The Arrival of Pain

I've not been keeping up on this blog for several years now.  Honestly, it's just been too hard.  This blog has been a place for me to be open and transparent about my faith, including the joys and struggles of the journey.  But for the past several years, even writing about the journey has been too difficult.  Perhaps because writing about it makes it more real.  Writing about it means admitting that this really is my story right now.  This really is MY life, not someone else's.

When I started this blog, I made a commitment to the Lord that I would be honest with my "readers" -- that is, the few who honor me by dropping by to see what I might have to say.  I wasn't going to make up a story or embellish my life.  I wasn't going to try to impress or dress up.  My goal for this blog was simply to be real about my life's journey to follow Jesus.  To be honest enough that people know I'm being real with them.

Well, it's time to be real.  These last several years have been about surviving, just keeping myself in the game.  I wake up in the morning with that goal.  I actually recite it to myself: "Stay in the game," throughout the day.  And when the day is over, I give thanks to the Lord for giving me just enough strength to get through it.

Life certainly wasn't always this way.  Not at all.

About six years ago an uninvited guest entered my life.  Not only was this guest uninvited, it was intrusive.   Impolite.  Never asking if its presence was an imposition on me, or my schedule, or my life.  I just woke up one morning and there it was.  And although I've asked it to leave time and time again, it stays.  It always stays.

Since it refuses to leave, it would be so much easier to hide at home with it,  But I can't do that.  At least not yet.  I'm not willing to give up my life for it -- not if I can help it.  So I gather up all the strength I have and with determination and a hint of anger, I tell it I am going out into the world.  I know it will accompany me.  But I won't let that stop me.  Except for those days when I just...can't...do...it.

The uninvited guest is chronic pain, and it started as a burning sensation on the side of my face and my jaw.  Now, in spite of four surgeries, trips to specialists and pain clinics, a myriad of medicines with names I can't pronounce, multiple healing services and hundreds of people praying for it to leave, it still remains.  And it seems as determined as ever to stay.  The longer it remains, the greater my challenge is --  not just to survive, but to convince myself that I AM NOT MY PAIN.

So this is my daily companion.  Everywhere I go.  Everything I do.  Pain accompanies me.  I know that some of you can relate.  I know that some of you can relate on a level that I can't comprehend because your pain is so much worse, so much more relentless.

More than anything, I just want you to know that you're not alone.  Perhaps one of the most devastating aspects of pain is the awful feeling of isolation that it brings.  But you are NOT alone.  There are MANY of us.  And ALL of us have Jesus, Who knows how horrendous pain can feel and knows exactly how WE feel.  He is my Hope.  He is my constant, INVITED friend and companion.  He keeps me in the game. 

Is it better to remain silent?

Is it better to remain silent?

My 8th grade English teacher posted famous quotes on the walls in her classroom.  I remember this one especially:

                            "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak                                 and remove all doubt."

 

Strange how some things stay with us while others are long forgotten.  My English teacher posted dozens of quotes.  This one stayed with me.  It became a sort of mantra for me. A justification.  A defense.  I will remain silent.  When I am silent, I can appear neutral.  When I am silent, I don't have to make a compelling argument.  When I am silent, I can appear to be smarter than I actually am.  When I am silent, I don't have to open myself up to criticism or ridicule or rejection. When I am silent, I can disappear -- almost.

Better to remain silent.

"There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens...

A time to tear, and a time to mend,

A time to be silent, and a time to speak. 

(Ecclesiastes 3:1 & 7)

 I don't know if the writer of Ecclesiastes intended for those last two lines to work together -- in other words, that WORDS are a part of the tearing and mending process and thus there are times to be silent and times to speak because words, or the lack of them, are part of the healing process.

And anyway, there are plenty of people who are more than willing to speak.  They speak often.  On every topic.  They speak with authority.  They speak on behalf of God.  They speak on behalf of the Bible.  They speak on behalf of lots of things -- issues and people and policies and religion.

But who will speak on behalf of me?  Who will speak these things that God is teaching me?  Who will share the insights and lessons that I'm discovering and learning?  Who will share the words that rise up within me desperate to come out?

I think I have been sitting here, hoping, praying that someone would speak on behalf of me.  I've been silent when told to be silent.  I've been a pretty good listener.  And I've walked away when told to walk away.  But why?

So, Ecclesiastes says there's "a time to be silent," but it also says there's "a time to speak."  I'm at a point in my life where I think it's time that I spoke.  Maybe this blog will be my microphone.  And maybe some people will actually want to hear what I have to say.  Maybe...