When the pain is blinding.
I have had something like
fifteen surgeries. Seven of them have been cesarean section births, two new
feet, some corrective plastic surgery, hand surgery, and oral surgery. The
worse by far was the parotidectomy. Your parotid gland incorporates nearly the
entire side of your face. One day I found a tumor right next to my right
ear. Everyone told me it was nothing, probably a benign cyst, that I
shouldn’t worry, but I knew different. This was one of those times when the
voice in the back of your head says, “God’s got a work for you to do. Be
prepared, He’s turning up the heat.”
That
voice is almost always the voice of the Holy Spirit guiding or convicting
us. Almost two agonizing months after I
found the tumor, I lay on an operating table for near six hours while my gifted
oncologist, with great precision, removed the tumor which did have some nerve
involvement. Because the nerve was involved, I was supposed be left with
anywhere from minor to major facial paralysis. to completely unable to even blink or smile. Best case scenario would
have been Bell’s Palsy as a lasting effect for the rest of my life. By the gracious
and miraculous hand of GOD, and complete surprise to all medical personnel, I
experienced none of the above. The story doesn’t end there. After proving
to be a stage one malignant tumor, my oncologist recommended daily radiation
therapy for a period of six weeks to burn out any remaining cancer cells in the
area
I foolishly assumed that the recovery
from that surgery was the most painful experience in my life, however, it was a
scratch on my cheek compared to what came next. For ten weeks, I endured
swallowing razor blades, radiation burns, radiation sores, complete loss of my
ability to taste anything, and fatigue like I’ve never known, even after having
birthed and raised eight babies. I was supposed to lose all my teeth and very
little hair, but GOD had a different plan. I lost no teeth at all, but
half a head of hair. I was bald as an eagle from the middle of my scalp down, but
no one knew because the top layer covered it. I had to walk around with a
mullet hair style for over a year, but considering I wasn’t supposed to keep my
teeth, I was all too happy to be out of style, looking like that achy-breaky,
country artist from the early 90’s.
The last difficult
ordeal, and I use that term loosely, was pain-med withdrawal. The fool
that I was, about two weeks after my last treatment, when I figured I could
stand the physical pain, I just removed the pain patches and threw them away.
Let me suggest, NEVER to do that! I wasn’t interested in tapering down, I
was interested in getting back to work and normal life. The withdrawal I
experience was similar to the kind of withdrawal a heroin addict experiences.
Now, don’t go assuming I was high and having a ball all that time, because when
narcotic painkillers are used properly for pain, there is no high as a kite.
There is only pain-relief to a degree, enough to live, but not enough to forget
the pain that was ever present.
All during those months,
I had lost sight of the reason for the pain. I had forgotten that it was all
for a greater purpose. I grew angry, bitter and near impossible to live with, a
time of my life of which I greatly grieve. It’s a funny thing about pain, sometimes
it can be so severe and life-draining, that the only thing we can focus on in
our daily life is the pain. Everything else becomes a blur, and we think is
this the way it’s always going to be? We wonder what if felt like to not
be in pain. We can’t remember life without it. It drains our energy, saps
our joy, and steals any happiness or hope we have for the future. Compassion
and agape love are gifts given to us by GOD, some get more some get less, while
empathy is an equal opportunity employer of our future work.
That
year my husband and I both survived dual cases of cancer, however, our three
decade old difficult marriage did not. The physical pain was over, but
the heart pain was only to get worse. I do thank GOD for every dark,
dreary, bleak, hopeless, despairing, oppressed and painful moment in my life,
because good will come from all of this. I’ve heard over and over the amount of
difficulties and obstacles a person has to endure is in proportion to the size
of the ministry GOD has planned for us after we have survived it all. I
hope that is true.
Currently,
I am in one of those extremely emotionally painful times where my back is
against the wall and there is no way out of my situation, short of the Hand of
GOD. There is no easy way out of this one, and sometimes, I get so lost in the
pain, I can’t remember the thousands of promises GOD gives us in His
Word. One of them is what GOD gave me the weekend before my cancer surgery.
This one is in Exodus, when the Israelites were at the Red Sea, with the
Egyptian army closing in on them. There was no way out for them, or so they
thought
Sometimes I lose focus, and I
look too much at the circumstances, the storm, the waves, and not the LORD who
just told me I could walk on water. Sometimes we fall into the devil’s
trap of only seeing and feeling the pain. This is the time that GOD uses
not to test us, because He knows if we will pass, but to prove to us that, yes,
we can endure it. We have two choices in pain, grow a deeper love for GOD or
withdraw from Him. I choose to grow deeper in love, my husband on the other
hand, chose the opposite road. People tell me everyday that GOD would never end
a marriage. People who say that don't know GOD very well, because in His Grace,
He did. We were both drowning in a sea of despair. I was on the top
trying to keep my head above water, while he was under the water, trying to
pull me under with him.
I thought being free from the
trap of a dying marriage would make it better, it only caused more grief,
because daily, he is a reminder that it didn't work. I am in constant
daily heart pain from that and a few other heart-crushing events since then,
but I march on, or as I tell my children when they are in physical pain,
"Kerri-Strugg-it. If she can do a perfect vault and win the gold for her
team on a broken ankle, then you can do whatever it is you have to do while
smarting a little, or even a lot.“
Recently, I learned that I
focused too much on Psalm 27:13, the promise that life would get better and
that I would see the "goodness" of the LORD in the land of the
living, and that made it worse. NOW, I focus on the character of GOD,
because that is always good, always gracious, always faithful, and always for
my good and the good of His Kingdom. That is where the numbing agent
really is.