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Posts Tagged ‘pain’

Lessons from a Broken Wrist

Posted in Eastertide, Random Thoughts, Spiritual formation, tagged , , , , , , , on May 15, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Scripture is clear:
“Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for You are my praise.”—Jeremiah 17:14

And yet, there’s no magic here. In fact, it’s a process just like everything else. What have I learned in the last eight and a half weeks?

  1. The pain is real. And honestly, I’m not even talking about the initial breaks. I’m talking about this healing process. Most people ask, is it getting better? I guess. I can do a little more, move more, and it only hurts part of the time, not all of the time. That’s progress. I’ll not mention the ice pick jabs that stop me in my tracks.
  2. It’s slow. I mean painfully slow. After eight weeks, I only have to wear my brace at night but now I’m supposed to voluntarily move my hand and wrist. Each effort is a test: does it still hurt? See point one.
  3. The healing is not observable. In fact, I think my wrist looks like something leftover from a Frankensteinian procedure. There’s some weird things going on inside my skin: the tendons are tormented, the nerves are shaken, the bone is unyielding. The outer skin is poor camouflage to what is happening inside.
  4. Limitations are numerous. I suppose there is improvement here, after all, I can wash my own hair, put on deodorant, and snap my bra. Breakthroughs. But not for many weeks on the front end and the last thing I wanted to do was ask for help. But I see the truth of it. The initial pain is simply too much to bear alone. I had to confess to my restrictions, my body imposed prohibitions.
  5. Inertia prevailed. Exercise? Forget it. Productivity? No chance. Typing? Be still my hands. Field trips or escapades? Not hardly. The bed drew me mostly. I wasn’t just tired in my body, I was tired in my mind. I didn’t want to think about my injury. I still don’t, not really.

So where is the good news? The list is the same as always: patience, trust, gentleness with oneself, and a sense of humor. This is tortoise territory (as in the tortoise and the hare); slow and steady wins the race.

But the last thing I want to share is that these lessons are the same for the heart. If anyone has experienced a broken heart, the symptoms are probably the same, as well as the “solution.”

Time heals, God heals. That’s a promise. But it’s still up to each one of us to walk it.

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God’s Hand

Posted in Grief, Lectionary, Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 14, 2015| 1 Comment »

Gods handWhether I like it or don’t like it, whether it’s fair or not fair, whether it’s convenient or not, I am a child of the Living God and this is my journey. When calamities happen to people (losses, illness, or trauma) and we did nothing to set the stage for those things to occur (we didn’t drink ourselves into stupors or ride the edges of cliffs), then peace comes only from knowing that God is God. And like many others, I too have been given a set of circumstances to navigate and learn and grow and maybe, just maybe, help someone else.

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
    or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
    or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
    that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every creature
    and the breath of all mankind. . . . “ [Job 12:7-10, NIV]

Throughout these months of grieving over Mike’s death, eight months ago now, people have asked me if I was angry yet. I suppose the implication is that I would become angry at Mike for dying or God for allowing it. But in neither case do I find these to be good material for anger. That’s not to say I haven’t had an array of other emotions like disappointment, sorrow, loneliness, and even misery, but anger, not so much.

Well, that’s not totally true. I did cut loose on my son one day for being so self-absorbed and insensitive to my chaos and insecurities and bafflement. But really, what twenty-two year old would do much better? He’s already boxed up his feelings about his father and he’s uncomfortable with any further displays of anguish. (He can save these up for the therapist down the road.) And perhaps, if I had to analyze that horrible episode, my ravings and tears and emotional collapse into a heap on the floor could have been anger as well, pent up and explosive.

I scared myself that day. I fasted soon after. For a week. Looking for the center of God in me. Again.

In the end, there was only the same certainty, God’s hand is on my situation and with me. My years are not over yet and time will reveal what is still intended for me to know, to live, to walk, to understand. Job figured it out. I guess I can too.

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Help Carry

Posted in Grief, Lectionary, Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »

tearsLike so many things in life, we are part of a circle. As we help bear the burdens of others, God bears ours (and that of the others we took upon ourselves). When a friend’s heart is heavy or circumstances pouring over them, we have a responsibility to help. Our fear is that we will be crushed or infected. But God’s promise is sure:

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. [Galatians 6:2, NIV] Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. [Psalm 68:19, NIV]

I had the opportunity this week to meet someone new and to hear her story, filled with disapmourn with those who mournpointment and sorrow. She needed to talk. She needed someone to listen. She need to offload. My cost was only time and my faith that God would ultimately carry the most of it. We are all so similar. Human pain and loss is universal. It’s easier to see it in others than to walk it. But time does bring some reprieve and the touch of others helping us hold up our heads, our hearts, our souls.

