CoachNet Campfire

Recently I’ve been tested on a very personal level by needing to coach someone who is in tremendous physical and emotional pain.  It is a deep and trying valley. Everything in me would rather relieve this person of her pain but it is beyond my and even many good physicians’ ability.  Instead it is my role to simply help her bear the pain by being present and perhaps in maintaining some sort of perspective.Perspective is easy if you have a familiar or fixed point from which to see things. Since pain can be very disorienting, helping that person in pain find something solid from which they might navigate can be a challenge for us as coaches.  The past three weeks have caused me to plumb the depths of my soul, my experience and my knowledge as I prepare for each appointment. And in each appointment this one who is in such pain has astounded me with profound “rebound coaching.” Her responses to my questions have fallen into three categories and from them I have also drawn much strength that I have to pass them on to you:1 - I believe that God is sovereign…this, and only this, allows me to live with the mystery of suffering.2 - I trust that God is good all the time this allows me, whenever I can, to laugh and to cry.3 - I know that God is just and this allows me to live responsibly and accept help when I need.Pain is an unfortunate fact of life, a faithful teacher and a formidable foe. It is also something that we are prone to run from…even when it is in others. I have found it very challenging to be completely present in our appointments and to not attempt to move the focus off of her pain but to coach her through it though it does not end. Yet.When we are in pain we sometimes experience God as our coach…He too doesn’t always give us answers. But, He does give us himself. And He has said to the perplexing things in life, like pain; “I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.” Therefore she and we can face pain, mystery and hardship knowing God is sovereign, good and just.  With that we can trust what we cannot trace. Step where we cannot see. And undergo what we do not understand.What have you learned coaching through pain, mystery and the unknown?