the problem of pain

It has seemed as if an invisible enemy has been taken my life by storm in the last three months.

And now I am literally bound to the confines of my own home, on bed/house rest, was taken for a 10 minute car ride yesterday and just the drive up the street to Starbucks brought me so much pain it wasn’t even worth it.

I feel like so much of my life has been slipping through my fingertips.

I am not in control and every day just wake up wishing I’m in some nightmare and that the pain will go away.

I feel disqualified from life. or life as I knew it.
It’s as if I’m watching everyone live life as normal and watching their lives pass me by when mine seems to be standing still.

There’s a reality that has been making itself more and more apparent in the last few days, I’m really sick, something is wrong and we don’t know what it is.

The uncertainty is crippling. At any given moment I’m somewhere between the caverns of faith or doubt, knowing yet struggling to believe at the same time that He is with me and promises to take care of me.

At different moments in the last couple of weeks, my Father has spoken these reassuring words to the depths of my soul when I needed them the most. Some days, it is only this gentle whisper that gives me the strength to go on:

“Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you…”

“God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble, therefore we will not fear…”

Like I said, it seems like an invisible enemy has been eating away at my life the last three months. Every week I felt, this week things will get back to normal only to be more and more devastated.

It started a few months ago with a maelstrom of emotional pain that hadn’t died down, only intensified, and then in the last 2 weeks replaced by an incredible amount of physical pain.

If there is anything I have learned about pain in the last couple of weeks of few months, physical or emotional it is that pain is persistent.

It demands our attention.

Pain does not whisper, it shouts.
Nags.
Bothers.

Pain is invasive.
It disrupts life. or perhaps, it unravels and disrupts the masquerade we knew as life, as one of my favorite authors puts it.

Pain does not ask, it intrudes.

I’ve been writing about the analogies between physical and emotional pain at length in the last three weeks, words I hadn’t had time nor the energy or strength to share, but now, as I’m on home rest the next at least another week, I’m going to try and start articulating them.

I’ll share more of those later, but just off the cuff as I sit here in my quiet living room, the first moment all day where I have not been in pain, I am feeling somewhat normal again.

Pain is like that unwanted visitor that just will not go away.

I remember how frustrating it was a few weeks ago when I was woken up once again in the wee hours of the morning by a nagging toothache. During that week, I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours before waking up due to the pain. Nothing seemed to bring relief.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. As I trudged to the kitchen to get a glass of water and then reached into my purse for some ibuprofen and some teeth gel Ben got me, I realized, this is useless.

Nothing will dull the ache.

I’m taking 3 ibuprofen every few hours for the pain (as prescribed) and it’s not even touching it!

As I sat there, in my feeble attempts to alleviate the pain, I realized how true of a parallel that is in the rest of our lives.

We will do anything to avoid or alleviate the pain.
But sometimes the pain gets so great, all we’re doing is merely temporarily numbing it, only for it to come back in just a little bit.

To heal the pain, you have to get at the source.

I remember just wanting to yank my tooth out in that moment. I had slept with an ice pack the whole night just to aid with that entire side of my face throbbing. The splitting headaches during the day were enough to make me feel like I was going crazy. Nothing was working.

The pain demanded attention.
Pain is a signal.

It is our body’s way of alarming us that something is wrong, and that something needs to be addressed.

I realized how real the physical pain and my feeble attempts to numb it, correlated with my own emotional pain and storm I’ve been in the last few months.

Everyday, every week, I felt like things would be getting better. But sadly, they were only getting worse.

I don’t know why all of these things are happening right now. In fact, just a week and a half ago, in the midst of the toothache and processing the other challenges I was facing emotionally, I had finally come to acceptance. And instead of fighting, was embracing the healing path that God has me on and my fiancé.

We started reading a book by Dan Allender called The Healing Path and it has been resonating deeply with us and the journey God currently has us on. A journey we did not choose, but have found ourselves on after a series of difficult circumstances have surrounded us. A journey and path that leads to life, more of life than we had been living, but one that does not cut the corners of walking through the dense and thick valleys of the valley of the shadow of death.

A tiny glimmer called hope.

Some days it is only this tiny dot on the horizon that can keep me going and remind me of the One who is holding my hand and holding me through all of this. Some days the darkness enveloping you seems overwhelming and you forget that this isn’t where you will always be, but that you are simply passing through.

The biggest correlation I felt that day, as I reached for ibuprofen to alleviate the pain was that to get at pain, you have to go directly to the source. You have to go to the root.

It involves a painful venture directly into the center of the pain, not away from it.

Just like a root canal, this invasive procedure is the only way to get all of the infection out. There is no other way.

The problem with pain is that while it hurts, it is healing.

Yet it demands attention. I couldn’t take it any longer and had to call my dentist and ask for an appointment immediately.

The thing with pain is we keep wishing it will just go away. Just like with the challenging situations I was faced with emotionally in the last few months, and just a week ago telling a friend I just couldn’t wait for life to get back to normal, is the reality that sometimes that pain is now a part of everyday life as we know it.

We never choose pain. Something in The Healing Path that really struck me is how often we set out on journeys that are supposed to look one way, only to find out, much to our surprise that instead of “Peace” and “Joy,” our companions for our journey are “Sorrow” and “Suffering,” the traveling companions of Much Afraid in Hannah Hurnard’s Hinds Feet on High Places allegory. I could relate to this so much, as I'm in a season where I'm getting married and on the outside you would think and expect everything to be exciting and joyous and for this to be a time filled with celebration and anticipation, yet while I am extremely grateful for the gift of getting to spend the rest of my life with this man, this season has looked anything but what I ever thought or imagined.

I’ve stopped fighting now and am accepting. Accepting whatever is happening within me, accepting the uncertainty of it all, accepting the pain and continuing to grieve, all that I feel I have lost and all I am not able to do right now or be a part of. Grief that is healing. That feels the full weight of the loss, yet relies on a grace that sustains, a grace that carries, and knows they are never alone and that He alone is faithful and eminently reliable. He will pull me through.

"When I am afraid, I will trust in You."

Love,
Avia
Hebrew for "Her Father is Lord"