Another brother in my extended community of faith has passed, a contemporary with my own husband. I cannot reach out physically to his wife who has moved away, but I do lift her and her family up in prayer. This lifting is a conscious carrying that is just as important as listening or talking to someone in person. Prayer is vital to burden bearing. Even though she may not know about it, God is faithful. And another, closer to me, will feel the call to hold her close, to wipe her tears, to sit and listen, to laugh when she laughs and to weep when she weeps. [Romans 12:15] It is the way of faith.

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Hide in God

Posted in Ordinary Time, Praying the Psalms, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Psalm 143 is filled with urgency and no less in these two verses:

hidingplaceLet the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
    for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
    for to you I entrust my life.
Rescue me from my enemies, Lord,
    for I hide myself in you. [Psalm 143:8-9 NIV 2011]

I don’t know this kind of urgency very often. From day to day, I live a life of relative ease. There might be emotional upheavals and drama (after all, I have two young adults still living at home with us), but none of these cause me to burrow into the hiding place of God. I do not live in a foxhole as many people do throughout the world today. Instead, for all I know, I may be luxuriating in pot of water on the stove, getting warmer and warmer, but not realizing I am actually dying.

Well, we all are. From day to day, closer each day to some inevitable transformative moment that will take us out of our bodies in an instant or on a journey of pain and disease, a slower but nonetheless equally lethal end. This is part of living, the dying.

There have been several deaths around me of late: husbands of friends, old friends, passing acquaintances, relatives of colleagues, and on and on the list seems to get longer each year. We have a patron who comes into the library every week to look at the local newspaper for one thing only, to check the obituaries. There is always someone she knows, she has lived in this same community all of her life.

Is the shadow of death the only real urgency in a life? Or, is that merely self-serving to the end?

Or, are we to live with empathy for others in their crisis?

No one can sustain the stress of true crisis for an extended time. The body cannot generate enough adrenalin. I could help by if I knew how to envelop this person in need with the love of God, with the touch of authentic human, with the promise of rest. But then, I must really know what it means to shelter in God before I can bring someone else into the hiding place.

Back in my childhood, I was never very good at playing hide and seek. Either my hiding place was too good (and no one could find me so I would come out – who wants to be alone in a hiding place?) or the spot was too easy and I was found right away. Often, I would keep peeking out just to see what was going on around me. Just in case. And of course, this would be another way I would be pulled free from safety.

And there’s the problem, the human tendency to peek. To hide in God works better as a permanent solution, not just in a state of emergency. If I could stay in the hiding place of God, within the Spirit of Christ, my view of the world would be through a completely different lens. I would see more clearly; I would recognize needs in others; I could envelope and invite them in, for the place is large and plentiful. The hiding place of God knows no limits, nor does it include chains. It’s a choice to remain, just as it is a choice to enter.

So, does the hiding place mean I won’t experience urgency and fear and pain? On the contrary, those moments will still happen, I’m sure of it. The difference is in walking out trauma with an ongoing confidence in the Presence: “We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan” [Romans 8:38, The Voice].

And remaining “in” God. No peeking.

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If Not Now, When?

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

time is now[If you truly fast . . . ] Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” [Isaiah 58:9-10]

Oh the promises God gives in so many different voices. I am slow. I am slow to respond with internal change.

I am reading a book by John Sarno, M.D. on healing back pain (and many other aches & pains) through a mind-body connection that we have lost. And in it, he says how slowly the subconscious responds to change. In another venue (not sure if it was a book, web site, or magazine article), I read about the difficulties that overweight people have in maintaining their weight loss and that the body, for many years even, wants to return to its former (heavier) state. It’s literally a battle within for the psyche to accept the “new you.” Or,  I think of more serious scenarios where abused and battered women stay in marriages and partnerships because it became the norm and a “new normal” hard to imagine.

These illustrations reveal tendencies in my personal spirit too. I have a comfort zone within which my spirit does not adapt out of easily. Our bodies, our minds, and our spirits experience a time of confusion when we try something new, when we step out of the familiar, when we dip our toes into unknown waters.

jumping inHow do you walk into the ocean? Do you run full tilt and jump headlong into the frigid waves, exulting in that blasting sensation? Or, are you like me, slowly wading in and letting each body part get used to the water beforslow ocean walke going the next step, the next depth. Only when the ocean takes charge and bursts over my plan do I give in and dunk in. But there are times when I don’t even get past my knees. Maybe the first steps are too cold or too rocky or too slimy and I turn back. I don’t give the ocean a chance to envelope me. I go back to the sand (and really how comfortable is that?).

