For Those in Pain and Suffering, Sickness and Disease. I See You.

For those with chronic disease. For those of you dealing with long term sickness, those in long term pain or suffering. I see you.

I see you.

I don’t “seem sick”.  From the outside. 

I don’t look flush.  I don’t look sick.  In fact, I “look good”, as people who see me have noted. In a world where we worship thinness, my loss of weight is to be admired, not a matter for concern.

I have been in some form of physical pain for 6 months now. 6 months. Sometimes dull pain, like complete body aching, sometimes extreme exhaustion and suffering, and sometimes very acute and intense pain. No matter which pain I feel, it has made each day very hard. Each day does not feel like a gift, but a burden to bear. Each day I have found myself contemplating, “How can God be in pain?”

I have learned three very profound things about pain in these months. Things I want to remember. So today I want to write it for me, but also for those of you in pain/suffering/disease of some kind, and lastly for those of you who know someone in the battle of pain/suffering/disease.

This is what I have learned.

Pain is so lonely. 

Now that I know chronic pain in a new way, I also know the bounds of empathy. I know what it is like to be on the other side of your empathy fatigue. Your compassion and empathy were big in the beginning, but now even though my pain has not languished, your empathy has.  And that is okay.  I don’t expect you to, or want you to, feel everything I feel.  I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.  I want you to move on and to not think about carrying my pain.  I do. 

Yet, it makes it lonely here. 

Pain is so lonely.

Pain is so quiet. 

Like a backpack full of rocks. Yes, that is how it feels. I wear it every day. I must carry the weight of it, but you cannot see it.  You see only the strain on my face as I carry its weight.  You tell me you wish to hold the backpack of rocks for me, but you and I both know that you cannot.  I must carry it and press forward. I get better at carrying the backpack of rocks as I become “used to it” so to speak, but I still long for the lightness of health. I still long to put this backpack down.

I quietly feel it and quietly suffer.  Quietly. You forget I feel it, but I do not.  You tire of hearing why there is strain on my face, and I tire of talking about it.  What good does talking about it do, except remind you of the backpack I carry?  And should we both concentrate on it and suffer? Isn’t one of us enough?

But that makes it so lonely here, and so quiet. 

Pain is so lonely.  Pain is so quiet.

Yet, pain is also so LOUD. 

Pain is so loud.

It rings in my ears.  It seems to take over my entire being and thinking.  Like being in the room of a house party, right next to the speaker. You know when the bass in on high as the EDM music plays, that is how I feel it.  It reverberates in my whole being. I cannot NOT think of it.  I try to not feel it and not think of it, but it reverberates. It takes over every thought; it runs through all of me. 

Suffering chronic pain is not for sissies.  It gets into your core and then into your mind.  Like the loud music with heavy bass, it is all-consuming. 

Pain is so lonely.  Pain is so quiet, and yet, it is also so loud. 

Where is God in the pain/suffering/disease?

I keep thinking how it cannot be from God.  Pain cannot be from the Lord. He is not the author of this. There is no way. Not the God I know. Yes, he can use it.  But does he cause it?  Did he give it?

I close my eyes and think of the God I have come to know so intimately in the last 3 years of my life.  The God I have met in the quiet.  I think of the God who has become my best friend.  I think of the God who whispers his love to me.  He is gentle and kind and loving and strong.  I know Him. 

I may not be a theologian, but I feel like in the depths of my knowing, now that I know this chronic pain, I also know this: pain and sickness is not from the Lord.

How do I know?

It is such a distraction.  I want more than anything to read and talk with the Lord, but the pain is just too loud. It throbs.  From my skin to my bones, to the core of my being.  It throbs in my mind. It is so loud.

And I fall.  The backpack becomes too heavy. I find myself falling from empathy for myself into the trap of self-pity. My eyes lose their gaze from His loving eyes gazing down at me to myself.  I can only see me.  What used to be a laser focus on my best friend, my Lord and God, how somehow become a blurry and apathetic at best. My gaze turns down toward me.  Inward.  Down and down and down. To me. I don’t want to be selfish or self-involved, but I can’t help it. I must think about how to move without exacerbating the pain. Every move of my body is thought through a million times before I can do it. How to shift so it doesn’t hurt, how to fake a smile for those around me, how to get through another part of life when the uncertain future consumes me. So self-focused. I don’t mean to, I don’t want to, but it is survival.

Where is the hand that saves?

Although I cannot muster the strength to look up, I will not believe the lie that He isn’t here.  I know he is.  I know his character.  He does not leave.  He does not abandon.  He will meet me in my pain just as he does in my joy. He walks with me in it. He doesn’t just walk with me, he also feels it. He suffers with me. He feels what I feel. This is the God I know. And He knows. Like no one else, he knows.

My God is here.  Here in the loneliness.  He does not abandon.  He never leaves or forsakes. 

My God is here. Here in the quiet.  He is a whisper of wind.  I cannot hear Him, but I just might be able to feel Him on a good day.

My God is here.  Here in the loud. I cannot feel Him, I feel only the vibrations of pain, but He is here. I know it, because I know Him.

I must cling to what I know of Him even when I can’t see Him, feel Him, or hear Him.

He is here.