Pain has a certain way of waking you up from the monotonous routine of life. I hate pain, but I am beginning to see its value. Obviously, no one appreciates pain at the time, but the effects of pain can be positive and long-lasting.
Personally, I've experienced quite a bit of pain in 2007. It's been a tough year. I've dealt with (and am still coming to grips with) the emotional pain of the loss of a young friend whose life seemed to end way too soon. And the loss of another family friend to an unexplained and still semi-puzzling suicide. In the last 10 weeks I've also dealt with some of the most painful pain I have experienced in my shoulder and back. It felt like there was a raging fire destroying everything inside and it only took three injections, a ridiculous amount of Ibuprofen and Vicadin to get over. And then of course, to cap the year off I got the stomach flu one day before I was to preach at Evergreen and fly for 6 hours back to the Midwest for Christmas break.
Somewhere in the midst of that I felt a certain depression, not quite despair but I did start to feel sorry for myself. It was hard to concentrate on anything but the pain, especially the five nights in a row I could not sleep because of it. In the middle of one night of sleepless wonder I expressed my anger with God and anger at the problem of pain and my unawareness of its usefulness to life.
Looking back over the last year and the pain that it brought I am started to understand a few things. The first is that life is really great without pain. There really is something to "the most important thing is that you have your health" as Kelli has stated. There really is nothing quite like it. There is nothing like pain or sickness to wake you up to that reality.
The second thing I have been pondering is that the experience of pain really makes you grateful to every day that you do not experience pain. Life is more enjoyable than ever! I am happy to be alive remembering that we are not promised a pain free existence, nor even tomorrow. My perspective has not necessarily been changed, but sharpened and for that I am grateful to God. Unfortunately, this is something that we tend to forget way to quickly as we begin the day to day routines that we get stuck in.
And third, like I said above, pain wakes you up to the fact that many things in life are not nearly as important as we make them. You start saying to yourself, especially when you are sick, once I get healthy again, I'm going to do things differently. I'm going to eat better, take better care of myself, get healthy. I'm going to focus on the more important things in life and forget the triviality. We all need a wakeup call like this, usually about once a year, some of us more frequently! At the time, there is nothing more horrible than hurling, no doubt about that, but once health has sprung upon us again, life has never seemed so good. Thank you God for the reminder of how valuable life and health is, may we not waste the blessing of health while we still have it and may we never take it for granted.
3 comments:
Ah, there are lists you make for yourself, and lists made by spouses. I know I have a list for Brian...I really really hope Brian's current pain level deters him from future adventures into carelessness...but I strongly doubt it.
--starla
pain is such a difficult thing because it's truly something that we have to experience and deal with ourselves. i wanted so much to alleviate Dustin's pain, but most times i couldn't. i hear about friends having babies and their husbands trying to be supportive and help out in the delivery room, but pain of birth is something the mother has to bear alone. there are so many spiritual implications to that. all that to say seeing pain in someone you love makes you appreciate the good times with them even more and makes you more sensitive to them. which is something we can all use a reminder of.
i'm glad your pain is beginning to go away honey, but you can still ask for a massage anytime. =)
Thanks for sharing this Dustin. I look at my past 3 years in Russia and can really relate to you. As Americans we've learned to escape pain and only sigh with relief once we're out of it. But being in Russia and experiencing one hardship after another I'm learning that Russians welcome pain because they know it makes them stronger and more valuable people. A huge generalization for a big/complex country, but still see so many around me learning lessons and living alot more joyfully than I would in a tough situation. And the Russian Orth Church welcomes pain as I don't do so well: as a chance to commune with Christ. And a realization that this is not our home.
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