When pain turns to joy

It is a funny thing about life, an irony and a paradox, that what begins in pain often ends up in joy, and conversely, what starts out in happiness sometimes ends up in sorrow. Of course, this is not true in every situation, but it’s true in enough of them to convince me.

Here are some examples of when pain turns to joy. What brought this idea to mind is something very simple, very mundane.

Last week I had an accident. I pulled a very heavy machine toward me and it dropped right on my bare feet, scraping them and cutting across one of them, drawing blood. (This did not happen at work, but at home.) Of course I attended to the wounds immediately, but the pain was very intense at first, and then moderate for a few days. I had to wear some soft moccasins on my feet when going out, even at work, because to wear my usual shoes (sandals) would have rubbed against the wounds and caused continuous pain. Finally, about three days ago, the wounds were sufficiently healed for me to wear sandals with socks as a cushion.
This morning, however, I slipped on my sandals over bare feet and came to work. There was a vestige of pain, but it was a pleasant sort of feeling, and my feet were full of energy allowing me to walk and run with the usual spring in my steps. It just felt so good to be able to walk and run again in those sandals, and the small pain of the scars added to the joy of walking. Don’t say I didn’t warn you: this was a very simple, very mundane example.

Another experience which many can share involves physical exercise.
I work out a couple of times a week on a bowflex machine. Once in a while, I really work some muscles hard, and they can feel very, very sore for up to three days. But there comes a certain point where the pain in the muscles changes its quality somehow, and though one still feels sore, the muscles are now ready for another workout or just everyday use, and it feels so good to use them again. Why? Because they feel more solid, stronger, and it raises the spirit to know that the body has been improved. When pain turns to joy…

A final example is the common occurrence of being sick, be it the flu, or a cold, or a sore throat, or an ear infection, whatever. The sickness goes on and on, and while it’s happening, one wants to either just die and be done with it, or somehow make it hurry up and finish. Well, regardless of how long it takes to recover—and it’s usually always too long—there’s a point at which we still are sick, but something has changed, we can tell we’ve turned a corner. Now, though the pain or symptom remains, it is somehow under control and is gradually weakening, and our joy grows, knowing that we are soon to become well. When we do become fully strong and well again, there might be a small hint of the pain left, yet it makes the joy of being well again even greater.

So much for my humble musings.
The Word of God itself has a far better example than any of mine.

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.
John 16:21 NIV

Yes, when pain turns to joy…