
None of that was glamorous. Healing rarely is.
People often love the “after” picture. They love the moment when someone says, “I made it.” They admire the smile, the strength, the victory.
But the middle part has its own story.
The middle part is where you wake up tired and keep going. It is where you follow instructions you did not want to need. It is where you face fear in small pieces because the whole thing feels too heavy to hold at once.
Then one day, maybe not all at once, something changes.
I could see.
Not perfectly in every sentimental sense. Not as if everything hard disappeared. But I could see in a way I once feared I might not.
That experience taught me something I still carry: the painful scene may not be the final scene.
When you are inside the hard part, it can feel like the whole movie. It fills the screen. It takes up all the sound. It convinces you nothing else is coming.
But sometimes, the camera is still rolling.
Some pain comes with love attached
Then there is the pain of raising children.
Lord, raising children.
That kind of pain is not always dramatic from the outside. Sometimes it looks like staying up late because someone has a fever. Sometimes it looks like stretching money further than it wants to go. Sometimes it looks like sitting in a car after a hard conversation, wondering if you said too much, not enough, or the wrong thing entirely.
Parenting has a way of exposing all the places where you are still growing.
You worry. You sacrifice. You lose sleep. You question yourself. You carry tiny shoes, school papers, doctor visits, meals, moods, mistakes, milestones, and memories.
And while you are in the middle of it, you may not always feel strong. You may just feel tired.
Then somehow, those little people become grown people.
They build lives. They make choices. They become themselves in ways you could not have scripted. Then come the generations after them, each one adding another layer to the story.
You look back and realize something strange and beautiful.
The same love that brought some of your greatest headaches also brought some of your greatest joy.
That is true of many worthy things in life. Love makes us vulnerable. Commitment costs something. Caring deeply opens the door to worry, grief, and disappointment.
Yet a life protected from all pain would also be protected from much of its meaning.
The goal is not to chase pain. The goal is to recognize that some pain travels with things worth loving.
A full heart is not always a comfortable heart.
Sometimes it aches because it has been stretched.
Some pain means you are growing
I did not follow a perfectly timed life plan.
I was not the traditional young student with a clear schedule, unlimited energy, and a straight road ahead.
Life had already happened. My eyesight had happened. Children had happened. Responsibilities had happened.
Then school happened too.
I went later in life.
Degree after degree, I kept showing up. I learned while working. I studied while raising a family. I built a career while carrying the same human worries everyone carries, plus a few of my own.
There were days when I felt proud. There were also days when I wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into.
That is the part we should talk about more.
Growth is not always inspiring while it is happening. Sometimes it is inconvenient. Sometimes it is lonely. Sometimes it asks you to keep becoming a person you have not fully met yet.
Going back to school later in life taught me that pain does not always mean something is wrong.
Sometimes it means you are being stretched.
There is a difference between pain that damages and pain that develops. One drains life from you. The other asks more from you because there is more in you than you have used so far.
Learning to tell the difference takes honesty.
Damaging pain says:
You are disappearing here.
You keep abandoning yourself.
This cost is too high.
You need help, distance, or change.
Growth pain says:
This is hard because it is new.
You are tired because you are building.
You are afraid because you care.
Keep going, just do not forget to rest.
The woman who once waited for donated corneas eventually earned degrees, built businesses, raised a family, and started dreaming bigger dreams.
That did not happen because every day felt easy.
It happened because I kept going through enough hard days to meet the woman on the other side of them.
Some pain simply needs to be grieved
This is where we have to be careful.
Not everything painful happens for a reason.
That sentence may make some people uncomfortable, but I believe it needs to be said with tenderness.
There are losses that do not need a lesson attached to them. There are heartbreaks that do not become more acceptable because someone tries to explain them. There is grief so deep that the kindest thing we can do is stop trying to make it useful.
When someone you love dies, the pain may not be there to teach you discipline, courage, patience, or perspective.
Sometimes grief simply says:
They were here. You loved them. They mattered.
That is enough.
We do not have to turn every sorrow into a sermon. We do not have to rush people toward gratitude while they are still trying to breathe. We do not have to make pain sound beautiful when it feels unbearable.
Some pain is a signal. Some pain is growth. Some pain is consequence. Some pain is love with nowhere to go.
And some pain is just pain.
That does not make it meaningless. It means the meaning may live in the love, not in the loss.
The purpose may not be found in explaining what happened. It may be found in honoring who was here, making room for tears, and letting memory remain sacred.
Grief asks for patience. It has its own clock. It does not follow a polite schedule.
If all you can do in a season of grief is survive the day, that is still something.
If all you can do is whisper their name, that is still love.
If all you can do is sit in the quiet and remember, that counts too.
The better question is not always why
For a long time, the first question that came to mind during pain was simple.
“Why is this happening to me?”
It is a human question. I understand it. I have asked it more than once.
But at this stage of life, I do not stop there as often. Sometimes I ask a different question.
“What is this telling me?”
That question does not blame me for the pain. It does not pretend I caused everything hard that ever happened. It does not force a lesson where there may not be one.
It simply helps me listen.
What is this telling me?
Maybe it is telling me to stop.
Maybe it is telling me to leave.
Maybe it is telling me to rest.
Maybe it is telling me to change.
Maybe it is telling me to keep fighting.
Maybe it is telling me to accept what I cannot fix.
Maybe it is telling me to grieve without apology.
That question gives pain a place to speak without giving it permission to rule everything.
Because pain can be loud. It can convince us that the hurt is the whole story. It can shrink our imagination until we cannot picture anything beyond the moment we are in.
But looking back across my own life, I can see the truth more clearly now.
Pain was not always the end of the story.
Sometimes it was one scene.
A hard scene. A frightening scene. A scene I would not have chosen.
But still, only one scene.
What hurt can leave behind
The pain itself is not always the gift.
That matters.
Pain can injure. Pain can exhaust. Pain can break routines, plans, relationships, and confidence. We do not need to romanticize it.
But sometimes, once the pain has passed or softened, we find something left behind.
A clearer boundary.
A deeper faith.
A stronger voice.
A new direction.
A softer heart.
A better understanding of what matters.
A life we would not have built if everything had gone according to the original plan.
I think about those eyes that once struggled to see. I think about the waiting, the surgeries, the healing, and the people whose generosity became part of my story.
I think about my children, the long nights, the questions, the worry, and the joy that grew right alongside the hard parts.
I think about school later in life, when I could have told myself it was too late, too much, too difficult, too inconvenient.
I think about Niko and that pizza.
I think about me and that apple.
Life teaches in many ways. Some lessons arrive gently. Others arrive with a stomachache, a scar, a goodbye, a challenge, or a season we did not see coming.
The work is learning how to listen without letting pain have the final word.
So when hurt shows up, I try to pause before I name it.
Is this a warning?
Is this grief?
Is this growth?
Is this love?
Is this something I need to release?
Is this something I need to fight through?
The answer is not always immediate. It may take time, prayer, counsel, rest, and honest reflection. Sometimes it may take years before the scene makes sense.
And sometimes it may never make sense in the way we hoped.
Still, I believe this: pain does not get to write the whole ending.
The camera pulls back.
There I am in those Big Red Glasses, looking through eyes that once struggled to see.
Beside me is Niko, probably still thinking about that pizza.
The light is warm. The room is quiet. The story is still unfolding.
Big Red Glasses. Big Ideas. ❤️👓
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