Antidote to Pain
The below was written on October 3, 2022.
___________________________________________________________
I sit in pain. Here. Now. As I sit and write, throbbing pain and shooting pain travels from my neck down to my shoulder and all the way down my left arm, to my fingertips. They say I have a pinched nerve in my neck. 5 weeks ago. 5 weeks of constant throbbing pain. 5 weeks of mind numbing, I can’t think about anything else or concentrate while you talk, pain.
All the prayers that came in the beginning have dried up. People have forgotten my pain and moved on to their daily life. My friend tells me she assumed I felt better.
5 weeks. Blinding pain. 5 weeks. That 5 seems small until you imagine yourself not able to move your head in any direction other than staring up at the ceiling…for almost 2 months. No tv. No phone. No reading. Lots of staring up at my ceiling. It is safe to say I have memorized the landscape of the dry wall bumps of my ceiling many times over.
The last 5 weeks, as I stare at the white of my ceiling, I have been thinking a lot about pain. Two things are clear to me. The first is that I now without a doubt believe that pain in not from God. I just can’t believe it is. The second thing is that I have noticed is that it is so hard not to let self-compassion slip into self-pity.
God calls us to be compassionate, to both ourselves and others, but self-pity is a whole different thing. Self-compassion is tender; you can allow yourself to hurt and give yourself some needed grace. Self-pity on the other hand…is self-focus. It is this never stopping self-involvement that comes along uninvited with long term pain. It cannot be from God. With self-compassion I find that I can still think of others, reach out to others, and love others…. but in self-pity…it is all about me. ME. ME. ME.
My pain. My suffering. My disease. My heart aches. My loss. My needs.
I met self-pity about a week ago and I did not like her. She was SO selfish. So self-involved. She didn’t mean to be, but she was. Self-pity. There was no room in her mind to hear about someone else. No space in her compassion to care about someone else’s pain. When she attempted it, any love that attempted to escape got swallowed up by “What about ME? MY PAIN?”, a loud voice ringing like cymbals in my ears.
Self-pity is LOUD. Like a selfish toddler having a tantrum, she only screamed her needs and desires with no ability to listen to anyone else. Self-pity is LOUD. Bossy. Takes up all the air in the room.
If she was a person, she would be loud and bossy. If she were a land, it would be the loneliest land in the world. No room for anyone else to be in it. Full…but only of me. All me. Just me. Suffocatingly full….and empty. No one else here but me.
The empty-full land of self-pity has a lot of words bouncing around. A lot of bitterness and blame. Most of mine pointed toward God.
I have been asking for healing, He did not give it.
I have been asking for relief, He did not grant it.
Blame and bitterness, self-involvement, self-pity, they all seek to devour me in this empty-full land.
Right in the middle of this lost land…in this empty and lonely place…full of a loud, all consuming, bossy voice not letting me think of anyone else but me…..darkness all around me….like in the bottom of a pit with not one glimmer of light to be seen…I hear a voice.
It is quiet. Quiet like a whisper, but somehow louder than the loud of self-pity. What does it say?
Praise me.
Praise ME.
I know it is the Lord, yet I do not have space for praise. I am full of ME. No one else can fit. My eyes cannot turn to another, they are transfixed on myself and me only. I do not know how to turn my head to the side, to someone else, to have compassion, or to turn my head up to look at God. My head hangs low, down.
My gaze only inward to myself.
Darkness surrounds.
I beg the Lord for help. I have been fasting and praying and hoping, but now my hope has turned to ashes. “Please send someone to fast and pray for me Lord, I have no strength left.” I beg Him. I know this is beyond my own strength, my own faith. I need back up.
Praise me.
Praise ME.
I hear it. Quiet, but like a broken record. I attempt to pray and the record spins with the same message.
Praise me.
Praise ME.
I cannot praise Him. I want to. But I slip further down into the pit of self-pity. Now I have reached the depth of self-loathing. It is deeper and darker than any pit. Self-loathing is low. Low, low, low.
I call to Him from the depths.
