I Met Myself in Pain

 "When she remembers to look at herself in a spiritual light, she sees the deep capacity for love this pain has brought her. The realization fills her with wonder. Now she can rise in the morning and greet the new day with eagerness and grace." -Harold Kemp 

With pain as a constant companion, I have found that it is like anything extremely difficult I've had to endure. I've learned to not embrace it, but to include it in a way that ends up deepening me. This is both a blessing and a curse. Pain becomes its own language when spoken, and is only understood completely by those who speak it, treat it, feel it, and carry it.  Pain is lonely, isolating, imprisoning, desperate, burdening, strength-sucking, and a constant battle for your mind and body, a constant feeling of loss while trying hard to hold on. 

Some days can be a desire to give up mentally, a temptation to give up physically, and some days it's both. Those days are the worst. 

While everyone is going about their days being "busy", those of us in pain are just busy trying to stay afloat.

When I try to explain my pain, someone has a story, a remedy, a comparison, a solution. But they don't understand. No two pains are alike. No two diseases share the same treatments or solutions. What worked for you is hurting me, and you not listening makes me not share my pain at all. "Getting out" and "staying positive" are just words when you haven't met pain eye to eye. When you don't really know what it takes for a person just to get up in the morning or walk from one room to another. This is how pain becomes isolating, and isolation leads to more pain. We are the ones who are most hurt by "share your blessings, not your burdens." Please don't listen to that. Share your pain. Find a good therapist who specializes in long-term illness. 

This pain reliever or that pain reliever doesn't work for this, and no, surgery isn't the best option either. That's why it's chronic. That's why it's a problem. That's why it affects my life in this way, and that's why not all pain has a "reliever". Be glad if all you have is a headache, a cold, or a stiff knee. There are remedies for those things. They pass. 

With chronic pain comes a loss of freedom. A loss of the ability to come and go as I please. To go and help others or attend important things with my family. It is a blow to any kind of socializing, though with Covid, I don't really care to socialize anyway, so that has actually helped. But to not be able to go for a long walk, or even a short walk has left me anxious, angry, and feeling punished at times. If you are sitting here reading this, wondering if you should start that exercise program and you have a healthy body, please do it today. Don't take a healthy body for granted. Move as it was designed to move. Mine will not allow me to do that anymore without terrible repercussions. 

Chronically ill people will tell you they experience chronic grief as well. Grief for the life they have lost, and grief for the potential they are also losing. We are often expected to represent strength, courage, and resilience, though I can tell you personally that I am sick of all of those terms. I would much rather show you what it really feels like to have the rug pulled out from under me and be honest with those emotions. I am angry. I took care of myself and I put good things in my body. Why all of these things happened to me has no rhyme or reason. It just happened. 

When I see ridiculous people acting idiotic on TV, treating others horribly, one of the first things I think is, "wow, and they have good health and look at all the negativity they are breeding out there." Here I am, sitting here with the good I want to give, and I'm stuck here at home in pain. Yes, I say this because it's how I really feel. I hate running with a passion, but if God healed me in an instant, I'd sign up for a 5K tomorrow. Hold me to it. Believe me, it would be the best day ever and I may even post it on my sleeping Instagram! 

I hear others making future plans and sometimes I can't help but be frustrated and disappointed that I can't do that. I can't plan for a wedding 4 months from now because I don't know if I can make that long of a trip. I can't predict the next 8 hours or tomorrow. Someone else's setbacks are easy to reconfigure. Mine feel like attacks, because they involve every part of my being. 

Maybe you are questioning now my opening quote? I have not forgotten my faith. I have not forgotten God. I have not forgotten how changed I have become throughout this pain journey. But I feel the need to explain the truth of pain before I can explain how I can manage to live in it. Even though I have faith and I have belief in God, it doesn't change the fact that my pain is real. I'm not Suzy Sunshine claiming joy when it's not like that at all. I can still feel all of those things, yet I can still have faith and I can still trust God for my eventual healing. I can still understand that there is a purpose to pain, and be content with not knowing that purpose yet. I can feel that I am a more loving person because I have felt this pain, and have expressed a deeper compassion for others through it. Though I love deeper, I have also been hurt on deeper levels as well, and even that has been something to stop and ponder. Pain is real and so is my faith. It is not an "either or" situation, and some people place that label on God if their pain isn't resolved from constant prayer. In due time, God will heal me. I just don't know how or when. 

When I have shared a compassionate love that even surprised myself, I now know that it is the love that was born from carrying this lonely pain, and if it wasn't accepted, then that person has not quite met themselves just yet. It has nothing to do with me. I believe this pain has helped me to get to know deeper parts of myself, and perhaps that is just part of the purpose God has chosen for me. And with that, I can greet this pain with grace. 

With pain, Jesus endured the cross for me. What cross am I to carry with this pain? Old me would have never asked these questions. 

Be blessed.