There are four parts to a complete Lenten experience:  fasting (the change up), prayer (the conversation),generosity (reaching out to others), and confession (owning up to our mistakes). This is the perfect time to enter the ocean of God’s love, God’s invitation, Christ’s work, and the Holy Spirit’s waters. Whether slow or fast, the time is now.

I will never be one to jump in with full abandon. But I do commit to a slower journey. I choose it. I choose to work inward so that my outward self becomes less judgmental, more connected, and filled with the Light of Christ. I want my night to become like noonday. It’s a process. And like everyone else, it’s outside my comfort zone.

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Getting to the Dream

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , on January 30, 2013| 2 Comments »

Photo by Bill Dickinson

Photo by Bill Dickinson

Joseph had the dream as a young man, his brothers and family bowing down to them. It was a true dream. But never did he imagine the journey that would bring him to the reality of that dream. Isn’t this so often the way? Betrayal and sorrow often bring the dream.

Genesis 42:8-9Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him. Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, “You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected.”

If the brothers hadn’t sold Joseph into slavery, then he couldn’t be in Egypt when Pharaoh had his dream to interpret it. If Joseph hadn’t been there, Egypt would not have prepared for famine in the same way that they did. And not only Jacob’s family would have been lost to famine, but scores and scores of people would have died.

Some will say God turned a bad thing into a good thing. And surely, that does happen. But on the grander scale, the big big picture that God sees, it appears, in hindsight, that achieving some goals (or dreams) have an arduous path. Peter Rollins wrote a book, “The Fidelity of Betrayal” which examines and expands on this concept of loss/death/betrayal preceding joy/renewal/transformation.

Some of us are lose the dream when the going gets tough: that would be me. I see myself so clearly now in this loss of confidence and direction. I look around and there is absolutely nothing that appears valuable in my quest for the dream. I am broke or caught up in a band of busyness. How could any of this end up at the dream? And the longer it goes on, the more doubt I have in the dream at all.

Oh sorrow.

I gave so many dreams because they didn’t come to fruition soon enough. I judged the time and found it lacking. So I’d build another dream and another dream and yet another. Looking for hints that one or the other dream was coming true. I was getting there. I was reaching it.

But no, the dream (the picture in my head of what the dream would look like) kept moving further away.

I am sorry now. I ask forgiveness of God for my lack of faith and fortitude. I didn’t trust the Way. I didn’t want to be a Joseph who had to be sold into slavery, wrongly accused, thrown into jail, and languish there until the moment was right. I wanted to create those moments. I wanted to control the timing. I wanted the dream my way or no way.

And so, I got my way after all. I got none of those dreams.

That’s sad except for one truth. There is another dream before me. I am, at the least, that resilient. I am not dreamless. But now, even at this age, after so many years, I can understand the importance of keeping on toward the dream, of trusting God no matter my circumstances, of believing in a future that holds the moments God creates.

I will believe.

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The Mark of Cain

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

And what was the curse on Cain: the very ground from which he had labored all of his life would no longer yield to him, would no longer produce, would no longer be his safety. He wandered because he found no rest in the land (Nod means “wandering”). He became the first nomad.

Genesis 4:11, 15-16
Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. . . Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,east of Eden.

And why the mark? And what was the mark? Most commentators don’t really know. Cain received the mark after complaining that he would be killed as a wanderer, that he would be outside of the clan (I’m guessing) and seen as a stranger and therefore suspect. And, perhaps a nomadic life was not the norm in that time.

What I find interesting is that everyone refers to the mark as protection. I believe the mark was equally part of the curse. Cain was destined to suffer and possibly, in the norm of that time, forever or nearly forever. After all, Adam and Eve, if counted just by generations and who was alive when, lived over 800 years. I assume this came as a result of their tastings of the Tree of Life (Creator stopped that practice when he cast them out of the garden of the two trees).

But death would have been release for Cain and I’m guessing, like Groundhog Day, when life is a drudgery, when hope is snatched away, then death seems like the best route out. The mark of Cain prevented him from dying.

What is the application for me, however? In general, I would say that I should not make assumptions about the intent of God who is ultimately sovereign. Based on subsequent laws that came down through Moses, death deserved death. But God did not destroy Cain. He had another purpose that was higher. I cannot judge why some live and some die. I cannot judge why some suffer and some do not. I cannot know who carries the Mark of Cain, for this is not a mark I can see, only God.

 

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