“Please Lord, send someone to help me. I am so low in this pit. Self-pity and self-loathing have swallowed me whole. I know this is not of you, but I am believing it is real. Every lie I hear in my mind feels incredibly real Lord. I cannot combat it with truth anymore, I am too weak.
I am worthless. My family would be better without me. I am a weight and a burden. I don’t really take any acts of faith. I don’t trust God. He will never use me. I am useless…..and on and on.
I hear in my mind that I am sick because he is punishing me for my lack of faith. I tell him I don’t have enough faith for what He calls me to do. I am too weak and too scared. “You chose the wrong girl,” I say.
With the last breath I have at the end of all these lies, in the spirit of desperation that comes after weeks and weeks of pain, I beg the Lord one last time,
“LORD, IF YOU ARE REAL AND YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT YOU ARE CALLING ME TO DO, AND I AM NOT THESE THINGS I HEAR, HELP ME HEAR THE TRUTH. SHOW ME THE WAY YOU SEE ME.”
Less than 24 hours later a friend texts me.
Words of praise.
Praise.
She tells me who I am.
Tears trickle down my face. This is answered prayer. This is God. This is how powerful He is.
She tells me how heavy hearted she has been for me and how she spent a whole day fasting and praying for me. (I am floored. I don’t think anyone, my own husband or even my own mother has even done that!)
“During my prayer and fasting I was reading verses and the overwhelming message I feel in my heart that I want to tell you is that you have tried to be obedient and taking so many steps of faith. You are so faithful and that should be celebrated, it is praise-worthy!” She tells me she felt God telling her to sing praises of me to Him!
“And I truly do praise God for the courage and strength that you have shown through the hardest of days!” she texts.
I sob.
This is my God. How kind, loving, and gentle He is. How He bends down to hear us. How He answers.
We text back and forth more. Next she tells me who God is.
Praise.
I cannot praise HIM so she does it for me. The Lord gives her the words I cannot find, and like a lantern in the dark, she hands them to me.
She tells me of the stories that came to her while she prayed for me. Stories in the bible of those who went before me who praised God not AFTER, but before. Not after the release from prison, but before; Paul sat in chains IN PRISON and praised the Lord. She reminded me of those who went before me and praised not AFTER the provision, but in the BEFORE….when they had nothing. No sheep in the stalls, not one fruit on the vine, no food at all, yet praise filled their lips. She remined me of those who went before me and praised God not for the healing, but BEFORE the healing.
Not for what God has done, but for who He is.
I ponder each of these stories. I know them. It hits me like a bolt of lightning to my soul: We don’t praise God for what He has done…like he is a genie in the bottle granting us our wishes…but for who He is.
We don’t praise God because of what He has done, like He is our genie in a bottle.
WE PRAISE GOD FOR WHO HE IS.
It hits me again and again. Light trickles into my dark spaces. More and more the light and truth filter in. Yet I cannot sing, or even speak praise, so I whisper. I whisper praise through the tears. Soft and quiet, like one small candle in a stadium of darkness.
In the way only God could, the next day, exactly one day later, I get three different texts from three different women. They do not know each other. They have not conspired. Each of the women text me a song. Women who I know love God but whom I do not regularly text or pray with. Seemingly out of the blue, all three say to me, “I believe God wants me to send this to you.”
Song of praise.
Song of praise.
Song of praise.
Praise God for who He is.
I learn to praise in the pain.
IN THE PAIN.
Whispers at first. Barely audible. But God knows. He hears. He bends his ear to the earth to hear my praises. He does not condemn or belittle. He holds my praise in the palm of his hands like a child holding a beloved shell they found on the beach. He is delighted. His delight radiates back to me…slowly warming my heart and casting out the darkness. Slowly shining light on all the darkness of self-pity and self-loathing until I cannot even see it anymore; like a candle flickering turned into powerful spotlight, chasing away the shadows. He chases away all the darkness in my mind that is not of Him. With praise. Praise chases away the dark.
I learn to praise God, not for what God has done, not for the healing, not for answered prayer, but in the pain.
IN THE PAIN I praise.
Praise is the passcode.
(I love the the because He hears me. Because He hears me, I will pray. Psalm 116:1-2)
