The Insanity of Chronic Pain

I was watching Grey's Anatomy "Shiny Happy People" on hulu.com and starting thinking about the insanity of chronic pain. A young girl was brought into the hospital because she tried to scratch her eyes out and commit suicide. She was in so much pain and delirium they thought she was Schizophrenic. It turned out she had pressure induced vertigo from a small hole in her inner ear causing her to hear every sound in her body and every sound outside her body was magnified.

Living with chronic pain is not only an assault on your body it is an assault on your mind. The un-relentless torture of agony, limitations, and lack of understanding brings many people to utter despair. It makes you want to scratch your eyes, tear your hair, or blow your brains out. The mind is more fragile than your body and without a strong faith it is almost impossible to maintain. Even then, it is almost impossible to continue without prayer support. Moses needed Joshua and Aaron to hold his arms up when he was too weak to carry on. And so people with chronic pain need to reach out.

Dear Friends, I am reaching out in the mist of my insanity and pain asking for prayer...asking for help...asking for understanding. It is so difficult for me to write and yet that is the very thing God keeps calling me to do. He keeps giving me all these messages to share and they are stuck in my brain...stuck with a body too painful to spend time on the computer...stuck with fingers that keep typing gobble de goop. I pray to heal my body or stop asking me to write...and He has chosen neither. He simple spoke to my spirit and explained you are here to learn to completely rely upon Me.

It is only by His Grace and with His Anointing I am able write anything. Without His Anointing it is like driving in the mist of a raging storm. You can barely see the road, but somehow with prayer manage to get to your destination. Yes, you got to where you were going, but not without a lot of stress and very slowly. Sometimes you just have to stop, pull over, and wait for the storm to pass. That is what my brain is like, dear friends, and my storm never passes. I am grateful for His Anointing. I am grateful I have these moments of lucidity, but I would love to be able to function day to day and just simply chat with my friends.

I have learned to have a grateful and positive perspective. I am being REAL. When you have everything taken away from you it is a choice how you are going to respond. I choose to be thankful for what I have and not to be complaining about what I do not have or can not do. Yes, there are days I am sad and lonely, days when I am delirious from the pain, days I don’t have the strength to feed myself…let alone make it to the store if I am out of food. Yet, with all this I choose to be joyful and content in the Lord. For…the joy of the Lord is my strength. Every day is a struggle, but I will continue to praise the Lord.

In His presence there is joy. In His presence there is peace. In His presence there is freedom from pain. It’s a choice and even though I might be crying on the outside…in my soul there is joy.

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Romans 12:12